Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Law

Parading Ourselves: Freedom Of Speech At The Feast Of St. Patrick, Larry Yackle Nov 1993

Parading Ourselves: Freedom Of Speech At The Feast Of St. Patrick, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

Three things are true. First, American society is now absorbed in yet another great civil rights movement, this one on behalf of gay, lesbian, and ambisexual citizens, which will lead ineluctably to the elimination of legal burdens on the basis of sexual orientation.' Change will come slowly, with much backing and filling, and at an awful price measured in human pain. Intolerance for the homosexualities that exist among us, and the homosexual behavior in which many of us engage, will persist in quarters where the law cannot reach.2 Yet private homophobia, deprived of legal sanction, will ultimately be discredited and …


Judicial Vacancies And Delay In The Federal Courts: An Empirical Evaluation, In Symposium, The Civil Justice Reform Act, A. Kimberley Dayton Jan 1993

Judicial Vacancies And Delay In The Federal Courts: An Empirical Evaluation, In Symposium, The Civil Justice Reform Act, A. Kimberley Dayton

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the relationship between federal district court judicial vacancies --whether caused by the executive branch's failure to timely nominate judges, Congress's failure to confirm presidential nominees, or some other reason -- and delays in processing the civil caseload. The hypotheses tested are several configurations of the hypothesis “judicial vacancies cause delay.” The statistical method of analysis of covariance is used to test this hypothesis and thereby evaluate the degree to which delays, defined by reference to certain case management statistics, are correlated to vacancy rates in individual federal district courts, and within the federal system as a whole. …


Women Judges And Better Justice For All, John D. Feerick Jan 1993

Women Judges And Better Justice For All, John D. Feerick

Faculty Scholarship

According to the most recent report of The New York Judicial Committee on Women in the Courts, published in October 1992, out of a total of 1,129 judges, only 183 are female. It is clear women are under-represented in the judiciary. Decisive action is required in order to increase opportunities for women to become judges. In January 1992, Governor Cuomo's Task Force on Judicial Diversity ("the Task Force") issued its report. The Task Force strongly supported diversity and set forth compelling reasons why a diverse bench is in the public interest. The report reminded us that "diversity is vital because …


Chase Court And Fundamental Rights: A Watershed In American Constitutionalism, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 1993

Chase Court And Fundamental Rights: A Watershed In American Constitutionalism, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

Three weeks before he died in May 1873, the frail and ailing Salmon P. Chase joined three of his brethren in dissent in one of the most important cases ever decided by the United States Supreme Court, the Slaughter-House Cases.1 This decision was a watershed in United States constitutional history for several reasons. Doctrinally, it represented a rejection of the virtually unanimous decisions of the lower federal courts upholding the constitutionality of revolutionary federal civil rights laws enacted in the aftermath of the Civil War. Institutionally, it was an example of extraordinary judicial activism in overriding the legislative will of …


Specifying Grounds For Judicial Disqualification In Federal Courts., Leslie W. Abramson Jan 1993

Specifying Grounds For Judicial Disqualification In Federal Courts., Leslie W. Abramson

Faculty Scholarship

One essential component of equal justice under the law is a neutral and detached judge to preside over the court proceedings. Public confidence in the legal system is maintained when a judge has no interest in the parties, attorneys or subject matter of the litigation. Sua sponte or by motion of a party, a federal judge is subject to disqualification for conflicts of interest on both constitutional and statutory grounds


Judicial Opinions As Binding Law And As Explanations For Judgments, Thomas W. Merrill Jan 1993

Judicial Opinions As Binding Law And As Explanations For Judgments, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

To what extent does the executive branch have autonomous powers of legal interpretation? The issue is often broadly framed in terms of two disparate understandings of the allocation of interpretative power: "judicial supremacy" and "departmentalism." In this paper, I shall speak of two different understandings of judicial opinions: the idea that judicial opinions (or at least the "holdings" of opinions) are legally binding on actors in the executive branch, and the idea that opinions are, from the perspective of executive actors, merely explanations for judicial judgments. I adopt this locution because it focuses more precisely on the core of the …