Law Commons^™

The Liberal Case Against The Modern Class Action, Martin H. Redish

Vanderbilt Law Review

Those who classify themselves as liberal generally favor widespread use of class actions as a means of policing corporate misbehavior and protecting the individual worker or consumer against capitalist excesses. In this Essay, however, I take the counterintuitive position that while class action practice could conceivably be modified in ways that make it far more acceptable than it currently is, liberal political theory should be very skeptical of the modern class action device as it currently exists. Defining the foundation of liberal thought as a process-based belief in accountable democratic government and respect for the right of individuals to protect …

The Emotionally Intelligent Judge, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Judges, like all of us, have been acculturated to an ideal of dispassion. But judges experience emotion on a regular basis. Judicial emotion must be managed competently. The psychology of emotion regulation can help judges learn to prepare realistically for, and respond thoughtfully to, the emotions they are bound to feel. This short piece, written for a judicial audience, synthesizes research that can help judges accept, analyze, and shape the emotional aspects of their work.

Altering Attention In Adjudication, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Judges decide complex cases in rapid succession but are limited by cognitive constraints. Consequently judges cannot allocate equal attention to every aspect of a case. Case outcomes might thus depend on which aspects of a case are particularly salient to the judge. Put simply, a judge focusing on one aspect of a case might reach a different outcome than a judge focusing on another. In this Article, we report the results of a series of studies exploring various ways in which directing judicial attention can shape judicial outcomes. In the first study, we show that judges impose shorter sentences when …

The Constitutionality Of Federal Jurisdiction-Stripping Legislation And The History Of State Judicial Selection And Tenure, Brian T. Fitzpatrick

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Few questions in the field of Federal Courts have captivated scholars like the question of whether Congress can simultaneously divest both lower federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court of jurisdiction to hear federal constitutional claims and thereby leave those claims to be litigated in state courts alone. Such a divestiture is known today as “jurisdiction stripping,” and, despite literally decades of scholarship on the subject, scholars have largely been unable to reconcile two widely held views: jurisdiction stripping should be unconstitutional because it deprives constitutional rights of adjudication by independent judges and jurisdiction stripping is nonetheless perfectly consistent with …

Angry Judges, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Judges get angry. Law, however, is of two minds as to whether they should; more importantly, it is of two minds as to whether judges’ anger should influence their behavior and decision making. On the one hand, anger is the quintessentially judicial emotion. It involves appraisal of wrongdoing, attribution of blame, and assignment of punishment — precisely what we ask of judges. On the other, anger is associated with aggression, impulsivity, and irrationality. Aristotle, through his concept of virtue, proposed reconciling this conflict by asking whether a person is angry at the right people, for the right reasons, and in …

Litigating Bp's Contribution Claims In Publicly Subsidized Courts: Should Contracting Parties Pay Their Own Way?, Bruce L. Hay, Christopher Rendall-Jackson, David Rosenberg

Vanderbilt Law Review

In this Article, we focus on an important problem involving mass-accident cases that was highlighted by the Deepwater Horizon litigation: overuse of courts to enforce contribution claims. These claims seek to shift incurred or expected liability and damages between the business and governmental entities that participated in the activity that gave rise to the mass-accident risk. Participants in such ventures generally have the option to determine by contract beforehand whether to subject themselves to contribution claims and, if so, whether such claims will be resolved by a publicly funded court or by a privately funded process, such as arbitration. Because …

From Judge To Justice: Social Background Theory And The Supreme Court, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Roberts Court Justices already have revealed many differences from one another, but they also share a (possibly) significant commonality: Presidents promoted all of them to the U.S. Supreme Court from the U.S. Courts of Appeals. This means, of course, that they initially learned how to be judges while serving on a circuit court. How might the Justices' common route to the Court affect their actions on it? Social background theory hypothesizes that prior experience influences subsequent behavior such as voting, opinion writing, and coalition formation. This Article empirically analyzes promotion to the Supreme Court and examines the implications of …

"The Threes": Re-Imagining Supreme Court Decisionmaking, Tracey E. George, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this Essay--the first in a series of essays designed to reimagine the Supreme Court--we argue that Congress should authorize the Court to adopt, in whole or part, panel decision making... With respect to the prospect of different Court outcomes, we demonstrate empirically in this Essay that the vast majority of cases decided during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries--including "Grutter", "Roe", and "Bush v. Gore" --would have come out the same way if the Court had decided them in panels rather than as a full Court.

"The Threes": Re-Imagining Supreme Court Decisionmaking, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this Essay--the first in a series of essays designed to reimagine the Supreme Court--we argue that Congress should authorize the Court to adopt, in whole or part, panel decision making... With respect to the prospect of different Court outcomes, we demonstrate empirically in this Essay that the vast majority of cases decided during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries--including "Grutter", "Roe", and "Bush v. Gore" --would have come out the same way if the Court had decided them in panels rather than as a full Court.

