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Racial Revisionism, Shaun Ossei-Owusu Apr 2021

Racial Revisionism, Shaun Ossei-Owusu

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Enigma of Clarence Thomas. by Corey Robin.


Why The Burger Court Mattered, David A. Strauss Apr 2018

Why The Burger Court Mattered, David A. Strauss

Michigan Law Review

A review of Michael J. Graetz and Linda Greenhouse, The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right.


Foreword: The Books Of Justices, Linda Greenhouse Apr 2017

Foreword: The Books Of Justices, Linda Greenhouse

Michigan Law Review

For this Michigan Law Review issue devoted to recently published books about law, I thought it would be interesting to see what books made an appearance in the past year’s work of the Supreme Court. I catalogued every citation to every book in those forty opinions in order to see what patterns emerged: what books the justices cited, which justices cited which books, and what use they made of the citations. To begin with, I should define what I mean by “books". For the purposes of this Foreword, I excluded some types of reading matter that may have a book-like …


Six Overrulings, Andrew Koppelman Apr 2015

Six Overrulings, Andrew Koppelman

Michigan Law Review

John Paul Stevens, who retired in 2010 at the age of ninety after more than thirty-four years on the Supreme Court, has capped his astoundingly distinguished career by becoming an important public intellectual. He reviews books, gives high-profile interviews, wrote a memoir of the chief justices he has known, and has now written a second book. Six Amendments revisits half a dozen old, lost battles. Stevens appeals over the heads of his colleagues to a higher authority: the public. Now that he is off the Court, Stevens explains why six decisions in which he dissented should be overruled by constitutional …


Jury Voting Paradoxes, Jason Iuliano Dec 2014

Jury Voting Paradoxes, Jason Iuliano

Michigan Law Review

The special verdict is plagued by two philosophical paradoxes: the discursive dilemma and the lottery paradox. Although widely discussed in the philosophical literature, these paradoxes have never been applied to jury decision making. In this Essay, I use the paradoxes to show that the special verdict’s vote-reporting procedures can lead judges to render verdicts that the jurors themselves would reject. This outcome constitutes a systemic breakdown that should not be tolerated in a legal system that prides itself on the fairness of its jury decision-making process. Ultimately, I argue that, because the general verdict with answers to written questions does …


What Books On Law Should Be, Richard A. Posner Apr 2014

What Books On Law Should Be, Richard A. Posner

Michigan Law Review

I have thought it might be useful to our profession, and appropriate to a foreword to a collection of reviews of newly published books on law, to set forth some ideas on how books can best serve members of the different branches of the legal profession — specifically judges, practicing lawyers, law students, and academic lawyers — plus persons outside the legal profession who are interested in law. I am not interested in which already published books should be retained and which discarded, but in what type of book about law should be written from this day forward. I will …


Foreword: The Question Of Process, J. Harvie Wilkinson Iii May 2000

Foreword: The Question Of Process, J. Harvie Wilkinson Iii

Michigan Law Review

Many in the legal profession have abandoned the great questions of legal process. This is too bad. How a decision is reached can be as important as what the decision is. In an increasingly diverse country with many competing visions of the good, it is critical for law to aspire to agreement on process - a task both more achievable than agreement on substance and more suited to our profession than waving the banners of ideological truth. By process, I mean the institutional routes by which we in America reach our most crucial decisions. In other words, process is our …


An Outsider's View Of Common Law Evidence, Roger C. Park May 1998

An Outsider's View Of Common Law Evidence, Roger C. Park

Michigan Law Review

same line by a Newton. There have been improvements since Bentham's jeremiad. But Anglo-American evidence law is still puzzling. It rejects the common-sense principle of free proof in favor of a grotesque jumble of technicalities. It has the breathtaking aspiration of regulating inference by rule, causing it to exalt the foresight of remote rulemakers over the wisdom of on-the-spot adjudicators. It departs from tried-and-true practices of rational inquiry, as when it prohibits courts from using categories of evidence that are freely used both in everyday life and in the highest affairs of state. Sometimes it seems to fear dim light …


Ignorance Of Law Is An Excuse - But Only For The Virtuous, Dan M. Kahan Oct 1997

Ignorance Of Law Is An Excuse - But Only For The Virtuous, Dan M. Kahan

Michigan Law Review

It's axiomatic that "ignorance of the law is no excuse." My aim in this essay is to examine what the "mistake of law doctrine" reveals about the relationship between criminal law and morality in general and about the law's understanding of moral responsibility in particular. The conventional understanding of the mistake of law doctrine rests on two premises, which are encapsulated in the Holmesian epigrams with which I've started this essay. The first is liberal positivism. As a descriptive claim, liberal positivism holds that the content of the law can be identified without reference to morality: one needn't be a …


Dream Makers: Black Judges On Justice, Julian Abele Cook Jr. May 1996

Dream Makers: Black Judges On Justice, Julian Abele Cook Jr.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Linn Washington, Black Judges on Justice


Fifth Amendment First Principles: The Self-Incrimination Clause, Akhil Reed Amar, Renée B. Lettow Mar 1995

Fifth Amendment First Principles: The Self-Incrimination Clause, Akhil Reed Amar, Renée B. Lettow

Michigan Law Review

In Part I of this article, we examine the global puzzle of the Self-Incrimination Clause and the local confusion or perversion lurking behind virtually every key word and phrase in the clause as now construed. In Part II we elaborate our reading of the clause and show how it clears up the local problems and solves the overall puzzle.


