Judicial precedents

Factual Questions
1

I think I understand the basic idea of how precedents work in the US, but I want to make sure I’ve got the right idea. Here’s my perception of how things work:

  1. The city council of East Squeedunk, KY makes it illegal to wear purple on Fridays.

  2. Joe Schmoe wears purple on a Friday and is arrested, charged, and convicted. He is sentenced to death.

  3. Mr. Schmoe appeals, saying that the law violates his first amendment right to free speech.

  4. After the district and circuit courts, the case ends up in the United States Supreme Court. The court decides that the law is unconstitutional.

  5. The city council of East Squeedunk, KY does not have to repeal the law. The SC does not have the power to remove the law, only to say that it is not constitutional.

  6. East Squeedunk cannot prosecute anyone under the law because if they try, the supreme court would just make the same ruling, making all prosecution pointless (that’s the point of the precedent.)

2

Basically you are right, except you omitted any mention of lawyers which is totally unrealistic. There is one more step:
When the town of Peedunk passes a law against wearing red, the lawyers defending Little Red Riding Hood would use the case of U.S. vs East Squeedunk as the precedent against the law.

3

That’s pretty much how it works. In fact, there wouldn’t be a need to take any subsequent cases to the Supreme Court. There’s a legal principle (whose Latin name I don’t remember) which requires courts to follow established precedents. So a local Kentucky court couldn’t convict someone on this law in the hope that the Supreme Court might decide not to hear this second case and overturn that conviction.

What lawyers try to do is to demonstrate that existing precedents do or do not apply (depending on who they’re working for) to the facts of the particular case they’re pleading. Suppose after your example, the town of West Grizzle, Idaho enacts a law prohibiting the wearing of yellow hats on Easter punishable by a fine of ten thousand dollars. When Otis Kloghorn is arrested on this charge, his lawyer will surely argue that the East Squeedunk v Schmoe decision applies and invalidates this law. The prosecutor will argue that Schmoe isn’t relevant because 1) it protects green clothing not yellow; 2) clothing in general is protected by the first amendment but hats, as an optional item of apparel, are not; 3) the law, which only applies to Easter, is narrow enough not to be a general prohibition; 4) the punishment, being a fine rather than the death penalty, means the Idaho law is fair and reasonable; and/or 5) the problem with the East Squeedunk law was that it unfairly discriminating against people of Irish descent while the West Grizzle law is not aimed at any ethnic group. Whether or not the judge buys this will depend on the actual wording of the Schmoe decision.

Another factor is that some precedents are only advisory. Let’s say that the East Squeedunk law was overturned by the Kentucky Supreme Court and never reached the USSC. The fine folks of West Grizzle then enact an identical law banning the wearing of green. If Otis is arrested for breaking this law, his lawyer would again present the Schmoe decision as precedent. But in this case, a Kentucky ruling is not binding in an Idaho court and the judge could decide to ignore it.

4

Nemo is really on to something there. I recall reading in Newsweek about 6 months ago. It seems we have an influx of US Applellet Courts giving different rulings on virtually identical cases.

But the Supreame Court won’t hear the cases. Thus saying both contrary rulings are correct.

5

No. It is an important principle of law that a decision by the Supreme Court to not hear a case does not decide that a particular decision is valid or invalid; it is no decision at all. An argument saying that the SCOTUS did not hear a particular appeal, and therefore that a circuit court’s decision is correct, is incorrect on its face.

But this doesn’t matter in the circuit where the decision was made. The rule is, if there is no case on point from the Supremes, you can apply law from the circuit court in the circuit in which you reside; these cases (if they have not been overturned) are just as binding as those from the Supreme Court. If there is no case on point in your circuit, you can try to apply cases from other circuits, and you may or may not succeed, but cases from other circuits are not necessarily binding, and what happens then is that the judge has to be convinced by the reasoning that the other circuit used. You use precedent in a hierarchy, from your district, through your circuit, to the Supreme Court. A similar hierarchy exists in the states, to the State Supreme Court. Theoretically, there is no conflict between the two, as the state courts rule on state matters and the federal courts rule on federal matters; however, this is not always the case, and where there is a conflict, in general the federal decision takes precedence. (Note: there are funny places where this rule does not hold, and state courts sometimes delight in thumbing their nose at federal jurisdiction when they can).

