Summary

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  • Caselist.CitesClass[16]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[17]

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Caselist.CitesClass[16]

EntryDate

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1		-2016-12-02 23:31:40.812
	1	+2016-12-02 23:31:40.0

Caselist.CitesClass[17]

Cites

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	1	+====Court dockets are historically low now but could still increase ====
	2	+**Roeder 5-17**, Oliver. "The Supreme Court's Caseload Is On Track To Be The Lightest In 70 Years." FiveThirtyEight. N.p., 17 May 2016. Web. 26 Nov. 2016. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-supreme-courts-caseload-is-on-track-to-be-the-lightest-in-70-years/. SM
	3	+In one sense, Monday was a noisy news day at the Supreme Court. It handed down decisions in six cases, including yet another challenge to Obamacare, which the court essentially punted, sending the challenge back to various federal appeals courts. But in another sense, it was a day as quiet as Clarence Thomas during oral argument. The court agreed to hear exactly zero new cases, continuing to set a sparse stage for its next term, which may see the lightest caseload in its already-light recent history. So far, only 12 cases are on the court's docket for the October 2016 term, which runs through June 2017.1 That number is far below the pace that we averaged in the 1980s and '90s. And if the first few months of the year are an indication, the upcoming court term may be the lightest in at least 70 years. The long, downward trend in the court's caseload began around 1980, when it routinely heard over 150 cases a term. These days, it hears about half that many. In 2014, the court heard 71 cases, the fewest since at least World War II, according to the Supreme Court Database. Now that record looks in danger of falling. The court still has ample time to add cases to next term's docket — indeed, it often adds many between May and October — but its pace of granting cases for next term is lagging, as the adjacent chart, based on data from SCOTUS blog's Kedar Bhatia, shows. Over the past five terms, the court had added nearly 18 cases to the next term's docket by this point in May, on average. Thus far this term, they've granted just 12.
	4	+
	5	+====Qualified immunity for police officers prevents frivolous cases ====
	6	+**Balko 14**, Radley. "7th Circuit Pokes a Hole in Prosecutorial Immunity." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 30 Jan. 2014. Web. 02 Nov. 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2014/01/30/7th-circuit-pokes-a-hole-in-prosecutorial-immunity/?utm_term=.b6664b5eb609. SM
	7	+A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit just issued an important opinion (PDF) on absolute immunity, the policy that makes it impossible to sue prosecutors who engage in misconduct, even when that misconduct results in a wrongful conviction. First, a little background: Prosecutors at all levels of the criminal justice system enjoy this absolute immunity from lawsuits. It's a sweeping bit of judge-made law that essentially shields them from any civil liability for even egregiously bad behavior, even when said behavior results in a wrongful convictions. Judges enjoy the same sort of immunity, and the cities and states that employ both are protected from "sovereign immunity," which doesn't prohibit lawsuits outright, but still sets a pretty high bar to get into court. The theory in support of absolute immunity holds that if prosecutors can be subjected to lawsuits for the decisions they make, they may start second-guessing themselves and become reluctant to file charges except in only the most open-and-shut cases. There's also a fear that opening prosecutors up to lawsuits could bring a wave of frivolous filings that clog up the court system. Or, as the Supreme Court put it in a 2009 case, the policy is "a balance of evils" and it is "better to leave unredressed the wrongs done by dishonest officers than to subject those who try to do their duty to the constant dread of retaliation." There's some merit to both arguments, but there are also some convincing arguments against them. For example, several states have open paths for state lawsuits for damages caused by prosecutorial misconduct, and there's little evidence that those states have been opened to a barrage of frivolous suits. As for the fear of retaliation, in nearly all cases, public officials found liable in civil cases don't pay the damages themselves. The damages are paid by the city or state that employs them — which is to say taxpayers. The main problem with absolute immunity for prosecutors is the incentives it creates. The problems with shielding a public servant in whom we grant the enormous powers granted to prosecutors should be pretty self-evident. Now consider that nearly every professional incentive (reelection, promotions, election to higher office, high-paying jobs at white-shoe law firms) points prosecutors toward procuring as many convictions as possible, and that courts and bar organizations are notoriously lax at sanctioning misconduct. You get a system that not only fails to sanction bad behavior, but also often rewards it. If the old Lord Acton axiom is true — that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely — enormous power with no accountability can be enormously destructive. Over the years, the U.S. Supreme Court has carved out one limited exception to absolute immunity: When prosecutors act as investigators — that is, when they engage in activities more often associated with police — they may lose some of their immunity, at which point they're only protected by the doctrine of qualified immunity given to cops and other public officials. (That's still a tough standard for a plaintiff to meet.) But even that small opening for lawsuits isn't