Law Commons^™

Neutralizing The Stratagem Of “Snap Removal”: A Proposed Amendment To The Judicial Code, Arthur Hellman, Lonny Hoffman, Thomas D. Rowe Jr., Joan Steinman, Georgene Vairo

Faculty Scholarship

The “Removal Jurisdiction Clarification Act” is a narrowly tailored legislative proposal designed to resolve a widespread conflict in the federal district courts over the proper interpretation of the statutory “forum-defendant” rule.

The forum-defendant rule prohibits removal of a diversity case “if any of the parties in interest properly joined and served as defendants is a citizen of the [forum state].” 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b)(2) (emphasis added). Some courts, following the “plain language” of the statute, hold that defendants can avoid the constraints of the rule by removing diversity cases to federal court when a citizen of the forum state has …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Federal Courts Scholars And Southeastern Legal Foundation In Support Of Respondents, Kimberly S. Hermann, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Backlash Against International Courts In West, East And Southern Africa: Causes And Consequences, Karen J. Alter, James T. Gathii, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

This paper discusses three credible attempts by African governments to restrict the jurisdiction of three similarly-situated sub-regional courts in response to politically controversial rulings. In West Africa, when the ECOWAS Court upheld allegations of torture by opposition journalists in the Gambia, that country’s political leaders sought to restrict the Court’s power to review human rights complaints. The other member states ultimately defeated the Gambia’s proposal. In East Africa, Kenya failed in its efforts to eliminate the EACJ and to remove some of its judges after a decision challenging an election to a sub-regional legislature. However, the member states agreed to …

Jurisdiction, Foundations, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

From Orphans To Families In Crisis: Parental Rights Matters In Maine Probate Courts, Deirdre M. Smith

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the sources of the contemporary problems associated with the adjudication of parental rights matters in Maine’s probate courts and identifies specific reforms to address both the structural and substantive law problems. The Article first reviews the development of Maine’s probate courts and their jurisdiction over parental rights matters. It traces the expansion of jurisdiction over children and families from a limited role incidental to the administration of a decedent’s estate to the current scope: a range of matters that may result in the limitation, suspension, or termination of the rights of living parents. Maine probate courts now …

Fletcherian Standing, Merits, And Spokeo V. Robins, Howard Wasserman

Faculty Publications

This essay offers an exercise in wishful jurisdictional and procedural thinking. As part of a Supreme Court Roundtable on Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, it argues for William Fletcher's conception of standing as an inquiry into the substantive merits of a claim and of whether the plaintiff has a valid cause of action. This approach is especially necessary in statutory cases; along with its constitutional power to create new rights, duties, and remedies, Congress should have a free hand in deciding who and how those rights and duties should be enforced. Spokeo, which involves a claim for damages for publication of …

A Jurisprudential Divide In U.S. V. Wong & U.S. V. June, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

In spring 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court decided two consolidated cases construing the Federal Tort Claims Act, U.S. v. Kwai Fun Wong and U.S. v June, Conservator. The Court majority, 5-4, per Justice Kagan, ruled in favor of the claimants and against the Government in both cases. On the face of the majority opinions, Wong and June come off as straightforward matters of statutory construction. But under the surface, the cases gave the Court a chance to wrestle with fundamental questions of statutory interpretation. The divide in Wong and June concerns the role of the courts vis-à-vis Congress — one …

Choosing A Court To Review The Executive, Joseph Mead, Nicholas Fromherz

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

For more than one hundred years, Congress has experimented with review of agency action by single-judge district courts, multiple-judge district courts, and direct review by circuit courts. This tinkering has not given way to a stable design. Rather than settling on a uniform scheme—or at least a scheme with a discernible organizing principle—Congress has left litigants with a jurisdictional maze that varies unpredictably across and within statutes and agencies.In this Article, we offer a fresh look at the theoretical and empirical factors that ought to inform the allocation of the judicial power between district and circuit courts in suits challenging …

How The Federal Cause Of Action Relates To Rights, Remedies, And Jurisdiction, John F. Preis

Law Faculty Publications

Time and again, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that the federal cause of action is "analytically distinct" from rights, remedies, and jurisdiction. Yet, just pages away in the U.S. Reports are other cases in which rights, remedies, and jurisdiction all hinge on the existence of a cause of action. What, then, is the proper relationship between these concepts?

