Today in Supreme Court History: April 20, 2010

4/20/2010: United States v. Stevens decided.

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. --- (decided April 20, 2020): guilty verdict for serious crime must be unanimous (overruling 1972 cases saying 10 - 2 was okay)

United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460 (decided April 20, 2010): striking down on First Amendment grounds federal statute criminalizing depictions of animal cruelty (not animal cruelty itself) (defendant sold videos of pit bulls tearing apart pigs)

Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 578 U.S. 212 (decided April 20, 2016): no separation of powers problem with statute designating property available to satisfy particular judgments (here, bank accounts in New York, and judgments against Iran brought by victims of terrorism)

UNUM Life Ins. Co. v. Ward, 526 U.S. 358 (decided April 20, 1999): A provision of the ERISA law says that it does not affect state insurance law (I give a CLE on this really boring topic). So Court holds that claim on group insurance plan was subject to California's "notice-prejudice" rule (insurer can't disclaim a late notice unless it can show it was prejudiced by the delay) but ERISA preempts California law deeming notice to the employer to be notice to the insurer.

McDermott v. AmClyde, 511 U.S. 202 (decided April 20, 1994): apportionment of fault in admiralty case (damage to 5,000-ton crane placing offshore platform) to settling defendant is by percentage of fault, not by dollar amount

United States v. Grace, 461 U.S. 171 (decided April 20, 1983): This case arose on the Supreme Court's own property, contesting statute disallowing political activity on the surrounding sidewalks. The Court struck down the statute on First Amendment "grounds".

Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138 (decided April 20, 1983): no Free Speech impediment to firing for insubordination Assistant D.A. who was upset at being transferred and circulated a questionnaire to other A.D.A.'s as to transfer policy, morale, pressure to work on political campaigns, etc.

Smith v. Wade, 461 U.S. 30 (decided April 20, 1983): "reckless or callous indifference" shown meriting punitive damages in §1983 action against juvenile facility guard for placing plaintiff in same cell with others who were likely to beat and sexually abuse him

Northwest Airlines, Inc. Transport Workers Union of America, 451 U.S. 77 (decided April 20, 1981): Title VII does not provide right to contribution (airline liable to female cabin attendants for back pay could not seek contribution from union whose policies were partly at fault for the discrimination)

City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95 (decided April 20, 1983): nobody has standing to seek injunction preventing police use of chokeholds because can't show that every police officer will always use a chokehold; 5 - 4 decision (Marshall, writing for the dissent, notes that on this reasoning federal courts would have no power to enjoin a "shoot to kill" policy, or a policy of shooting one out of ten suspects on sight)

[John F. Carr]

I hear Ben Stein as captcrisis teaching the world's most boring CLE class to nobody who cares.

In 1974, The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, in an attempt to alleviate the effects of the... anyone? anyone?

[Dan Schiavetta]

That's about the size of it.

It's not so bad with CLE's being online now. I can't see people being bored. Also -- remember how they'd tell you one way to get over nervousness in public speaking was to pretend the people in the crowd were naked? Well . . . nowadays I'm thinking . . . some of these people listening to my webinar probably really are naked.

[Life of Brian]

Or for the young/young at heart, scream can design class.

[David Nieporent]

(I give a CLE on this really boring topic)

You are a monster.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The CLE folks I do presentations for asked me to do it, and I already knew a lot about it and it's an important topic, so I said yes.

As you might have heard, ERISA stands for "Every Ridiculous Idea Since Adam".

[David Nieporent]

Now captcrisis invokes the "Just following orders" defense!

[Dan Schiavetta]

LOL!

[David Nieporent]

City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95 (decided April 20, 1983): nobody has standing to seek injunction preventing police use of chokeholds because can’t show that every police officer will always use a chokehold; 5 – 4 decision (Marshall, writing for the dissent, notes that on this reasoning federal courts would have no power to enjoin a “shoot to kill” policy, or a policy of shooting one out of ten suspects on sight)

And this is another reason why the Kacsmaryk decision was so bad with respect to standing. You have to show that you will be affected by a policy to have standing, not that it's statistically possible you could be.

[John F. Carr]

The Northwest Airlines case is interesting because one of the effects of the 1960s employment law changes was getting men employed as cabin crew. In those days before deregulation businessmen wanted to fly with some eye candy. It was the way the world worked, your stewardesses were young women and your Pullman porters were black.

[Dan Schiavetta]

In the early 70’s one of the airlines had a series of commercials with the slogan, “I’m Susie — come fly me!” or whatever the name was of the cute young woman in the airline-monogrammed miniskirt. The psychologist Erich Fromm remarked, “They're really advertising another ‘f’ word.”

