Academic Round-Up

The Virginia Law Review‘s online companion, In Brief, has two articles that will be of some interest to our readers (Hat Tip: Concurring Opinions):

1. Professor Scott Dodson (University of Arkansas School of Law) has written a case comment on one of the most important cases from October Term 2006: Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, see here. Among other things, Professor Dodson explains how the case has changed the pleading standards under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), and how the decision applies beyond the antitrust context.

2. Andrew George (student in the University of Virginia’s Class of 2008) has written a case comment on another interesting case from this past Term: Scott v. Harris, see here. In particular, Mr. George takes issue with the Court’s prior case on the subject, Tennessee v. Garner, and argues that Scott uses the correct constitutional standard for the use of deadly force based on Graham v. Connor. In George’s view, Garner is nothing more than an example for the propriety of using deadly force under the Fourth Amendment, and that the Scott Court properly recognized that danger from flight can be “equally relevant to a reasonableness calculation” as the danger from continued freedom.

Tom Clark (Princeton University) and Charles Cameron (Princeton University) have posted “The Macro-Politics of the Supreme Court” on SSRN, see here. The unsurprising aspect of this paper is that the authors conclude that the median Justice’s location is important for determining the liberalism of a Court. The surprising, and signficant finding, is that when the median Justice is moderate, the ideology of the Chief Justice plays an important role in outcome liberalism for two related reasons. First, the opinion writer gains substantial influence over the direction of the opinion. And second, the Chief Justice plays an important role in steering cases, especially important cases, toward ideologically attractive authors. This is a really interesting paper, and I recommend a download if you are interested in median voter theories.

Things have been quite active on the academic front, and I hope to post a new academic round-up early next week, including discussion of an excellent paper by Professors Greg Caldeira (Ohio State University) and James Gibson (Washington University).