By 1976, Congress recognized that foreign states and their business enterprises were common participants in the global economy, often transacting with US citizens. It further recognized that there were no uniform or comprehensive rules governing when and how private parties could bring suit against those foreign governments in the courts of the United States.
From the 1990s to 2017, life was good for plaintiffs in patent infringement lawsuits. In 1990, the Federal Circuit1 interpreted the patent venue statute—28 USC § 1400(b)—to allow patent venue in any district with personal jurisdiction over a corporate defendant.
In the battle against partisan gerrymandering, redistricting commissions are now on the front lines.
Vickie Sanders was convicted in a California state court of felony drug possession, sixteen years before California voters would pass Proposition 47. Proposition 47, which was passed in 2014, reduces most possessory drug offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, and allows California courts to retroactively redesignate individuals’ felonies as misdemeanors.
The Supreme Court did not use the term “federalism” in any opinions in its first 150 years. The Court had (of course) previously talked about federal-state relations, but it did so without the term “federalism”—it preferred a different vocabulary, discussing the police powers of the states and the enumerated powers of the federal government.
In asserting that “this land is our land” in his new book by that title,1 Professor Jedediah Purdy hopes to craft a narrative of possibility and common plight that can serve as a banner high and wide enough for all to unite beneath. The task he undertakes in this meditative collection of essays, written in a colloquial and often poetic tone, is no less than to sketch out a “horizon to aim for”—for all to aim for—a vision of the future to guide the kind of legal, social, and political change he wishes to see.