entirely certain. In the 1993 case Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, the prosecutor accused of manufacturing evidence while aiding with the police investigation wasn't the same prosecutor who tried the case. The 7th Circuit ruled that the actual injury incurred by the defendant as a result of the misconduct occurred at trial, not during the investigation. Because the prosecutor at trial was acting in his official capacity as a prosecutor, he was protected by absolute immunity. The U.S. Supreme Court took the case on appeal, but only the claim against the prosecutor who actually manufactured the evidence. The court ruled that prosecutor was only entitled to qualified immunity and that his actions were egregious enough that qualified immunity couldn't protect him. Another prosecutorial immunity case came along in 2009, Pottawattamie v. McGhee. In that case, prosecutors were accused of manufacturing evidence that resulted in the convictions and long-term imprisonment of two men. The attorneys for the prosecutors accused of misconduct (along with the U.S. Department of Justice and most state attorneys general) seized on the ambiguity in Buckley. They argued that the actual harm done to a defendant by misconduct committed during an investigation only attatches when that evidence is introduced against him at trial. And once the case makes it to trial, they argued, the prosecutor is acting as a prosecutor, not an investigator, and is therefore protected by absolute immunity. It was an absurd argument that would have essentially rendered the "investigation" exception meaningless. The only time a prosecutor could be held liable for manufacturing evidence would be if a different prosecutor then used that evidence at trial. Nevertheless, during oral arguments, it seemed to have some resonance with at least a few of the Supreme Court justices. But most of the justices seemed skeptical, and it appeared as if the court would affirm the "investigation" exception — prosecutors who knowingly manufacture evidence that results in the conviction of an innocent person shouldn't be shielded from lawsuits. (Read the clause after the dash again. The idea that this would even be up for discussion shows just how far down the rabbit hole we've fallen.) The defendants and their supporters apparently sensed the justices' skepticism, too. They settled with the plaintiffs after oral arguments but before the court issued a decision. Because of the settlement, the court considered the case moot, and dismissed it without a ruling. That brings us to Fields v. Wharrie, the recent decision from the 7th Circuit. The case itself is a gory mess of injustice, including a trial judge who took a bribe from Fields' co-defendant. But, for the purposes of this discussion, Fields discovered that prosecutors had knowingly coerced witnesses into giving false testimony, which resulted in his conviction and 17 years in prison before he was acquitted at a second trial. Writing for the majority, Judge Richard Posner makes it clear that Buckley was a special circumstance in which one prosecutor replaced another before trial, and that it should not be used to close the investigation exception to absolute immunity: . . . the act that causes an injury need not be simultaneous with the injury (indeed it will never be exactly simultaneous) for the actor to be liable. Think of products liability. The defect that caused a pipe to burst and flood your home may have been present when the pipe was manufactured years earlier. The manufacturer would be liable despite the lapse of time. He who creates the defect is responsible for the injury that the defect foreseeably causes later. Nor is the only harm that resulting from the conviction and the sentence. In the present case . . . the fabrication of evidence harmed the defendant before and not just during the trial, because it was used to help indict him.
	8	+**That turns case—makes courts super stressed and limits their resources to make sufficient rights evaluations**
	9	+**Leong 09**, Nancy (B.A., 2001, Northwestern University B.Mus., 2001, Northwestern University J.D., 2006, Stanford Law School ). "The Saucier Qualified Immunity Experiment: An Empirical Analysis." Pepperdine Law Review 36 (2009). SM
	10	+Mandatory sequencing also engenders a host of undesirable practical consequences, not least the requirement that courts grapple unnecessarily with complex constitutional issues. Several Justices have voiced concern that the Saucier rule "rigidly requires courts unnecessarily to decide difficult constitutional questions when there is available an easier basis for the decision (e.g., qualified immunity) that will satisfactorily resolve the case before the court."66 The Court's reluctance to endorse unnecessary decision of "difficult" questions embodies two concerns. The first concern is that inefficiency will ensue from courts expending the time and resources to puzzle through difficult constitutional questions. Justice Breyer has argued that "when courts' dockets are crowded, a rigid 'order of battle' makes little administrative sense,"67 adding that sequencing sometimes "will require lower courts unnecessarily to answer difficult constitutional questions, thereby wasting judicial resources." 68 Such inefficiency is compounded by the fact that courts often confront the qualified immunity question early in the course of litigation, spurred on by the Court's insistence that qualified immunity should be resolved as expeditiously as possible "so that the costs and expenses of trial are avoided where the defense is dispositive." 69 In a significant number of cases, therefore, courts decide these difficult constitutional questions on a motion to dismiss-indeed, my research reveals that, in 2006 and 2007, 24.6 of cases in which a court addressed a qualified immunity issue took place on a motion to dismiss. 