Blinking On The Bench: How Judges Decide Cases, Chris Guthrie, Andrew J. Wistrich

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

How do judges judge? Do they apply law to facts in a mechanical and deliberative way, as the formalists suggest they do, or do they rely on hunches and gut feelings, as the realists maintain? Debate has raged for decades, but researchers have offered little hard evidence in support of either model. Relying on empirical studies of judicial reasoning and decision making, we propose an entirely new model of judging that provides a more accurate explanation of judicial behavior. Our model accounts for the tendency of the human brain to make automatic, snap judgments, which are surprisingly accurate, but which …

Other Disciplines, Methodologies, And Countries: Studying Courts And Crisis, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

How do governments and their citizens respond to fear and risk in times of crisis? Dr. Lee Epstein and Professor Christina Wells, in papers presented on the final symposium panel focus in particular on the Supreme Court's response to government encroachment on individual liberties during a national emergency. Their work is made particularly timely by three Supreme Court decisions this past term. In this essay, I begin by framing the issue very briefly. I then argue that understanding this issue requires scholars to follow Epstein and Wells by looking to other disciplines, methodologies, and countries.

Judging By Heuristic: Cognitive Illusions In Judicial Decision Making, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The institutional legitmacy of the judiciary depends on the quality of the judgments that judges make. Even the most talented and dedicated judges surely make occasional mistakes, but the public expects judges to avoid making systematic errors that favor particular parties or writing opinions that embed these mistakes into the substantive law. Psychological research on human judgment, however, suggests that this expectation might be unrealistic.

Deciphering Courts Of Appeals Decisions Using The U.S. Courts Of Appeals Data Base, Tracey E. George, Reginald S. Sheehan

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Is one circuit significantly more conservative or liberal than the others? Do circuit courts consistently avoid deciding the substance of certain appeals by concluding that the plaintiffs lack standing? Have state governments been more successful than other parties when they appeal adverse district court rulings? Do appeals courts act in a majoritarian or countermajoritarian manner with regard to elected institutions and the general public? The United States Courts of Appeals Data Base, an extensive data set of courts of appeals decisions, can address these and other questions about the circuit courts. This article describes the background, scope, and content of …

Untying A Judicial Knot: Examining The Constitutional Infirmities Of Extrajudicial Service And Executive Review In U.S. Extradition Procedure, Matthew M. Curley

Vanderbilt Law Review

Consider the following situation. An investment banker embezzles millions of dollars from a bank in Italy and transfers the funds to an account in the United States. While he is vacationing in the United States, federal marshals apprehend him pursuant to a request by the Italian government. They bring him before a federal district court judge sitting as an extradition magistrate in the local federal courthouse. After determining that the evidence presented meets the requisite level of criminality, the judge declares that the banker is properly extraditable and binds the case over to the Secretary of State.

The President, however, …

Indigent Access To Civil Courts: The Tiger Is At The Gates, Wayne H. Scott

Vanderbilt Law Review

The accusation that justice in America has become a luxury has been heard with increasing frequency in recent years. An often criticized aspect of this perceived discrimination is that the poor are systematically deprived of effective access, and frequently of any access at all, to the judicial process by the varied and burdensome expenses of civil litigation.' Although these financial barriers have been subjected to increasingly successful attacks in the courts, the extent to which they have been lowered remains unclear. Nevertheless, an examination of the steps already taken to alleviate the problem of the indigent civil litigant raises hopes …

State Courts And The Federal System, Griffin B. Bell

Vanderbilt Law Review

One of the more important aspects of federalism lies in the relationship which has been established between state and federal courts. The interworkings of the judicial process involve power in some in-stances and principles of comity in others. The purpose of this article is to examine this relationship, including possible areas of abrasion resulting from the interworkings between the two court systems.

Justice Murphy: The Freshman Years, Woodford Howard

Vanderbilt Law Review

Justice Murphy is commonly regarded as having been a libertarian activist. He was not highly regarded as a Justice during his lifetime and this opinion prevails today. Here Professor Howard sees Justice Murphy during his early years on the Supreme Court as a man of indecision rather than an uncompromising libertarian. Through an examination of first amendment cases between 1940-42, the author finds that Murphy displayed a common reaction to the responsibilities of a new Supreme Court Justice which differed from most only in intensity.

The First Amendment And The Judicial Process: A Reply To Mr. Frantz, Wallace Mendelson

Vanderbilt Law Review

Cut loose from its foundation in the distinction between discussion and incitement, the clear and present danger test lost its rational meaning and became a cloak for "vague but fervent transcendental-ism." In short, the activists destroyed it as an intelligible guide to decision-and then abandoned it about a dozen years ago. Meanwhile they have tried, and apparently discarded, one "new" verbalism after another. The latest is Mr. Justice Black's absolutist concentration on two untroubled words in the first amendment: "no law." This gambit--"no law means no law"--again begs all the difficulties simply by ignoring them. As Dean Griswold has suggested, …

Culture Patterns And Judicial Systems, Stuart S. Nagel

Vanderbilt Law Review

Comparative law, like comparative government in general,' has largely confined itself to unintegrated descriptions of European legal principles. Not only has comparative law traditionally been limited in its subject matter, but it also has rarely, if ever, made use of statistical techniques in accounting for the differences observed. It is the purpose of this paper to analyze statistically the relations between industrialism, democracy, and collectivism on the one hand and the judicial process on the other in ten different societies.