The goal of this Article is to articulate that relationship. This Article traces the history of the cause of action from eighteenth-century England to its modem usage in the federal courts. This history demonstrates that the federal cause of action is …

Choosing A Court To Review The Executive, Joseph Mead, Nicholas Fromherz

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

For more than one hundred years, Congress has experimented with review of agency action by single-judge district courts, multiple-judge district courts, and direct review by circuit courts. This tinkering has not given way to a stable design. Rather than settling on a uniform scheme—or at least a scheme with a discernible organizing principle— Congress has left litigants with a jurisdictional maze that varies unpredictably across and within statutes and agencies.

In this Article, we offer a fresh look at the theoretical and empirical factors that ought to inform the allocation of the judicial power between district and circuit courts in …

Five Questions After Atlantic Marine, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s Atlantic Marine ruling did a lot to clear up the law of forum selection. But it also left a number of live questions in place. This essay briefly discusses five of them. When a party wants to move a case to the selected forum, what procedures can it use, other than venue transfer or forum non conveniens? When is a forum selection clause valid and enforceable, as a matter of state or federal law? If the clause isn’t valid, should a federal court still give it any weight? What if there are multiple parties or claims, and …

Judicial Participation In Plea Bargaining: A Dispute Resolution Perspective, Rishi Batra

Faculty Articles

There is a common perception that judges do not or should not play a role in the criminal plea bargaining discussions between prosecutors and defense counsel. However, in many state jurisdictions, judicial participation is allowed or even encouraged by statute or by case law. This Article briefly summarizes some of the issues with the plea bargaining process, including how structural issues with the way defense counsel are appointed and compensated, along with the power of prosecutors, makes good representation for defendants less likely. By then performing a fifty-state survey of rules for judicial participation in plea bargaining, the Article explicates …

Patent Dialogue, Jonas Anderson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Article examines the unique dialogic relationship that exists between the Supreme Court and Congress concerning patent law. In most areas of the law, Congress and the Supreme Court engage directly with each other to craft legal rules. When it comes to patent law, however, Congress and the Court often interact via an intermediary institution: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In patent law, dialogue often begins when Congress or the Supreme Court acts as a dialogic catalyst, signaling reform priorities to which the Federal Circuit often responds.

Appreciating the unique nature of patent dialogue has important …

Congress As A Catalyst Of Patent Reform At The Federal Circuit, Jonas Anderson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is the dominant institution in patent law. The court’s control over patent law and policy has led to a host of academic proposals to shift power away from the court and towards other institutions, including the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and federal district courts. Surprisingly, however, academics have largely dismissed Congress as a potential institutional check on the Federal Circuit. Congress, it is felt, is too slow, too divided, and too beholden to special interests to effectively monitor changes in innovation and respond with appropriate reforms. …

How Congress Should Fix Personal Jurisdiction, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

Personal jurisdiction is a mess, and only Congress can fix it. The field is a morass, filled with buzzwords of nebulous origin and application. Courts have sought a single doctrine that simultaneously guarantees convenience for plaintiffs, fairness for defendants, and legitimate authority for the tribunal. Caught between these goals, we've let each new fact pattern pull precedent in a different direction, robbing litigants of certainty and blunting the force of our substantive law.

Solving the problem starts with reframing it. Rather than ask where a case may be heard, we should ask who may hear it. If the parties are …

Saving The Federal Circuit, Paul Gugliuzza

Faculty Scholarship

In a recent, attention-grabbing speech, the Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit, Diane Wood, argued that Congress should abolish the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases. Exclusive jurisdiction, she said, provides too much legal uniformity, which harms the patent system. In this response to Judge Wood’s thoughtful speech, I seek to highlight two important premises underlying her argument, neither of which is indisputably true.

