Law Commons^™

Accessing Justice With Zoom: Experiences And Outcomes In Online Civil Courts, Victor D. Quintanilla, Kurt Hugenberg, Ryan Hutchings, Nedim Yel

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The global COVID-19 pandemic brought significant change to our civil justice system, particularly in the rapid shift from in-person to remote court proceedings. Courts across the country, facing the unprecedented challenge of a global health emergency, embraced rapid innovation and the adoption of remote proceeding platforms, such as Zoom and Webex. State courts did so across case types, including within high-volume civil dockets containing evictions, debt collections, small claims, and family law cases, where millions of self-represented and unrepresented litigants encounter the U.S. civil justice system each year. Amid the pandemic, voices converged to encourage these justice innovations, including the …

Population-Based Sentencing, Jessica M. Eaglin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The institutionalization of actuarial risk assessments at sentencing reflects the extension of the academic and policy-driven push to move judges away from sentencing individual defendants and toward basing sentencing on population level representations of crimes and offenses. How have courts responded to this trend? Drawing on the federal sentencing guidelines jurisprudence and the emerging procedural jurisprudence around actuarial risk assessments at sentencing, this Article identifies two techniques. First, the courts have expanded individual procedural rights into sentencing where they once did not apply. Second, the courts have created procedural rules that preserve the space for judges to pass moral judgment …

Le Role Politique De La Cour Supreme, Toujours Recommence, Elisabeth Zoller

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Judicial Independence: Tweak The Guiding Paradigm, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Over time, the public has simply ceased to believe judges when say that they follow the law, and nothing but. If judges impose their ideological policy preferences, the argument goes, why should they be independent from political controls, when other policymakers are not? We have reached the point where, when judges seek to defend the customs and conventions that have guarded against incursions upon their independence by arguing that “we are all about the law and nothing else,” the public response has increasingly become, “No, no, no, your nose is growing.”

Fines, Fees, And Filing Bankruptcy, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

When faced with mounting civil or criminal court fines, fees, and interest-"court debt," as broadly defined-people may consider turning to the bankruptcy system to deal with that debt. Every year, about a million people file bankruptcy, seeking to discharge most of their debts. Although most court debt is categorically nondischargeable, bankruptcy's discharge may provide people struggling with court debt a way to wipe the slate somewhat clean so they have a better chance of paying such debt. Also, people who file bankruptcy under chapter 13--one of the two most common chapters filed by consumers are entitled to a so-called "superdischarge" …

The Categorical Imperative As A Decarceral Agenda, Jessica M. Eaglin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In his forthcoming book, The Insidious Momentum of Mass Incarceration, Frank Zimring proposes two alternative methods to decarcerate: states can adopt a categorical imperative to reduce prison populations or states can reform the governance of sentencing. This symposium Essay focuses on the first of these options, as proposed in his tentative Chapter Six, wherein Zimring calls for categorically removing drug-addicted offenders from eligibility for prison sanctions and expanding use of jails for categories of offenses or offenders.

These methods, I suggest, exist in tension with numerous popular sentencing reforms being implemented in the states right now. Popular reforms, including the …

Circumventing Standing To Appeal, Ryan W. Scott

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The requirement of standing to sue in federal court is familiar, but the related requirement of standing to appeal within the Article III judiciary is badly undertheorized. The Supreme Court’s opinions suggest (at least) four constitutional rationales. Standing to appeal might serve the same functional purposes as standing to sue, or it might follow from the fact that appeals involve two separate courts, or it might be triggered because the underlying case or controversy has become moot, or because it has reached the point of final judgment.

