Law Commons^™

Gideon V. Wainwright--From A 1963 Perspective, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

Gideon v. Wainwright is more than a “landmark” Supreme Court ruling in the field of constitutional criminal procedure. As evidenced by the range of celebrators of Gideon’s Fiftieth Anniversary (extending far beyond the legal academy) and Gideon’s inclusion in the basic coverage of high school government courses, Gideon today is an icon of the American justice system. I have no quarrel with that iconic status, but I certainly did not see any such potential in Gideon when I analyzed the Court’s ruling shortly after it was announced in March of 1963. I had previously agreed to write an article for …

Trusting The Courts: Redressing The State Court Funding Crisis, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, state courts have suffered serious funding reductions that have threatened their ability to resolve criminal and civil cases in a timely fashion. Proposals for addressing this state court funding crisis have emphasized public education and the creation of coalitions to influence state legislatures. These strategies are unlikely to succeed, however, and new institutional arrangements are necessary. Dedicated state trust funds using specific state revenue sources to fund courts offer the most promise for adequate and stable state court funding.

Disparity In Judicial Misconduct Cases: Color-Blind Diversity?, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

This article presents and analyzes preliminary data on racial and gender disparities in state judicial disciplinary actions. Studies of demographic disparities in the context of judicial discipline do not exist. This paper presents a first past and preliminary look at the data collected on the issue and assembled into a database. The article is also motivated by the resistance encountered to inquiries into the demographic profile of the state bench and its judges. As such, it also tells the story of the journey undertaken to secure this information and critiques what the author terms a practice of colorblind diversity. Initially …

How Congress Should Fix Personal Jurisdiction, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

Personal jurisdiction is a mess, and only Congress can fix it. The field is a morass, filled with buzzwords of nebulous origin and application. Courts have sought a single doctrine that simultaneously guarantees convenience for plaintiffs, fairness for defendants, and legitimate authority for the tribunal. Caught between these goals, we've let each new fact pattern pull precedent in a different direction, robbing litigants of certainty and blunting the force of our substantive law.

Solving the problem starts with reframing it. Rather than ask where a case may be heard, we should ask who may hear it. If the parties are …

Response: Means, Ends, And Institutions, Charlton C. Copeland

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Jurisprudence Of Union, Gil Seinfeld

Articles

The primary goal of this Article is to demonstrate that the interest in national unity does important, independent work in the law of vertical federalism. We have long been accustomed to treating union as a constitutionally operative value in cases involving the duties states owe one another (i.e. horizontal federalism cases), but in cases involving the relationship between the federal government and the states, the interest in union is routinely ignored. This Article shows that, across a wide range of cases relating to the allocation of power between the federal government and the states, the states are constrained by a …