Law Commons^™

Rules, Standards, And Such, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article aims to create a complete typology of the forms of decisional law. Distinguishing "rules" from "standards" is the most commonly attempted jurisprudential line, roughly drawn between nonvague and vague. But no agreement exists on the dimension along which the rule/standard terminology lies, or on where the dividing line on the continuum lies. Thus, classifying in terms of vagueness is itself vague. Ultimately it does not aid legal actors in formulating or applying the law. The classification works best as an evocative image.

A clearer distinction would be useful in formulating and applying the law. For the law-applier, it …

Res Judicata As Requisite For Justice, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

From historical, jurisprudential, and comparative perspectives, this Article tries to synthesize res judicata while integrating it with the rest of law. From near their beginnings, all systems of justice have delivered a core of res judicata comprising the substance of bar and defense preclusion. This core is universal not because it represents a universal value, but rather because it responds to a universal institutional need. Any justice system must have adjudicators; to be effective, their judgments must mean something with bindingness; and the minimal bindingness is that, except in specified circumstances, the disgruntled cannot undo a judgment in an effort …

The One Or The Many, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The following Review Essay, inspired by Tracy Isaacs’ new book, Moral Responsibility in Collective Contexts, connects the philosophical literature on group agency with recent trends in international criminal law. Part I of the Essay sketches out the relevant philosophical positions, including collectivist and individualist accounts of group agency. Particular attention is paid to Kornhauser and Sager’s development of the doctrinal paradox, Philip Pettit’s deployment of the paradox towards a general argument for group rationality, and Michael Bratman’s account of shared or joint intentions. Part II then analyzes, with cautious support, Isaacs’ two-level solution, which entails both individual and collective …

Coming Off The Bench: Legal And Policy Implications Of Proposals To Allow Retired Justices To Sit By Designation On The Supreme Court, Lisa T. Mcelroy, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In the fall of 2010, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced a bill that would have overridden a New Deal-era federal statute forbidding retired Justices from serving by designation on the Supreme Court of the United States. The Leahy bill would have authorized the Court to recall willing retired Justices to substitute for recused Justices. This Article uses the Leahy bill as a springboard for considering a number of important constitutional and policy questions, including whether the possibility of 4-4 splits justifies the substitution of a retired Justice for an active one; whether permitting retired Justices to substitute for recused Justices would …

Majoritarian Difficulty And Theories Of Constitutional Decision Making, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Recent scholarship in political science and law challenges the view that judicial review in the United States poses what Alexander Bickel famously called the "counter-majoritarian difficulty." Although courts do regularly invalidate state and federal action on constitutional grounds, they rarely depart substantially from the median of public opinion. When they do so depart, if public opinion does not eventually come in line with the judicial view, constitutional amendment, changes in judicial personnel, and/or changes in judicial doctrine typically bring judicial understandings closer to public opinion. But if the modesty of courts dissolves Bickel's worry, it raises a distinct one: Are …

Promise Against Peril: Of Power, Purpose, And Principle In International Law, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

I take two recent monographs on international law – Mary Ellen O’Connell’s "The Power and Purpose of International Law," and Eric Posner’s "The Perils of Global Legalism," as case studies in a more general inquiry into the role of the "rule of law" ideal in domestic and international law. I argue that international and domestic law alike give varyingly explicit and effective expression to the rule of law ideal, and that the task before us is accordingly steadily to improve their effectiveness in so doing, not to pretend that there is no role for this ideal to play in interpreting …

The Dance Of Death Or (Almost) "No One Here Gets Out Alive": The Fourth Circuit's Capital Punishment Jurisprudence, John H. Blume

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Justice In Time, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Challenges raised by the subject of intergenerational justice seem often to be thought almost uniquely intractable. In particular, apparent conflicts between the core values of impartiality and efficiency raised by a large and still growing number of intertemporal impossibility results derived by Koopmans, Diamond, Basu & Mitra, and others have been taken to foreclose fruitful policy assessment done with a view to the distant future.

This Essay aims to dispel the sense of bewilderment, pessimism and attendant paralysis that afflicts intertemporal justice assessment. It works toward that end by demonstrating that the most vexing puzzles raised by questions of intergenerational …

Why Paretians Can’T Prescribe: Preferences, Principles, And Imperatives In Law And Policy, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Recent years have witnessed two linked revivals in the legal academy. The first is renewed interest in articulating a normative “master principle” by which legal rules might be evaluated. The second is renewed interest in the prospect that a variant of Benthamite “utility” might serve as the requisite touchstone. One influential such variant now in circulation is what the Article calls “Paretian welfarism.”