The first premise is that the Federal Circuit actually provides legal uniformity. Judge Wood suggests that, due to the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction, patent doctrine is insufficiently “percolated,” meaning that it lacks mechanisms through which …

The Federal Circuit As A Federal Court, Paul Gugliuzza

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals and, as a consequence, the last word on many legal issues important to innovation policy. This Article shows how the Federal Circuit augments its already significant power by impeding other government institutions from influencing the patent system. Specifically, the Federal Circuit has shaped patent-law doctrine, along with rules of jurisdiction, procedure, and administrative law, to preserve and expand the court’s power in four interinstitutional relationships: the court’s federalism relationship with state courts, its separation of powers relationship with the executive and legislative branches, its vertical …

Preliminary Injunction Standards In Massachusetts State And Federal Courts, Arthur D. Wolf

Faculty Scholarship

Concurrent jurisdiction frequently allows attorneys the choice of filing a complaint in state or federal court. State courts presumptively have jurisdiction over claims rooted in federal law. At times, state courts are required to entertain federal claims. Similarly, federal courts have authority over state claims because of diversity, federal question, and supplemental jurisdiction. Many claims are rooted in both state and federal law, such as antitrust, civil rights, environmental, consumer protection, and civil liberties. Confronted with the choice of state or federal court, the attorney must evaluate a variety of factors before deciding in which court to file.

In a …

Defying Gravity: The Development Of Standards In The International Prosecution Of International Atrocity Crimes, Matthew H. Charity

Faculty Scholarship

The International Criminal Court (the “ICC”), now one decade old, is still in the process of setting norms as to scope, jurisdiction, and other issues. One issue that has thus far defied resolution is a key issue of jurisdiction: the place of complementarity in deciding whether certain criminal issues impacting international standards or interests should be decided before the ICC or national tribunals. Although the Rome Statute crystallizes definitions of core international crimes that may be tried before the ICC, the process of determining whether to leave jurisdiction with the nation or allowing jurisdiction to the ICC continues to lack …

Bargaining Practices: Negotiating The Kampala Compromise For The International Criminal Court, Noah Weisbord

Faculty Publications

At the International Criminal Court's (ICC) Review Conference in 2010, the ICC's Assembly of States Parties (ASP) agreed upon a definition of the crime of aggression, jurisdictional conditions, and a mechanism for its entry into force (the "Kampala Compromise"). These amendments give the ICC jurisdiction to prosecute political and military leaders of states for planning, preparing, initiating, or executing illegal wars, beginning as early as January 2017.

This article explains the bargaining practices of the diplomats that gave rise to this historic development in international law. This article argues that the international-practices framework, as currently conceived, does not adequately capture …

Brief Of Professor Stephen E. Sachs As Amicus Curiae In Support Of Neither Party, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

The parties in this case defend two sides of a many-sided circuit split. This brief argues that a third view is correct.

If a contract requires suit in a particular forum, and the plaintiff sues somewhere else, how may the defendant raise the issue? Petitioner Atlantic Marine Construction Company suggests a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(3) or 28 U.S.C. § 1406, on the theory that the contract renders venue improper. Respondent J-Crew Management, Inc. contends that venue remains proper, and that the defendant¹s only remedy is a transfer motion under § 1404.

Both sides are wrong. Forum-selection …

Judging The Flood Of Litigation, Marin K. Levy

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court has increasingly considered a particular kind of argument: that it should avoid reaching decisions that would “open the floodgates of litigation.” Despite its frequent invocation, there has been little scholarly exploration of what a floodgates argument truly means, and even less discussion of its normative basis. This Article addresses both subjects, demonstrating for the first time the scope and surprising variation of floodgates arguments, as well as uncovering their sometimes-shaky foundations. Relying on in-depth case studies from a wide array of issue areas, the Article shows that floodgates arguments primarily have been used to protect three institutions: …

Treating Juveniles Like Juveniles: Getting Rid Of Transfer And Expanded Adult Court Jurisdiction, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The number of juveniles transferred to adult court has skyrocketed in the past two decades and has only recently begun to level off. This symposium article argues that, because it wastes resources, damages juveniles, and decreases public safety, transfer should be abolished. It also argues that the diminished culpability rationale that has had much-deserved success at eliminating the juvenile death penalty and mandatory life without parole for juveniles is not likely to have a major impact on the much more prevalent practices of transferring mid- and older-adolescents to adult court and expanding adult court jurisdiction to adolescents; neither the law …

Mass Torts And Universal Jurisdiction, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

The technologies of the present era mean that injuries have become more massive in dimension. Mass torts affect greater numbers of people and larger geographical areas. Consequently, they can cross borders, affecting the populations of multiple countries. One of the two mechanisms in tort law for remedying mass catastrophes. restricted to cases involving jus cogens violations (namely, violations of human rights so grave as to be against international customary law, or the "law of nations"), is universal jurisdiction pursuant to the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).

