In "Letting it Slide: Supreme Court chooses precedent over direct impact on high-profile cases," reporter Jeremy Duda wrote about such "prospective" rulings, which are rarely used in high-profile cases. And yet, the court recently allowed the city of Phoenix to give a large tax break to a developer, while ruling such subsidies violate the state Constitution, Duda wrote. And the court let the Legislature off the hook, he wrote, after lawmakers withheld budget bills from the governor during a recent political dispute. The court then decided that, in the future, the Legislature must send bills to the governor immediately.
Bender said the court used a prospective-only ruling with the Legislature to dodge a politically charged decision. "They ended up pretending to decide something, not really deciding anything that's going to change anything," he said.
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Bender teaches courses on U.S. and Arizona constitutional law. He has written extensively about constitutional law, intellectual property and Indian law, and is coauthor of the two-volume casebook/treatise, Political and Civil Rights in the United States. Bender has argued more than 20 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and actively participates in constitutional litigation in federal and state courts.
Hessick teaches Civil Procedure, Administrative Law, the Supreme Court in American Politics, and Judicial Remedies. Hessick, who joined the College faculty in 2008, served as a law clerk for Judge Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Judge Reena Raggi of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.