What is the canonical ruling on why the rulings of a supreme court cannot be appealed? I am essentially asking for a quote that I know exists but cannot remember. A Law Lord from the British House of Lords either made a remark or an actual ruling on the subject of whether a ruling from a final court could be appealed. It was something like &quot;otherwise, nothing would ever be settled and there would be no finality&quot;. I'm sure I read it in some kind of &quot;intro to law&quot; book.
One direct statement about this is in White v. Tommey [1853] 10 E.R. 483, in which the House of Lords had to consider whether to allow a rehearing of a case which they had previously decided, on the basis that there had been misrepresentation the first time round which affected their judgement. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Cranworth, said: What ought your Lordships to do in this state of things? It was pressed very strongly on the part of Tommey by his counsel, that your Lordships in truth have no jurisdiction; that after a matter has once been heard and adjudicated upon in this ultimate Court of appeal, there is an end of it, that there must be an end somewhere, and that if it can be said that the trustees can be heard now to come and call in question the decree of 1850, what is to prevent Mr. Tommey coming afterwards, in 1860, and praying your Lordships to reconsider it again, and so toties quoties to the very end of time? In this case, the Lords sent the case back to the Court of Chancery in Ireland, setting aside their earlier orders relating to the appeal. This did not amount to a rehearing of the merits in the House of Lords, but their correction of a mistake in the proceedings and restoring the status quo ante. In an earlier case, Stewart v. Agnew [1823] 1 Shaw 413, another Lord Chancellor, Lord Eldon, observed: It is infinitely better that the matter should be here finally decided upon one hearing, even if the decision is wrong, than that there should be a new litigation unknown to our proceedings, as to this matter of rehearing; - nor can any one say where it is to stop. In general, it is to be hoped that the decisions of this House are right; but, whether right or wrong, it has been taken for granted that considerations of infinitely greater moment than the considerations which arise out of the particular mischief in particular cases, have led this House to determine, that where a matter has been heard between parties at the Bar, and the House has given its decision upon the merits discussed by those parties, the House will not rehear the cause.
Such an order, like all other orders and decisions, is voted on at a conference of justices. Normally all 9 are present and vote, unless one or more is recused. But if one or more happens to be absent, those present vote. A majority of those present an voting is enough for such an order. Dissents from such orders are quite unusual, but any justice may file one if s/he so elects. Reasons for such orders are not normally provided. The usual standard is that such relief is only granted if A) one party will be irreparably harmed by delay, and B) that party has a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on the merits when the matter is finally decided. Presumably a majority of the Justices did not feel that this standard was met. Beyond that, no one can say.
The House of Lords declared themselves able to depart from their own precedents in 1966, stating (emphasis added): Their Lordships regard the use of precedent as an indispensable foundation upon which to decide what is the law and its application to individual cases. It provides at least some degree of certainty upon which individuals can rely in the conduct of their affairs, as well as a basis for orderly development of legal rules. Their Lordships nevertheless recognise that too rigid adherence to precedent may lead to injustice in a particular case and also unduly restrict the proper development of the law. They propose therefore, to modify their present practice and, while treating former decisions of this house as normally binding, to depart from a previous decision when it appears right to do so. In this connection they will bear in mind the danger of disturbing retrospectively the basis on which contracts, settlement of property, and fiscal arrangements have been entered into and also the especial need for certainty as to the criminal law. This announcement is not intended to affect the use of precedent elsewhere than in this House. This applies equally to the Supreme Court, which has replaced the judicial functions of the Lords. The Practice Statement of 1966 itself overturned London Street Tramways v London County Council [1898] AC 375, in which the Lord Chancellor, Lord Halsbury, had said: A decision of this House once given on a point of law is conclusive on this House afterwards. In the modern understanding, it is in the interests of justice for the Supreme Court to always be able to say what the law is, even if that conflicts with the understanding of the past. As it is the final court of appeal, there is no other court which could review or overturn its decisions. Parliament could, and sometimes has, done so, but it is not always easy to express the desired effect in statutory language; and Parliament has many other demands on its time. It was felt that the court itself should be in a position to say that a past judgement was wrongly decided, or should no longer be considered binding for another reason. In the Scottish tradition, this power has long been held to be inherent in that country's highest courts, the Court of Session / High Court of Justiciary. It is allied to the nobile officium, or equitable jurisdiction of those courts to provide a just remedy in the absence of any explicit law. Judicial precedent is not a barrier to justice either. As Lord Kames said (Historical law-tracts, 1758; tract 8), No defect in the constitution of a state deserves greater reproach, than the giving license to wrong without affording redress. Upon this account, it is the province, one should imagine, of the sovereign, and supreme court, to redress wrongs of every kind, where a peculiar remedy is not provided. Those courts have not held themselves to a strict idea of stare decisis with respect to their own decisions, feeling instead that in the interests of justice they should be able to decide what a particular case demands. John Erskine explained (An institute of the law of Scotland, 1773; book 1, title 1, section 47): Decisions therefore though they bind the parties litigating create no obligation on the judges to follow in the same tract if it shall appear to them contrary to law. English courts, at least once in their roughly modern shape following the reforms of the late 19th century, have taken a stricter view of precedent, in the interests of predictability. The reform of 1966 was influenced by differences between English and Scottish practice, and represents something of a course-correction away from the strict position of the prior era. In terms of the present and the past, &quot;precedent&quot; doesn't precisely mean that the past wins out. It would be better to say that a past decision is presumed to be right, up until proved otherwise, or made obsolete by events such as the passage of new statutes. The presumption is binding on lower courts, and merely &quot;very strong&quot; for the highest court. The post-1966 position recognises that it is sometimes appropriate for the Supreme Court itself, seized of a particular case, to point out when a past decision is no longer right.
