Law Commons^™

Piercing The Procedural Veil Of Qualified Immunity: From The Guardians Of Civil Rights To The Guardians Of States’ Rights, Leo Yu

Washington and Lee Law Review

Scholars have found that, despite a split on the burden of proof for qualified immunity, courts agreed that defendants must bear the burden of pleading to raise qualified immunity as a defense. This Article is the first to find that, over the past decade, this established consensus has been disrupted, culminating in a fresh circuit split.

This Article investigates twelve Federal Courts of Appeals’ qualified immunity rulings on 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and finds that six have required plaintiffs to anticipate defendants’ qualified immunity arguments at the pleading stage, essentially treating the negating of qualified immunity as an element of …

Decisionmaking In Patent Cases At The Federal Circuit, Jason Reinecke

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article provides the results of an empirical study assessing the impact of panel composition in patent cases at the Federal Circuit. The dataset includes 2675 three-judge panel-level final written decisions and Rule 36 summary affirmances issued by the Federal Circuit between January 1, 2014 and May 31, 2021. The study informs the longstanding debate concerning whether the Federal Circuit is succeeding as a court with nationwide jurisdiction in patent cases and provides insight into judicial decisionmaking more broadly. And several results show that many of the worst fears that commentators have about the Federal Circuit appear overstated or untrue. …

Comment: Court Adr Analytics, Benjamin G. Davis

Washington and Lee Law Review

For the reasons in my comments below, Jordan Hicks’s note entitled Judicial-ish Efficiency: An Analysis of Alternative Dispute Resolution Programs in Delaware Superior Court is a tour de force. Its content and methodology suggest a fresh approach to thinking about court-annexed Alternative Dispute Resolution (“ADR”) in general and court-annexed mandatory nonbinding arbitration programs in particular. The meticulous analysis of three different eras (1978–2008, 2008–2018, and 2018–present) of the program, with a focus on judicial efficiency (speed, failure rate, and prejudicial concerns), provides an important template for how this work might be expanded to look at programs in other courts …

Judicial-Ish Efficiency: An Analysis Of Alternative Dispute Resolution Programs In Delaware Superior Court, Jordan Hicks

Washington and Lee Law Review

Since the late twentieth century, federal and state jurisdictions across the United States have explored the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (“ADR”) programs to resolve legal disputes. ADR programs provide extrajudicial mechanisms through which parties can resolve their disputes without the delay and expense of a traditional judicial proceeding. Courts and practitioners alike have lauded ADR programs. For litigators, ADR programs are a way to deliver outcomes to clients quickly and efficiently. For courts, ADR programs are a way to remove cases from overcrowded dockets.

While ADR is generally considered to be speedier and more cost-efficient than a trial, little …

Outsourcing Self-Regulation, Marsha Griggs

Washington and Lee Law Review

Answerable only to the courts that have the sole authority to grant or withhold the right to practice law, lawyers operate under a system of self-regulation. The self-regulated legal profession staunchly resists external interference from the legislative and administrative branches of government. Yet, with the same fervor that the legal profession defies non-judicial oversight, it has subordinated itself to the controlling influence of a private interest. By outsourcing the mechanisms that dictate admission to the bar, the legal profession has all but surrendered control of the most crucial component of its gatekeeping function to an unregulated industry that profits at …