What Is a Test Case in Legal Terms
In some cases, a person may choose to violate an existing law to provoke a lawsuit, prosecution, or punishment. The person can then challenge the lawsuit, prosecution or punishment and use the case to try to change the law through a court notice. In Druker v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 697 F.2d 46 (2d Cir. 1982), den. cert., 461 U.S. 957, 103 p. Ct. 2429, 77 L. Ed.
2d 1316 (1983), for example, James O. and Joan Druker, a married couple, intentionally used the lower tax rates for unmarried individuals in calculating their 1975 and 1976 income taxes because they believed the federal tax system was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment`s equality clause. Before the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could take action against the Drukers, the Drukers filed a lawsuit against the IRS Commissioner. The Drukers did not succeed, but if they had received a favorable attitude, they would have succeeded in changing the law on the federal taxation of married couples. These sample phrases are automatically selected from various online information sources to reflect the current use of the word “test case”. The views expressed in the examples do not represent the views of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us your feedback. Litigants use test cases to obtain a positive decision from all levels of the courts, but the practice has most often been used to obtain a Supreme Court decision on an important issue. Although used since the early days of the Supreme Court, test cases became a more popular tool in civil rights cases of the late 19th and 20th centuries. These cases are often generated by non-profit organizations, businesses, or the government itself. Many of the most high-profile cases in Supreme Court history are test cases such as Plessy v. Ferguson, Korematsu v.
United States, Griswold v. Connecticut and Brown v. School Board. The JPSG is a small organization with limited resources, and we do not directly inform the public. We advise consultants and accept test case recommendations from other organizations if they meet our criteria and we have the resources to adopt them. Our Guide to Legal Test Cases provides candidates and potential advisors with an overview of what it means to follow up on a test case. By launching test cases, the CPAG aims to ensure the legality of social security legislation itself and to improve the interpretation and application of the law so that it fully promotes the rights of applicants, especially families with children. We want to ensure that those who have to apply for benefits, often vulnerable members of our community, receive what they are entitled to under a statutory social security system. To illustrate, suppose Congress passes a bill that punishes the use of a cell phone while driving with a minor offense of up to one year in prison and a $10,000 fine. Such a law would likely be challenged by a large number of cell phone owners, all of whom are in essentially identical circumstances and all have the same arguments against the law. In such a situation, lawyers representing plaintiffs could seek a case with a set of sympathetic facts with which they can challenge the law.
For example, they might choose a case involving a female driver who was charged with breaking the law when she used her cell phone to seek medical help for a family member. Other attentive law firms would otherwise postpone or delay their own similar cases to await the outcome of the test case. CPAG adopts a small number of test cases each year in accordance with our test case strategy. We focus on cases that have the potential to improve the lives of families with children in poverty. This case law article is a heel. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. Government agencies sometimes bring test cases to confirm or extend their powers. [1] Test cases refer to lawsuits brought with the intent to challenge or clarify existing law. The strategy is usually to create a “controversy” to go to court that would not otherwise result in a lawsuit, as the courts must have a real dispute to hear a case. Since the goal is to make a judicial decision on a particular issue, litigants must strategically choose the right case with favorable facts, place and time so that a court makes a decision based on the issue raised by the litigants and not on the basis of another issue.
Action brought specifically on the basis of an important legal right or principle. The strategy of using test cases must be implemented carefully, as the outcome of the case submission could be the opposite of what is intended. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union in Korematsu filed a test case challenging the legality of the federal government`s detention of Korematsu and other Japanese Americans on the basis of their race in the 1940s, but instead of repealing the law authorizing imprisonment, the Supreme Court upheld the practice as a “military necessity.” These unexpected test case results can lead to long-term consequences that may be difficult to reverse in the future.
