Law Commons^™

Convictions Of Innocent People With Intellectual Disability, Sheri Johnson, John H. Blume, Amelia Courtney Hritz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held that executing individuals with intellectual disability violates the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment. In addition to concerns over culpability and deterrence, the Court’s judgment in Atkins was informed by the heightened “risk of wrongful execution” faced by persons with intellectual disability. This essay explores that question both anecdotally and quantitatively, hoping to illuminate the causes of wrongful conviction of persons with intellectual disability. We provide examples from our experiences in the Cornell Death Penalty Clinic and cases brought to our attention by defense attorneys. We also present data …

Agency And Insanity, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article offers an unorthodox theory of insanity. According to the traditional theory, insanity is a cognitive or volitional incapacity arising from a mental disease or defect. As an alternative to the traditional theory, some commentators have proposed that insanity is an especially debilitating form of irrationality. Each of these theories faces fair-minded objections. In contrast to these theories, this Article proposes that a person is insane if and because he lacks a sense of agency. The theory of insanity it defends might therefore be called the lost-agency theory.

According to the lost-agency theory, a person lacks a sense of …

State Criminal Appeals Revealed, Michael Heise, Nancy J. King, Nicole A. Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Every state provides appellate review of criminal judgments, yet little research examines which factors correlate with favorable outcomes for defendants who seek appellate relief. To address this scholarly gap, this paper exploits the Survey of Criminal Appeals in State Courts (2010) dataset, recently released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for State Courts (hereinafter, “NCSC Study”). The NCSC Study is the first and only publicly available national dataset on state criminal appeals and includes unprecedented information from every state court in the nation with jurisdiction to review criminal judgments. We focus on two subpools of state …

Unprecedented? Judicial Confirmation Battles And The Search For A Usable Past, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Recent years have seen intense conflicts over federal judicial appointments, culminating in Senate Republicans' 2016 refusal to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats' 2017 filibuster of Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the same seat, and Republicans' triggering of the "nuclear option" to confirm Gorsuch. At every stage in this process, political actors on both sides have accused one another of "unprecedented" behavior.

This Essay, written for the 2017 Supreme Court issue of the Harvard Law Review, examines these disputes and their histories, with an eye toward understanding the ways in which discussions of (un)precedentedness …

From No Child Left Behind To Every Student Succeeds: Back To A Future For Education Federalism, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When passed in 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act represented the federal government’s most dramatic foray into the elementary and secondary public school policymaking terrain. While critics emphasized the Act’s overreliance on standardized testing and its reduced school district and state autonomy, proponents lauded the Act’s goal to close the achievement gap between middle- and upper-middle-class students and students historically ill served by their schools. Whatever structural changes the No Child Left Behind Act achieved, however, were largely undone in 2015 by the Every Student Succeeds Act, which repositioned significant federal education policy control in state governments. From a …

Monsanto Lecture: The Complicated Business Of State Supreme Court Elections: An Empirical Perspective, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Proponents of judicial elections and related campaign activities emphasize existing First Amendment jurisprudence as well as similarities linking publicly elected state judges and other publicly-elected state officials. Opponents focus on judicial campaign contributions’ corrosive effects, including their potential to unduly influence judicial outcomes. Using a comprehensive data set of 2,345 business-related cases decided by state supreme courts across all fifty states between 2010–12, judicial election critics, including Professor Joanna Shepherd, emphasize the potential for bias and find that campaign contributions from business sources to state supreme court judicial candidates corresponded with candidates’ pro-business votes as justices. While Shepherd’s main findings …

Signing Statements And Presidentializing Legislative History, John M. De Figueiredo, Edward H. Stiglitz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Presidents often attach statements to the bills they sign into law, purporting to celebrate, construe, or object to provisions in the statute. Though long a feature of U.S. lawmaking, the President has avowedly attempted to use these signing statements as tool of strategic influence over judicial decisionmaking since the 1980s—as a way of creating “presidential legislative history” to supplement and, at times, supplant the traditional congressional legislative history conventionally used by the courts to interpret statutes. In this Article, we examine a novel dataset of judicial opinion citations to presidential signing statements to conduct the most comprehensive empirical examination of …