Wade H. Mccree, Jr.: A Compassionate And Great Judge, Horace W. Gilmore Nov 1987

Wade H. Mccree, Jr.: A Compassionate And Great Judge, Horace W. Gilmore

Michigan Law Review

A Tribute to Wade H. McCree, Jr.


Reassessing The Role Of The Trial Judge In Verdictless Dispositions Of Criminal Cases, H. Richard Uviller Mar 1983

Reassessing The Role Of The Trial Judge In Verdictless Dispositions Of Criminal Cases, H. Richard Uviller

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Passive Judiciary by Abraham S. Goldstein


Disqualifications For Interest Of Lower Federal Court Judges: 28 U.S.C. § 455, Michigan Law Review Jan 1973

Disqualifications For Interest Of Lower Federal Court Judges: 28 U.S.C. § 455, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Disqualification of a judge occurs when he is ineligible by law to sit in a particular case. At the Supreme Court level, disqualification is a personal decision of the individual justice, who seldom records the reasons for his decision. Thus, there is little material on the Court's disqualification practices that can be subjected to legal analysis. However, substantial case law on disqualification has developed in the lower federal courts, where the decision of a trial judge to sit or step down in a case may appear in the trial record and is subject to review by a court of appeals. …


Mr. Justice Powell And The Emerging Nixon Majority, A.E. Dick Howard Jan 1972

Mr. Justice Powell And The Emerging Nixon Majority, A.E. Dick Howard

Michigan Law Review

In recent years, we have come to expect the debate over Supreme Court nominations to reflect ideological passions in the Government and the country at large; the Fortas, Haynsworth, and Carswell cases remain fresh in memory. In the hearings on the nominations of Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and William H. Rehnquist to the Court, Senate Democratic liberals made clear their intention to probe not only the nominees' integrity and legal qualifications, but also their judicial philosophies. It was ironic, therefore, to watch as liberal members of the Judiciary Committee, through their questions and comments at the confirmation hearings, made Powell, …


Controlling The Police: The Judge's Role In Making And Reviewing Law Enforcement Decisions, Wayne R. Lafave, Frank J. Remington Apr 1965

Controlling The Police: The Judge's Role In Making And Reviewing Law Enforcement Decisions, Wayne R. Lafave, Frank J. Remington

Michigan Law Review

We have chosen to focus here upon judicial involvement (1) in determining whether arrest and search warrants should issue and (2) in reviewing such decisions after they have been executed (and, perhaps, made) by police officials. A comparison of some recent findings respecting the actual practice at the trial level with the "ideal" as set forth in appellate opinions may allow some conclusions to be drawn both as to the present effectiveness of appellate rulings on these subjects and as to the ultimate feasibility of further implementation of those rulings. Finally, since the exclusionary rule is, theoretically at least, one …


Mr. Justice William Johnson, Jurist In Limine: Views On Judicial Precedent, A. J. Levin Feb 1948

Mr. Justice William Johnson, Jurist In Limine: Views On Judicial Precedent, A. J. Levin

Michigan Law Review

We have already become familiar with Johnson's awareness of the unconsciousness of mankind "of the shackles which superstition and tyranny had thrown around" it. He was also sensitive to the part which the law had played in preserving such a state of affairs. His keen and analytic mind was unwilling to accept as final what he knew was the illusive mirage of reality. The situation was a frustrating one-so much so that few minds today are prepared to accept the challenge which such a dynamic attitude entailed for him. He began anticipating beyond the capacities of the minds of those …


The Investigating Magistrate (Juge D'Instruction) In European Criminal Procedure, Morris Ploscowe May 1935

The Investigating Magistrate (Juge D'Instruction) In European Criminal Procedure, Morris Ploscowe

Michigan Law Review

For nearly five centuries the distinctive figure in the preliminary stages of European criminal proceedings has been the investigating magistrate, known in France as the juge d'instruction. Although temporarily eclipsed by the revolutionary reforms in France in 1791, he was soon re-established. In other European countries the juge d'instruction continued to be the central figure in the preliminary procedure through all the reforms achieved by the liberal movements of the nineteenth century. The investigating magistrate has remained a purely Continental institution. In theory and in practice he embodies the essential difference between Continental and Anglo-American criminal procedure preliminary to trial.


Judges In The British Cabinet And The Struggle Which Led To Their Exclusion After 1806, Arthur Lyon Cross Nov 1921

Judges In The British Cabinet And The Struggle Which Led To Their Exclusion After 1806, Arthur Lyon Cross

Michigan Law Review

Among the anomalies in the queer and devious course of Eng- £ lish constitutional progress few have been more striking than the number of reforms which have been due to the Conservatives.. One of no little significance was brought about during that period of political stagnation-the era of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. This was the exclusion of judges from the Cabinet, as the result of a political struggle in which the forces of opposition, though temporarily defeated, formulated a policy which was destined henceforth to prevail.


The Recall And The Political Responsibility Of Judges, W. F. Dodd Dec 1911

The Recall And The Political Responsibility Of Judges, W. F. Dodd

Michigan Law Review

The movement for the recall of State officers is one which has became important only within the past three or four years. The first application of the recall as a modem institution in the United States appears to have been in Los Angeles in 19o3, where the institution was adopted in the amendment of the charter framed by that city. From Los Angeles the recall as applicable only to municipal officers spread to other California cities, and has now been rather widely adopted in other States. The first State constitutional amendment with respect to the recall, that of California in …