Supremely Conservative Replacements

By Paige Gottorff

Paige Gottorff is a recent graduate of the Class of 2024 at Albany Law School.

Prior to attending law school, Paige earned a degree in Legal Studies at Grand Valley State University, Michigan, where she was a member of the Women’s Lacrosse Team. 

At Albany Law School, Paige served as Managing Editor for Research and Writing for the Government Law Review, Vol. 17, where she worked on the Writing Competition and edited second-year students’ notes and comments. She was also a member of the Albany Law Negotiations Travel Team and the Albany Law Student Trial Advocacy Competition Travel Team.  Additionally, Paige competed in numerous in-house moot court competitions.

Following the bar examination, Paige will be working as an Associate Attorney for Vahey Law Offices, PLLC, in Rochester, NY.

The United States Supreme Court has recently been on a history-making streak.  And not for admirable reasons, but for the alarming regularity with which the Court has been stripping individuals of their rights.

The current bench is the most conservative panel the Court has seen in ninety years.  This is frightening when pondering the trend expected regarding basic human rights cases about which the Court grants certiorari and opts to conceal from public scrutiny by deciding through the shadow docket.

Since the earliest of times, death has been a valid punishment for crimes with minuscule societal impact.  As history progressed, methods of execution began at the most barbaric levels and slowly shifted to consider the ethics of executing a fellow human being.  Presently, “more than seventy percent of the world’s countries have abolished capital punishment in law or practice.”  But in 2022, the United States was in the top five of the world’s countries that performed executions--fewer only than China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

As a vast majority of death penalty cases are petitioned to the Supreme Court, the nine Justices who don the black robe are the same ones who “okay” the executions.  How has the United States gone from abolishing the death penalty to reinstating it and using it the fifth most frequently in the world?  A closer look at the individuals who have made and are currently making these critical decisions may give us a sense of what is really going on at this country's “Court of Last Resort.”

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To read the paper, open HERE.

Justice Ginsburg’s Opinions on Race: Her Past is Prologue

By Christopher R. Scoville
Christopher Scoville is a third-year law student at Albany Law School. He received his B.A. in History with a minor in American Studies from New York University.
In law school, Christopher is pursuing a concentration in Labor and Employment Law, and he is currently employed as a Law Clerk with New York State United Teachers. Additionally, he currently serves as the Director of the Immigration Assistance Pro Bono Project and as Vice-President of the Labor and Employment Law Society.
He prepared this paper (as well as a presentation on the same subject which will be published subsequently), for Professor Bonventre’s Judicial Process Seminar.


This paper examines the life and times of Justice Ginsburg that shaped her into an advocate and set her on a trajectory that would lead to the United States Supreme Court.  The paper then follows that path to opinions Justice Ginsburg issued in cases dealing with race.

From her work in academia to her time with the American Civil Liberties Union, and her opinions since being on the Court, there is no denying Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is ideologically liberal. It is clear that Justice Ginsburg has a long history of arguing and deciding cases impacting many issues, including race based upon her arguments in front of the Supreme Court, her time on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and her time as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

While on the United States Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg’s most high profile opinions on race have been her dissents. Whether they are on affirmative action (Fisher), Title VII (Ricci), or most recently the Voting Rights Act (Shelby County), her dissents are well thought out and founded on facts and precedent. Her opinions also exhibit something beyond the mere “application of the law.” They seem clearly to be shaped by what Justice Holmes referred to as an “inarticulate and unconscious judgment.”

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To read the paper, open HERE.

Ginsburg (and sometimes Scalia) on Search and Seizure

By Joshua Greenfield
Joshua Greenfield is a third year student at Albany Law. He graduated from Syracuse University in 2011 with a degree in Art History. Josh has interned at CBS's legal division and the New York Public Employment Relations Board. He is currently a contributing member of the Center for Art Law website writing on various issues in the field of art law.
This essay was prepared for Prof. Bonventre’s Judicial Process Seminar, Fall 2013.


Looking back on the last ten divided Supreme Court decisions in which Justice Ginsburg voted on the issue of search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment, it is evident that Ginsburg is, above all else, a proponent of greater individual and privacy rights.[1] Justice Ginsburg’s decisions are not guided by a need to ensure that law enforcement complies with procedure. Rather, it is the level of intrusion the government places on an individual that determines how she votes.

Her “stream of tendency,”[2] the underlying principle guiding her decisions, is based on greater individual freedom and personal autonomy. In every single divided case involving searches and seizures in the last ten years or so, Ginsburg has voted for greater individual protections from governmental intrusion rather than allowing law enforcement to exercise discretion.

Getting Justice Ginsburg's Goat

An Examination of Her Dissenting Opinions

By Chelsy Jones
Chelsy Jones, a third-year student at Albany Law School, is a Senior Editor of the Center.  Chelsy is a magna cum laude graduate of Siena College with a degree in Political Science. While in law school, she has served as a legal intern for the Domestic Violence Hybrid Prosecution Clinic, and as a Research Assistant for the Albany Law School Clinic and Justice Center.  Currently, Chelsy works year round as a legal intern at the Schenectady County District Attorney's Office. Chelsy also is the student ambassador for the Center for Excellence in Law Teaching and a member of the Teaching Enhancement Committee.
Chelsy's paper was originally written for the Judicial Process Seminar last year.

In his Nature of the Judicial Process lectures, Benjamin Cardozo once spoke of the “inarticulate” and “unavowed” views and positions that underlie all judges’ decisions.  He was speaking of judicial realism, a term most judges today retract from and even flat out deny, claiming impartiality to the point of judicial lobotomy.  

Realistically however, it truly is impossible for a judge, or any human for that matter, not to bring their personal views and positions into the equation when making a decision.  Cardozo therefore spoke of the “stream of tendencies” or patterns that naturally emerge in a judge’s voting record.  This paper will explore Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s “stream of tendencies” in an effort to unearth what truly vexes her and reveal her “inarticulate” and “unavowed” views.

Dissents, in particular, best reveal a judge's position on certain issues.  When a judge dissents, she is not only disagreeing with her colleagues in the majority, but also taking the time and effort to explain her reasons for doing so.  Thus, to illustrate the types of issues Justice Ginsburg feels strongly about, or that “get her goat,” this paper will examine her dissenting opinions authored during the 2010 and 2011 terms.*
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* Citations to references in this introduction are available in the paper.

To read the entire paper, open HERE.