Should Compensated Surrogacy Be Permitted Or Prohibited?, Cornell Law School. International Human Rights Policy Advocacy Clinic, National Law University, Delhi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Surrogacy provides a way for infertile people, as well as same-sex couples and single individuals, to become parents. Surrogacy is permitted in most states in the United States. In New York, however, surrogacy contracts are void and unenforceable according to a 1992 law. The Child-Parent Security Act of 2017 (the CPSA) would repeal this prohibition, make surrogacy agreements enforceable, and permit surrogates to be compensated for the gestational care they provide. In this report, we review the landscape of state laws in the United States, laws around the world, moral concerns that led to the adoption of the current New …

Philosophical Legal Ethics: An Affectionate History, David Luban, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The modern subject of theoretical legal ethics began in the 1970s. This brief history distinguishes two waves of theoretical writing on legal ethics. The "First Wave" connects the subject to moral philosophy and focuses on conflicts between ordinary morality and lawyers' role morality, while the "Second Wave" focuses instead on the role legal representation plays in maintaining and fostering a pluralist democracy. We trace the emergence of the First Wave to the larger social movements of the 1960s and 1970s; in the Conclusion, we speculate about possible directions for a Third Wave of theoretical legal ethics, based in behavioral ethics, …

Did Russian Cyber Interference In The 2016 Election Violate International Law?, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When it was revealed that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by hacking into the email system of the Democratic National Committee and releasing its emails, international lawyers were divided over whether the cyber-attack violated international law. President Obama seemingly went out of his way to describe the attack as a mere violation of “established international norms of behavior,” though some international lawyers were more willing to describe the cyber-attack as a violation of international law. However, identifying the exact legal norm that was contravened turns out to be harder than it might otherwise appear. To …

Comment Data From Ceri, 4-3-2017, Cornell Erulemaking Initiative

Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative Publications

This file contains comment data from ten live policy discussions held on RegulationRoom.org and SmartParticipation.com from May 2010 to November 2016. A cross-disciplinary group of Cornell researchers, the Cornell eRulemaking Initiative (CeRI), created the experimental platforms for public participation in policymaking processes. CeRI used selected live federal agency rulemakings and other policy discussions to discover how the design and process of online engagement can support public discussion that is informed, inclusive and insightful.

Retiring Forum Non Conveniens, Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When it comes to transnational litigation in the federal courts, it is time to retire the doctrine of forum non conveniens. The doctrine, which allows judges to decline jurisdiction in cases they believe would be better heard in foreign courts, is meant to promote international comity and protect defendant fairness. But it is not well-designed for the former purpose, and given recent developments at the Supreme Court, it is dangerously redundant when it comes to the latter. This Article seeks to demythologize forum non conveniens, to question its continuing relevance, and to encourage the courts and Congress to narrow its …

Barriers To Participatory Erulemaking Platform Adoption: Lessons Learned From Regulationroom, Mary J. Newhart, Joshua D. Brooks

Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative Publications

Rulemaking, the process through which United States (U.S.) federal government agencies develop major health, safety and economic regulations, was an early target of electronic government (e-government) efforts. Because it was an established decision-making process that had substantial formal requirements of transparency, public participation and responsiveness it seemed a perfect target for technology-supported participatory policymaking. It was believed that new technologies could transform rulemaking, increasing its democratic legitimacy and improving its policy outcomes by broadening the range of participating individuals and groups (Brandon and Carlitz, 2003; Coglianese, 2004; Noveck, 2004). Despite the promise of a more deliberative and democratic process, rulemaking …

Columbia University And Incarcerated Worker Labor Unions Under The National Labor Relations Act, Kara Goad

Cornell Law Library Prize for Exemplary Student Research Papers

Kara Goad’s research examines the forms and terms of labor that incarcerated workers perform in American prisons, seeking to demonstrate that labor law could provide potential remedies for work-related grievances.