Clear as mud?

6

The Supreme Court only takes a handful of cases and its tentative view of the corectness of the lower court decision is only one minor factor in the decision. The Supreme Court is not primarily in the business of ensuring that justice is done. They are a law making body and pick their cases primarily on the suitability to settle issues of national importance.

Refusal of leave never has precidential value though it may, in some circumstances where it seems obvious they agree with the lower court, offer additional weight to a nonbinding precident such as little nemo discussed. The term he was trying to remember is stare decisis by the way which loosly translates into letting stand that which has been decided.

On point 6, it doesn’t get to the Supreme Court again as the lower court will follow the previous Supreme Court decision. Generally courts treat as binding decisions from any court in a supervisory position to themselves as well as equal courts within their writ. Thus Judges in the same Court will usually follow whatever other judges in the same court have decided until the issue is resolved at the next level up.

Decisions from outside this chain of command are considered nonbinding precidents and are considered to have only persuasive value. It isn’t uncommon to see cases from other countries being cited for their persuasive value.

One of the interesting aspects of this is how informal the system is and there continues to be debate about how binding precident really is. Most Judges treat it as written in stone but on very rare occassions one will refuse to follow an old decision for instance and proceed to make new law hoping that the Appelate Courts will go along. This may seem unfair but it is arguably a better route then the far more common fudging of facts many Judges do to push the case at hand outside the precident.

7

As indicated by the prior post, stare decisis is a principle, but not rigidly followed. The SC can overturn any of its prior decisions and overrule itself. However, no lesser court can do that. Lesser courts must always follow the decisions of the higher courts.

The country is laid out in 9 federal circuits. A decision by the Ct of Appeals in one circuit is not binding in another, altho it can be used as a guiding principle, which the circuit may or may not adopt. Thus, if an agency of the Federal Gvt, such as Social Security, loses a case in the Ct of Appeals in one circuit, it need not adopt that ruling nationwide. It should, however, adopt that rule or interpretation of its regulations in that circuit, but doesn’t always do it. It may decide not to appeal to the SC because then that interpretation would have to be followed nationwide. Thus, altho the SSA may not agree with the decision of a Court of Appeals in one circuit, it may decide not to appeal it if it thinks it may lose in the SC.

SSA has been noted not to follow the interpretation of a Ct of Appeals in one circuit even in that circuit. It has been reprimanded by the Ct of Appeals for not doing so, but its rationale is that it has to follow a nationwide consistent policy, that the Appeals Court ioterpretation is not its interpretation, and that is not the law of the land. It must apply the interpretation to the instant case, but not to others, even in the same circuit (at least it maintains).

8

Um, we have some legal troubles here, and I’m surprised no one to date has pointed them out. Seems we tend to forget we are a federal government. :wink:

First off, the federal district and circuit courts would never hear Mr. Squeedunk’s case, in all likelihood. This is because Mr. Squeedunk is being charged with an offense under the laws of the Commonwealth of Kentucky (as it has delegated the authority to make such laws to the incorporated city of East Squeedunk). Thus, Mr. Squeedunk would be tried in a state court. In Kentucky, normally violation of a municipal code is heard in the District Court, but since Mr. Schmoe was silly enough to violate a capital crime, his trial would be in Circuit Court (we will ignore for the duration of commentary the fact Kentucky likely has laws which prevent East Squeedunk from making municipal code violations capital offenses, not to mention the whole Eighth Amendment issue :wink: ).

