The theme running through this dissertation is intended to prove that the Supreme Court has a role to play in the promotion, enforcement and sustenance of a proper democratic system of government, good governance and fundamental human rights and freedoms in Ghana. The Study would therefore address the role of the Supreme Court in the development of Constitutional Law in Ghana, with particular emphasis on the court's contribution to the underlying concepts of the Fourth Republican Constitution of 1992; the guiding principles of constitutional interpretation and the vexed issue of whether the court should adopt a mechanical and literal approach to the interpretation of the Constitution or adopt a liberal, beneficent and purposive approach. The Supreme Court has asserted in the locus classicus decision: Tuffuor v Attorney-General [1980] GLR 637 that the 1979 Constitution as the supreme law, must be construed as a living political document capable of growth. Is there any evidence now to support that claim? The study shall also investigate the question of the power of the Supreme Court to review legislative and executive action. We shall also examine the role of the Supreme Court in the interpretation and enforcement of the Constitution and Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms in relation to the rights and obligations of the individual and the State with the view to achieving good governance. The 1992 Constitution itself is founded on the premise that there are limitations to the enjoyment of fundamental human rights and freedoms. What is the extent of such limitations as determined by the Supreme Court? What has been the Supreme Court's contribution to the sustenance of political stability and democratic governance and, especially, in matters relating to coup d'etats and to enforcement of the Constitution itself as distinct from the enforcement of fundamental human rights and freedoms? Has the Supreme Court power to enforce the Constitution and the existing law where there is proven case of injustice and illegality? Has the Supreme Court power to enforce Directive Principles of State Policy as formulated in chapter 6 of the 1992 Ghana Constitution? / Jurisprudence / LL.D.

This thesis provides a comprehensive history of Supreme Court Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence from 1879 until the present day. It describes how a jurisdictional approach to free exercise dominated the Court’s rulings from its first Free Exercise Clause case in 1879 until Sherbert v. Verner in 1963, and how Sherbert introduced an accommodationist precedent which was ineffectively, incompletely, and inconsistently defined by the Court. This thesis shows how proponents of accommodationism furthered a false narrative overstating the scope and consistency of Sherbert’s precedent following the Court’s repudiation of accommodationism and return to full jurisdictionalism with Employment Division v. Smith (1990). It then shows how this narrative inspired a massive bipartisan coalition in favor of codifying accommodationism, and how this coalition succeeded in passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1993. The RFRA coalition eventually fractured, as RFRA’s implications began to conflict with principles and objectives of liberal interest groups and the Democratic Party. This thesis posits that the fracture of the RFRA coalition can be traced back directly to confusions over Sherbert’s precedent.

The Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana, established by the first state constitution (1812) as the only appellate court in the judicial system, commenced its work on March 1, 1813. The Court's jurisdiction was limited to civil cases. It also had control over admissions to the bar and the rules for the administration of its own business. Created in the wake of the conflict between proponents of Louisiana's traditional civil law system and the promulgators of the federal government's territorial policy of common law imposition, the Supreme Court reinforced the ultimately accepted continuance of civil law within the limitations of the United States Constitution and Statutes. The First Minute Book of the Supreme Court is a small, yet significant, part of the documentation of the Court's past. It is a segment of the extensive Louisiana Supreme Court records housed in the Department of Archives and Manuscripts of the Earl K. Long Library at the University of New Orleans. Dating from March, 1813 to May, 1818, the 340-page manuscript details the business of the Court's sessions at New Orleans, the seat of the eastern appellate district. Daily entries include the judges present, the cases before the Court, the disposition of cases, Court rules, and admissions to the bar. The purpose of this edition is to provide a readable, accessible, and comprehensible document for use by the scholarly and research community. With the addition of missing docket numbers which serve as access points to Supreme Court case records and the annotation of persons, cases, and legal terms, the manuscript becomes an important guide for further investigation. The rendition of the text conforms to modern practices of historical editing recommended in the Harvard Guide to American History. No attempt was made to produce a facsimile of the original.

This paper will attempt to explore the history and function of judical disagreement behaviour using information from both the Canadian Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court. The evolution of national high court decision making, highlights the changing role of courts within the political and public spheres, as well as the increasing authority courts have over policy. This changing role reinforces the need to study the role of courts on law. I will use minority opinions from the Laskin and Dickson courts to study what disagreement reveals about the decision making process. Judicial disagreement has largely been summed up into two deficient stereotypes: the dissent as "serious" disagreement and the separate concurrence as inferior disagreement to the dissent. I will dispel this fallacy by introducing the five categories created to describe a new way of thinking about judicial disagreement and to shatter the old stereotypes. / vii, 149 leaves ; 29 cm.

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On February 5, 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt submitted to Congress “The Judiciary Reorganization Act of 1937,” often simply called the Court-packing bill. The president hoped to circumvent the Court, which for years had been overturning New Deal programs, by appointing six new justices. However, the bill disguised its true intentions behind a veil of improving judicial efficiency. This misdirection backfired; the bill failed and Roosevelt’s popularity plummeted just months after a landslide reelection. This thesis examines the origins of the infamous Court-packing bill. It argues that Roosevelt was largely a background figure in the development of the plan, as he charged Attorney General Homer Cummings with finding a solution to the Court’s obstinacy. Cummings was the driving force behind the bill, particularly with regards to keeping it secret from other advisers and hiding its true intentions. Roosevelt’s most crucial mistake was in relying almost exclusively on his cunning attorney general.

