Law Commons^™

Contaminating The Verdict: The Problem Of Juror Misconduct, Bennett L. Gershman

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Are You Experienced?: Examining The Need For Specialized Ethics Rules In Patent Litigation, Benjamin J. Sodey

ExpressO

Any attorney licensed to practice before a federal district court, regardless or his or her area of specialization, may file a patent infringement suit on behalf of a client in that court. The possibility exists, therefore, for an attorney having little or no intellectual property experience to represent clients in complex patent litigation matters. Due to this, infringement defendants and their counsel may find themselves on the receiving end of a dubious patent claim brought by attorneys lacking patent law experience. This article discusses whether the existing rules governing attorney conduct, such as professional responsibility, procedural, or statutory rules, are …

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

ExpressO

This article takes a fresh look at the increasingly discussed topic of the scarcity of civil cases reaching trial in the Article III system. The number of cases tried declined by more than one-fourth in the decade from 1989-1999, and the decline continued at about the same rate to the end of the latest year for which statistics are available, 2002, while ADR (particularly arbitrations) skyrocketed.

The authors examine the history of competing English courts (particularly Common Pleas and King's Bench) for signs that, in fact, market competition can arise among dispute-resolving bodies. They also apply economic analysis to the …

Valuation Averaging: A New Procedure For Resolving Valuation Disputes, Keith Sharfman

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

In this Article, Professor Sharfman addresses the problem of "discretionary valuation": that courts resolve valuation disputes arbitrarily and unpredictably, thus harming litigants and society. As a solution, he proposes the enactment of "valuation averaging," a new procedure for resolving valuation disputes modeled on the algorithmic valuation processes often agreed to by sophisticated private firms in advance of any dispute. He argues that by replacing the discretion of judges and juries with a mechanical valuation process, valuation averaging would cause litigants to introduce more plausible and conciliatory valuations into evidence and thereby reduce the cost of valuation litigation and increase the …

No Free Lunch: How Settlement Can Reduce The Legal System's Ability To Induce Efficient Behavior, Abraham Lee Wickelgren

ExpressO

While there is widespread agreement that it is better for cases to settle than go to trial, the arguments in favor of settlement have typically overlooked how settlement affects one of the most important functions of the legal system: influencing the behavior that gives rise to lawsuits. This essay argues that, in some cases, settlement can impair the ability of the legal system to deter harmful behavior without chilling desirable behavior. Where it exists, this effect is a fundamental property of settlement in that there is no way to change other legal rules to eliminate it. Because settlements also have …

Jurors, Judges, And The Mistreatment Of Risk By The Courts, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A sample of almost 500 jury-eligible citizens considered a series of experimental situations involving accidents. The juror sample did not properly apply negligence rules, as their errors were particularly great for low-probability, large-loss cases. They also penalized corporations for undertaking corporate risk analyses that seek to trade off cost versus risk reduction benefits. Jurors' damages assessments were also more prone to error than were responses by a sample of state judges. Judges were less prone to erroneous risk beliefs and less subject to the zero-risk mentality.

A More Complete Look At Complexity, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The ability of courts to successfully resolve complex cases has been a matter of contentious debate, not only for the last quarter-century, but for most of the twentieth century. This debate has been part of the legal landscape at least since Judge Jerome Frank's polemic book from which this Symposium derives its title, and probably since Roscoe Pound's famous address to the American Bar Association. During the 1980s and 1990s in particular, the battlelines of the pro-and anti-court debate have been brightly drawn. Some commentators, most reliably successful plaintiffs' counsel and politically liberal academics, defend the judicial track record in …

Section 1983, Honorable George C. Pratt, Martin A. Schwartz, Leon Friedman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Rehnquist Court, Statutory Interpretation, Inertial Burdens, And A Misleading Version Of Democracy, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

No one theory or school of thought consistently dominates judicial application of statutes, but the basic methodology employed by courts seems well-established if not always well-defined. Most mainstream judges and lawyers faced with a statutory construction task will look at (although with varying emphasis) the text of the statute, the legislative history of the provision, the context of the enactment, evident congressional purpose, and applicable agency interpretations, often employing the canons of construction for assistance. Although orthodox judicial thought suggests that the judge's role is confined to discerning textual meaning or directives of the enacting legislature, courts also often examine …

Pitfalls Of Public Policy: The Case Of Arbitration Agreements, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

As the juxtaposition of these quotations suggests, judges have long held disparate views on the legitimacy and value of “public policy” considerations as a basis for legal decision making. The popular notion posits that Justice Holmes and legal realists carried the day, making public policy analysis an ordinary part of the adjudication process. The story, of course, is more complex than this legal version of Don Quixote. Many judges and lawyers, including Justice Holmes in other writings, continued to speak of adjudication in more formalist and positivist terms, with most laypersons in apparent agreement. Judge Burroughs' view of public policy …

Section 1983, Martin A. Schwartz, Honorable George C. Pratt, Leon Friedman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Report On Survey Of The Bar, Committee On Federal Courts Of The New York State Bar Association

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Distorted Mirror: The Supreme Court's Shimmering View Of Summary Judgment, Directed Verdict, And The Value Of Adjudication, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

As almost anyone alive during the past decade knows, this is the era of the ‘litigation explosion,’ or there is at least the perception that a litigation explosion exists. Although all agree that the absolute number of lawsuits has increased in virtually every corner of the state and federal court systems, there exists vigorous debate about whether the increase is unusual in relative or historical terms and even more vigorous debate about whether the absolute increase in cases symbolizes the American concern for fairness and justice or represents a surge in frivolous or trivial disputes needlessly clogging the courts. As …