Law Commons^™

The D'Oh! Of Popular Constiutitonalism, Neal Devins

Neal E. Devins

No abstract provided.

The Courtroom Technology Wars Are Here!, Fredric I. Lederer

Fredric I. Lederer

No abstract provided.

Technology Augmented Litigation--Systemic Revolution, Fredric I. Lederer

Fredric I. Lederer

This article reviews key aspects of high technology litigation, including technology augmented court records, two-way video arraignment and testimony, and technology based evidence display, and posits some of the critical jurisprudential and pragmatic issues posed by the use of such technologies

Communicating The Canons: How Lower Courts React When The Supreme Court Changes The Rules Of Statutory Interpretation, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

No abstract provided.

Factual Precedents, Allison Orr Larsen

Allison Orr Larsen

Lawyers and judges speak to each other in a language of precedents—decisions from cases that have come before. The most persuasive precedent to cite, of course, is an on-point decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. But Supreme Court opinions are changing. They contain more factual claims about the world than ever before, and those claims are now rich with empirical data. This Supreme Court factfinding is also highly accessible; fast digital research leads directly to factual language in old cases that is perfect for arguments in new ones. An unacknowledged consequence of all this is the rise of what I …

Making Deals In Court-Connected Mediation: What's Justice Got To Do With It?, Nancy A. Welsh

Nancy Welsh

When mediation was first introduced to the courts, the process was hailed as “alternative.” Mediation gave disputants the opportunity to discuss and resolve their dispute themselves; the role of the third party was to facilitate the disputants’ negotiations, not to dictate the outcome; and because the disputants were able to focus on their underlying interests in mediation, the process could result in creative, customized solutions. The picture of mediation is changing, however, as the process settles into its role as a tool for the resolution of personal injury, contract, and other nonfamily cases on the courts’ civil dockets. Attorneys dominate …

Law Enforcement And Criminal Law Decisions, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.

Trial Courts: An Economic Perspective, Robert D. Cooter, Daniel L. Rubinfeld

Daniel L. Rubinfeld

This article describes economic research on models of legal disputes. Concepts such as rational choice and static equilibrium are often used inaccurately in the noneconomic research presented in this issue. This article critiques the longitudinal studies, illustrating a number of problems of conceptualization and data analysis. Finally, the authors consider normative models of dispute resolution and the evolution and effects of judge-made law.

The French Prosecutor As Judge. The Carpenter’S Mistake?, Mathilde Cohen

Mathilde Cohen

The History Of The Florida Supreme Court, Volume 0, M. C. Mirow

M. C. Mirow

A Case Study On Court Of Appeals Finality, Michael J. Nolan

Michael J. Nolan

The article illustrates the New York Court of Appeals jurisdictional requirement of finality by tracing the history of a case in which leave to appeal was sought, and dismissed, 5 separate times.

Resolving Cases On The Merits, Jay Tidmarsh

Jay Tidmarsh

Prepared for a Symposium on Civil Justice Reform, this essay examines the role of the “on the merits” principle in modern American procedure. After surveying the possible meanings of the phrase, the essay critiques its most common understanding due to its economic inefficiency and its lack of strong philosophical support. Relying on the recent work of Amartya Sen, the essay proposes that the principle be replaced with a “fair outcome” principle that melds both “procedural” and “substantive” concerns.

Judicial Innovation And Sexual Harassment Doctrine In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Holley Takersley

Laura Moyer

The determination that sexual harassment constituted “discrimination based on sex” under Title VII was first made by the lower federal courts, not Congress. Drawing from the literature on policy diffusion, this article examines the adoption of hostile work environment standards across the U.S. Courts of Appeals in the absence of controlling Supreme Court precedent. The results bolster recent findings about the influence of female judges on their male colleagues and suggest that in addition to siding with female plaintiffs, female judges also helped to shape legal rules that promoted gender equality in the workplace.

Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Sean Farhang

The program of regulation through private litigation that Democratic Congresses purposefully created starting in the late 1960s soon met opposition emanating primarily from the Republican party. In the long campaign for retrenchment that began in the Reagan administration, consequential reform proved difficult and ultimately failed in Congress. Litigation reformers turned to the courts and, in marked contrast to their legislative failure, were well-rewarded, achieving growing rates of voting support from an increasingly conservative Supreme Court on issues curtailing private enforcement under individual statutes. We also demonstrate that the judiciary’s control of procedure has been central to the campaign to retrench …

Resurrecting Trial By Statistics, Jay Tidmarsh

Jay Tidmarsh

“Trial by statistics” was a means by which a court could resolve a large number of aggregated claims: a court could try a random sample of claim, and extrapolate the average result to the remainder. In Wal-Mart, Inc. v. Dukes, the Supreme Court seemingly ended the practice at the federal level, thus removing from judges a tool that made mass aggregation more feasible. After examining the benefits and drawbacks of trial by statistics, this Article suggests an alternative that harnesses many of the positive features of the technique while avoiding its major difficulties. The technique is the “presumptive judgment”: a …

The Languishing Public Safety Doctrine, Brian Gallini

Brian Gallini

The Role Of Courts In Improving The Legislative Process, Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

Dr. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

Hollow Hopes, Flypaper, And Metaphors, Malcolm M. Feeley

Malcolm Feeley

No abstract provided.

Two Models Of The Criminal Justice System: An Organizational Perspective, Malcolm M. Feeley

Malcolm Feeley

Systematic studies of the administration of justice in the United States have stressed either the rational-goal model or the functional-systems model. The former model emphasizes problems with the justice system's formal rules of operation and appears to be the dominant view of appellate judges, lawyers, and law students, while the latter model is concerned with the identification and adaptation of action to the environment and the interests of action within the system.

