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Courts
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What is Courts?

Courts sit at the center of legal education because they are the institutions through which laws are interpreted, rights are enforced, and disputes between parties are resolved. Students across law, political science, public policy, and criminal justice courses routinely write about courts because the topic bridges abstract legal doctrine and concrete social outcomes. The subject is academically rich precisely because court decisions carry binding authority, shape public policy, and reflect broader tensions between individual rights and government power. Cases touching on issues from capital punishment to surveillance to the rights of detainees illustrate how judicial reasoning evolves in response to changing social and political conditions.

The papers archived on this topic approach courts from several distinct angles. Some focus on specific cases and rulings, such as those examining Ingraham v. Wright or the application of Common Article 3 to Guantanamo detainees, using close case analysis to explore how courts balance competing rights claims. Others take a comparative or structural approach, examining how the court system operates across jurisdictions or how UK courts handle questions of legal liability. Policy-oriented papers address issues like Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, electronic surveillance of employees, adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples, and antitrust exemptions in professional sports labor disputes.

A strong essay on courts grounds its thesis in a specific legal question rather than summarizing court history in general terms. Evidence drawn from actual case decisions, statutory language, and constitutional provisions carries the most weight. One common pitfall is conflating a court's ruling with broader public opinion — a well-argued essay keeps its analysis tethered to legal reasoning and the formal logic of judicial decisions.

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Paper Doctorate
Women's economic autonomy and social power in eighteenth-century Ottoman Egypt
Islamic women who lived in the Ottoman Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries are the focus of this inquiry. What was their social life like in terms fun, vice, pleasure, and other activities that involved sensuality or…
Paper Undergraduate
Switzerland's federal system, neutrality, and direct democracy
Switzerland, a federal republic in west central Europe, is officially known as the Swiss Confederation or Confoederatio Helvetica (Heatwole 2009). Its people are an ethnic mix, mainly of native German, French and…
Paper Doctorate
Is democracy the most viable form of government today?
There are numerous forms of government, especially when we consider our global population. There are dictatorships, socialists, communists, and then, those who follow the political bearing of democracy.
Paper Doctorate
Ford administration drug policy and the heroin epidemic
The issue of drug abuse has plagued this country for a while. Some drugs, while not as harmful as others are still considered illegal. In Chapter 5 of the book The Quest for Drug Control, Politics and Federal Policy…
Paper Doctorate
Proposition 8 and the tension between majority rule and minority rights
Proposition 8 was passed in the state of California by a majority. In essence this proposition overturned the right for same sex couples to be married. The passing of this proposition is being contested in the appellate court.
Essay Doctorate
American disillusionment in Chapman's "Coatesville" and King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
This paper synthesizes pertinent information from the written works of Martin Luther King Jr. and John Chapman. A sense of disillusionment regarding the U.S. is explored within these works. This disillusionment pertains to the state of racial affairs during the time these pieces were written.
Research Paper Undergraduate
The Bush administration's use of extraordinary rendition and torture
On September 6, 2006, President Bush openly admitted that the CIA, under his authorization, had been operating secret detention centers at sites abroad for the previous five years (Elsea & Kim, 2007).
Paper Doctorate
The expenses scandal and British electoral system reform
Over the last year, the Labor Party of Great Britain has been facing increasing amounts of pressure. This is because an expenses scandal has exploded onto the political scene almost overnight.
Essay Doctorate
The doli incapax defence and evolution of Canada's youth justice system
The study explores how the move from the Juvenile Delinquents Act to the Youth Criminal Justice Act leads to changes in the youth justice system in Canada. The paper evaluates the JDA and YOA, and the shortcomings identified within the Acts led to the enactment of YCJA. The enactment YCJA is to address the major concerns of YOA. The YCJA aims to reduce the use of courts for young offenders and address the over-reliance on incarceration of young offenders leading to the improvement of youth justice system in Canada.
Paper Undergraduate
Evolution of commercial law from the eighteenth century to e-commerce
This essay examines the evolution of commercial law from the eighteenth century to the current international e-commerce era, with an eye towards specific crises and responses that led to formation of the current system of general commercial law. These crises include the conflict between national law and the law merchant during the eighteenth century, the emergence of negotiable instruments in the early nineteenth century, the importance of new forms of insurance during the middle of the nineteenth century, the consolidation and monopolization of the Industrial Revolution, and the global effects of the internet on commerce and copyright. Tracing these crises and the legal system's response allows one to better understand how the evolution of commercial law is constituted by a mixture of disruptive change and long-standing legacies, as each new generation contributes to the whole of the law while continuing to deal with the long-standing effects of centuries-old rulings.