What is the nature of these “internal documents” from the U.S. Supreme Court? The media have been reporting on the contents of Justice John Paul Stevens' documents, which have now been made public. This article for instance includes excerpts from what seem to be correspondence between the justices—sometimes with an informal tone, clearly not meant to be released. I'm curious how these documents are produced, and how they are distributed practically. It would otherwise seem like an email exchange between people who work remotely. I've always imagined them as nine people working in the same office building. Do the nine justices continually send written letters to one another? (Is this because they don't always work in proximity to one another?) Are there assistants typing up each person's notes and sending them to the other eight Justices?
The Justices communicate by exchanging written memoranda, or at least they did during Justice Stevens’ time. See Jeffrey Toobin, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (2007), p 48: Outsiders tend to be surprised by how rarely Supreme Court justices speak to each other, one on one. Under Rehnquist, the nine spent a good deal of time together as a group. Argument days, most Mondays and Wednesdays when they were in session, were preceded by the traditional thirty-six handshakes, each justice with every other, and they had lunch together most of these days as well. There were also conference discussions every Friday during these weeks. After the conference, however, the justices tended to communicate with one another through memos, which were often drafted by their law clerks. (After e-mail became ubiquitous, the memos also circulated electronically, but always with paper copies as well; among the justices, only Thomas and Breyer, and eventually Stevens, were fully comfortable communicating by e-mail.) Some further detail about the distribution of these memos appears later in an anecdote about Bush v. Gore (p 170): Stevens drafted an order of just a few sentences remanding the case to the Florida Supreme Court for the setting of a statewide standard to continue the recount. He sent his messenger scurrying down the marble hallway to Kennedy and the rest of the justices. He heard nothing back, except from Ginsburg, who said she would join if it was a way of bringing the whole Court together. (The rush of events in Bush v. Gore strained the Court's technology, which was, in 2000, still rather primitive. As a security precaution, the e-mail system circulated only within the building. Plus, there was only a single, communal computer from which the justices and clerks could obtain access to the Internet. Because only Thomas and Breyer used computers regularly at the time, there was little pressure from the justices to update. For the most part, the justices communicated with one another by hand-delivered memos, which were typed by their secretaries.)
There is a potentially infinite regress of questions regarding the constitutionality of restrictions imposed under these "emergency" circumstances. The basic legal principle is clearly established: laws restricting fundamental rights are subject to strict scrutiny. The specific details of a particular law and surrounding circumstances have yet to be discovered by the courts. If it is necessary to the purpose of saving lives that meetings of more than 10 people be prohibited, then the "compelling interest" test probably has been satisfied. That is basically a medical question, and the courts have a limited interest in scientific controversies, instead they are interested in whether people who make legal decisions do so rationally (is it reasonable to think that such limits would accomplish that compelling government end). Is it reasonable to think that restrictions lasting two months are necessary? The Black Death lasted at least 4 years. In the current circumstances (very limited hard knowledge this disease), it's hard to say what government actions could not be excused based on necessity. Summary execution is, at least in the current knowledge context, probably not going to pass strict scrutiny. As already explained in other thread on the topic, there is no "churches are above the law" constitutional provision. The appropriate question in the Florida case is not about the First Amendment, it is about the Due Process clauses – is the arrest lawful? We will, no doubt, see. On the face of it, he violated the law, so he can be arrested. I understand that there is a team poking holes in the order.
This happened despite the fact that the marriage and Bible verses requirement were almost surely illegal and similar things have happened on and off, mostly in rural courts with non-attorney judges, for pretty much as long as the U.S. has been a country (and earlier). The trick is that the orders take effect unless someone appeals them, and since deals like this are usually a result of a plea bargain which waives rights to an appeal, and even if the result is simply imposed by the judge, one has to consider if taking the case up on appeal, having the sentence reversed, and then having it remanded to the same judge for resentencing would be worse from the perspective of the defendant, given the broad authority of a sentencing judge in a minor case like this one, than simply accepting the illegal sentence. Also, cases that aren't appealed never create precedents and aren't generally available among resources used by legal researchers, so they systemically evade documentation in easily available sources.
Unless there is something special in Pakistani case law on this topic, it would pass the originality requirement. In my opinion, it is actually very well laid out, and it is clearly not just slapping a few tags on plain text. This article does not indicate any particularly high standards for originality in Pakistan.
