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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Adversarial Myth: Appellate Court Extra-Record Factfinding, Brianne J. Gorod
The Adversarial Myth: Appellate Court Extra-Record Factfinding, Brianne J. Gorod
Duke Law Journal
The United States' commitment to adversarial justice is a defining feature of its legal system. Standing doctrine, for example, is supposed to ensure that courts can rely on adverse parties to present the facts courts need to resolve disputes. Although the U.S. legal system generally lives up to this adversarial ideal, it sometimes does not. Appellate courts often look outside the record the parties developed before the trial court, turning instead to their own independent research and to factual claims in amicus briefs. This deviation from the adversarial process is an important respect in which the nation's adversarial commitment is …
Coming Off The Bench: Legal And Policy Implications Of Proposals To Allow Retired Justices To Sit By Designation On The Supreme Court, Lisa T. Mcelroy, Michael C. Dorf
Coming Off The Bench: Legal And Policy Implications Of Proposals To Allow Retired Justices To Sit By Designation On The Supreme Court, Lisa T. Mcelroy, Michael C. Dorf
Duke Law Journal
In the fall of 2010, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced a bill that would have overridden a New Deal-era federal statute forbidding retired Justices from serving by designation on the Supreme Court of the United States. The Leahy bill would have authorized the Court to recall willing retired Justices to substitute for recused Justices. This Article uses the Leahy bill as a springboard for considering a number of important constitutional and policy questions, including whether the possibility of 4-4 splits justifies the substitution of a retired Justice for an active one; whether permitting retired Justices to substitute for recused Justices would …
Realist Lawyers And Realistic Legalists: A Brief Rebuttal To Judge Posner, Michael A. Livermore
Realist Lawyers And Realistic Legalists: A Brief Rebuttal To Judge Posner, Michael A. Livermore
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Some Realism About Judges: A Reply To Edwards And Livermore, Richard A. Posner
Some Realism About Judges: A Reply To Edwards And Livermore, Richard A. Posner
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
The Limits Of Advocacy, Amanda Frost
The Limits Of Advocacy, Amanda Frost
Duke Law Journal
Party control over case presentation is regularly cited as a defining characteristic of the American adversarial system. Accordingly, American judges are strongly discouraged from engaging in so-called "issue creation"-that is, raising legal claims and arguments that the parties have overlooked or ignored-on the ground that doing so is antithetical to an adversarial legal culture that values litigant autonomy and prohibits agenda setting by judges. And yet, despite the rhetoric, federal judges regularly inject new legal issues into ongoing cases. Landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins and Mapp v. Ohio were decided on grounds never raised …
Pitfalls Of Empirical Studies That Attempt To Understand The Factors Affecting Appellate Decisionmaking, Harry T. Edwards, Michael A. Livermore
Pitfalls Of Empirical Studies That Attempt To Understand The Factors Affecting Appellate Decisionmaking, Harry T. Edwards, Michael A. Livermore
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Economic Trends And Judicial Outcomes: A Macrotheory Of The Court, Thomas Brennan, Lee Epstein, Nancy Staudt
Economic Trends And Judicial Outcomes: A Macrotheory Of The Court, Thomas Brennan, Lee Epstein, Nancy Staudt
Duke Law Journal
We investigate the effect of economic conditions on the voting behavior of U.S. Supreme Court Justices. We theorize that Justices are akin to voters in political elections; specifically, we posit that the Justices will view short-term and relatively nit. nor economic downturns-recessions-as attributable to the failures of elected officials, but will consider long-term and extreme economic con tractions-depressions-as the result of exogenous shocks largely beyond the control of the government. Accordingly, we predict two patterns of behavior in economic-related cases that come before the Court: (1) in typical times, when the economy cycles through both recessionary and prosperous periods, the …
The “Hidden Judiciary”: An Empirical Examination Of Executive Branch Justice, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich
The “Hidden Judiciary”: An Empirical Examination Of Executive Branch Justice, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich
Duke Law Journal
Administrative law judges attract little scholarly attention, yet they decide a large fraction of all civil disputes. In this Article, we demonstrate that these executive branch judges, like their counterparts in the judicial branch, tend to make predominantly intuitive rather than predominantly deliberative decisions. This finding sheds new light on executive branch justice by suggesting that judicial intuition, not judicial independence, is the most significant challenge facing these important judicial officers.
