Skinner V. Switzer
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Skinner V. Switzer
''Skinner v. Switzer'', 562 U.S. 521 (2011), is a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the route through which a prisoner may obtain biological DNA material for testing to challenge his conviction; whether through a civil rights suit or a habeas corpus petition. A majority of the Court held that the civil rights path was the appropriate path. Background Henry Skinner was convicted of murdering his girlfriend in 1995, and sentenced to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) affirmed. On March 26, 1998, Skinner filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in Texas courts. It was subsequently dismissed as untimely and the CCA affirmed. In 1999, he filed a federal habeas petition. At the same time, he began pushing for DNA testing of materials in the original case by the District Attorney's office. The testing was conducted by a private office and resulted in mixed results; however Skinner wanted what he called 'independent' testing. He filed claims in Texas court ...
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5th Cir
Fifth is the ordinal form of the number five. Fifth or The Fifth may refer to: * Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as in the expression "pleading the Fifth" * Fifth column, a political term * Fifth disease, a contagious rash that spreads in school-aged children * Fifth force, a proposed force of nature in addition to the four known fundamental forces * Fifth (Stargate), a robotic character in the television series ''Stargate SG-1'' * Fifth (unit), a unit of volume used for distilled beverages in the U.S. * Fifth-generation programming language * The fifth in a series, or four after the first: see ordinal numbers * 1st Battalion, 5th Marines * The Fraction 1/5 * The royal fifth (Spanish and Portuguese), an old royal tax of 20% Music * A musical interval (music); specifically, a ** perfect fifth ** diminished fifth ** augmented fifth * Quintal harmony, in which chords concatenate fifth intervals (rather than the third intervals of tertian harmony) * Fifth (chord) ...
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Supreme Court Of The United States
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." The court holds the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction. The court may decide cases having political overtones, but has ruled that it does not have power to decide non-justiciable political questions. Established by Article Three of the United States ...
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Habeas Corpus
''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, to bring the prisoner to court, to determine whether the detention is lawful. The writ of ''habeas corpus'' was described in the eighteenth century by William Blackstone as a "great and efficacious writ in all manner of illegal confinement". It is a summons with the force of a court order; it is addressed to the custodian (a prison official, for example) and demands that a prisoner be brought before the court, and that the custodian present proof of authority, allowing the court to determine whether the custodian has lawful authority to detain the prisoner. If the custodian is acting beyond their authority, then the prisoner must be released. Any prisoner, or another person acting on their behalf, may petition the court, or a judge, for a ...
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Fifth Circuit Court Of Appeals
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (in case citations, 5th Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * Eastern District of Louisiana * Middle District of Louisiana * Western District of Louisiana * Northern District of Mississippi * Southern District of Mississippi * Eastern District of Texas * Northern District of Texas * Southern District of Texas * Western District of Texas The Fifth Circuit has 17 active judgeships, and is headquartered at the John Minor Wisdom United States Court of Appeals Building in New Orleans, Louisiana, with the clerk's office located at the F. Edward Hebert Federal Building in New Orleans. Originally, the Fifth Circuit also included the federal district courts in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. In 1981, the district courts for those states were transferred to the newly created U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. History of ...
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Certiorari
In law, ''certiorari'' is a court process to seek judicial review of a decision of a lower court or government agency. ''Certiorari'' comes from the name of an English prerogative writ, issued by a superior court to direct that the record of the lower court be sent to the superior court for review. The term is Latin for "to be made certain", and comes from the opening line of such writs, which traditionally began with the Latin words "''Certiorari volumus''..." ("We wish to be made certain..."). Derived from the English common law, ''certiorari'' is prevalent in countries utilising, or influenced by, the common law''.'' It has evolved in the legal system of each nation, as court decisions and statutory amendments are made. In modern law, ''certiorari'' is recognized in many jurisdictions, including England and Wales (now called a "quashing order"), Canada, India, Ireland, the Philippines and the United States. With the expansion of administrative law in the 19th and 20th cen ...
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Justice Alito
Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. ( ; born April 1, 1950) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George W. Bush on October 31, 2005, and has served since January 31, 2006. He is the second Italian American justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court—after Antonin Scalia—and the eleventh Catholic. Raised in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, and educated at Princeton University and Yale Law School, Alito served as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey and a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) before joining the Supreme Court. He is the 110th justice. In 2013, Alito was considered "one of the most conservative justices on the Court". Granick, Jennifer and Sprigman, Christopher (June 27, 2013"The Criminal N.S.A.", ''The New York Times'' He has described himself as a "practical originalist". Alito's majority opinions in landma ...