[John F. Carr]

That ad inspired the 10cc song “I’m Mandy Fly Me".

[Dan Schiavetta]

That band's very name was about sex.

[John F. Carr]

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/fly-me-ad-campaign-photos/

There were several women who were “flown” by many men.

I’m Cheryl. Millions of people flew me last year. And by “me,” I don’t mean just me. I mean Sandy. Undra. Denise. Judy. I mean: National.

According to another web site

As the women’s liberation movement exploded in the late 1960s, some stewardesses took to protesting. The airlines’ marketing frequently sexualized the flight attendants. In 1971 stewardesses joined members of the National Organization for Women in picketing the offices of the advertising agency behind National Airlines’ infamous “Fly Me” campaign, which featured real-life stewardess Cheryl Fioravante staring provocatively into the camera under the headline “I’m Cheryl. Fly me.” The picketers’ signs read “Go Fly Yourself.” The following year, hundreds, Ms. Hutto among them, joined Stewardesses for Women’s Rights, an activist group that found a loyal supporter in Gloria Steinem.

Through contract negotiations and lawsuits, the stewardesses gradually made progress. The eventual elimination of the age and marriage rules offered the possibility of a career instead of a brief stint between school and marriage. In 1971, after Celio Diaz, a man denied a job as a steward, sued Pan Am for sex discrimination and won, men began to enter the ranks. The women used the men as leverage to negotiate changes to their contracts. If men could do the job in flat shoes, for instance, why must women wear three-inch heels? When their new male counterparts got single rooms—stewardesses were still expected to double up—the women at American angered both the airline and the union by voting down the contract twice, insisting that it address the rooming issue. American finally caved.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The rooming policy probably was motivated by homophobia, in the strict sense of “irrational fear”. Aware that the profession attracted gay men, the airline either didn’t want to have them humping each other on the airline’s dime, or wanted to reassure straight men that if they got the job they wouldn’t be attacked by roommates. So men got single rooms.

As for lesbians, just a rumor of women having sex with each other would have played into the hands of the ad campaign. "We're Julie and Betty. Fly us!!"

[SMP0328]

Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. — (decided April 20, 2020): guilty verdict for serious crime must be unanimous (overruling 1972 cases saying 10 – 2 was okay)

The overruled case is Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404 (1972). That case had 4 Justices saying juries had to be unanimous, 4 Justices saying a statute could allow 10 out of 12 or 5 out of 6 to be sufficient for conviction, and Justice Powell playing King Solomon (unanimous for federal juries, not unanimous for State juries). Ramos was the Supreme Court finally cleaning up the mess Powell made and, thankfully, deciding unanimity was allows the rule for criminal juries.

[Dan Schiavetta]

For my Con Law seminar class paper I focused on Apodaca among other cases, my thesis being that our jurisprudence is often based on ideas about human nature that the social sciences have proven to be false. Early on we see assumptions about women being temperamentally weak, nonwhite people being intellectually inferior, etc. With Apodaca the Court did not consider that, in a 6 person jury, one dissenter is more likely to go along with the other 5 for a unanimous verdict, whereas in a 12 person jury, two dissenters are more likely to support each other and hold firm, and possibly convince others to switch to their side. This is partly "common knowledge" (which the social sciences are suspicious of) but also has been proven in controlled experiments.

[John F. Carr]

Cordelia Fine is making a career out of throwing stones at studies claiming to show that women's brains are different. I do not have an opinion on her work in general. I heard an interview where she claimed that some scientists would intepret either of two opposing results as supporting the hypothesis that women are more emotional. That is a sign of bad experimental design.

[Dan Schiavetta]

An experiment must be valid (measuring what it’s supposed to be measuring). One example of an invalid experiment, and this is an actual original thought of mine which I put in my paper, was Dr. Kenneth Clark’s with black and white dolls, which played a large part in the Brown v. Board of Education decision, supposedly to show how children have been taught that to be black was to be inferior. These children would have seen a lot more white dolls than black, and Clark might have been in reality measuring the fact that children prefer what’s familiar to them. If it had been dolls of boxers (sorry, “action figures”), most of whom are black, the children might have picked the black doll.

[Artifex]

often based on ideas about human nature that the social sciences have proven to be false.

[Bangs head on desk]. Sigh, ... and how exactly does it do that ? Repeat for me again all those natural laws you have discovered.

[John F. Carr]

I remember a case in Wisconsin deciding whether there was a right to a jury trial for civil-but-really-quasi-criminal cases like traffic violations. The justices tried to figure out what their forefathers meant in the mid-19th century when they guaranteed a right to a jury. The split was 3-1-3 for "12 man jury", "6 man jury", and "no jury". The least popular option became binding precedent.