Law Commons^™

Passport To Toledo: Cuno, The World Trade Organization, And The European Court Of Justice, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The purpose of this article is to try to place the debate about Cuno v. DaimlerChrysler in a broader perspective by connecting it with the overall discussion of harmful tax competition. It discusses two hypothetical scenarios under which the city of Toledo, Ohio, is (a) a separate country and (b) a member state of the European Union. If the first hypothetical were true, the tax incentives offered by Toledo would violate the rules of the World Trade Organization; if the second hypothetical were true, the tax incentives would also violate the Treaty of Rome, as interpreted by the European Court …

Natural Forum And The Elusive Significance Of Jurisdiction Agreements, Tiong Min Yeo

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Singapore court's power to stay its proceedings by reason of its not being the appropriate forum the proceedings ought not to be continued is underpinned by the common law principle enunciated in The Spiliada that generally a trial should be heard in its natural forum. The Rainbow Joy adds significantly to Singapore law on forum non conveniens on two important points. First, it establishes that it is not necessary to show that the alternative forum abroad is constituted as a court of law. Secondly, the case establishes that whether there is a defense claim on the merits is an …

Hearing On Merger Enforcement, Panel On Treatment Of Efficiencies Antitrust Modernization Commission, Jonathan Baker

Congressional and Other Testimony

No abstract provided.

The Market For Justice, The "Litigation Explosion," And The "Verdict Bubble:" A Closer Look At Vanishing Trials, Frederic N. Smalkin, Frederic N. C. Smalkin

Faculty Scholarship

Recently, a respected jurist has lamented the declining number of federal jury trials. Chief Judge William Young of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, writing in the Federal Lawyer, pointed out that jury trials in federal civil cases declined 26% in the decade between 1989 and 1999, which he attributed to four factors: the district court judiciary’s “loss of focus” on the core function of trying jury cases; the business community’s loss of interest in jury adjudication (“opting out of the legal system altogether” in favor of arbitration); Congress’s “marginalizing the district court judiciary”; and …

Confronting Death: Sixth Amendment Rights At Capital Sentencing, John G. Douglass

Law Faculty Publications

The Court's fragmentary approach has taken pieces of the Sixth Amendment and applied them to pieces of the capital sentencing process. The author contends that the whole of the Sixth Amendment applies to the whole of a capital case, whether the issue is guilt, death eligibility, or the final selection of who lives and who dies. In capital cases, there is one Sixth Amendment world, not two. In this Article, he argues for a unified theory of Sixth Amendment rights to govern the whole of a capital case. Because both Williams and the Apprendi-Ring-Booker line of cases purport to rest …

Taking Your Case To The Court Of Public Opinion – Strategic, Legal And Ethical Implications Conference, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., C. Ronald Ellington, Lonnie T. Brown, David L. Balser, Sally Yates, Peter Canfield, Bruce Harvey, Paul Butler, Joseph Gladden, Larry D. Thompson, Robert Rothman, Linda Disantis, Kenneth Canfield, Adam Liptak

Conferences and Symposia to 2010

During the daylong conference, judges, lawyers and members of the news media debated the professional and moral consequences of discussing legal cases with the media.

Examination Of The Constitutional Amendment On Marriage: Hearing Before The Subcomm. On The Constitution, Civil Rights, And Property Rights Of The S. Comm. On The Judiciary, 109th Cong., Oct. 20, 2005 (Statement Of Professor Louis Michael Seidman, Geo. U. L. Center), Louis Michael Seidman

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

Justice Blackmun And The Spirit Of Liberty, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

As we see in this symposium, Justice Harry Blackmun is as controversial in death as he was in life. We live in a time of increasing absolutism, where things are either black or white, red or blue, you are either for me or against me, my way or the highway. It is when we are swayed by the sirens of absolutism that we are most likely to make mistakes, for absolutism diminishes our capacity to see nuance, much less to appreciate and account for it in our reasoning. This is a dangerous thing in a court, and in a democracy. …