This Article rejects Paretian welfarism and advocates an alternative it calls “fair welfare.” It does so because Paretian welfarism is inconsistent with ethical, social, and legal prescription, while fair welfare is what we have been groping for …

Judicial Independence In Excess: Reviving The Judicial Duty Of The Supreme Court, Paul D. Carrington, Roger C. Cramton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Independence from extrinsic influence is, we know, indispensable to public trust in the integrity of professional judges who share the duty to decide cases according to preexisting law. But such independence is less appropriate for those expected to make new law to govern future events. Indeed, in a democratic government those who make new law are expected to be accountable to their constituents, not independent of their interests and unresponsive to their desires. The Supreme Court of the United States has in the last century largely forsaken responsibility for the homely task of deciding cases in accord with preexisting law …

Legal Taxonomy, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This essay examines the ambition to taxonomize law and the different methods a legal taxonomer might employ. Three possibilities emerge. The first is a formal taxonomy that classifies legal materials according to rules of order and clarity. Formal taxonomy is primarily conventional and has no normative implications for judicial decision-making. The second possibility is a function-based taxonomy that classifies laws according to their social functions. Function-based taxonomy can influence legal decision-making indirectly, as a gatekeeping mechanism, but it does not provide decisional standards for courts. Its objective is to assist in analysis and criticism of law by providing an overview …

Government Lawyers, Democracy, And The Rule Of Law, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Criticism of the “politicization” of the role of federal government lawyers has been intense in recent years, with the scandals over the hiring practices at the Department of Justice, and the advice given to the administration by lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel, concerning various aspects of the post-9/11 national security environment. Unfortunately, many of these critiques do not hold up very well under scrutiny. We lack a coherent account of what it means to “politicize” the practice of interpreting and applying the law. This paper argues that our evaluative discourse about the ethics of government lawyers is inadequately …

Foreward: The Most Confusing Branch, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Federal Criminal Appeals: A Brief Empirical Perspective, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Although few dispute the appellate process's centrality to justice systems, especially in the criminal context, debates over rationales supporting the appellate process's vaunted status in adjudication systems persist. Clearly, it is difficult to overestimate error correction as a justification for an appellate system. Of course, other rationales, such as a desire for lawmaking and legitimacy, also support the inclusion of a mechanism for appellate review in an adjudication system.

Though comparative latecomers, appellate courts are now ubiquitous in the American legal landscape—appellate review exists in state and federal systems for criminal convictions. Despite general agreement and widespread understanding that access …

The Jurisprudence Of Pleading: Rights, Rules, And Conley V. Gibson, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In 1957, in the case of Conley v. Gibson, the Supreme Court announced a minimal standard for the contents of a complaint under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and endorsed what has come to be known as 'notice' pleading. This article, prepared for a symposium on Conley, reviews the debate over pleading requirements that preceded the case. Unlike modern discussions of pleading, which focus on the level of factual specificity required in complaints, the pre-Conley debate was about the legal content of complaints - an question largely forgotten in the years following Conley.

The early twentieth century debate over …

Cafa Judicata: A Tale Of Waste And Politics, Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Class Action Fairness Act has taken on its real form through construction by the federal judges. That form emerges in this empirical study of judicial activity and receptivity to the Act. Our data comprise the opinions under the Act published during the two and a half years following its enactment in 2005.

CAFA has produced a lot of litigation in its short life. The cases were varied, of course, but most typically the resulting published federal opinion involved a removed contract case, with the dispute turning on the statute's effective date or on federal jurisdiction. Even though the opinions …

Impartiality In Judicial Ethics: A Jurisprudential Analysis, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Jurisprudence And Judicial Ethics, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The fundamental value in judicial ethics is impartiality. This means that a judge is duty-bound to decide cases on their merits, be open to persuasion, and not influenced by improper considerations. The paradigm case of unethical behavior by a judge is taking a bribe to decide a case in favor of one of the parties. This kind of corruption, which is fortunately rare in many developed countries, is also relatively uninteresting from an intellectual point of view. A more difficult case of failure of impartiality, conceptually speaking, involves a judge who relies on extra-legal factors as the basis for a …

The Impossibility Of A Prescriptive Paretian, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Most normatively oriented economists appear to be “welfarist” and Paretian to one degree or another: They deem responsiveness to individual preferences, and satisfaction of one or more of the Pareto criteria, to be a desirable attribute of any social welfare function. I show that no strictly “welfarist” or Paretian social welfare function can be normatively prescriptive. Economists who prescribe must embrace at least one value apart from or additional to “welfarism” and Paretianism, and in fact will do best to dispense with Pareto entirely.

Comments On The Comments, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The paper replies to Bix and Soper (Bix 2007; Soper 2007). Bix’s paper raises methodological questions, especially whether a form-theorist merely needs to reflect on form from the arm-chair so to speak. A variety of methods is called for, including conceptual analysis, study of usage, “education in the obvious,” general reflection on the nature of specific functional legal units, empirical research on their operation and effects, and still more. Further methodological remarks are made in response to Soper’s paper. Soper suggests the possibility of substituting “form v. substance” of a unit as the central contrast here rather than form v. …

Noncomparabilities & Non Standard Logics, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Many normative theories set forth in the welfare economics, distributive justice and cognate literatures posit noncomparabilities or incommensurabilities between magnitudes of various kinds. In some cases these gaps are predicated on metaphysical claims, in others upon epistemic claims, and in still others upon political-moral claims. I show that in all such cases they are best given formal expression in nonstandard logics that reject bivalence, excluded middle, or both. I do so by reference to an illustrative case study: a contradiction known to beset John Rawls's selection and characterization of primary goods as the proper distribuendum in any distributively just society. …