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Chief Justice John Roberts
John Glover Roberts Jr. (born January 27, 1955) is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as the 17th Chief Justice of the United States, chief justice of the United States since 2005. Roberts has authored the majority opinion in several List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark cases, including ''National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius,'' ''Shelby County v. Holder'', and ''Riley v. California''. He has been described as having a conservative judicial philosophy but, above all, is an institutionalist. He has shown a willingness to work with the Supreme Court of the United States, Supreme Court's liberal bloc, and after the retirement of Anthony Kennedy in 2018, he has been regarded as the primary swing vote on the Court. However, Roberts is no longer regarded as the Court's median vote following the replacement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. Roberts grew up in northwestern Indiana and was educated in a series o ...
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Stephen Breyer
Stephen Gerald Breyer ( ; born August 15, 1938) is a retired American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1994 until his retirement in 2022. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton, and replaced retiring justice Harry Blackmun. Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, was his designated successor. Breyer was generally associated with the liberal wing of the Court. He is now the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process at Harvard Law School. Born in San Francisco, Breyer attended Stanford University, the University of Oxford as a Marshall Scholar, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1964. After a clerkship with Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg in 1964–65, Breyer was a law professor and lecturer at Harvard Law School from 1967 until 1980. He specialized in administrative law, writing textbooks that remain in use today. He held other prominent positions before being nominated to the ...
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Brady V
Brady may refer to: People * Brady (surname) * Brady (given name) * Brady (nickname) * Brady Boone, a ring name of American professional wrestler Dean Peters (1958–1998) Places in the United States * Brady, Montana, a census-designated place and unincorporated community * Brady, Nebraska, a village * Brady, Texas, a city * Brady, Washington, a census-designated place * Brady Township (other) * Brady Lake (Ohio) * Brady Creek Reservoir, also known as Brady Lake and Brady Reservoir, McCulloch County, Texas Arts and entertainment * "Duncan and Brady", also known as "Brady", a traditional murder ballad * The fictional Brady family, in the American television show ''The Brady Bunch'' and various sequels and spinoffs * Brady Black, a character in the American soap opera ''Days of Our Lives'' Companies * Brady Corporation, a manufacturer of products for identifying components used in workplaces * Brady Drum Company, a manufacturer of drums in Western Australia ...
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Majority Opinion
In law, a majority opinion is a judicial opinion agreed to by more than half of the members of a court. A majority opinion sets forth the decision of the court and an explanation of the rationale behind the court's decision. Not all cases have a majority opinion. At times, the justices voting for a majority decision (e.g., to affirm or reverse the lower court's decision) may have drastically different reasons for their votes, and cannot agree on the same set of reasons. In that situation, several concurring opinions may be written, none of which is the view of a majority of the members of the court. Therefore, the concurring opinion joined by the greatest number of judges is referred to as the plurality opinion. Normally, appellate courts (or panels) are staffed with an odd number of judges to avoid a tie. Sometimes, and in some jurisdictions, when judicial positions are vacant or a judge has recused themselves from the case, the court may be stuck with a tie, in which case the ...
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( ; ; March 15, 1933September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton to replace retiring justice Byron White, and at the time was generally viewed as a moderate consensus-builder. She eventually became part of the liberal wing of the Court as the Court shifted to the right over time. Ginsburg was the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court, after Sandra Day O'Connor. During her tenure, Ginsburg wrote notable majority opinions, including ''United States v. Virginia''(1996), '' Olmstead v. L.C.''(1999), '' Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc.''(2000), and '' City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York''(2005). Ginsburg was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Her older sister died when she was a baby, and her mother died shortly bef ...
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Subject-matter Jurisdiction
Subject-matter jurisdiction (also called jurisdiction ''ratione materiae')'' is the authority of a court to hear cases of a particular type or cases relating to a specific subject matter. For instance, bankruptcy court only has the authority to hear bankruptcy cases. Subject-matter jurisdiction must be distinguished from personal jurisdiction, which is the power of a court to render a judgment against a particular defendant, and territorial jurisdiction, which is the power of the court to render a judgment concerning events that have occurred within a well-defined territory. Unlike personal or territorial jurisdiction, lack of subject-matter jurisdiction cannot be waived. A judgment from a court that did not have subject-matter jurisdiction is forever a nullity. To decide a case, a court must have a combination of subject (''subjectam'') and either personal (''personam'') or territorial (''locum'') jurisdiction. Subject-matter jurisdiction, personal or territorial jurisdictio ...
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