Now, if Mr. Schmoe is lucky enough to have a good attorney, he will raise the constitutional issue at the trial. Let us for the nonce assume he does so, but the trial judge rules that the statute does not violate the First Amendment (in the opinion of the judge, wearing purple is not ‘speech’, it’s just bad fashion). Following his conviction, Mr. Schmoe will appeal his conviction. Ignoring for the moment the fact he has been sentenced to death, which might force his appeal directly to Kentucky’s Supreme Court, his appeal would be to the Kentucky Court of Appeals (of which there are seven districts). Because of the seriousness of the case, he likely has an appeal by right, meaning the appellate court can’t turn down his attempt to get a ruling on the issue: they have to rule on the merits of the appeal. Assuming that they agree with the Circuit Court judge, Mr. Schmoe now is forced to file an appeal with the Supreme Court of Kentucky. Kentucky, it seems, has a case on point, since the Supreme Court of Kentucky addressed a similar case in regards to Section 1 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which guarantees to all ‘men’ “Fourth: The right of freely communicating their thoughts and opinions.” In Bfstsplk v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, the court had previously ruled that the state provision did not preclude the reactionary village of North Nimby from passing a law precluding the painting of one’s car blue. Thus, the Supreme Court of Kentucky denies Mr. Schmoe’s appeal, asserting (with some asperity) that blue is blue and it isn’t communication (apparently ignoring Mr. Schmoe’s reasoning that cars aren’t shirts, a crucial distinguishing factor in his mind). As there is no case on point from the US Supremes, the Kentucky court applies its own reasoning to the federal constitutional issue as well.

Which means, then, that the case the Supreme Court of the United States is presented with is “Joe Schmoe, Petitioner v. East Squeedunk, Respondent, Petition for Writ of Certiorari”. The Supreme Court of the US has been itching for years to address conflicting concepts about blue and clothing (and we aren’t talking Ritz here, either…). So it grants Mr. Schmoe’s petition, hears arguments, and issues the now famous decision Schmoe v. East Squeedunk, ___ U.S. ___ (2001), in which it rules 5-4 that the decision of the Supreme Court of Kentucky is incorrect as regards the federal constitution and vacates the result and remands the case to the Kentucky courts for further procedings not inconsistent with its decision. Kentucky gives up, frees Mr. Schmoe, who celebrates by sponsoring an exhibition of works by Picasso to be hung in the halls of the Supreme Court of Kentucky.

Now, this is not the only way Mr. Schmoe could have gotten in front of the US courts after his conviction for Friday Blueing. He might file a Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus before the local federal District Court, asserting that the law in question violated the US Constitution, having failed for some reason to raise this before the state courts. This is the traditional ‘second bite of the apple’ used by those condemned to death for appealing the conviction by the state courts. There are other federal writs that can conceivably be used, but generally speaking, it isn’t a good idea to fail to raise a basic issue at trial.

What, then, does this mean for East Squeedunk? Well, they can leave the law on the books; it just can’t be applied. The courts in Kentucky will still follow the federal law most of the time. :wink: Indeed, any attempt by East Squeedunk to apply the law to anyone else likely would result in a Petition for Writ of Mandamus filed with either the federal or state courts to order East Squeedunk to stop acting illegally.

As for Otis Kloghorn, his case will depend in large measure on what the opinions by the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States said. If five justices agreed that the First Amendment protects the wearing of colored clothing as a method of ‘expression’, West Grizzle is likely in trouble, no matter how it attempts to distinguish the case. On the other hand, if three justices thought all colored clothing was protected, but two justices thought only Mr. Schmoe’s specific case of a blue shirt was protected (and not all colored clothing), then West Grizzle may have some room to work with.

And, of course, if after 70 years of application the rule of constitutional law laid down in Schmoe v. East Squeedunk, as modified by the decision in West Grizzle v. Cloghorn, is found to have some bad results, the Supreme Court can always change the rule, as it did in such seminal cases as Brown v. Board of Education.