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Rethinking Rule 59'S Appellate 'Waiver' For Magistrate Judge Adjudication Post-Olano, Meehan Rasch
Rethinking Rule 59'S Appellate 'Waiver' For Magistrate Judge Adjudication Post-Olano, Meehan Rasch
Meehan Rasch
In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Thomas v. Arn that a federal court of appeals may establish a rule that failure to file objections to a magistrate judge’s report and recommendations "waives" both the right to further review by the district court and the right to appeal the judgment to the court of appeals. The Arn majority determined that such a rule did not remove the essential attributes of the judicial power from the Article III court or elevate non-life-tenured magistrate judges to the functional equivalents of Article III judges. Rather, loss of the right to any Article …
California's Dueling Harmless Error Standards: Approaches To Federal Constitutional Error In Civil Trials And Establishing The Proper Test For Dependency, Meehan Rasch
Meehan Rasch
For forty years, California appellate courts generally have applied one discrete harmless error test for federal constitutional error in criminal cases and another for civil proceedings. In appeals from convictions in California state criminal cases, errors rising to a federal constitutional dimension are governed by the standard of Chapman v. California, which requires that these errors be proven by the state to be harmless beyond any reasonable doubt. The more lenient standard (for the trial court) of People v. Watson, which holds errors of state law and procedure harmless unless there is a reasonable probability that such error prejudiced the …