Federal Judiciary

Academic Round-Up

By Akin Gump Supreme Court Practice Group

With summer here, I have finally caught up on much of my reading after a busy semester. There are a number of articles out there that deserve some attention for their analysis of recent Supreme Court decisions.  Here are a few:

Randal Picker (University of Chicago Law School) has posted “Twombly, Leegin, and the Reshaping of Antitrust” on SSRN, see here, which examines the four antitrust decisions (Weyerhaeuser, Twombly, Leegin, and Credit Suisse) from last Term. As Professor Picker notes, the 2006 Term was an unusually active one for the antitrust field, which has not received much attention from the Supreme Court in recent years. The bottom line, according to Professor Picker, is that “[t]aken as a group, the cases represent a substantial raising of the hurdles that antitrust plaintiffs face, even, if each case represents a simple one-step extension of current Supreme Court doctrine.” For those who are interested in how the Roberts Court has been deciding business cases generally, and antitrust cases in particular, Professor Picker’s paper is a must read.

Michael P. Allen (Stetson University College of Law) has published “Of Remedies, Juries and State Regulation of Punitive Damages: The Significance of Philip Morris v. Williams” in the most recent issue of the NYU Survey of American Law, see here.  In analyzing another case from last Term, Professor Allen examines three ramifications of the Philip Morris decision: (1) that it returns the device of punitive damages to its historical roots as a one-on-one device; (2) the limitations it places on state regulation of punitive damages, both in defendant-friendly and plaintiff-friendly directions; and (3) the constraints the decision places on jury autonomy.  This article contains a good discussion of the existing scholarship out there on punitive damages and nicely summarizes Philip Morris in the context of the Court’s other punitive damages decisions.

Finally, in continuing the theme of discussing last Term’s cases, Samuel Estreicher (New York University School of Law) has published “The Nonpreferment Principle and the ‘Racial Tiebreaker’ Cases” in the Cato Supreme Court Review, see here.  The piece is a very short and highly readable account of the Parents Involved cases from the perspective of the general principle of non-preferment of any racial group by the government.  At only 12 pages, the piece is an easy read.

Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on May 26, 2008 (boomark / email).