Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Courts (35)
- International law (17)
- International courts and tribunals (12)
- Judges (11)
- Conflicts of law (private international law) (10)
-
- Jurisdiction (7)
- Jurisprudence (7)
- Litigation, alternative dispute resolution, and remedies (7)
- Criminal law and procedure (6)
- Evidence (6)
- Legal history (6)
- Constitutional law (5)
- Law and politics (5)
- Education (4)
- Human rights (4)
- Trials (4)
- AI (3)
- Article III (3)
- Artificial intelligence (3)
- Civil procedure (3)
- Court data (3)
- Court transparency (3)
- Data (3)
- Data justice (3)
- Federal court (3)
- International relations and national security (3)
- Judicial decisionmaking (3)
- Medical jurisprudence (3)
- OKN (3)
- PACER (3)
- Publication Year
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 30 of 96
Full-Text Articles in Law
Settlement As Construct: Defining And Counting Party Resolution In Federal District Court, Charlotte S. Alexander, Nathan Dahlberg, Anne M. Tucker
Settlement As Construct: Defining And Counting Party Resolution In Federal District Court, Charlotte S. Alexander, Nathan Dahlberg, Anne M. Tucker
Northwestern University Law Review
Most civil cases settle. Yet generating a definitive settlement rate presents complex definitional and empirical problems, both in what should count as a settlement and how to count it. This Essay makes three contributions to better understanding and defining settlement. First, we propose a flexible, empirically informed, operationalizable definition of settlement as party resolution. Second, we exploit a new federal litigation data source to count party resolutions using machine learning models trained on 11 million docket sheet entries. Third, we offer new findings on party resolution frequency and distribution in the federal courts. Settlement is more widely and differently deployed …
Lawyerless Litigants, Filing Fees, Transaction Costs, And The Federal Courts: Learning From Scales, Judith Resnik, Henry Wu, Jenn Dikler, David T. Wong, Romina Lilollari, Claire Stobb, Elizabeth Beling, Avital Fried, Anna Selbrede, Jack Sollows, Mikael Tessema, Julia Udell
Lawyerless Litigants, Filing Fees, Transaction Costs, And The Federal Courts: Learning From Scales, Judith Resnik, Henry Wu, Jenn Dikler, David T. Wong, Romina Lilollari, Claire Stobb, Elizabeth Beling, Avital Fried, Anna Selbrede, Jack Sollows, Mikael Tessema, Julia Udell
Northwestern University Law Review
Two Latin phrases describing litigants—pro se (for oneself) and in forma pauperis (IFP, as a poor person)—prompt this inquiry into the relationship between self-representation and requests for filing fee waivers. We sketch the governing legal principles for people seeking relief in the federal courts, the sources of income of the federal judiciary, the differing regimes to which Congress has subjected incarcerated and nonincarcerated people filing civil lawsuits, and analyses enabled by SCALES, a newly available database that coded 2016 and 2017 federal court docket sheets. This Essay’s account of what can be learned and of the data gaps demonstrates the …
The Scales Project: Making Federal Court Records Free, David L. Schwartz, Kat M. Albrecht, Adam R. Pah, Christopher A. Cotropia, Amy Kristin Sanders, Sarath Sanga, Charlotte S. Alexander, Luís A.N. Amaral, Zachary D. Clopton, Anne M. Tucker, Thomas W. Gaylord, Scott G. Daniel, Nathan Dahlberg
The Scales Project: Making Federal Court Records Free, David L. Schwartz, Kat M. Albrecht, Adam R. Pah, Christopher A. Cotropia, Amy Kristin Sanders, Sarath Sanga, Charlotte S. Alexander, Luís A.N. Amaral, Zachary D. Clopton, Anne M. Tucker, Thomas W. Gaylord, Scott G. Daniel, Nathan Dahlberg
Northwestern University Law Review
Federal court records have been available online for nearly a quarter century, yet they remain frustratingly inaccessible to the public. This is due to two primary barriers: (1) the federal government’s prohibitively high fees to access the records at scale and (2) the unwieldy state of the records themselves, which are mostly text documents scattered across numerous systems. Official datasets produced by the judiciary, as well as third-party data collection efforts, are incomplete, inaccurate, and similarly inaccessible to the public. The result is a de facto data blackout that leaves an entire branch of the federal government shielded from empirical …
Resurrection, Bassim Al Shaker
Resurrection, Bassim Al Shaker
Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés
No abstract provided.
American Legal Realism Today: An Idiosyncratic Restatement, Mark Tushnet
American Legal Realism Today: An Idiosyncratic Restatement, Mark Tushnet
Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés
No abstract provided.
Foreword, Caroline Faye Radell, Udhanth Mallasani
Foreword, Caroline Faye Radell, Udhanth Mallasani
Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés
No abstract provided.
