The Roundtable
Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
 By Alicia Kysar
Alicia Kysar studied Political Science and English at Columbia University Last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dominated American headlines for scathingly criticizing Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump in a series of three interviews that she conducted with, respectively, the New York Times, Associated Press, and CNN. Speaking on the effect that his potential presidency would have on the country and, specifically, on the Supreme Court, she noted, “I can’t imagine what this place would be—I can’t imagine what the country would be—with Donald Trump as our president. For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be—I don’t even want to contemplate that.” [1]
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 By Alicia Kysar
Alicia Kysar is a graduate of Columbia University who studied political science and Pre-Law. In a decision that received very little media attention, June 13, the Supreme Court dramatically changed the way in which patent infringement cases will work in the future. [1] The case responsible for the decision, Halo Electronics, Inc v Pulse Electronics, Inc. fundamentally changed how enhanced damages in intellectual property law will be determined and granted. The facts of the case depict a relatively standard dispute between two electronics companies on the usage of a new technology: Halo alleged that Pulse had infringed on the former’s patents for electronic packages that included transformers that could be mounted onto circuit boards. Instead of confronting Pulse outright about his alleged violation, Halo instead sent Pulse two letters in 2002, offering to provide them with licenses for the usage of the technology, thus legitimizing it and righting the infringement. An engineer working for Pulse, however, decided that Halo’s claim to the relevant patent was invalid, and Pulse continued selling the transformers in question. Eventually, Halo took legal action against Pulse, and the case reached the Supreme Court in 2015, with a decision handed down in 2016. [2]  By Alicia Kysar
Alicia Kysar is a senior at Columbia University studying English and Political Science with a concentration in Pre-Law. During Justice Antonin Scalia’s tenure on the Supreme Court, he authored many contentious and heavily conservative opinions. Thus, when he passed away unexpectedly on Saturday, many liberals celebrated his death, or at least his future absence on the Court. [1] As a political liberal, I am fascinated by the political implications of the absence of one of the most polarizing justices on the Supreme Court just months before the most polarizing presidential election in decades; moreover, I am excited for upcoming cases in which the political bend of the Court will be swayed. However, while I cannot name a single one of his decisions that I agree without major reservations, I mourn the passing of Antonin Scalia as a scholar of the Constitution. Scalia’s constitutional theory was old-fashioned, but his titanic personality and intellect brought it back into style—and public debate—during his tenure as an associate justice. Constitutional originalism, the idea that judges should interpret the Constitution solely based on its meaning at the time it was written, had been popular during the mid-twentieth century; by the time President Reagan nominated Scalia to the Court, however, the theory had fallen out of favor with most legal theorists. [2] Scalia came into the public eye with his variation on originalism: rather than scouring it for intent, constitutional scholars and judges should instead base their decisions on the original meaning of the words in the text. [3]  By Alicia Kysar
Alicia Kysar is a senior at Columbia University studying English and Political Science with a concentration in Pre-Law. As an unincorporated American territory, Puerto Rico has long had a complex and unique history with the United States. [1] While its citizens are granted statutory U.S. citizenship, and while the Puerto Rican currency is the U.S. dollar, Puerto Rico does not have the right to vote in Congress, and Puerto Rican-American citizens residing in Puerto Rico cannot vote in federal elections. In 2012, a referendum occurred in order to determine the nature of relationship with the United States Puerto Ricans desired in the coming years. Fifty-four percent of participants voted against their country remaining an unincorporated territory with limited American rights. Furthermore, sixty-one percent of voters opted for Puerto Rico to join the United States as the 51st state and enjoy the full rights of American citizenship. [2] Despite the wishes of the Puerto Rican people, however, there has been little to no action taken by the U.S. in recent years to incorporate further incorporate Puerto Rico into the United States. Two cases currently facing the Supreme Court, however, are poised to compel the US to take a more definite stand regarding Puerto Rico’s sovereignty.  By Alicia Kysar
Alicia Kysar is a senior at Columbia University studying English and Political Science with a concentration in Pre-Law. In 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which provided the firearm and ammunitions industry with unprecedented protections from tort legal actions against it. This law originally came about in November of 1998 when Richard M. Daley, then the mayor of Chicago, was searching for a way to curb the gun violence in his city. At that point, there had been 471 deaths in Chicago that were a direct result of gun violence, with many more non-fatal injuries sustained. [1] Brian Crowe, Chicago’s corporation counsel, argued that gun manufacturers were largely at fault for these incidences of violence. [2] Most of the guns used in the shootings had been sold and exchanged illegally, as it was illegal to own a gun unless it was registered before March of 1982. Crowe contended that gun manufacturers nevertheless continued to disseminate their guns by designing them for and marketing them to criminals. [3] Furthermore, given the overwhelmingly large volume of guns that were sold to a relatively limited clientele, gun manufacturers and distributors should have reasonably been able to assume that people were purchasing guns in suburban areas to distribute them illegally in cities like Chicago; however, the manufacturers and distributors of firearms seemed to have taken advantage of the situation to earn higher profits, disregarding potential safety concerns. [4]  By Alicia Kysar