Despite the distinctive official restriction of universal jurisdiction to the criminal law domain in civilian …

Federal Judicial Center International Litigation Guide: Recognition And Enforcement Of Foreign Judgments, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This publication was prepared for the U.S. Federal Judicial Center as a guide for Federal Judges on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. It covers applicable law in federal courts, the issues raised when a foreign judgments recognition case, grounds for non-recognition (and their sources in the law), and recent developments that may affect future adjustments in the rules. The law in those states that have adopted one of the Uniform Acts is covered, as is the law in states that remain under a common law system for recognition and enforcement of judgments. Also covered is the 2005 Hague …

Judicial Review For Enemy Fighters: The Court’S Fateful Turn In Ex Parte Quirin, The Nazi Saboteur Case, Andrew Kent

Faculty Scholarship

The emerging conventional wisdom in the legal academy is that individual rights under the U.S. Constitution should be extended to noncitizens outside the United States. This claim - called globalism in my article - has been advanced with increasing vigor in recent years, most notably in response to legal positions taken by the Bush administration during the war on terror. Against a Global Constitution challenges the textual and historical grounds advanced to support the globalist conventional wisdom and demonstrates that they have remarkably little support. At the same time, the article adduces textual and historical evidence that noncitizens were among …

Spatial Legality, Due Process, And Choice Of Law In Human Rights Litigation Under U.S. State Law, Anthony J. Colangelo, Kristina Kiik

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Framing the topic of this symposium as “Human Rights Litigation in State Courts and Under State Law” effectively orients the discussion around the rights of plaintiffs from the outset, the central question being whether they have enforceable rights in U.S. state courts under state law. Standing in the way are various legal doctrines. In broad strokes, the relevant questions become: Which doctrines do, or should, either facilitate or obstruct human rights litigation in U.S. state courts and under state law? How are courts applying these doctrines? How should courts apply these doctrines?

Many of the doctrines that potentially stand in …

A Tort Statute, With Aliens And Pirates, Eugene Kontorovich

Faculty Working Papers

The pirates of the Caribbean are back. Not in another fantastical film but in the litigation over the reach of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). For the first time since they dealt with the legal issues raised by a wave of maritime predation in the Caribbean in the early nineteenth century, Supreme Court justices are seriously discussing piracy. This crime has emerged as the test case for evaluating the major controversies about the reach of the statute -- namely, extraterritorial application and the existence of corporate liability. At oral argument in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell, justices of all persuasions …

The Ghost That Slayed The Mandate, Kevin C. Walsh

Law Faculty Publications

Virginia v. Sebelius is a federal lawsuit in which Virginia has challenged President Obama's signature legislative initiative of health care reform. Virginia has sought declaratory and injunctive relief to vindicate a state statute declaring that no Virginia resident shall be required to buy health insurance. To defend this state law from the preemptive effect of federal law, Virginia has contended that the federal legislation's individual mandate to buy health insurance is unconstitutional. Virginia's lawsuit has been one of the most closely followed and politically salient federal cases in recent times. Yet the very features of the case that have contributed …

Discretion, Delegation, And Defining In The Constitution's Law Of Nations Clause, Eugene Kontorovich

Faculty Working Papers

Never in the nation's history has the scope and meaning of Congress's power to "Define and Punish. . . Offenses Against the Law of Nations" mattered as much. The once obscure power has in recent years been exercised in broad and controversial ways, ranging from civil human rights litigation under the Alien Tort Statue (ATS) to military commissions trials in Guantanamo Bay. Yet it has not yet been recognized that these issues both involve the Offenses Clauses, and indeed raise common constitutional questions.First, can Congress only "Define" offenses that clearly already exist in international law, or does it have discretion …