Goad’s research includes traditional statutory and case law analysis along with examinations of prison statistics, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decisions and other administrative law materials relating to prisons and labor law. She uses her findings lay out a path for incarcerated workers to potentially unionize under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

Truth Or Dare: A Framework For Analyzing Credibility In Children Seeking Asylum, Karen Smeda

Cornell Law Library Prize for Exemplary Student Research Papers

U.S. border agents detained at least 52,000 unaccompanied minors from only four Central American countries—Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras—in 2014, while 95,000 unaccompanied children sought asylum in Europe in 2015. Given the ongoing turmoil in various parts of the world, these numbers will likely rise. Children are narrowly escaping their native countries. With little help available from legal counsel and little time to gather supporting evidence, more children are relying on the gamble of a positive credibility assessment in an asylum application.

The stakes are high—either a new life in the United States, or probable fatality at home if …

The French Veil Ban: A Transnational Legal Feminist Approach, Sital Kalantry

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

After the gruesome terrorist attack that killed eighty-four people in Nice, many beach towns in France began to ban Muslim women from wearing the "burkini" on beaches. The burkini, which was created by an Australian designer, is modest swimwear that covers the body and hair. The Nice attack occurred on the heels of a series of attacks in France. The timing of the French burkini ban suggests it was targeting Muslims due to the anger over the attacks. The argument that burkinis are not hygienic is a fig leaf for other more pernicious justifications. Others argue that religious garb generally …

The Pre-Furman Juvenile Death Penalty In South Carolina: Young Black Life Was Cheap, Sheri Lynn Johnson, John H. Blume, Hannah L. Freedman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Capital punishment in this country, and in South Carolina, has its roots in racial subjugation, stereotype, and animosity. The extreme disparities we report here have dampened due to the combined effects of decreasing levels of open racial antagonism, the reforms of the modem death penalty, including categorical exemptions for juveniles and person with intellectual disabilities and prohibition of the imposition of the death penalty for the crime of rape, and the (small) increase in diversity in capital juries. But dampened does not mean eradicated. Significant disparities in the administration of capital punishment persist today. The color of a defendant's skin …

Parochial Procedure, Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The federal courts are often accused of being too parochial, favoring U.S. parties over foreigners and U.S. law over relevant foreign or international law. According to what this Article terms the “parochial critique,” the courts’ U.S.-centrism generates unnecessary friction with allies, regulatory conflict, and access-to-justice gaps. This parochialism is assumed to reflect the preferences of individual judges: persuade judges to like international law and transnational cases better, the standard story goes, and the courts will reach more cosmopolitan results.

This Article challenges that assumption. I argue instead that parochial doctrines can develop even in the absence of parochial judges. Our …

Law In Hiding: Market Principles In The Global Legal Order, Odette Lienau

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Standing in the background of the global legal order are a range of what might be called “market principles” or “market givens” -- collective presentations or beliefs about how markets work -- which are treated as objective descriptions at a particular time and place. This Article argues that such market givens should be understood as a kind of “law in hiding,” shaping the policy space available to states and other actors and affecting global legal developments in important but unrecognized ways. Drawing on examples from global financial law, rules on capital mobility, and sovereign debt practices, I demonstrate how market …

When Tenure Standards Are Wrong, James Grimmelmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

If It Walks Like Systematic Exclusion And Quacks Like Systematic Exclusion: Follow-Up On Removal Of Women And African-Americans In Jury Selection In South Carolina Capital Cases, 1997-2014, Ann M. Eisenberg, Amelia Courtney Hritz, Caisa Elizabeth Royer, John H. Blume

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article builds on an earlier study analyzing bases and rates of removal of women and African-American jurors in a set of South Carolina capital cases decided between 1997 and 2012. We examine and assess additional data from new perspectives in order to establish a more robust, statistically strengthened response to the original research question: whether, and if so, why, prospective women and African-American jurors were disproportionately removed in different stages of jury selection in a set of South Carolina capital cases.