Compounding the confusion, the requirement of standing to appeal can have troubling consequences …

New Services For Families In The Dc Superior Court, Amy Applegate, Jeannie M. Adams, Connie J. Beck, Amy Holtzworth-Munroe, Fernanda S. Rossi

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Until recently, because of concerns about safety and parties’ abilities to make good decisions in cases with a history of high intimate partner violence or abuse (IPV/A), in the District of Columbia’s Superior Court such cases were screened out of mediation and sent back to the family court. But two big program additions — videoconferencing and shuttle mediation — have allowed parties in these cases to consider mediation. The Multi-Door Dispute Resolution Division of the DC Superior Court (Multi-Door) implemented this change after several years of preparation: its administrators added safety measures, provided in-depth training for staff and mediators, and …

Court Personnel Attitudes Towards Medication-Assisted Treatment: A Statewide Survey, Barbara Andraka-Christou, Meghan Gabriel, Jody L. Madeira, Rod D. Silverman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Background: Despite its efficacy, medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is rarely available in the criminal justice system in the United States, including in problem-solving courts or diversionary settings. Previous studies have demonstrated criminal justice administrators' hostility towards MAT, especially in prisons and jails. Yet, few studies have examined attitudes among court personnel or compared beliefs among different types of personnel. Also, few studies have explored the relationship between MAT education/training and attitudes. Finally, few studies have directly compared attitudes towards methadone, oral buprenorphine, and extended-release naltrexone in the criminal justice system.

Methods: We modified a survey by Matusow et al. (2013) to …

Increasing Transparency In The Us Tax Court, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Transparency is a widely accepted judicial norm because it increases accountability. Access to U.S. Tax Court documents has long differed from access to the documents of other courts. For example, the Tax Court does not participate in PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records). This essay discusses some of the ways in which access to Tax Court documents has been restricted; areas in which the Tax Court has increased transparency over the years; upcoming changes; and where increased transparency is still needed, such as with respect to case statistics.

Taking Judicial Legitimacy Seriously, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Unequal Opportunities: Education Pathways To The U.S. Judiciary, Alfred C. Aman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This paper is about diversity in federal and state courts in the United States. My main argument is that we should promote a judiciary that is reflective of the society of which it is a part for three reasons: first, because in doing so, we gain critical awareness of barriers to judicial service; second, because in doing so, we are also promoting access to resources, education and opportunities in the legal profession; and third, because it is possible (although not automatic) that a reflective judiciary will broaden the range of experience and perspective on the matters involved in the cases …

Cross-Sectional Challenges: Gender, Race, And Six-Person Juries, Jeannine Bell, Mona Lynch

Articles by Maurer Faculty

After two grand juries failed to indict the police officers that killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014, our nation has engaged in polarizing discussions about how juries reach their decision. The very legitimacy of our justice system has come into question. Increasingly, deep concerns have been raised concerning the role of race and gender in jury decision-making in such controversial cases. Tracing the roots of juror decision-making is especially complicated when jurors’ race and gender are factored in as considerations. This Article relies on social science research to explore the many cross-sectional challenges involved in the jurors’ decision …

Salman V. United States: Insider Trading's Tipping Point?, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Practical Tips For Interpreting Statutory Overrides, Deborah A. Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

When The Bough Breaks: The U.S. Tax Court's Branch Difficulties, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay highlights the confusion over which of the three branches of government (if any) is home to the U.S. Tax Court, which hears over 95% of litigated federal tax cases. This uncertainty recently resulted in a separation of powers challenge to the Tax Court. There is a pressing need for the Tax Court’s status to be resolved, to decrease its insularity and increase transparency and accountability.

Reynolds Reconsidered, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Review Of Covering The United States Supreme Court In The Digital Age, Susan David Demaine

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Still Kickin’ After All These Years: Sutton And Toyota As Shadow Precedents, Deborah A. Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Congress’s ability to override judicial opinions that interpret statutes is generally understood as an important aspect of maintaining legislative supremacy. In a series of articles, I have challenged the validity of this assumption by showing that courts often continue to rely on overridden precedents—what I have called shadow precedents. My earlier work explores instances in which it was unclear or debatable whether the override or the prior precedent should control. This article further documents such ambiguities, but its primary objective is to highlight examples of ongoing reliance on shadow precedents where it is unquestionably improper. It suggests, however, that citation …