Unpublished Opinions And No Citation Rules In The Trial Courts, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Nomination John G. Roberts: Hearing Before The S. Comm. On The Judiciary, 109th Cong., Sept. 15, 2005 (Statement Of Peter B. Edelman, Prof. Of Law, Geo. U. L. Center), Peter B. Edelman

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

High-Tech Trial Lawyers And The Court: Responsibilities, Problems, And Opportunities, Fredric I. Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

House Resolution On The Appropriate Role Of Foreign Judgments In The Interpretation Of The Constitution Of The United States: Hearing Before The Subcommittee On The Constitution, House Committee On The Judiciary, 109th Cong., July 19, 2005 (Statement Of Viet D. Dinh, Prof. Of Law, Geo. U. L. Center), Viet D. Dinh

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

House Resolution On The Appropriate Role Of Foreign Judgements In The Interpretation Of The Constitution Of The United States: Hearing Before The Subcomm. On The Constitution, H. Comm. On The Judiciary, 109th Cong., July 19, 2005 (Statement Of Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, Prof. Of Law, Geo. U. L. Center), Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

Foreign Law And The U.S. Constitution, Kenneth Anderson

Popular Media

The use of foreign law and unratified international treaty law by U.S. courts in U.S. constitutional adjudication has emerged as a major debate among justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for a majority approving the practice in the March 2005 decision of Roper v. Simmons, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer undertaking an unusual public discussion of the practice in January 2005 at American University law school. This article examines the arguments made by Justices Kennedy, Scalia, and Breyer for and against the practice, setting them in the broader context of constitutional theory. It …

An Honest Approach To Plea Bargaining, Steven P. Grossman

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, the author argues that differential sentencing of criminal defendants who plead guilty and those who go to trial is, primarily, a punishment for the defendant exercising the right to trial. The proposed solution requires an analysis of the differential sentencing motivation in light of the benefit to society and the drawbacks inherent in the plea bargaining system.

Supreme Court Overview, October Term 2004, Georgetown University Law Center, Supreme Court Institute, Kelly Falls

Supreme Court Overviews

No abstract provided.

Preventing The Subversion Of Devlin V. Scardelletti, Brian Wolfman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Devlin v. Scardelletti that objecting class members could appeal a federal district court’s approval of a class settlement without first intervening in the litigation. Public interest lawyer Brian Wolfman says the ruling was a victory for both objectors and the integrity of class action procedure: Objectors, he argues, help keep fairness hearings fair.

But a number of courts are now ruling that Devlin only applies to non-opt-out class actions, rather than the much more numerous ones that give class members opt-out rights. In this article, Wolfman details the exact wording of the …

Dickerson V. United States: The Case That Disappointed Miranda's Critics--And Then Its Supporters, Yale Kamisar

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

It is difficult, if not impossible, to discuss Dickerson v. United States intelligently without discussing Miranda, whose constitutional status Dickerson reaffirmed (or, one might say, resuscitated). It is also difficult, if not impossible, to discuss the Dickerson case intelligently without discussing cases the Court has handed down in the five years since Dickerson was decided. The hard truth is that in those five years the reaffirmation of Miranda’s constitutional status has become less and less meaningful.

In this paper I want to focus on the Court’s characterization of statements elicited in violation of the Miranda warnings as not actually “coerced” …

Lochner: Another Time, Another Place Symposium: Lochner Centennial Conference, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Lynn Baker's contribution to this symposium' extends her longterm project both to defend and to critique the Supreme Court's decisions on the scope of congressional power.2 I find this work valuable and not a little provocative. If Baker's account of the decisions thus far is even partly right, the Court is poised to assume decision-making responsibility that has long been ceded to Congress. If her proposals for the future are adopted, we are in for a cataclysmic constitutional event that rivals the convulsive period when the nation confronted the judicial arrogation of authority associated (rightly or wrongly) with the …

Judicial Citation To Legislative History: Contextual Theory And Empirical Analysis, Michael B. Abramowicz, Emerson H. Tiller