The study and the article it builds on add to decades of empirical research exploring the impacts (or …

Objects Of Art; Objects Of Property, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Seemingly worlds apart, art and the law of property in fact share much in common. Some of this shared space is obvious, the result of their intersection through property law's protection and regulation of art. But another aspect of their commonality is considerably less obvious. Both rely, implicitly and in ways not always acknowledged, on assumptions about objects in the world-thing-ness. That is, both have relied, or traditionally have done so, on certain assumptions about the nature of objects-the objects of art and the objects of property-and the upshot of those assumptions is that those objects are characterized by thing-ness, …

The Supreme Court’S Application Of 'Ordinary Contract Principles' To The Issue Of The Duration Of Retiree Healthcare Benefits: Perpetuating The Interpretation/Gap-Filling Quagmire, Robert A. Hillman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The United States Supreme Court purported to apply "ordinary contract principles" in its decision reversing the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in M&G Polymers USA v. Tackett . The Sixth Circuit had held that plaintiffs, retired employees of M&G, were entitled to lifetime healthcare benefits under their union's agreement with M&G. According to the Supreme Court, the Sixth Circuit wrongly relied on a false set of "inferences" established in International Union v. Yard-Man, Inc. to find that "in the absence of extrinsic evidence to the contrary, the provisions of [the collective bargaining agreement] indicated an intent to vest …

Law-And-Economics Approaches To Labour And Employment Law, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article describes the distinctive approaches that law and economics takes to labour and employment law. The article distinguishes between ‘economic analysis of law’ and ‘law and economics’, with the former applying economic models to generally simple legal rules while the latter blends messier institutional detail with legal and economic thought. The article describes three eras of law-and-economics scholarship, recognizing that economics teaches that markets work and markets fail. Era One emphasizes that labour laws and mandatory employment rules might reduce overall social welfare by preventing a benefit or term from going to the party that values it most highly. …

Incomprehensible Discrimination, James Grimmelmann, Daniel Westreich

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The following (fictional) opinion of the (fictional) Zootopia Supreme Court of the (fictional) State of Zootopia is designed to highlight one particularly interesting issue raised by Solon Barocas and Andrew Selbst in Big Data’s Disparate Impact. Their article discusses many ways in which data-intensive algorithmic methods can go wrong when they are used to make employment and other sensitive decisions. Our vignette deals with one in particular: the use of algorithmically derived models that are both predictive of a legitimate goal and have a disparate impact on some individuals. Like Barocas and Selbst, we think it raises fundamental questions about …

Pain And Suffering Damages In Personal Injury Cases: An Empirical Study, Yun-Chien Chang, Theodore Eisenberg, Tsung Hsien Li, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Many jurisdictions award pain and suffering damages, yet it is difficult for judges or juries to quantify pain. Several jurisdictions, such as California, cap pain and suffering damages or other noneconomic damages, and legal scholars have proposed ways to control such damages. Reforms and proposals, however, have been based on limited empirical evidence. It remains an open question whether components of economic damages explain pain and suffering damages. This study employs a unique dataset of Taiwan district court cases and uses detailed information on the components of pecuniary damages. Pain and suffering damages highly correlate with the plaintiff’s medical expenses, …

Sixth Circuit Undermines Labor Statute, Angela B. Cornell

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Putting Distribution First, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

It is common for normative legal theorists, economists and other policy analysts to conduct and communicate their work mainly in maximizing terms. They take the maximization of welfare, for example, or of wealth or utility, to be primary objectives of legislation and public policy. Few if any of these theorists seem to notice, however, that any time we speak explicitly of maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing other things and of equalizing yet other things. Fewer still seem to recognize that we effectively define ourselves by reference to that which we distribute and equalize. For it is in …

Forces Of Federalism, Safety Nets, And Waivers, Edward H. Stiglitz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Inequality is the defining feature of our times. Many argue it calls for a policy response, yet the most obvious policy responses require legislative action. And if inequality is the defining feature of our times, partisan acrimony and gridlock are the defining features of the legislature. So being, it is worth considering what role administrative agencies, and administrative law, might play in ameliorating or exacerbating economic inequality. Here, I focus on American safety net programs, many of which are joint operations between federal administrative agencies and state governments. In this context, a central mode of bureaucratic policy innovation comes in …

Limiting The Last-In-Time Rule For Judgments, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

A troublesome problem arises when there are two binding but inconsistent judgments: Say the plaintiff loses on a claim (or issue) in the defendant’s state and then, in a second action back home, wins on the same claim (or issue). American law generally holds that the later judgment is the one entitled to preclusive effects. In the leading article on the problem, then-Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested that our last-in-time rule should not apply if the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the second court’s decision against giving full faith and credit. Although that suggestion is unsound, the last-in-time rule …