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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Doe v. Batie

Citation: 2020 ME 124

Opinion Date: October 27, 2020

Judge: Ellen A. Gorman

Areas of Law: Family Law

The Supreme Judicial Court vacated the judgment of the district court granting Pat Doe a protection from abuse order against Appellant on behalf of Doe's two minor children, holding that the district court erred as a matter of fact and law by finding that Appellant committed abuse within the meaning of Me. Rev. Stat. 19-A, 4002. Doe filed a complaint for protection from abuse on behalf of his two minor children against Appellant, the children's maternal grandmother. The court issued a protection order prohibiting Appellant from having any contact with the children after determining that Appellant's actions in taking the children to Arizona and keeping them there after their mother's death constituted abuse within the meaning of the protection from abuse statute. The Supreme Judicial Court disagreed, holding that, on this record, there was insufficient evidence to support the court's finding that Appellant knowingly restricted the children's movement without consent or lawful authority to do so.