Supreme Court Attitudes Toward Federal Administrative Agencies, Joseph Tanenhaus

Vanderbilt Law Review

This article reports for a legal audience an examination by social science methods of the validity of certain hypotheses about the behavior of the United States Supreme Court and of its individual members. In order that this study may be viewed in broader perspective,the first part of the essay surveys the prior uses of social science methods in dealing with the judicial process.

The Nature Of The Arbitration Process, William M. Hepburn, Pierre R. Loiseaux

Vanderbilt Law Review

The process of reaching a decision in labor-management arbitrations involves many uncertain factors. As to the final result in a case, we can perhaps say that it is in accord with the contract of the parties or that it is not; that it is "fair" or not; "practical" or unworkable; or that it accords with "public policy" or violates it. Some or all of the criteria discussed in this article may be satisfied in a particular case, but, as is proper, the parties are most often interested in basic equities, in whether an award can be brought within the ambit …

What Is Happening In The Conflict Of Laws: Three Supreme Court Cases, Wendell Carnahan

Vanderbilt Law Review

An answer to the topical inquiry is "A great deal" but full explanation of the general answer to a very big question cannot be attempted in a single article. Instead, attention will be directed primarily to the opinions in three cases decided on the same day by the Supreme Court of the United States. These cases present problems in the segments of conflict of laws dealing with principles of forum non conveniens and full faith to a statute,' jurisdiction over a foreign corporation and a combination of choice of laws rules and judicial recognition of an alimony award. These cases …

The Moral Element In Supreme Court Decisions, Samuel E. Stumpf

Vanderbilt Law Review

Does the United States Supreme Court decide cases on the basis of moral and ethical value judgments? Such a question may reveal a misunderstanding of the nature of law as well as the nature of the judicial process. Moreover, to expect the Court to roam in the field of morals may indicate a failure to take into account the limitations placed upon the Court both by our federal system and by the division of powers. Indeed, a reading of the Supreme Court decisions for the past twenty years reveals a manful resistance on the part of the judges to intrude …

Book Reviews, Carl B. Swisher (Reviewer), Elvin E. Overton (Reviewer), Jay Murphy (Reviewer), Charlotte Williams (Reviewer), Alexander Holtzoff (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

Book Reviews

LIONS UNDER THE THRONE

By Charles P. Curtis, Jr.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947. Pp. xviii, 368. $3.50

MR. JUSTICE BLACK: THE MAN AND His OPINIONS

By John P. Frank (Introduction by Charles A. Beard)

New York: Knopf Company, 1949.Pp. xix, 357. $4.00

ON UNDERSTANDING THE SUPREME COURT

By Paul A. Freund

Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1949. Pp. vi, 130. $3.00

MELVILLE VESTON FULLER: CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES, 1888-1919

By Willard L. King

New York: Macmillan Company, 1950. Pp.394. $5.00

CHIEF JUSTICE STONE AND THE SUPREME COURT

By Samuel J. Konefsky (Prefatory Note by Charles A. …

Book Reviews, Noel T. Dowling (Reviewer), Hugo L. Black, Jr. (Reviewer), George H. Cate, Sr. (Reviewer), Henry N. Williams (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

On Understanding the Supreme Court

By Paul A. Freund

Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1949. Pp. 130. $3.00

reviewer: Noel T. Dowling

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Courts on Trial

By Jerome N. Frank

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949. Pp. vii, 441. $5.00

reviewer: Hugo L. Black, Jr.

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Hugo L. Black: A Study in the Judicial Process

By Charlotte Williams

Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1950. Pp. vii, 208. $3.50.

reviewer: George H. Cate, Sr.

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Hatch Act Decisions (Political Activity Cases) of the United States Civil Service Commission

By James W. Irwin

Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1949. Pp. 304. $1.50 …

Trends In The Use Of Extrinsic Aids In Statutory Interpretation, Glendon M. Fisher Jr., William J. Harbison

Vanderbilt Law Review

As evidenced by the increasing numbers of court decisions which involve statutes,' and by the large and continually growing literature in the field, the subject of statutory interpretation is one of the most important in modern law. Although it is a field in which exact rules of automatic application can very seldom be formulated, only recently a member of the Supreme Court pointed out the great need for a set of "consistently accepted principles of interpretation." Since the primary purpose of all statutory interpretation is to ascertain the meaning and to effectuate the purposes of the legislature, and since words …