Probing The Effects Of Judicial Specialization, Lawrence Baum
Probing The Effects Of Judicial Specialization, Lawrence Baum
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
No Warrant For Radical Change: A Response To Professors George And Guthrie, Erwin Chemerinsky
No Warrant For Radical Change: A Response To Professors George And Guthrie, Erwin Chemerinsky
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Measuring Judges And Justice, Jeffrey M. Chemerinsky, Jonathan L. Williams
Measuring Judges And Justice, Jeffrey M. Chemerinsky, Jonathan L. Williams
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Autocrat Of The Armchair, David F. Levi
Are Empiricists Asking The Right Questions About Judicial Decisionmaking?, Jack Knight
Are Empiricists Asking The Right Questions About Judicial Decisionmaking?, Jack Knight
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Do Judges Think? Comments On Several Papers Presented At The Duke Law Journal’S Conference On Measuring Judges And Justice, Robert Henry
Do Judges Think? Comments On Several Papers Presented At The Duke Law Journal’S Conference On Measuring Judges And Justice, Robert Henry
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Remaking The United States Supreme Court In The Courts’ Of Appeals Image, Tracey E. George, Chris Guthrie
Remaking The United States Supreme Court In The Courts’ Of Appeals Image, Tracey E. George, Chris Guthrie
Duke Law Journal
We argue that Congress should remake the United States Supreme Court in the U.S. courts' of appeals image by increasing the size of the Court's membership, authorizing panel decisionmaking, and retaining an en banc procedure for select cases. In so doing, Congress would expand the Court's capacity to decide cases, facilitating enhanced clarity and consistency in the law as well as heightened monitoring of lower courts and the other branches. Remaking the Court in this way would not only expand the Court's decisionmaking capacity but also improve the Court's composition, competence, and functioning.
Predicting Court Outcomes Through Political Preferences: The Japanese Supreme Court And The Chaos Of 1993, J. Mark Ramseyer
Predicting Court Outcomes Through Political Preferences: The Japanese Supreme Court And The Chaos Of 1993, J. Mark Ramseyer
Duke Law Journal
Empiricists routinely explain politically sensitive decisions of the U.S. federal courts through the party of the executive or legislature appointing the judge. That they can do so reflects the fundamental independence of the courts. After all, appointment politics will predict judicial outcomes only when judges are independent of sitting politicians. Because Japanese Supreme Court justices enjoy an independence similar to that of U.S. federal judges, I use judicial outcomes to ask whether Japanese premiers from different parties have appointed justices with different political preferences. Although the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) governed Japan for most of the postwar period, it temporarily …
Are Appointed Judges Strategic Too?, Joanna M. Shepherd
Are Appointed Judges Strategic Too?, Joanna M. Shepherd
Duke Law Journal
The conventional wisdom among many legal scholars is that judicial independence can best be achieved with an appointive judiciary; judicial elections turn judges into politicians, threatening judicial autonomy. Yet the original supporters of judicial elections successfully eliminated the appointive systems of many states by arguing that judges who owed their jobs to politicians could never be truly independent. Because the judiciary could function as a check and balance on the other governmental branches only if it truly were independent of them, the reformers reasoned that only popular elections could ensure a truly independent judiciary. Using a data set of virtually …
A Response To Professor Ramseyer, Predicting Court Outcomes Through Political Preferences, Michael Boudin
A Response To Professor Ramseyer, Predicting Court Outcomes Through Political Preferences, Michael Boudin
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Justices As Economic Fixers: A Response To A Macrotheory Of The Court, Scott Baker, Adam Feibelman, William P. Marshall
Justices As Economic Fixers: A Response To A Macrotheory Of The Court, Scott Baker, Adam Feibelman, William P. Marshall
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
A Response To Professors George And Guthrie, Remaking The United States Supreme Court In The Courts’ Of Appeals Image, Michael Boudin
A Response To Professors George And Guthrie, Remaking The United States Supreme Court In The Courts’ Of Appeals Image, Michael Boudin
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
A Response To Professor Knight, Are Empiricists Asking The Right Questions About Judicial Decisionmaking?, H. Jefferson Powell
A Response To Professor Knight, Are Empiricists Asking The Right Questions About Judicial Decisionmaking?, H. Jefferson Powell
