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Full-Text Articles in Law

On Sexual Harassment In The Judiciary, Leah Litman, Deeva Shah Oct 2020

On Sexual Harassment In The Judiciary, Leah Litman, Deeva Shah

Articles

This Essay examines the legal profession’s role in sexual harassment, particularly in the federal courts. It argues that individuals in the profession have both an individual and collective responsibility for the professional norms that have allowed harassment to happen with little recourse for the people subject to the harassment. It suggests that the legal profession should engage in a sustained, public reflection about how our words, actions, attitudes, and institutional arrangements allow harassment to happen, and about the many different ways that we can prevent and address harassment.


Judge Kozinski Objects, Beth H. Wilensky Sep 2017

Judge Kozinski Objects, Beth H. Wilensky

Articles

Sitting judges don’t get to practice law. So although they often opine on the dos and don’ts of effective advocacy, we rarely get to see them put their advice into practice. But a few years ago, a class-action lawsuit provided the rare opportunity to witness a federal judge acting as an advocate before another federal judge—if not in the role of attorney, then certainly in as close to that role as we are likely to see. Given the chance to employ his own advice about effective advocacy, would the judge—Alex Kozinski—practice what he preaches? Would his years of experience on …


Fun With Administrative Law: A Game For Lawyers And Judges, Adam Babich May 2015

Fun With Administrative Law: A Game For Lawyers And Judges, Adam Babich

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

The practice of law is not a game. Administrative law in particular can implicate important issues that impact people’s health, safety, and welfare and change business’ profitability or even viability. Nonetheless, it can seem like a game. This is because courts rarely explain administrative law rulings in terms of the public purposes and policies at issue in lawsuits. Instead, the courts’ administrative law opinions tend to turn on arcane interpretive doctrines with silly names, such as the “Chevron two-step” or “Chevron step zero.” To advance doctrinal arguments, advocates and courts engage in linguistic debates that resemble a smokescreen—tending to obscure …


Judges! Stop Deferring To Class-Action Lawyers, Brian Wolfman Jan 2012

Judges! Stop Deferring To Class-Action Lawyers, Brian Wolfman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

I represent a national non-profit consumer rights organization, as an amicus, in a federal appeal challenging a district court’s approval of a class-action settlement of claims under the federal Credit Repair Organization Act (CROA). My client maintains that the district court erred in finding that the settlement was “fair, reasonable, and adequate,” which is the standard for class-action settlement approval under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In particular, we argue that the district court committed a reversible legal error when it deferred to the class-action lawyers’ recommendation to approve the settlement because, in those lawyers’ view, it was fair, …


Our Broken Misdemeanor Justice System: Its Problems And Some Potential Solutions, Eve Brensike Primus Jan 2012

Our Broken Misdemeanor Justice System: Its Problems And Some Potential Solutions, Eve Brensike Primus

Reviews

Although misdemeanors comprise an overwhelming majority of state criminal court cases, little judicial and scholarly attention has been focused on how misdemeanor courts actually operate. In her article, Misdemeanors, Alexandra Natapoff rights this wrong and explains how the low-visibility, highly discretionary decisions made by actors at the misdemeanor level often result in rampant discrimination, incredible inefficiency, and vast miscarriages of justice. Misdemeanors makes a significant contribution to the literature by refocusing attention on the importance of misdemeanor offenses and beginning an important dialogue about what steps should be taken going forward to fix our broken misdemeanor justice system.


Charles Evans Hughes, Richard D. Friedman Jan 2009

Charles Evans Hughes, Richard D. Friedman

Book Chapters

Hughes, Charles Evans (1862-1948). Lawyer, politician, diplomat, and chief justice of the United States. Hughes was born in Glens Falls, N.Y., the son of a Baptist preacher from the English- Welsh border country who changed congregations from time to time. Young Hughes spent his earliest years in several locations in New York and New Jersey before the family settled in Brooklyn. A precocious child, he was educated both at home and in public school. At age 14, he began college at Madison (now Colgate) University, a Baptist institution. After his sophomore year, he transferred to Brown, which also had a …


Justice Frank Murphy And American Labor Law, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 2002

Justice Frank Murphy And American Labor Law, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Working people and disfavored groups were central concerns of Frank Murphy, the last Michigan Law School graduate to sit on the United States Supreme Court. In the pages of this Review, just over a half century ago, Archibald Cox wrote of him: "It was natural ...th at his judicial work should be most significant in these two fields [labor law and civil rights] and especially in the areas where they coalesce."' In this Essay, after a brief overview of Murphy the man, his days at the University of Michigan, and his career prior to the Court appointment, I shall review …


Dream Makers: Black Judges On Justice, Julian Abele Cook Jr. May 1996

Dream Makers: Black Judges On Justice, Julian Abele Cook Jr.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Linn Washington, Black Judges on Justice


Strong Criticism Of The American System Of Trial By Jury, Yale Kamisar Jan 1995

Strong Criticism Of The American System Of Trial By Jury, Yale Kamisar

Articles

I grieve for my country to say that the administration of the criminal law in all the states in the Union (there may be one or two exceptions) is a disgrace to our civilization.


Clerks In The Maze, Pierre Schlag Aug 1993

Clerks In The Maze, Pierre Schlag

Michigan Law Review

It must be very difficult to be a judge - particularly an appellate judge. Not only must appellate judges reconcile often incommensurable visions of what law is, what it commands, or what it strives to achieve, but judges must do this largely alone. What little help they have in terms of actual human contact, apart from their clerks, typically takes the form of two or more advocates whose entire raison d'être is to persuade, coax, and manipulate the judge into reaching a predetermined outcome - one which often instantiates or exemplifies only the most tenuous positive connection to the rhetoric …


Safeguarding The Litigant's Constitutional Right To A Fair And Impartial Forum: A Due Process Approach To Improprieties Arising From Judicial Campaign Contributions From Lawyers, Mark Andrew Grannis Nov 1987

Safeguarding The Litigant's Constitutional Right To A Fair And Impartial Forum: A Due Process Approach To Improprieties Arising From Judicial Campaign Contributions From Lawyers, Mark Andrew Grannis

Michigan Law Review

This Note will argue that the improprieties arising from some campaign contributions are so egregious that they offend the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. Consequently, states must either reform judicial campaigns to eliminate such improprieties, or, through mandatory judicial recusal or disqualification, respect the absolute constitutional right to an impartial forum. Part I of this Note will examine the history of disqualification at common law and in American practice, focusing on the extent to which it has been held to be a requirement of due process. Part II will argue that under the applicable due process standards, a …


The Iconoclast As Reformer: Jerome Frank's Impact On American Law, Matthew W. Frank Apr 1986

The Iconoclast As Reformer: Jerome Frank's Impact On American Law, Matthew W. Frank

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Iconoclast as Reformer: Jerome Frank's Impact on American Law by Robert Jerome Glennon


Brandeis, Michigan Law Review Feb 1984

Brandeis, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Brandeis by Lewis J. Paper


Some Hints On Defects In The Jury System, James V. Campbell Dec 1877

Some Hints On Defects In The Jury System, James V. Campbell

Articles

The occasional freaks of juries have now and then led some members of the bar to speculate on the policy of doing without them entirely, and some persons no doubt think that they have strong convictions that the jury system has become useless. It is safe to say that these extreme views are altogether speculative, and not based on any careful comparison of results. Most persons who have looked into their own experience with courts and juries are ready to agree that where there is no dispute about main facts, so that the chief dispute is one of law, there …