Law and Economics Papers

Judge Leventhal famously described the invocation of legislative history as "the equivalent of entering a crowded cocktail party and looking over the heads of the guests for one's friends." The volume of legislative history is so great and varied, some contend, that judges cite it selectively to advance their policy agendas. In this article, we employ positive political and contextual theories of judicial behavior to examine how judges use legislative history. We consider whether opinion-writing judges, as Judge Leventhal might suggest, cite legislative history from legislators who share the same political-ideological perspective as the opinion-writing judge? Or do judges make …

Florida's Request For Admission Rule: 150 Years On The Road To Inconsistency, Ineffectiveness And Appellate Nullification, Mitchell J. Frank

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Shifting The Focus From The Myth Of "The Vanishing Trial" To Complex Conflict Management Systems, Or I Learned Almost Everything I Need To Know About Conflict Resolution From Marc Galanter, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

To say that The Vanishing Trial is a myth is not to suggest that the facts or analysis in Professor Marc Galanter's seminal report on the vanishing trial are fictional or inaccurate. Indeed, he marshals a massive amount of data to show that the number of trials and the trial rates have been declining for the past four decades, particularly in the federal courts. The report documents an apparent paradox: the proportion of cases going to trial has dropped sharply during the past forty years despite substantial increases in many other legal indicators including the number of lawyers, the number …

The Supreme Court: A Unique Institution, John Paul Jones

Law Faculty Publications

Established by the U.S. Constitution in 1789, the Supreme Court is both the final arbiter of significant legal cases and the prevailing authority on the constitutionality of individual laws. While the Constitution specifies the Court's original jurisdiction, it does not spell out how the Court should conduct its business, or even the number of justices who should serve on the Court or what their qualifications should be. Thus, the Founding Fathers provided a High Court for the nation with the adaptability to respond to the needs of its citizens.

The Proven Key: Roles And Rules For Dictionaries In The Patent Office And The Courts, Joseph Scott Miller, James A. Hilsenteger

Scholarly Works

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in its continuing effort to develop a patent claim construction jurisprudence that yields predictable results, has turned to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and similar sources with increasing frequency. This paper explores, from both an empirical and a normative perspective, the Federal Circuit's effort to shift claim construction to a dictionary-based approach. In the empirical part, we present data showing that the Federal Circuit has, since its own in banc Markman decision in April 1995, used reference works such as dictionaries to construe claim terms with steadily increasing frequency. In addition, and contrary to …

Deterrence And Implied Limits On Arbitral Power, Michael A. Scodro

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Medical Malpractice Debate: The Jury As Scapegoat (Symposium), Nancy S. Marder

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reply Brief For Petitioner, Hamdan V. Rumsfeld, No. 04-702 (U.S. Jan. 03, 2005), Neal K. Katyal

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

The Writ Of Habeas Corpus And The Special Court For Sierra Leone: Addressing An Unforeseen Problem In The Establishment Of A Hybrid Court, Anthony O'Rourke

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Foreign Judgments At Common Law: Rethinking The Enforcement Rules, Tanya J. Monestier

Journal Articles

England and Canada have adopted divergent approaches to the enforcement of foreign civil and commercial judgments. An English court will only enforce a foreign judgment where the defendant submitted to the junsdiction of the foreign court, or was present in the foreign jurisdiction when served with process. This position. while protecting domestic defendants, is outdated and does little to further the objectives underpinning judgment enforcement- Canadian courts, by contrast, have been far more liberal than their English counterparts, enforcing foreign judgments in cases where there is a "real and substantial connection" between the dispute and the judgment forum. While this …

Mixed Signals And Subtle Cues: Jury Independence And Judicial Appointment Of The Jury Foreperson, Andrew Horwitz

Law Faculty Scholarship

Imagine that you are falsely accused of a serious crime and that you are now on trial before a judge and jury. You knew before the trial began that the judge had a reputation as a “law and order” judge, as a judge who was not at all receptive to the arguments of most criminal defense attorneys. You have been watching as the judge and your attorney have been engaged in what appears to be an adversarial battle throughout the trial, but you have taken some comfort in the fact that it will be the jury, not the judge, who …