70 At these early stages of the proceedings the constitutional issues are more likely to be insufficiently briefed by parties struggling to meet ambitious filing deadlines, so courts will therefore have to invest even more judicial resources in compensating for these shortcomings with their own research. 71 The efficiency problem, while serious in its own right, also segues into a broader worry: that in their effort to decide difficult constitutional questions with the limited time and resources available to them, courts will make badlaw. 72 Justice Breyer expressed this concern in County of Sacramento v. Lewis, when he wrote in concurrence that "~~Siegert~~ should not be read to deny lower courts the flexibility, in appropriate cases, to decide ~~§ 1983~~ claims on the basis of qualified immunity, and thereby avoid wrestling with constitutional issues that are either difficult or poorly presented."73 Justice Stevens, concurring in the judgment, likewise registered an objection to the Court's statement that sequencing is "normally" the "better approach." He argued: "That is sound advice when the answer to the constitutional question is clear. When, however, the question is both difficult and unresolved, I believe it wiser to adhere to the policy of avoiding the unnecessary adjudication of constitutional questions." 74 Thus, without denying the concern for articulating legal principles that underlies the sequencing approach, Justices Breyer and Stevens express concern for the quality of the law articulated. No law, they suggest, is better than bad law. 75 And their concern that courts will do a poor job of articulating constitutional principles seems intuitively reasonable if courts are forced to make law under conditions of constrained resources and insufficient briefing.
	11	+
	12	+====That crushes the economy====
	13	+Ashley **Post**, 7/22/20**11** (staff writer, "Frivolous lawsuits clogging U.S. courts, stalling economic growth," http://www.insidecounsel.com/2011/07/22/frivolous-lawsuits-clogging-us-courts-stalling-eco, Accessed 9/16/2014, rwg)
	14	+Americans' litigiousness and thirst for massive damages has been a boon to the legal profession. But some researchers and litigation experts warn that the abundance of lawsuits—many of them frivolous—flooding U.S. courts is severely weakening the economy. According to consulting firm Towers Watson, the direct cost of the U.S. tort system in 2009 was approximately $250 billion, which was roughly 2 percent of the gross domestic product. The amount is double the estimated tort expenses in other countries, including the U.K. and Japan. In May, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing that explored excessive litigation's effect on the United States' global competitiveness. During his testimony, Skadden Partner John Beisner explained that plaintiffs counsel engage in five types of litigation abuse that ultimately undermine economic growth: improperly recruiting plaintiffs, importing foreign claims, filing suits that piggyback off government investigations and actions, pursuing aggregate litigation and seeking third-party litigation financing. "America's litigious nature has caused serious damage to our country's productivity and innovation. … The root cause is that we have created incentives to sue—and to invest in litigation—instead of establishing disincentives for invoking judicial process unless absolutely necessary. Other countries discourage litigation; we nuture it," Beisner said at the hearing. Many litigation experts resoundingly agree with Beisner's stance on the necessity of tort reform to ameliorate the country's economy.
	15	+
	16	+
	17	+====Economic decline causes protectionism and war ====
	18	+Royal 10 – Jedediah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, 2010, "Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises," in Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215
	19	+Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defense behavior of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crisis could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin, 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fearon, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner, 1999). Seperately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behavious of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations, However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crisis could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states. Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write, The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favor. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflict self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg and Hess, 2002. P. 89) Economic decline has been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, and Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. 'Diversionary theory' suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increase incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995), and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlated economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels. This implied connection between integration, crisis and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.

EntryDate

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	1	+2016-12-02 23:31:42.185

Judge

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	1	+Samuel Rinkacs

Opponent

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	1	+Madison JM

ParentRound

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	1	+13

Round

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	1	+1

Team

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	1	+Southlake Carroll Mohsin Neg

Title

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	1	+NODEC-DA Court Clog v2

Tournament

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	1	+UT Austin