Treating Religion As Speech: Justice Stevens's Religion Clause Jurisprudence, Eduardo M. Peñalver

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Justice Stevens has sometimes been caricatured as the U.S. Supreme Court Justice who hates religion. Whether considering questions under the Establishment Clause or the Free Exercise Clause, questions about the funding or regulation of religious groups, or the permissibility of religious speech in public places, in case after case he has voted against religion. Like most caricatures, this view of Justice Stevens is based on a kernel of truth. He does appear to be more likely to vote against religious groups than any other Justice. But an exploration of the cases in which Justice Stevens has voted in favor of …

Demystifying Legal Reasoning: Part Ii, Larry Alexander, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

"Demystifying Legal Reasoning" defends the proposition that there are no special forms of reasoning peculiar to law. Legal decisionmakers engage in the same modes of reasoning that all actors use in deciding what to do: open-ended moral reasoning, empirical reasoning, and deduction from authoritative rules. Part II (abstracted here) addresses common law reasoning, when prior judicial decisions determine the law. Part III addresses interpretation of texts. We conclude that, in both areas, the popular view that legal decisionmakers practice special forms of reasoning are false.

In Chapter 2, we propose that there are two plausible models of common law reasoning, …

Rulemaking Versus Adjudication: A Psychological Perspective, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Legal systems make law in one of two ways: by abstracting general principles from the decisions made in individual cases (the adjudicative process) or by declaring general principles through a centralized authority that are to be applied in individual cases (through the rulemaking process). Administrative agencies have long had the unfettered authority to choose between the two methods. Although each method could identify the same solution to the legal issues that come before them, in practice, the two systems commonly settle upon different resolutions. Each system presents the underlying legal issue from a different cognitive perspective, highlighting and hiding different …

Professionalism As Interpretation, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, I defend the interpretive attitude of professionalism. Professionalism is a stance toward the law which accepts that a lawyer is not merely an agent of her client. Rather, in carrying out her client's lawful instructions, a lawyer has an obligation to apply the law to her client's situation with due regard to the meaning of legal norms, not merely their formal expression. Professionalism requires a lawyer acting in a representative capacity to respect the achievement represented by law, namely the final settlement of contested issues (both factual and normative) with a view toward enabling coordinated action in …

Misunderstanding Ability, Misallocating Responsibility, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In the Anglo-American legal tradition, people are responsible for damage caused by their failure to conform their conduct with that of the "reasonable person." With few exceptions, so long as one's conduct conforms to that of the reasonable person, then even if the conduct harms others, it does not create liability. Courts understand that the "reasonable person" is an idealized legal fiction but believe the construct to be a useful way to identify culpable conduct. For the reasonable-person test to be useful, courts must identify the characteristics of this reasonable person. As to cognitive and perceptual abilities, courts endow this …

Education And Interrogation: Comparing Brown And Miranda, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Ross Feldmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Although the Warren Court had its share of grand decisions, perhaps it should be known instead for its grand goals--particularly the goals of ending America's shameful history of segregation and of providing a broad array of constitutional rights to persons accused of committing crimes. Brown v. Board of Education and Miranda v. Arizona, the two most well-known decisions of the Warren Court (and possibly the two most well-known decisions in the history of the Supreme Court), best capture the Court's labor in the rocky fields of our nation's legal, political, and cultural life. In this Article, we explore certain parallels …

The Pluralistic Foundations Of The Religion Clauses, Steven H. Shiffrin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Contemporary Supreme Court interpretations suggest that the religion clauses are primarily rooted in the value of equality. The United States Supreme Court has argued that in the absence of discrimination against religion (or the presence of other constitutional values), there is no violation of the Free Exercise Clause when a statute inadvertently burdens religion. Similarly, equality values have played a strong role in the Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence. Many distinguished commentators have pointed to the equality focus and have argued that it gives insufficient attention to the value of religious liberty. Professor Shiffrin argues that these commentators are right in …

Common-Law Compulsory Counterclaim Rule: Creating Effective And Elegant Res Judicata Doctrine, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Even in the absence of an applicable statute or court rule, failure to assert an available counterclaim precludes bringing a subsequent action thereon if granting relief would nullify the judgment in the initial action. This so-called common-law compulsory counterclaim rule emerges from the intuitive principle of claim preclusion that a valid and final judgment generally precludes the defendant from later asserting mere defenses to the claim. The implicit extension of this idea is that once a plaintiff obtains a judgment, the defendant generally cannot bring a new action to undo the judgment by reopening the plaintiff’s claim and pushing those …

The Jurisprudence Of Enron: Professionalism As Interpretation, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Jurisprudence can seem like a formidably esoteric field, with conceptual arguments carried on at a high level of abstraction, seemingly remote from the concerns of practicing lawyers. In fact, it is impossible to ignore jurisprudence when thinking about the role of lawyers in the wave of financial accounting scandals exemplified by the collapse of Enron. The Enron case is not about ethics so much as it is about the interpretation and application of a complex scheme of legal norms to innovative business transactions. The lawyers believed they were taking a legitimate, albeit aggressive interpretive attitude toward the law, by structuring …