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
On Doctors And Judges, Barak Richman
Does The Supreme Court Follow The Economic Returns? A Response To A Macrotheory Of The Court, Ernest A. Young, Erin C. Blondel
Does The Supreme Court Follow The Economic Returns? A Response To A Macrotheory Of The Court, Ernest A. Young, Erin C. Blondel
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Money, Politics, And Impartial Justice, Joanna M. Shepherd
Money, Politics, And Impartial Justice, Joanna M. Shepherd
Duke Law Journal
A centuries-old controversy asks whether judicial elections are inconsistent with impartial justice. The debate is especially important because more than 90 percent of the United States' judicial business is handled by state courts, and approximately nine in ten of all state court judges face the voters in some type of election. Using a stunning new data set of virtually all state supreme court decisions from 1995 to 1998, this paper provides empirical evidence that elected state supreme court judges routinely adjust their rulings to attract votes and campaign money. I find that judges who must be reelected by Republican voters, …
Forgotten Racial Equality: Implicit Bias, Decisionmaking, And Misremembering, Justin D. Levinson
Forgotten Racial Equality: Implicit Bias, Decisionmaking, And Misremembering, Justin D. Levinson
Duke Law Journal
In this Article, I claim that judges and jurors unknowingly misremember case facts in racially biased ways. Drawing upon studies from implicit social cognition, human memory research, and legal decisionmaking, I argue that implicit racial biases affect the way judges and jurors encode, store, and recall relevant case facts. I then explain how this phenomenon perpetuates racial bias in case outcomes. To test the hypothesis that judges and jurors misremember case facts in racially biased ways, I conducted an empirical study in which participants were asked to recall facts of stories they had read only minutes earlier. Results of the …
Deciding Death, Corinna Barrett Lain
Deciding Death, Corinna Barrett Lain
Duke Law Journal
When the Supreme Court is deciding death, how much does law matter? Scholars long have lamented the majoritarian nature of the Court's Eighth Amendment '' evolving standards of decency '' doctrine, but their criticism misses the mark. Majoritarian doctrine does not drive the Court's decisions in this area; majoritarian forces elsewhere do. To make my point, I first examine three sets of '' evolving standards '' death penalty decisions in which the Court implicitly or explicitly reversed itself, attacking the legal justification for the Court's change of position and offering an extralegal explanation for why those cases came out the …
Independent Judicial Research In The Daubert Age, Edward K. Cheng
Independent Judicial Research In The Daubert Age, Edward K. Cheng
Duke Law Journal
The Supreme Court's Daubert trilogy places judges in the unenviable position of assessing the reliability of often unfamiliar and complex scientific expert testimony. Over the past decade, scholars have therefore explored various ways of helping judges with their new gatekeeping responsibilities. Unfortunately, the two dominant approaches, which focus on doctrinal tests and external assistance mechanisms, have been largely ineffective. This Article advocates for a neglected but important method for improving scientific decisionmaking--independent judicial research. It argues that judges facing unfamiliar and complex scientific admissibility decisions can and should engage in independent library research to better educate themselves about the underlying …
Another Hurdle To Habeas: The Streamlined Procedures Act, Michelle Hertz
Another Hurdle To Habeas: The Streamlined Procedures Act, Michelle Hertz
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Advisory Counterparts To Constitutional Courts, Christopher S. Elmendorf
Advisory Counterparts To Constitutional Courts, Christopher S. Elmendorf
Duke Law Journal
In recent years, legal scholars have paid a great deal of attention to the emergence of constitutional courts and judicial review in democracies worldwide, yet an intriguing parallel development in democratic constitutionalism has gone largely unnoticed: the establishment of independent bodies which, like constitutional courts, are concerned with foundational commitments of liberal democracy, but which advance these commitments mainly through investigations and advice-giving. Lacking de jure authority to block the implementation of unconstitutional laws and policies, the new advice givers instead make their contributions ex ante, identifying problems that warrant legislative attention and helping to craft laws and regulations that …
Causes Of The Recent Turn In Constitutional Interpretation, Christopher H. Schroeder
Causes Of The Recent Turn In Constitutional Interpretation, Christopher H. Schroeder
Duke Law Journal
No abstract provided.