A good starting point would be the SCOTUS opinion, or everything on SCOTUSblog, especially the application for injunctive relief filed on Aug. 30. There is a long sequence of petitions and orders which ask the courts either to issue an injunction preventing the law from taking force, or to vacate an administrative stay of proceedings by the lower court regarding petitioner's challenge. The lower court denied the petitions, therefore petitioners turn to SCOTUS to get an injunction against the law. Then you can turn to the SCOTUS opinion to see what the reasons were, for and against the petition. The majority position is that an applicant must carry the burden of making a “strong showing” that it is “likely to succeed on the merits,” that it will be “irreparably injured absent a stay,” that the balance of the equities favors it, and that a stay is consistent with the public interest. The majority concludes that The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue. But their application also presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden. Immediately after this the court comments that federal courts enjoy the power to enjoin individuals tasked with enforcing laws, not the laws themselves. However, it is unclear whether the named defendants in this lawsuit can or will seek to enforce the Texas law against the applicants in a manner that might permit our intervention The law states that Any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state, may bring a civil action against any person who and the named respondents (government workers of various sorts) all appear to be precluded from filing an action – thus an injunction against the judge is superfluous since he cannot file a lawsuit anyhow. It is also unclear whether SCOTUS can issue an injunction against state judges asked to decide a lawsuit under Texas’s law. When SCOTUS say &quot;it is unclear&quot; in this context, they mean that petitions did not adequately demonstrate that the court can in fact issue such an injunction. It's not that SCOTUS cannot decide such matters after extensive consideration of the facts / arguments and discussion, it's that the standards for an emergency action require something that the court found lacking in the petition: we cannot say the applicants have met their burden to prevail in an injunction or stay application. In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants’ lawsuit.
The exact form used can vary based on the court. At the federal level, the Administrative Office for the US Courts has a standardized form, although I don’t know that district courts have to use it. State courts obviously wouldn’t be expected to use the federal form, and I’m having a harder time turning up a blank state warrant form. The standard elements are in the federal form, though. A search warrant will have a header identifying it as a search warrant and will have something identifying the court that issued it. It will be signed by some sort of judge. The body of the warrant will be written as a command to the police to do a search, telling them where to search and what to look for. There will generally be some standard language about what to do with the property once it’s seized.
In my experience, varying jurisdictions can and do differ as to the myriad ways these disputes are resolved. Contract law is one area where the judge has a lot of discretion. This is definitely true in state courts, even from judge to judge, and can even be true in the federal level-The 9th Circuit has some wildly different appellate decisions when compared to the 1st Circuit, and so on. I say this not to be argumentative, but to highlight the importance of careful and concise drafting that fully explicates the bargained for exchange, as there can be a vast amount of judicial subjectivity that goes into determining which rules pertain to certain situations. "Conflicting or competing clause" cases are now some of the most commonly litigated contract disputes. This is largely because the last 20 years has seen a huge influx of people "drafting" (more like piecing together) contracts without benefit of qualified counsel. This is particularly true because lay people do not generally create a specific insturment like an attorney would - from scratch, with definitions and terms specific to the transaction. Rather, they go online and find "form" or model contracts that they feel are close enough (which are almost always missing key components), and then they type in their own terms, or even write them in. Because this is so common, most jurisdictions follow the rule that hand written terms supersede pre-printed terms; likewise, type written terms will take precedence over pre-printed terms. Specific terms also carry more weight than general terms. Specific terms will usually be given precedence over general terms, as these are seen as creating a specific exception to the general terms. For example, if Clause A in your scenario said: Written notice must be provided at least five days in advance of (any) change... (leaving out "to price"), then clause B would prevail because it would be more specific than the more general term (A), which in my scene would pertain to any change whatsoever (this is assuming the whole of the agreement did not shed light on the issues more fully). In your hypothetical, these are both specific terms. In that case, the court would first examine the entire contract and all addendum, specs, plans, etc. when interpreting competing or conflicting clauses applying the fundamental principal that a contract should always be interpreted as a whole - not clause-by-clause - and not section-by-section. Contracts will often have numerous parts with portions incorporated specifically by reference, or numerous documents that may be integral to the transaction, If the parties agree to what constitutes the various parts of the contract (even if not incorporated) the entirety of the transactional documents may be considered by the trier of fact (and law). Once examined, if a proposed interpretation makes other portions of the global agreement meaningless, illogical or unenforceable, and another party's interpretation is in keeping with the document as a whole, that is the interpretation that will typically be adopted. Assuming this analysis doesn't work to resolve the issue, then the court would look to see if there is an order-of-precedence clause, which is a clause that lays out what parts of the contract / types of clauses take precedence over others (ex. written requirements take precendee over performance requirements, addendum hold less import than the signed agreement, schematics hold less import than addendum, and so on). Assuming this there is no order of precedence, the court will look first to see if the contract was negotiated back and forth, with terms being modified with each draft. If Yes, then the court will except extrinsic evidence (parole evidence) that goes to the intent of the parties bargained for exchange. If not, the contract term(s) will be construed against the drafter and in favor of the one who signed the others' instrument. So, as you can see, there is no clear answer to what seems to be a simple issue. This just goes to show: Lawyers seem expensive when you decide to hire them - Lawyers are expensive when you have to hire them, because you decided not to in the first place!
You would be amazed at how vanishingly few the number of cases are where a signature is disputed. Signatures are easy, quick and don't require you having inky fingers all the time. They are so useful that to throw them out to deal with infinintesimally small fractions of disputes over their veracity (bearing in mind that 99.999999999% of contracts never have a dispute that gets to a court [or at all]) is ridiculous. When it does happen, handwriting analysis is probably not going to be put into evidence anyway. Testimony like "I saw him sign it" is way more likely to be used.