Identifying Congressional Overrides Should Not Be This Hard, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This paper is an invited response to Professor William N. Eskridge, Jr., and Mr. Matthew R. Christiansen’s recently-published study (92 Texas L. Rev. 1317 (2014)) identifying and analyzing Congressional overrides of Supreme Court statutory interpretation decisions since 1967. Christiansen and Eskridge provide a new taxonomy for overrides that distinguishes between "restorative" overrides, which denounce a judicial interpretation as misrepresenting prior Congressional intent, and overrides that simply update or clarify policy. Although political science and legal scholarship has focused on the interbranch struggle implicit in restorative overrides, Christiansen and Eskridge classify only about 20% of the overrides in their total dataset …

(Un)Appealing Deference To The Tax Court, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The U.S. Tax Court (Tax Court), which hears the vast majority of litigated federal tax cases, occupies an unusual place in the federal government. It is a federal court located outside of the judicial branch, but its decisions are appealable to the federal courts of appeals. This odd structure, coupled with the court's history as an independent agency in the executive branch, can give rise to important questions, such as the standard of review that should apply to its decisions. In particular, should the courts of appeals treat Tax Court decisions the same as those of district courts in tax …

Restructuring The U.S. Tax Court: A Reply To Stephanie Hoffer And Christopher Walker's The Death Of Tax Court Exceptionalism, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article is an invited reply to an article in the Minnesota Law Review regarding whether the “reviewing court” provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) apply to the U.S. Tax Court, the principal court hearing disputes between taxpayers and the IRS. (The Tax Court has repeatedly said that the APA does not apply to it). It argues in part that the question of whether the Tax Court must apply the APA’s standard and scope of review when reviewing IRS action is not as clear as a matter of history and doctrine as Professors Hoffer and Walker argue. The author …

Tribute To Randall Shepard, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Dimensions Of Judicial Impartiality, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Scholars have traditionally analyzed judicial impartiality piecemeal, in disconnected debates on discrete topics. As a consequence, current understandings of judicial impartiality are balkanized and muddled. This Article seeks to reconceptualize judicial impartiality comprehensively, across contexts. In an era when "we are all legal realists now," perfect impartiality-the complete absence of bias or prejudice-is at most an ideal; "impartial enough" has, of necessity, become the realistic goal. Understanding when imperfectly impartial is nonetheless impartial enough is aided by conceptualizing judicial impartiality in three distinct dimensions: a procedural dimension, in which impartiality affords parties a fair hearing; a political dimension, in which …

The American Judicature Society And Judicial Independence: Reflections At The Century Mark, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A logical starting point in a symposium commemorating AJS at the century mark is with judicial independence – a sweeping topic with a complex architecture that gives structure to the AJS mission. The many and varied contributions that AJS has made to the administration of justice over the past one hundred years can best be understood and appreciated as means to further the overarching objective of promoting an independent and accountable judiciary.

Book Review. Epstein, L., Et. Al., The Behavior Of Federal Judges: A Theoretical And Empirical Study Of Rational Choice, Ashley A. Ahlbrand

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Undermining Congressional Overrides: The Hydra Problem In Statutory Interpretation, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Statutory overrides — that is, amendments to supersede a judicial interpretation of a statute — are the primary mechanism by which Congress signals disagreement with court interpretations; they are essential to protect the separation of powers and the promise of legislative supremacy. But in Gross v. FBL Financial Services, the Supreme Court held that Congress’s override of a judicial interpretation of Title VII did not control the interpretation of identical language in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and further that Congress’s “neglecting” to amend the ADEA when it amended Title VII was a clear signal that Congress intended the …

Innocence And Federal Habeas After Aedpa: Time For The Supreme Court To Act, Joseph L. Hoffmann

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Family Capital Of Capital Families: Investigating Empathic Connections Between Jurors And Defendants' Families In Death Penalty Cases, Jody L. Madeira

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Judicial Elections In The Aftermath Of White, Caperton, And Citizens United, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.