The direct answer is &quot;no&quot; and the indirect answer is &quot;yes&quot;, that is, your way of putting the matter diverges significantly from how the Bill of Complain puts the matter. The claim is that the defendant states violated the Electors Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Due Process Clause. Texas claims that there is an injury in fact, citing various SCOTUS rulings e.g. Wesberry v. Sanders which says that No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined See the argument in the brief for more legal rhetoric. There can be no question that one state can sue another; equally clearly, the plaintiff must show actual harm and not just annoyance. New Jersey v. New York is a case involving a question of equity, not the federal constitution, but there is no legal principle to the effect that one state cannot sue over a constitutional harm rather than an equitable harm. See the brief p. 65 ff. The court does not require that there be exact precedential analogs (otherwise, Roe v. Wade would have turned out differently), what's required is simply that there be reasonable logical steps: SCOTUS gets to decide what is reasonable (or it can decline to decide).
There is currently no means for the Earl to disclaim his title, if it has been longer than the permitted period since he inherited it. He also could not do so if he was the first holder, since the 1963 Act only applies to inheritance, and he cannot disclaim a life peerage. The reasoning from 1963 is that the Act was made for people who wanted to sit in the House of Commons, but could not do so due to an accident of birth - something they had no say in. For a life peerage, or peerage of the first creation, they should have refused the honour at the time it was offered. The situation is now a bit different thanks to the removal of all but 92 hereditary peers from the House of Lords in 1999, and the resignation provisions in the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. If the Earl were one of the 92, then he could not disclaim the peerage until he resigned, or was disqualified under other provisions of the 2014 Act. On resignation, he would become able to vote in general elections, stand as a candidate, and sit in the Commons if elected. (By the way, Church of England bishops who are members of the Lords can also resign, but do so in a different way.) So any hereditary or life peer who feels that they are disenfranchised by virtue of sitting in the Lords also has the means to leave that chamber. That makes it difficult to make a human rights claim on the basis of Article 3 of the First Protocol. The European Court of Human Rights has upheld other kinds of voting restrictions in parallel circumstances, such as Ahmed and others v United Kingdom [1998]. In that case, several local government officials were barred from certain political activities, including standing for election, and brought a claim against the UK concerning violation of Articles 10 (free expression), 11 (free association) and 3 of Protocol 1 (free elections). The Court found that the restrictions were justified, and in particular that the applicants could avoid them by resigning. An opposite case was X v United Kingdom [1978] in which the applicant claimed a violation of Article 6 (right to a fair trial) because he claimed to have the right to sit in the Lords but his petition to the Queen was denied. The Commission found that participating in the legislature is part of public law as opposed to a &quot;civil right&quot; within the scope of Article 6. Also, granting or withholding an honour has traditionally been held to be immune from judicial review - cited for example in Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service [1985] AC 374 - although this conclusion may no longer be completely solid since the well-known 2019 Miller case. That would apply for aspects of a peerage which are purely ceremonial in nature. The Earl might want to argue that his free expression is impaired by having a hereditary title at all. But there is nothing stopping him from calling himself by an ordinary name. British law doesn't require him to be called the Earl in any context, and there are plenty of peers who use their normal names while working at normal jobs. He has a defined place in the order of precedence, but I am not convinced that the situation would arise where he insisted on going to a fancy dinner and had a contretemps with the host over the seating arrangement that amounted to a human rights violation. Equally, he has the right to wear an Earl's coronet at a royal coronation, but our newly republican Earl would probably just not go. In the case of the Earl Marshal - a hereditary office which goes along with being the Duke of Norfolk - there are non-trivial duties involved, and an Earl Marshal might justifiably want to stop doing them. The past procedure has been for the Crown to appoint a Deputy Earl Marshal instead, as was done in 2000 when the Duke at the time was unwell. It would seem that a similar manoeuvre would work for any other