SCOTUS Begins New Term with Restatement Citations

The U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly cited the Restatement Second of Judgments, including citations to §§ 17, 19, 27, 28, and 29, in its opinion in the first argued case of the term, which was decided on November 29.

The opinion, Bravo-Fernandez v. United States, affirmed a judgment of the First Circuit, holding that the “issue-preclusion component of the Double Jeopardy Clause” does not bar retrial of defendants “after a jury has returned irreconcilably inconsistent verdicts of conviction and acquittal, and the convictions are later vacated for legal error unrelated to the inconsistency. . . .” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the unanimous Court, concluded that issue preclusion could not be applied when “inconsistent verdicts shroud in mystery what the jury necessarily decided.”

Citing the Restatement, Justice Ginsberg averred that “issue preclusion ordinarily bars relitigation of an issue of fact or law raised and necessarily resolved by a prior judgment . . . . In significant part, preclusion doctrine is premised on ‘an underlying confidence that the result achieved in the initial litigation was substantially correct.’” She opined that “‘[i]n the absence of appellate review,’ we have observed, ‘such confidence is often unwarranted.’”