Options for Biden’s Supreme Court Reform Commission

MICHAEL C. DORF

Cornell law professor Michael C. Dorf explores several options that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden should consider if he wins the election and fulfills his proposal of convening a bipartisan commission of constitutional scholars to study and recommend court reforms. Dorf discusses the benefits and limitations of each option and describes how Congress and a President Biden could implement meaningful court reform that could withstand review by the Supreme Court itself.

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Michael S. Yu, a Law Corp. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County

Docket: B304011(Second Appellate District)

Opinion Date: October 27, 2020

Judge: Dhanidina

Areas of Law: Civil Procedure

After the referee in a consensual general reference filed his decisions in the trial court, but before entry of judgment on those decisions, the trial court entertained motions to set them aside and ordered a new trial to be had by the trial court, not by the referee. Petitioners, who had prevailed before the referee, petitioned this court for a writ of mandate to compel the trial court to enter judgment on the referee's decisions, or alternatively, to direct the trial court to order a new trial to be heard by the referee. The Court of Appeal granted the petition, holding that the trial court had no authority to review the consensual referee's decisions before entering judgment on them; the trial court did not apply the incorrect standard of review; and the trial court did not err in ordering that the new trial would be heard by it and not by the referee.

People v. Ruiz

Docket: A153153(First Appellate District)

Opinion Date: October 27, 2020

Judge: Stewart

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

Ruiz, convicted of sex crimes against his minor daughter, was sentenced to 44 years to life. The court of appeal rejected Ruiz’s argument that the trial court’s admission into evidence of the minor’s incriminating out-of-court statements to a social worker violated his confrontation clause rights and affirmed his convictions for continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14 and for forcible rape of a child under 14. The social worker’s primary purpose in interviewing the minor was to assess the child’s safety and the minor’s primary purpose in responding was to stop the abuse. The interview was informal and brief; it was a nontestimonial encounter to address an emergency situation. The court reversed his conviction for oral copulation or sexual penetration of a child 10 or younger, section 288.7, finding that the corpus delicti rule was not satisfied regarding that count; the rule requires, when a defendant makes extrajudicial incriminating statements, that there also be independent evidence of the corpus delicti (the body of the crime itself), in order to convict. The court noted forensic evidence and Ruiz’s own statements with respect to the other counts.