Alicia Kysar is a senior at Columbia University studying English and Political Science with a concentration in Pre-Law. In my previous article, “The Value of Dissent in the Supreme Court,” I enumerated arguments in favor of and against the practice of dissension in Supreme Court rulings through the lens of political science and judicial scholarship. [1] This article will approach the same issue though the perspective of legal history, and explore the influence that legal dissents have had on past Supreme Court decisions. The landmark case of Brown v Board of Education (1954), in which the Supreme Court unanimously voted to desegregate schools, so that children of all races could attend school together, was a landmark case in American history and is a credit to all the justices on the bench at the time, and particularly to Earl Warren, the Chief Justice.[2] It was, at the time, a highly controversial decision – so much so that President Eisenhower had to deploy the National Guard to enforce it. Arguments similar to those used in the Warren Court’s ruling, however, were not new to the Supreme Court. In Plessy v Ferguson (1896), the case that upheld the constitutionality of state laws that required the doctrine of “separate but equal” as a rationale for racial segregation, Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented from the majority opinion. [3] Many of the arguments that Harlan used in opposition to racial discrimination reappeared in Chief Justice Earl Warren’s decision in Brown v Board of Education (1896). [4] In his dissension, Justice Harlan warned that the decision of the majority would “encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution.” [5] He cited the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, which abolished slavery after the Civil War and took additional measures in order to ensure the freedom and liberty of all Americans.  By Alicia Kysar
Alicia Kysar is a senior at Columbia University studying English and Political Science with a concentration in Pre-Law. In the legal community, the role and importance of dissenting opinions in Supreme Court decisions has been deeply controversial and often questioned. For the first twenty years after the establishment of the US Supreme Court, justices initially each issued independent opinions. Since there existed no prevailing opinion, confusion regarding the judgment of the Court abound, despite there being only six justices serving at the time. It was only when John Marshall became Chief Justice in 1801 that he changed the system to that which we have today: a system in which the Court issues an official, majority decision, with each justice given the option of writing his or her own dissent or concurrence. [1] Since then, dissenting opinions have proven to be crucial to the integrity of the Supreme Court and to its proper functioning. The most obvious reason for allowing justices to publish their dissenting opinions is that the legacy each justice leaves behind is his or her history of signing on to Court decisions. If the Supreme Court operated under a system that did not allow for the formally documented expression of dissenting opinions, justices would then be forced to sign on to judgments with which they disagreed. It is both cumbersome and impractical to hope for a unanimous decision on each case, and furthermore unethical to compel any justice to sign a decision which he or she does not support. Justice Felix Frankfurter, who served from 1939 to 1962, defined the sum of a justice’s decisions as “the thought and action of a lifetime.” [2] Indeed, this legacy cannot and should not be swayed to achieve unanimity.  Warning: This post discusses sexual violence against children and human trafficking.
By Alicia Kysar Alicia Kysar is a senior at Columbia University studying English and Political Science with a concentration in Pre-Law. In June of this year, MasterCard joined Visa and American Express in announcing that it would no longer allow its services to be used for purchasing advertising space on the adult ad part of Backpage.com, a website that hosts advertisements uploaded by users for a wide range of services and products. In recent years, the site has become particularly notorious for featuring advertisements for sex, a large number—more than on other such major websites—of which support the child sex trade or human trafficking. [1] Of the five major websites that host advertisements for sex, Backpage.com hosts about 70 percent of the advertising for prostitution. In 2012, the AIM Group estimated that Backpage earned more than 22 million dollars a year merely from prostitution advertisements. [2] In April of 2015, Backpage.com published over 1.4 million advertisements on its section for sex, and most of them were certainly legal. The significant percentage of those that are advertising children or victims of trafficking, however, cannot be ignored. [3] Credit card companies, in a move to curb the ability of sex traffickers to advertise their victims on the website, have withdrawn their services from all “adult” ads featuring any sort of prostitution, thus making it impossible for traffickers to pay Backpage.com with any major credit card.  By Alicia Kysar
Alicia Kysar is a rising senior at Columbia University studying English and Political Science with a concentration in Pre-Law. During his appearance on a segment of “Meet the Press” in early July, Texas senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz criticized the current justices on the Supreme Court for “politiciz[ing] the Court.” He accused them of taking sides in the political arena, siding with President Obama’s policies even at the cost of delivering unconstitutional decisions. [1] He focused on the Court’s upholding of the Affordable Care Act and on its declaring gay marriage a federal right, two issues highly polarizing issues against which he has been very vocal. Whenever the Court makes a high profile, politically impactful decision, there are cries of political bias and of unconstitutionality, so Cruz’s claims are neither surprising nor unexpected. Cruz then argued that the Supreme Court justices should be subject to retention elections to ensure that they continue to represent the needs of the people several years after their nominations to the bench. [2] The problems with this proposition are obvious and many sources were quick to criticize Cruz for suggesting it. One of the most salient arguments against his idea is that the role of the justices on the bench is unique in that they—ideally—remain accountable solely to the Constitution, and thus transcend the limitations of daily politics. Their freedom from seeking reelection allows them to express their legal conclusions—ostensibly the conclusions of the best constitutional scholars and judges in the country—fully and directly, without political maneuvering. The conception of the justices is that they, the ultimate voice in jurisprudence, rise above the fray of petty politics to perform authentic, unbiased legal analysis. |
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