Partisanship Creep, Katherine Shaw
Partisanship Creep, Katherine Shaw
Northwestern University Law Review
It was once well settled and uncontroversial—reflected in legislative enactments, Executive Branch practice, judicial doctrine, and the broader constitutional culture—that the Constitution imposed limits on government partisanship. This principle was one instantiation of a broader set of rule of law principles: that law is not merely an instrument of political power; that government resources should not be used to further partisan interests, or to damage partisan adversaries.
For at least a century, each branch of the federal government has participated in the development and articulation of this nonpartisanship principle. In the legislative realm, federal statutes beginning with the 1883 Pendleton …
Silent Today, Conversant Tomorrow: Education Adequacy As A Political Question, Yeju Hwang
Silent Today, Conversant Tomorrow: Education Adequacy As A Political Question, Yeju Hwang
Northwestern University Law Review
When the Supreme Court declined to recognize the right to education as one fundamental to liberty, and thus unprotected by the U.S. Constitution, state courts took on the mantle as the next best fora for those yearning for judicial review of inequities present in American public schools. The explicit inclusion of the right to education in each state’s constitution carried the torch of optimism into the late twentieth century. Despite half a century of litigation in the states, the condition of the nation’s public school system remains troubling and perhaps increasingly falls short of expectations. Less competitive on an international …
Are They All Textualists Now?, Austin Peters
Are They All Textualists Now?, Austin Peters
Northwestern University Law Review
Recent developments at the U.S. Supreme Court have rekindled debates over textualism. Missing from the conversation is a discussion of the courts that decide the vast majority of statutory interpretation cases in the United States—state courts. This Article uses supervised machine learning to conduct the first-ever empirical study of the statutory interpretation methods used by state supreme courts. In total, this study analyzes over 44,000 opinions from all fifty states from 1980 to 2019.
This Article establishes several key descriptive findings. First, since the 1980s, textualism has risen rapidly in state supreme court opinions. Second, this rise is primarily attributable …
Climate Change, Corruption, And Colonialism: Solving The Conundrum With Regional Courts, Taylor Nchako
Climate Change, Corruption, And Colonialism: Solving The Conundrum With Regional Courts, Taylor Nchako
Northwestern University Law Review
It is no secret that climate change is the most pressing issue of our times. Global South countries, especially those in Africa, face challenges mitigating the worst impacts of climate change, adapting technological solutions, and continuing to develop their nation’s infrastructure and industry. Cameroon provides an archetypal example of the challenges many African countries face. Plagued by an economy that both exacerbates climate change and stands to collapse from it, Cameroon struggles with corruption that has roots in colonialism and neocolonialism. This corruption taints not only the forestry service and the executive branch, but the judiciary as well, leaving Cameroon’s …
Foreign Antisuit Injunctions And The Settlement Effect, Connor Cohen
Foreign Antisuit Injunctions And The Settlement Effect, Connor Cohen
Northwestern University Law Review
International parallel proceedings, which are concurrent identical or similar lawsuits in multiple countries, often ask courts to balance efficiency and fairness against the speculative fear of insulting foreign nations. Some litigants abuse foreign duplicative litigation to exhaust their opponents’ resources and pressure them into settling out of court. This Note provides the first empirical evidence of such abuse of international parallel proceedings: when courts deny motions to enjoin foreign parallel litigation, the settlement rate rises significantly. Considering the results of this empirical project and its limitations, I encourage future studies on international parallel proceedings and settlement. I also argue for …
Rebuilding The Federal Circuit Courts, Merritt E. Mcalister
Rebuilding The Federal Circuit Courts, Merritt E. Mcalister
Northwestern University Law Review
The conversation about Supreme Court reform—as important as it is—has obscured another, equally important conversation: the need for lower federal court reform. The U.S. Courts of Appeals have not seen their ranks grow in over three decades. Even then, those additions were stopgap measures built on an appellate triage system that had outsourced much of its work to nonjudicial decision-makers (central judicial staff and law clerks). Those changes born of necessity have now become core features of the federal appellate system, which distributes judicial resources—including oral argument and judicial scrutiny—to a select few. This Article begins to reimagine the courts …
Mdl In The States, Zachary D. Clopton, D. Theodore Rave
Mdl In The States, Zachary D. Clopton, D. Theodore Rave
Northwestern University Law Review
Multidistrict litigation (MDL) is exploding. MDL makes up a large and increasing portion of the federal civil docket. It has been used in recent years to manage and resolve some of our largest controversies: opioids, NFL concussions, Volkswagen “clean” diesel, and many more. And, given its growing importance, MDL has come to dominate the academic literature on complex litigation.