Damages for personal injury The diploma thesis focuses on the analysis and evaluation of the recodified legal regulation on damages for non-pecuniary loss arising from personal injury in the light of its comparison with the relevant English common law. On the background of the historical evolution of the method for assessing the amount of damages for non-pecuniary loss arising from personal injury, as well as through the comparison of Metodika Nejvyššího soudu k náhradě nemajetkové újmy při ublížení na zdraví (bolest a ztížení společenského uplatnění podle § 2958 občanského zákoníku) with Guidelines for the Assessment of General Damages in Personal Injury Cases, the diploma thesis arrives at a conclusion in favour of the development and application of the former, which it deems to have been a suitably chosen pre-emptive measure that would allow Czech legal practice to approach damages for non-pecuniary loss arising from personal injury in a consistent and proportionate fashion right from the moment of the coming into effect of Act No. 89/2012 Coll., the Civil Code, without having to overcome a period of relative legal uncertainty, during which standardised amounts of damages would have been developed through judicial practice, as was the case in the English common law. As regards the...

When Donald Trump took the stage as the Republican presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention in July 2016, he made a historical appeal to LGBTQ Americans: to the boisterous applause of a Republican audience, he promised "to protect LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology." Utilizing this historical moment as an indicator of shifting political views around LGBTQ rights in the Republican Party and the US nation-state as a whole, this paper links contemporary iterations of the War on Terror to the legalization of same-sex marriage in June 2015. Connecting same-sex marriage to the US nation-building project, I argue that the "dignity" newly available to certain queer folks via the institution of marriage makes possible an articulation of queer-defensibility that services a Republican investment in the aging War on Terror and the sustained targeting and hyper-surveillance of Muslims globally.

O objeto de estudo desta dissertação recai sobre as funções jurisdicionais do Superior Tribunal de Justiça no Estado Democrático de Direito, visando verificar uma possível mudança na sua compreensão, atividades e competências, desde a sua criação pela Constituição de 1988 até os dias atuais e seu papel no desenvolvimento do Direito. Para tanto, pautado nas mudanças ocorridas na passagem do modelo de Estado Legislativo Liberal para o Estado Democrático de Direito, estuda-se a evolução do papel Judiciário e suas funções como prestador de serviços e poder do Estado. Nesse sentido, a fim de verificar os modelos de Corte que serviram de matriz para a organização do Poder Judiciário no ocidente, as diferenças de suas funções e os sistemas em que se encontram inseridas, o presente trabalho destaca a estrutura e competências da Corte de Cassação Francesa, seus reflexos na Europa continental, e o papel desempenhado pela Suprema Corte estadunidense, clássico exemplo de Corte de Precedentes. Assim, a partir de modelos distintos de Corte, esta dissertação faz a análise da formação e estruturação do Judiciário nas Constituições brasileiras, para poder analisar, o momento de criação, as funções, prerrogativas e competências do Superior Tribunal de Justiça e a potencial mudança na sua compreensão frente às alterações legislativas e constitucionais ocorridas desde 1988, notadamente da criação de um sistema de precedentes pelo Novo Código de Processo Civil. Por fim, o trabalho se dedica a análise de alguns julgados proferidos pelo STJ, que possam exemplificar a atuação da Corte no Estado Democrático de Direito, agindo esta como órgão apto a promover, ao lado do Poder Legislativo, o desenvolvimento do Direito em harmonia com as evoluções sociais. / The object study of this dissertation relapses about the Superior Court of Justice jurisdictional functions on the Democratic State of Law, aiming to verify a possible change on its comprehension, activities and competences, since its creation by the 1988 Constitution until the current days and its role on the law development. Therefore, guided on the changes made on the passage from the Liberal Legislative State to the Democratic State of Law, is studied the evolution on the Judiciary role and its functions as service provider and State power. In this way, in order to verify the Court models that served as pattern to the organization on the Judiciary on the west, the differences on its functions and the systems that are included on it, the present paper point out the structure and the competences of the French Court of Cassation, its reflexes on the continental Europe, and the role played by the American Supreme Court, a classical Precedent Court example. Thus, from the distinct Court models, this dissertation makes analyses on the formation and organization of the Judiciary on the Brazilian Constitutions, in order to analyze, the creation moment, the functions, prerogatives and competences of the Superior Court of Justice and the possible change on its comprehension in front of the legislatives and constitutionals changes happened since 1988, notably from the creation of a precedents system by the New Procedural Civil Code. Finally, the paper apply to analyze of some judgments given by the Superior Court of Justice, that can exemplify the action of the Court on the Democratic State of Law, acting as a public agency capable to promote, next to the Legislative, the development of the law in harmony with the social evolutions.