Latest Case: Janakievski v. Executive Director, Rochester Psychiatric Center (Civil Rights)

How Allen v. Cooper Breaks Important New (if Dubious) Ground on Stare Decisis

VIKRAM DAVID AMAR

Illinois Law dean and professor Vikram David Amar comments on language in a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Allen v. Cooperdiscussing constitutional stare decisis in the context of state sovereign immunity. Amar points out some of the problems with the Court’s jurisprudence on state sovereign immunity and Congress’s Section 5 power, and he questions the Allen majority’s embrace of a “special justification” requirement for constitutional stare decisis.

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Janakievski v. Executive Director, Rochester Psychiatric Center

Docket: 18-3235

Opinion Date: April 10, 2020

Judge: Leval

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law

The Second Circuit vacated the district court's dismissal of a petition for writ of habeas corpus. The district court dismissed the petition based on the grounds that it became moot when petitioner was conditionally released from confinement in a state psychiatric institution as a person with a "dangerous mental disorder." The court held that the conditional release did not render the petition moot, because petitioner remains subject to an "order of conditions" that leaves him vulnerable to recommitment, and the imposition of this order was a mandatory consequence of the confinement orders that his petition challenges.