Brown Bag Lecture Series
Supreme Court Review
Pam Karlan, founding director of the Stanford Law School’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, gave her analysis of the 2010–2011 Supreme Court Term. She noted that the label “The Kennedy Court” used for the last several years because his swing vote has turned many important ideological cases before the polarized court is even more applicable to this term as, with Justice Stevens’ retirement, Justice Kennedy now assigns who should write major opinions and that may have a significant impact in how those decisions are shaped. Ms. Karlan ran through statistics: percentage of unanimous decisions (48%), 5-4 decisions (18%), how often specific justices agreed or opposed one another, and how Justice Kagan’s entry to the Court has changed the balance of the Court.
In addition to summarizing the most notable cases before the court and their decisions, Ms. Karlan identified several themes of the 2010–2011 term—including The Arizona term, The Children’s Rights term, The First Amendment term, and The Access to Justice term—and discussed the ramifications of each of the decisions particularly in terms of how they impact the future of Employment Law.