The Supreme Court's Impact on the Law of Libel: Compliance by Lower Federal Courts

TLDR

Abstract

EGAL SCHOLARS traditionally analogized the federal judiciary to a pyramid, with the Supreme Court at the apex, the courts of appeals in the middle, and the district courts at the base. The scholars focused their attention upon the Supreme Court, because they believed that this was where the authoritative decisions were made. For them, the study of public law revolved around analysis of Supreme Court decisions; it was essentially the study of constitutional law. The scholars did not focus much of their attention upon the lower courts, because they assumed that these courts obeyed the dictates of the Supreme Court. short, the scholars subscribed to a hierarchical model to explain the Supreme Court's relationship with the lower courts. But beginning in the 1950s, and continuing through the 1960s and 1970s, revisionist scholars criticized this model. They said it reflected an myth' and therefore provided an unsatisfactory explanation of the Supreme Court's relationship with the lower courts. Jerome Frank wrote, In legal mythology one of the most popular and most harmful myths is the upper-court myth, the myth that upper courts are the heart of courthouse government .... considerable part, this belief arises from the fallacious notion that the legal rules, supervised by the upper courts, control decisions.2