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Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Six-Month List And The Unintended Consequences Of Judicial Accountibility, Miguel F. P. De Figueiredo, Alexandra D. Lahav, Peter Siegelman
The Six-Month List And The Unintended Consequences Of Judicial Accountibility, Miguel F. P. De Figueiredo, Alexandra D. Lahav, Peter Siegelman
Cornell Law Review
A little-known mechanism instituted to improve judicial accountability and speed up the work of the federal judiciary has led to unintended consequences, many of them unfortunate. Federal district court judges are subject to a soft deadline known as the Six-Month List (the List). By law, every judge's backlog (cases older than three years and motions pending more than six months) is made public twice a year. Because judges have life tenure and fixed salaries, a mere reporting requirement should not influence their behavior. But it does. Using the complete record of all federal civil cases between 1980 and 2017 and …
Reconsidering Judicial Independence: Forty-Five Years In The Trenches And In The Tower, Stephen B. Burbank
Reconsidering Judicial Independence: Forty-Five Years In The Trenches And In The Tower, Stephen B. Burbank
All Faculty Scholarship
Trusting in the integrity of our institutions when they are not under stress, we focus attention on them both when they are under stress or when we need them to protect us against other institutions. In the case of the federal judiciary, the two conditions often coincide. In this essay, I use personal experience to provide practical context for some of the important lessons about judicial independence to be learned from the periods of stress for the federal judiciary I have observed as a lawyer and concerned citizen, and to provide theoretical context for lessons I have deemed significant as …
Diversifying The Federal Bench: Is Universal Legitimacy For The U.S. Justice System Possible?, Nancy Scherer
Diversifying The Federal Bench: Is Universal Legitimacy For The U.S. Justice System Possible?, Nancy Scherer
Northwestern University Law Review
No abstract provided.
Beyond Principal-Agent Theories: Law And The Judicial Hierarchy, Pauline T. Kim
Beyond Principal-Agent Theories: Law And The Judicial Hierarchy, Pauline T. Kim
Northwestern University Law Review
No abstract provided.
Discretion In Class Certification, Tobias Barrington Wolff
Discretion In Class Certification, Tobias Barrington Wolff
All Faculty Scholarship
A district court has broad discretion in deciding whether a suit may be maintained as a class action. Variations on this phrase populate the class action jurisprudence of the federal courts. The power of the federal courts to exercise discretion when deciding whether to permit a suit to proceed as a class action has long been treated as an elemental component of a representative proceeding. It is therefore cause for surprise that there is no broad consensus regarding the nature and definition of this judicial discretion in the certification process. The federal courts have not coalesced around a clear or …
The Missing Minority Judges, Pat K. Chew, Luke T. Kelley-Chew
The Missing Minority Judges, Pat K. Chew, Luke T. Kelley-Chew
Articles
This essay documents the lack of Asian-American judges and considers the consequences.
Judicial Foreign Policy: Lessons From The 1790s, David Sloss
Judicial Foreign Policy: Lessons From The 1790s, David Sloss
Faculty Publications
This Article demonstrates that the exclusive political control thesis is incompatible with the original understanding of the Founders. The Article does not defend originalism as a method of constitutional interpretation; it merely shows that the exclusive political control thesis is inconsistent with an originalist approach.
The Article examines the implementation of U.S. neutrality policy in the period from 1793 to 1797. Other scholars have analyzed the initial formulation of U.S. neutrality policy in 1793. Scholars who focus narrowly on the year 1793, when the United States first articulated its neutrality policy, have concluded that "the federal courts played a relatively …
Judicial Independence, Judicial Accountability And Interbranch Relations, Stephen B. Burbank
Judicial Independence, Judicial Accountability And Interbranch Relations, Stephen B. Burbank
All Faculty Scholarship
In this paper I argue that the main cause of the poisonous state of interbranch relations involving the federal judiciary, as of the frequent and strident attacks on courts, federal and state, are strategies calculated to persuade the public that courts are part of ordinary politics and thus that judges are policy agents to be held accountable as such. Although unremarkable in the sense that a breakdown in norms of interdependency is a defining characteristic of contemporary politics, I regard the current situation involving the federal judiciary as remarkably dangerous because of the possibility that a tipping point of no …
Introduction To Mercer Law Review Symposium On Federal Judicial Independence, L. Ralph Mecham
Introduction To Mercer Law Review Symposium On Federal Judicial Independence, L. Ralph Mecham
Mercer Law Review
No abstract provided.
Judicial Reporting Under The Civil Justice Reform Act: Look, Mom, No Cases!, R. Lawrence Dessem
Judicial Reporting Under The Civil Justice Reform Act: Look, Mom, No Cases!, R. Lawrence Dessem
Faculty Publications
This article addresses the new reporting provision of the Civil Justice Reform Act. Part II analyzes the reporting requirement and the requirement's legislative history. Part III describes the implementation of the requirement by the federal judiciary, while Part IV discusses the initial reports filed pursuant to the provision and the media coverage of those reports. Part V next analyzes the wisdom of the reporting requirement, concluding that, on balance, the requirement may be helpful in furthering public accountability of an independent federal judiciary. Part VI then considers what the data now publicly reported under the Civil Justice Reform Act does, …
Federal Jurisdiction, Ronald J. Mann
Federal Jurisdiction, Ronald J. Mann
Faculty Scholarship
One important task of the federal judiciary is to resolve cases presenting tensions between national and state governments. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit justly is renowned for its work in this area. One major, if not sensational, arena in which these tensions surface is in cases presenting issues of federal jurisdiction, pursuant to which federal courts allocate power between the national and state judicial systems.
During the survey period the Fifth Circuit published almost one hundred opinions dealing with substantive issues of federal jurisdiction. Like others before me, I have not undertaken in this essay …
Bad Judicial Activism And Liberal Federal-Courts Doctrine: A Comment On Professor Doernberg And Professor Redish, Jack M. Beermann
Bad Judicial Activism And Liberal Federal-Courts Doctrine: A Comment On Professor Doernberg And Professor Redish, Jack M. Beermann
Faculty Scholarship
JUDUCIAL ACTIVISM IS often portrayed as a liberal vice. This perception is wrong both historically and, as Professor Redish argues, 3 currently as well. The federal judiciary has been and still is an activist institution, working with both substantive law and jurisdictional rules to achieve its own policy goals. It has done this in statutory, constitutional, and common-law matters. Specifically, the Supreme Court of the United States has actively-shaped the jurisdiction of the federal courts in a restrictive and generally conservative manner.
Professors Doernberg4 and Redish attack this last form of activism by the federal courts, activism in shaping …
Controlling The Structural Injunction, Robert F. Nagel
Controlling The Structural Injunction, Robert F. Nagel
Publications
No abstract provided.
Book Review. The Business Of The Supreme Court By F. Frankfurter And J. M. Landis, Fowler V. Harper
Book Review. The Business Of The Supreme Court By F. Frankfurter And J. M. Landis, Fowler V. Harper
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.