Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Judges

PDF

University of Michigan Law School

Discretion

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Law

Justice Scalia And The Idea Of Judicial Restraint, John F. Manning Apr 2017

Justice Scalia And The Idea Of Judicial Restraint, John F. Manning

Michigan Law Review

Review of A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law by Antonin Scalia .


Revising Civil Rule 56: Judge Mark R. Kravitz And The Rules Enabling Act, Edward H. Cooper Oct 2014

Revising Civil Rule 56: Judge Mark R. Kravitz And The Rules Enabling Act, Edward H. Cooper

Articles

This contribution uses the history of amending Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56, “Summary Judgment,” to pay tribute to Mark R. Kravitz and to the Rules Enabling Act process itself. The three central examples involve discretion to deny summary judgment despite the lack of a genuine dispute as to any material fact, the choice whether to prescribe a detailed “point–counterpoint” procedure for presenting and opposing the motion, and the effect of failure to respond to a motion in one of the modes prescribed by the rule. These topics are intrinsically important. The ways in which the Civil Rules Advisory Committee …


Discretionary (In)Justice: The Exercise Of Discretion In Claims For Asylum, Kate Aschenbrenner Apr 2012

Discretionary (In)Justice: The Exercise Of Discretion In Claims For Asylum, Kate Aschenbrenner

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Section 208(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act provides that asylum may be granted to an applicant who meets the definition of a refugee-that is, someone who has been persecuted or has a well-founded fear of future persecution in her own country on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Asylum is a discretionary form of relief which means that the United States government is not required to grant asylum to every refugee within the United States but instead may decide whether or not to do so. This Article sets out in Part …


The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: A Misplaced Trust In Mechanical Justice, Evangeline A. Zimmerman May 2010

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: A Misplaced Trust In Mechanical Justice, Evangeline A. Zimmerman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In 1984 the Sentencing Reform Act was passed, ending fully discretionary sentencing by judges and allowing for the creation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines ("FSG" or "Guidelines"). This Note proposes that the Guidelines failed not only because they ran afoul of the Sixth Amendment, as determined by the Supreme Court in 2005, but also because they lacked a clear underlying purpose, had a misplaced trust in uniformity, and were born of political compromise. Moreover, the effect of the FSG was to blindly shunt discretionary decisions from judges, who are supposed to be neutral parties, to prosecutors, who are necessarily partisan. …


Reply: The Institutional Dimension Of Statutory And Constitutional Interpretation, Richard A. Posner Feb 2003

Reply: The Institutional Dimension Of Statutory And Constitutional Interpretation, Richard A. Posner

Michigan Law Review

Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule argue in Interpretation and lnstitutions that judicial interpretation of statutes and constitutions should take account both of the institutional framework within which interpretation takes place and of the consequences of different styles of interpretation; they further argue that this point has been neglected by previous scholars. The first half of the thesis is correct but obvious; the second half, which the authors state in terms emphatic to the point of being immodest, is incorrect. Moreover, the authors offer no feasible suggestions for how the relation between interpretation and the institutional framework might be studied better …


Restrictions On Publication And Citation Of Judicial Opinions: A Reassessment, Robert J. Martineau Oct 1994

Restrictions On Publication And Citation Of Judicial Opinions: A Reassessment, Robert J. Martineau

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In response to the "crisis of volume," state and federal appellate courts have been restricting the opinions they write to those opinions which will: (1) establish a new. rule of law or expand, alter, or modify an existing rule; (2) involve a legal issue of continuing public interest; (3) criticize existing law; or (4) resolve a conflict of authority. All other opinions are limited to brief statements of the reasons for the decision, go unpublished, and generally carry a prohibition against their being cited as precedent. Recently, critics have alleged a number of faults with this practice, including the supposed …


Reassessing The Role Of The Trial Judge In Verdictless Dispositions Of Criminal Cases, H. Richard Uviller Mar 1983

Reassessing The Role Of The Trial Judge In Verdictless Dispositions Of Criminal Cases, H. Richard Uviller

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Passive Judiciary by Abraham S. Goldstein