This particular supreme court is the Russian Supreme Court which today ruled that Jehovah’s Witnesses were an extremist organization, banned them and confiscated their property. But this is the bit that puzzled me.
Appeal to whom? I figured a Supreme Court was supreme, the final arbiter. How can a Supreme Court decision, whether it be of Russia or the US, be appealed?
Of course, in the US, it’s the end of the line.
And when that fails, you need to check with Putin for the details of his private banking arrangements.
Fwiw, in the UK the decision of the Supreme Court is final - unless Parliament changes the law, and each Parliament is sovereign.
In the US, can’t you petition the Court to rehear or reconsider? Not that they are likely to do so, of course.
And you can also make an emotional appeal to Congress to change the law or amend the Constitutional provision on which the decision was based.
You could try - everyone would have a good laugh.
THAT will work. Until it hits the Courts again, anyway.
It’s all down to nomenclature. In the US, at the federal level, the Supreme Court is, well, supreme, but it ain’t necesarily so elswhere, even in the US. In New York State, for example, you start your proceedings in the Supreme Court of New York. If you don’t like the outcome, you head off to the Court of Appeals. In England, the Supreme Court used to comprise (a) the High Court and (b) the Court of Appeals; above them all sat the court of final appeal, the House of Lords. They have since rejigged that, and now its High Court > Court of Appeals > Supreme Court. In Australia, the Supreme Court is the court in each state with universal jurisdiction; you have your trial there, and if you don’t like the outcome you go to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. The court at the top of the system at the federal level is the High Court.
And so on, and so on. It’s often the case that a court called the “Supreme Court” is the ultimate court at the top of a judicial system, but it’s also often the case that it’s not.
“Your Honor, I strenuously object!” Is that how it works?
I know you’re joking, but a party can request rehearing under the Supreme Court’s Rule 44. However, SCOTUS will not grant a petition for rehearing unless at least one Justice in the majority of the original decision agrees that he or she decided erroneously (“A petition for rehearing . . . will not be granted except by a majority of the Court, at the instance of a Justice who concurred in the judgment or decision.”).
There is one way a decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan can be appealed. That is in a case of criminal contempt, the convict can appeal to a bench comprising the remainder of the members of the Court (SC sits in panels). Known as an Intra Court Appeal.
That’s what Oliver Brown and others did in 1951. They were essentially asking the Supreme Court to overturn its Plessy decision of 1892. And they succeeded.
No, a Constitutional amendment overrides a Supreme Court decision. The 11th, 13th, 14th, and 16th Amendments were all enacted to override Supreme Court decisions. And the Supreme Court obviously can’t declare the Constitution to be unconstitutional.
Couldn’t SCOTUS get round that by interpreting the amendment in a way other than Congress intended it? Sure, it’s unlikely but it is up to the court to intepret the words of a law or amendment. If the court persisted in fanciful interpretations after several attempts by Congress to try to bullet-proof the amendment against being interpreted in any other way than intended (is that even possible?) what could Congress do?
Impeach and remove from office the offending Justices.
You’re missing an element. Russia is (just about, still) a member of the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights, and therefore there is the possibility of a case to the European Court of Human Rights. But even if the ECHR rules against Russia, the chances of anything much happening as a result are not great:
http://www.russia-direct.org/opinion/whats-stake-if-russia-turns-its-back-council-europe
FYI: My quote was a reference to A Few Good Men, Kevin Pollak’s response to Demi Moore’s naïve outburst in the courtroom.
No. That was a different case and controversy. The question here relates to a reconsideration of a decision in a single case.
Exactly right. Also plenty of laws have been enacted to reverse a Supreme Court decision with respect to interpreting that law; the bulk of the Court’s work being final interpretation of statute as opposed to constitutional decisions.
And it has done exactly that before. See: The Slaughterhouse Cases.
I was referring to the “Laws” portion of teh question, not Amendments - Thoguh indeed as discussed, sometimes decisions based on Amendments don’t always return the result anticipated.
Are you saying Plessy hasn’t been overturned and is still valid precedent?
I think you can make a good argument the Supreme Court has done that. It’s hard to reconcile the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment with several of the decisions the Supreme Court made in subsequent decades after it was enacted. I think you could sum up the Supreme Court’s doctrine during that period as “The Constitution says the law has to treat black people the same as white people. But that’s obviously crazy talk so we’ll just ignore it.”
It’s not like they were unaware of what they were doing; John Marshall Harlan made sure to point it out to the other Justices. And in Yick Wo v Hopkins, the Supreme Court demonstrated it understood how the law was supposed to work and was able to apply it in cases that didn’t involved black people.
No, and nothing I wrote remotely invites that conclusion.
The reason I said “No,” is that the discussion in this thread relates to appealing the court’s decision in a specific case, or asking the court to reconsider the ruling it made in a single case as part of that same case.
It’s true that the Supreme Court can overrule its own decisions in future cases, and indeed did in Brown v. Board of Education. Or Lawrence v. Texas, to pick a more recent example. But from a procedural standpoint, that’s very different: that’s a new case that begins at the trial court and makes its own way through the appellate process.
In your opinion, how likely is it, Little Nemo, that I would say that Plessy had not been overturned and was still good law?