Democracy And Torture, Patrick A. Maurer

Patrick A Maurer

September 11th spawned an era of political changes to fundamental rights. The focus of this discussion is to highlight Guantanamo Bay torture incidents. This analysis will explore the usages of torture from a legal standpoint in the United States.

Trust And Good-Faith Taken To A New Level: An Analysis Of Inconsistent Behavior In The Brazilian Legal Order, Thiago Luis Sombra

Thiago Luís Santos Sombra

With the changes in the paradigm of voluntarism developed under the protection of liberalism, the bases for legal acts have reached an objective dimension, resulting in the birth of a number of mechanisms of control of private autonomy. Among these mechanisms, we can point out the relevance of those reinforced by the Roman Law, whose high ethical value underlines one of its biggest virtues in the control of the exercise of subjective rights. The prohibition of inconsistent behavior, conceived in the brocard venire contra factum proprium, constitutes one of the concepts from the Roman Law renown for the protection …

Beyond The Written Constitution: A Short Analysis Of Warren Court, Thiago Luis Santos Sombra

Thiago Luís Santos Sombra

This essay propose an analysis about how Warren Court became one of the most particular in American History by confronting Jim Crow law, especially by applying the Bill of Rights. In this essay, we propose an analysis of how complex the unwritten Constitution is. Cases like Brown vs. Board of Education will be analyzed from a different point of view to understand the methods of the Court.

Do We Know How To Punish?, Benjamin L. Apt

Benjamin L. Apt

A number of current theories attempt to explain the purpose and need for criminal punishment. All of them depend on some sort of normative basis in justifying why the state may penalize people found guilty of crimes. Yet each of these theories lacks an epistemological foundation; none of them explains how we can know what form punishments should take. The article analyses the epistemological gaps in the predominant theories of punishment: retributivism, including limited-retributivism; and consequentialism in its various versions, ranging from deterrence to the reparative theories such as restorative justice and rehabilitation. It demonstrates that the common putative epistemological …

An Approach To The Regulation Of Spanish Banking Foundations, Miguel Martínez

Miguel Martínez

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the legal framework governing banking foundations as they have been regulated by Spanish Act 26/2013, of December 27th, on savings banks and banking foundations. Title 2 of this regulation addresses a construct that is groundbreaking for the Spanish legal system, still of paramount importance for the entire financial system insofar as these foundations become the leading players behind certain banking institutions given the high interest that foundations hold in the share capital of such institutions.

The Hypocrisy Of "Equal But Separate" In The Courtroom: A Lens For The Civil Rights Era, Jaimie K. Mcfarlin

Jaimie K. McFarlin

This article serves to examine the role of the courthouse during the Jim Crow Era and the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement, as courthouses fulfilled their dual function of minstreling Plessy’s call for “equality under the law” and orchestrating overt segregation.

Impartiality And Independence: Misunderstood Cousins, James E. Moliterno

James E. Moliterno

No abstract provided.

Jones, Lackey, And Teague, Richard Broughton

Richard Broughton

In a recent, high-profile ruling, a federal court finally recognized that a substantial delay in executing a death row inmate violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments. Courts have repeatedly rejected these so-called “Lackey claims,” making the federal court’s decision in Jones v. Chappell all the more important. And yet it was deeply flawed. This paper focuses on one of the major flaws in the Jones decision that largely escaped attention: the application of the non-retroactivity rule from Teague v. Lane. By comprehensively addressing the merits of the Teague bar as applied to Lackey claims, and making …

Stiffing The Arbitrators: The Problem Of Nonpayment In Commercial Arbitration, Brian Farkas, Neal M. Eiseman

Brian Farkas

Commercial arbitration is a creature of contract; the parties are there because they choose to be, either including an arbitration clause in their written agreement or, after a dispute developed, electing to avoid litigation all together. Arbitration also comes with an up-front cost non-existent in litigation: the arbitrators. Taxpayers pay for their state and federal judges, but the parties themselves pay for their arbitrators. But what happens if one party refuses (or is otherwise unable) to pay the arbitrator? If the arbitrator then refuses to proceed, as is likely, should the dispute revert to court, in derogation of the prior …

Less Mischief, Not None: Respecting Federalism, Respecting States And Respecting Judges In Diversity Jurisdiction Cases, Doris Deltosto Brogan

Doris DelTosto Brogan

Abstract: In 2009, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decided Berrier v. Simplicity, a tragic, but otherwise modest personal injury diversity case that was brought under Pennsylvania products liability law. The Third Circuit predicted that Pennsylvania would adopt the Restatement (Third) of Torts, and abandon what everyone (including several members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court) considered an incomprehensible products liability jurisprudence that had evolved under Pennsylvania’s interpretation of the Restatement (Second). But for five years the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did not adopt the Restatement (Third), despite several opportunities to do so. Yet during those years, the Third Circuit …

A Government Of Laws Not Of Precedents 1776-1876: The Google Challenge To Common Law Myth, James Maxeiner

James R Maxeiner

Conventional wisdom holds that the United States is a common law country of precedents where, until the 20th century (the “Age of Statutes”), statutes had little role. Digitization by Google and others of previously hard to find legal works of the 19th century challenges this common law myth. At the Centennial in 1876 Americans celebrated that “The great fact in the progress of American jurisprudence … is its tendency towards organic statute law and towards the systematizing of law; in other words, towards written constitutions and codification.” This article tests the claim of the Centennial Writers of 1876 and finds …