hereditary offices that were more than nominal. If the Crown refused to do this, then perhaps a claim could arise under Article 14 (discrimination on the grounds of birth), but it would require a particularly intransigent Crown. Hereditary peers may hold property in a variety of entertaining feudally-derived ways, in addition to more familiar modes. The most relevant scenario to imagine is that our Earl owns Exampleshire Castle in &quot;fee tail&quot;, meaning that he can't dispose of it even though it is horribly expensive for him to keep paying for repairs to its leaky roof - it must pass to his eldest son, and so forth. Even if the Earl is able to disclaim his peerage, he may still be on the hook for the property, depending on how everything is structured. However, there are generally legal workarounds these days, beyond the scope of this question, unlike when entails were so important to the plots of historical stories featuring the aristocracy. There is a current campaign by daughters of some peers to change the inheritance laws away from male-preference primogeniture, including on human rights grounds. It remains to be seen how that will work out, but a key difference here is that they are losing out by not being able to inherit, while the Earl is able to divest himself of all the disadvantages of the title, by simply not using it.
Parliament in the UK is sovereign: Parliament [is] the supreme legal authority in the UK, which can create or end any law. Generally, the courts cannot overrule its legislation and no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change. If parliament passed a law saying that it was a crime for "a black American woman sat at the front of the bus" and provided that it repealed all existing laws that would invalidate that law (e.g. the European Charter of Human Rights); then there is no defence to that crime if the prosecution proves the elements beyond reasonable doubt i.e. that you are a) black, b) American, c) a woman and d) sat at the front of the bus. In the UK there is no higher law that can be appealed to like a constitution. Over the years, UK parliaments have passed laws limiting their sovereignty, however, any current or future parliament could (in theory) repeal those limits. Just like the USA could (also in theory) repeal the Bill of Rights amendments to their constitution (or even replace the Constitution as a whole); albeit the process is different and less likely to succeed. The limitations on this are political, not legal.
A promise that a court would not enforce by injunction can still be valid consideration and be part of a valid contract. Failure to carry out such obligations would lead to some measure of money damages, most likely. On the other hand, provisions specifically barred by law, or against public policy, such as a promise to commit a crime, are void from the start, and form no part of a valid contract. Such provisions may be treated by a court as if they had just been left out, or if they were essential to the contract, or formed the sole consideration, the whole contract might be considered void. If a term is too vague for a court to determine if it has been violated or not, the court may try to clarify it, or may just ignore it. Just what it would mean for a tenant to "undermine the leadership" of a landlord is not clear to me, at least. That might well be held to be "too vague". As to "not complain" it may be that a tenant has a legal right to make official complaints, which cannot be waived by contract. Or it may not, depending on the local laws.
This depends on how far along you're waiting for court rulings to set in, and if you count laws of Congress passed under the 13th amendment's enforcement clause. There were quite a lot of things that got ruled as violations of the 13th and 14th amendments (mostly the 14th), but many were not ruled or legislated that way for decades. Some were even ruled to have an essentially opposite effect of what the current (overturning) precedents do. "Separate but equal" was challenged on 13th amendment grounds, but was upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and wasn't overturned, on 14th amendment grounds, until 58 years later in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Your particular situation sounds like peonage, which was outlawed by Congress in 1867 via the enforcement clause. This law specifically banned "the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise." However, peonage cases continued to make their way into the courts for more than 40 years thereafter, such as Clyatt v. United States (1905)&mdash; which ruled that peonage was involuntary servitude&mdash; and Bailey v. Alabama (1911). These cases affirmed that the 13th amendment abolished not just chattel slavery but essentially all forms of involuntary or indentured servitude (except as punishment for a crime). Though exactly what qualifies as "involuntary servitude" is still something courts decide on a case-by-case basis; the draft doesn't, nor does mandatory community service to graduate high school.