At its base, MDL is a tool to coordinate related cases across different courts in service of justice, efficiency, and fairness. These goals are not unique to the federal courts. State courts handle far more cases than federal courts, including the …
Remote Court: Principles For Virtual Proceedings During The Covid-19 Pandemic And Beyond, Alicia L. Bannon, Douglas Keith
Remote Court: Principles For Virtual Proceedings During The Covid-19 Pandemic And Beyond, Alicia L. Bannon, Douglas Keith
Northwestern University Law Review
Across the country, courts at every level have relied on remote technology to adapt the justice system to a once-a-century global pandemic. This Essay describes and assesses this unprecedented journey into virtual justice, paying particular attention to eviction proceedings. While many judges have touted remote court as a revolutionary innovation, the reality is more complex. Remote court has brought substantial time savings and convenience to those who are able to access and use the required technology, but it has also posed hurdles to individuals on the other side of the digital divide, particularly self-represented litigants. The remote court experience has …
Third-Party Standing And Abortion Providers: The Hidden Dangers Of June Medical Services, Elika Nassirinia
Third-Party Standing And Abortion Providers: The Hidden Dangers Of June Medical Services, Elika Nassirinia
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
Standing is a long held, judicially-created doctrine intended to establish the proper role of courts by identifying who may bring a case in federal court. While standing usually requires that a party asserts his or her own rights, the Supreme Court has created certain exceptions that allow litigants to bring suit on behalf of third parties when they suffer a concrete injury, they have a “close relation” to the third party, and there are obstacles to the third party's ability to protect his or her own interests. June Medical Services, heard by the Supreme Court on June 29, 2020, …
Can There Be Too Much Specialization? Specialization In Specialized Courts, Melissa F. Wasserman, Jonathan D. Slack
Can There Be Too Much Specialization? Specialization In Specialized Courts, Melissa F. Wasserman, Jonathan D. Slack
Northwestern University Law Review
While modern society has embraced specialization, the federal judiciary continues to prize the generalist jurist. This disconnect is at the core of the growing debate on the optimal level of specialization in the judiciary. To date, this discussion has largely revolved around the creation of specialized courts. Opinion specialization, however, provides an alternative, underappreciated method to infuse specialization into the judiciary. In contrast to specialized courts, opinion specialization is understudied and undertheorized.
This Article makes two contributions to the literature. First, this Article theorizes whether opinion specialization is a desirable practice. It argues that the practice’s costs and benefits are …
Why Judicial Independence Fails, Aziz Z. Huq
Why Judicial Independence Fails, Aziz Z. Huq
Northwestern University Law Review
Judicial independence seems under siege. President Trump condemns federal courts for their political bias; his erstwhile presidential opponents mull various court-packing plans; and courts, in turn, are lambasted for abandoning a long-held constitutional convention against institutional manipulation. At the same time, across varied lines of jurisprudence, the Roberts Court evinces a deep worry about judicial independence. This preoccupation with threats to judicial independence infuses recent opinions on administrative deference, bankruptcy, patent adjudication, and jurisdiction-stripping. Yet the Court has not offered a single, overarching definition of what it means by the term “judicial independence.” Nor has it explained how its disjointed …
The Promise Of Senior Judges, Marin K. Levy
The Promise Of Senior Judges, Marin K. Levy
Northwestern University Law Review
Judges, lawmakers, and scholars have long debated whether the federal courts of appeals are understaffed and, if so, how Congress should go about redressing that fact. Even though there is currently a strong argument that some new judgeships should be created, such a path presents logistical complications. If a significant number of seats are added to the appellate bench, circuits may eventually become too large to function well. And if a significant number of circuits are ultimately split, the total number of federal appellate courts may become too large for the judiciary as a whole to function well. Furthermore, there …
An Unfair Cross Section: Federal Jurisdiction For Indian Country Crimes Dismantles Jury Community Conscience, Alana Paris
An Unfair Cross Section: Federal Jurisdiction For Indian Country Crimes Dismantles Jury Community Conscience, Alana Paris
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
Under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, federal jury pools must reflect a fair cross section of the community in which a crime is prosecuted and from which no distinct group in the community is excluded. The community in which a crime is prosecuted varies widely in Indian country based on legislative reforms enacted by Congress to strip indigenous populations of their inherent sovereignty. Under the Major Crimes Act, the federal government has the right to adjudicate all serious crimes committed by one American Indian against another American Indian or non-Indian within Indian country. American Indian defendants under …
Avoiding Judicial Discipline, Veronica Root Martinez
Avoiding Judicial Discipline, Veronica Root Martinez
Northwestern University Law Review
Over the past several years, several high-profile complaints have been levied against Article III judges alleging improper conduct. Many of these complaints, however, were dismissed without investigation after the judge in question removed themselves from the jurisdiction of the circuit’s judicial council—oftentimes through retirement and once through elevation to the Supreme Court. When judges—the literal arbiters of justice within American society—are able to elude oversight of their own potential misconduct, it puts the legitimacy of the judiciary and the rule of law in jeopardy.
