In a recent decision involving a capital murder case, Oregon State Hospital v. Butts, the Oregon Supreme Court conducted a mandamus hearing to ascertain whether Oregon State Hospital (OSH) had a legal duty to comply with a Sell order from a county trial court to provide antipsychotic medications to an incompetent defendant, despite its belief, as an institution, that medication was not clinical...

This article discusses what happens to testimonial privilege following a patient's death. First, the article reviews the concepts of confidentiality and testimonial privilege. Second, the article discusses the case of Jaffe v. Redmond, in which the Supreme Court ruled that testimonial privilege applies to licensed psychotherapists under Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Third, the arti...

In 1973, the Supreme Court decided one of the most well-known cases in history—Roe v. Wade. In this landmark decision, the United States Supreme Court held that the constitutional right to privacy extends to a woman’s right to have an abortion. From 1973 through 1977, Medicaid covered the costs of an abortion without restriction. In 1966, Republican Senator Henry Hyde introduced an amendment to...

In 2011, the United States Supreme Court in Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc. struck down a Vermont law that would restrict the ability of pharmaceutical companies to purchase certain physician-identifiable prescription data without the consent of the prescriber. The law's stated purpose was threefold: to protect the privacy of medical information, to protect the public health and to contain healthcar...

Using data on essentially every US Supreme Court decision since 1946, we estimate a model of peer effects on the Court. We consider both the impact of justice ideology and justice votes on the votes of their peers. To identify these peer effects we use two instruments. The first is based on the composition of the Court, determined by which justices sit on which cases due to recusals or health r...

We ask whether the widely used direction of decision and direction of vote variables in the United States Supreme Court Judicial Database (USSCJD) are contaminated by confirmation bias, or have been affected by expectations about the likely effects of judicial preferences on case outcomes. Using a sample of generally comparable cases, we find evidence that the assignment of issue codes to these...

Public interest has become increasingly focused on the role of money in politics. Specifically, the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling maintained the legality of unrestricted political expenditures by corporate and union entities. As a result, there has been a proliferation of super PAC, or ‘political action committee’, organizations. While these organizations are not permitted to make...

Beginning on March 26, 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments regarding challenges to the recent federal health care reform legislation. The Court scheduled this unusually lengthy series of arguments to last for three days—a reflection of both the high stakes and the complexity of the legal issues involved. Whatever the Court ultimately decides, the outcome will have ...

Title of Thesis: FEAR AND DARKNESS: ANTI-ABORTION TERRORISM AND THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT Brad Bartholomew, Master of Arts Thesis Directed by: Professor Ray Paternoster Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice Relative deprivation theory (Davies, 1962) suggests that acts of anti-abortion terrorism result from the general widening of the gap between the individual’s goals and expecta...