The Federal court system: Structure and jurisdiction 2. Les migrations 3. Féminisme et antiféminisme 4. La colonne brisé, Frida Kahlo Please select type 5. Démarche de soin de Mme Rose 6. Lettre de motivation pour une grande école 7. Compte rendu TP

4 The Federal Court System: Structure and   Jurisdiction

1. Facts

Exercise 1 (pages 125-127)

1. True.  2. True.   3. True.   4. False.   5. False.   6. False (can hear both issues of fact or errors of law).  7. False.  8. True.  9. True.   10. True (generally, but can also be a term fixed  by the President).   11. False.   12. True.   13. False.   14. False.   15. False.

Exercise 2 (page 127) Students' own answers.

Exercise 3 (page 127)

1. allege = insinuate; hold (office) = be elected; petition = document of protest or demand; vindicate = demand.
2. achieve = attain; handle = deal with; preside over = govern, lead; arise = occur; hear = sit in judgment; regulate = make conform, standardize; deny = refute; interact = work together; sit = convene; determine = establish; interpret = construe, deduce; solve = elucidate.
3. appoint = dismiss; grant = receive; lack = possess; discretionary = compulsory, mandatory; procedural = unorganized; alleged = definitive.

Exercise 4 (pages 127-128) Students' own answers.

Exercise 5 (page 128)

state: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14.

federal: 4, 6, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18.

Exercise 6 (pages 128-129)

resort – Chief – Associate – case – controversy – appeals – violative – utilized – Supreme Court – Appeals – District – general trial – heard – intermediate – expedited – docket.

Exercises 7-9 (page 129) Students' own answers.

1. Further Resources

Exercise 1 (page 131)

1. The opinion proclaimed by the majority of judges sitting on the bench and deciding in one given case.
2. The minority opinion of one or more judges compared to the majority decision in one given case.

Exercise 2 (page 132)

1. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, and was nominated by President Clinton in 1993.

1. Her vote has never changed relative to abortion cases, but her voice changed in the Stenberg case in that she read her dissent out loud from the bench, a rare occurrence for her or any judge on the U.S. Supreme Court bench.
2. Justices use to dissent to express to both their colleagues on the bench and the public at large their strong disapproval of the majority opinion and also to frame a judicial counter- argument, a difference way of interpreting the Constitution, that might be used in the future in a similar case, and hence become the basis of a new majority opinion.
3. She is resorting to dissent because she firmly condemned the majority opinion in Stenberg

1. Carhart, and because she wants to “sound an alarm” to what she perceives of as being a flagrant misinterpretation of precedent and of the Constitution by her  colleagues.

Exercise 3 (page 132)

1. A US Congressional law banning a form of therapeutic abortion for women in their late term of pregnancy.
2. The US Supreme Court decided in a 7 to 1 decision in 1996 (U.S. v. Virginia) that it was unconstitutional for a school supported by public funds to exclude women. Writing for the majority, Justice Ginsburg stated that because VMI failed to show "exceedingly persuasive justification" for its sex-biased admissions policy, it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause
3. Passed in 1993, the Family and Medical Leave Act requires employers eligible employees up to a total of 12 workweeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period for one or more of the following reasons: for the birth and care of the newborn child of the employee; for placement with the employee of a son or daughter for adoption or foster care; to care for an immediate family member (spouse, child, or parent) with a serious health condition; or to take medical leave when the employee is unable to work because of a serious health condition.
4. The case Bush v. Gore (decided in December 2000) put an end to the recounting of votes in the state of Florida subsequent to the presidential election held in November. The majority ruled 5-4 first that the recounts must be stopped, and then after sufficient time had elapsed, that no constitutionally-valid recount could timely be completed. The opinion stated that the state-wide standard could not guarantee that each county would count the votes the same  way, and held that this violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Exercise 4 (page 132) Students' own answers.

Exercise 1 (page 134)

“Liberal” in the American sense = not literal or strict, broadminded, not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition.

Exercise 2 (page 134)

1. John Roberts is the seventeenth and current Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. He became Chief Justice in September 2005, after being nominated by President George W. Bush and approved by the Senate.
2. The cornerstone of his Supreme Court policy is based on legal minimalism, his philosophical approach to the role of judges. This involves a critique of judicial activism, and a strong reliance on predictability and consensus.

1. The changes in the Court since the arrival of John Roberts involve a decrease in the number of cases heard and an increase in unanimous decisions.
2. On the one hand, there are “liberal” judges who prefer to interpret the Constitution in a flexible manner and who argue that the Constitution is a “living document”, and on the other hand, there are “strict constructionist” judges who prefer to interpret the Constitution based on the “original intentions” of the Founding Fathers.
3. The possible consequences of Robert’s policy on the case Roe v. Wade would be to remove US constitutional protection to a women’s decision to terminate and pregnancy, and return to the states the possibility, on an individual basis, to decide whether or not abortion could be legal or not.
4. The journalist argues that despite minimalism displayed by the Roberts court, this will not guarantee against controversial issues arising and being decided in the years to come.

Exercises 3-5 (page 135) Students' own answers.

Exercise (page 137) Students' own answers.

1. Focus on Case Law

Exercise 1 (page 139)

Entrench = to place within or surround with a trench especially for defense; to place (oneself) in a strong defensive position; to consolidate, reinforce.

Exercise 2 (pages 139-140)

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