This Essay argues that it is imperative that mechanisms are adopted that will ensure investigations into …
Litigating Welfare Rights: Medicaid, Snap, And The Legacy Of The New Property, Andrew Hammond
Litigating Welfare Rights: Medicaid, Snap, And The Legacy Of The New Property, Andrew Hammond
Northwestern University Law Review
In 2017, the Republican-controlled Congress was poised to make deep cuts to the nation’s two largest anti-poverty programs: Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as “food stamps.” Yet, despite a unified, GOP-led federal government for the first time in over a decade, those efforts failed. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration and its allies in state government continue to pursue different strategies to roll back entitlements to medical and food assistance. As public interest lawyers challenge these agency actions in federal court, roughly five million Americans’ health insurance and food assistance hang in the balance. This Article asks …
Screened Out Of Housing: The Impact Of Misleading Tenant Screening Reports And The Potential For Criminal Expungement As A Model For Effectively Sealing Evictions, Katelyn Polk
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
Having an eviction record “blacklists” tenants from finding future housing. Even renters with mere eviction filings—not eviction orders—on their records face the harsh collateral consequences of eviction. This Note argues that eviction records should be sealed at filing and only released into the public record if a landlord prevails in court. Juvenile record expungement mechanisms in Illinois serve as a model for one way to protect people with eviction records. Recent updates to the Illinois juvenile expungement process provided for the automatic expungement of certain records and strengthened the confidentiality protections of juvenile records. Illinois protects juvenile records because it …
The Pursuit Of Comprehensive Education Funding Reform Via Litigation, Lisa Scruggs
The Pursuit Of Comprehensive Education Funding Reform Via Litigation, Lisa Scruggs
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
No abstract provided.
Panel Discussion: The Right To Education: With Liberty, Justice, And Education For All?
Panel Discussion: The Right To Education: With Liberty, Justice, And Education For All?
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
No abstract provided.
A Class Action Lawsuit For The Right To A Minimum Education In Detroit, Carter G. Phillips
A Class Action Lawsuit For The Right To A Minimum Education In Detroit, Carter G. Phillips
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
No abstract provided.
Prosecuting In The Shadow Of The Jury, Anna Offit
Prosecuting In The Shadow Of The Jury, Anna Offit
Northwestern University Law Review
This Article offers an unprecedented empirical window into prosecutorial discretion, drawing on research between 2013 and 2017. The central finding is that jurors play a vital role in federal prosecutors’ decision-making, professional identities, and formulations of justice. This is because even the remote possibility of lay scrutiny creates an opening for prosecutors to make commonsense assessments of (1) the evidence in their cases, (2) the character of witnesses, defendants, and victims, and (3) their own moral and professional character as public servants. By facilitating explicit consideration of the fairness of their cases from a public vantage point, I argue that …
A Guiding Hand Or A Slap On The Wrist: Can Drug Courts Be The Solution To Maternal Opioid Use?, Cara O'Connor
A Guiding Hand Or A Slap On The Wrist: Can Drug Courts Be The Solution To Maternal Opioid Use?, Cara O'Connor
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
As the opioid epidemic has expanded its reach, the number of pregnant women addicted to opioids has increased exponentially in recent years. The increase in the number of opioid-addicted pregnant women has resulted in a drastic expansion in the number of newborns who experience Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS). Newborns affected with NAS experience painful withdrawal and cost more to care for due to their increased health needs. In an effort to address the growing number of pregnant women using opioids and babies born with NAS, some states have turned to the criminal justice system. Three states–Tennessee, South Carolina, and Alabama–have …
Mens Rea Reform And Its Discontents, Benjamin Levin
Mens Rea Reform And Its Discontents, Benjamin Levin
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
This Article examines the contentious debates over recent proposals for “mens rea reform.” The substantive criminal law has expanded dramatically, and legislators have criminalized a great deal of conduct that is quite common. Often, new criminal laws do not require that defendants know they are acting unlawfully. Mens rea reform proposals seek to address the problems of overcriminalization and unintentional offending by increasing the burden on prosecutors to prove a defendant’s culpable mental state. These proposals have been a staple of conservative-backed bills on criminal justice reform. Many on the left remain skeptical of mens rea reform and view …
If An Interpreter Mistranslates In A Courtroom And There Is No Recording, Does Anyone Care?: The Case For Protecting Lep Defendants’ Constitutional Rights, Lisa Santaniello
If An Interpreter Mistranslates In A Courtroom And There Is No Recording, Does Anyone Care?: The Case For Protecting Lep Defendants’ Constitutional Rights, Lisa Santaniello
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
No abstract provided.
Policy Considerations And Implications In United States V. Bryant, Jessica Larsen
Policy Considerations And Implications In United States V. Bryant, Jessica Larsen
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
No abstract provided.