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Full-Text Articles in Law
Packing And Unpacking State Courts, Marin K. Levy
Packing And Unpacking State Courts, Marin K. Levy
Faculty Scholarship
When it comes to court packing, questions of “should” and “can” are inextricably intertwined. The conventional wisdom has long been that federal court packing is something the President and Congress simply cannot do. Even though the Constitution’s text does not directly prohibit expanding or contracting the size of courts for political gain, many have argued that there is a longstanding norm against doing so, stemming from a commitment to judicial independence and separation of powers. And so (the argument goes), even though the political branches might otherwise be tempted to add or subtract seats to change the Court’s ideological makeup, …
Courts Of Good And Ill Repute: Garoupa And Ginsburg’S Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory, Tracey E. George, G. Mitu Gulati
Courts Of Good And Ill Repute: Garoupa And Ginsburg’S Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory, Tracey E. George, G. Mitu Gulati
Faculty Scholarship
Nuno Garoupa and Tom Ginsburg have published an ambitious book that seeks to account for the great diversity of judicial systems based, in part, on how courts are designed to marshal the power of a high public opinion of the judiciary. Judges, the book posits, care deeply about their reputations both inside and outside the courts. Courts are designed to capitalize on judges’ desire to maximize their reputation, and judges’ existing stock of reputation can affect the design of the courts which they serve. We find much to like in this book, ranging from its intriguing and ambitious positive claims …
Supremes, Jennifer L. Behrens
A Winner’S Curse?: Promotions From The Lower Federal Courts, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, Eric A. Posner
A Winner’S Curse?: Promotions From The Lower Federal Courts, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, Eric A. Posner
Faculty Scholarship
The standard model of judicial behavior suggests that judges primarily care about deciding cases in ways that further their political ideologies. But judicial behavior seems much more complex. Politicians who nominate people for judgeships do not typically tout their ideology (except sometimes using vague code words), but they always claim that the nominees will be competent judges. Moreover, it stands to reason that voters would support politicians who appoint competent as well as ideologically compatible judges. We test this hypothesis using a dataset consisting of promotions to the federal circuit courts. We find, using a set of objective measures of …
Judging Justice On Appeal, Marin K. Levy
Judicial Attention As A Scarce Resource: A Preliminary Defense Of How Judges Allocate Time Across Cases In The Federal Courts Of Appeals, Marin K. Levy
Faculty Scholarship
Federal appellate judges no longer have the time to hear argument and draft opinions in all of their cases. The average annual filing per active judgeship now stands at 330 filed cases per year — more than four times what it was sixty years ago. In response, judges have adopted case management strategies that effectively involve spending significantly less time on certain classes of cases than on others. Various scholars have decried this state of affairs, suggesting that the courts have created a “bifurcated” system of justice with “separate and unequal tracks.” These reformers propose altering the relevant constraints of …
In The Absence Of Scrutiny: Narratives Of Probable Cause, Mitu Gulati, Jack Knight, David F. Levi
In The Absence Of Scrutiny: Narratives Of Probable Cause, Mitu Gulati, Jack Knight, David F. Levi
Faculty Scholarship
This Article reports on a set of roughly thirty interviews with federal magistrate judges. The focus of the interviews was the impact of the Supreme Court case, United States v. Leon, on the behavior of magistrate judges. Leon, famously, put in place the "good faith" exception for faulty warrants that were obtained by the officers in good faith. The insertion of this exception diminished significantly the incentive for defendants to challenge problematic warrant grants. That effect, in turn, could have diminished the incentive for magistrate judge scrutiny of the warrants at the front end of the process. We do not …
Legitimacy And Lawmaking: A Tale Of Three International Courts, Laurence R. Helfer, Karen J. Alter
Legitimacy And Lawmaking: A Tale Of Three International Courts, Laurence R. Helfer, Karen J. Alter
Faculty Scholarship
This article explores the relationship between the legitimacy of international courts and expansive judicial lawmaking. We compare lawmaking by three regional integration courts — the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ), and the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (ECCJ). These courts have similar jurisdictional grants and access rules, yet each has behaved in a strikingly different way when faced with opportunities to engage in expansive judicial lawmaking. The ECJ is the most activist, but its audacious legal doctrines have been assimilated as part of the court’s legitimate authority. The ATJ and ECOWAS have been more …
Legal Integration In The Andes: Law-Making By The Andean Tribunal Of Justice, Laurence R. Helfer, Karen J. Alter
Legal Integration In The Andes: Law-Making By The Andean Tribunal Of Justice, Laurence R. Helfer, Karen J. Alter
Faculty Scholarship
The Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ) is a copy of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), and the third most active international court. This article reviews our findings based on an original coding of all ATJ preliminary rulings from 1984 to 2007, and over forty interviews in the region. We then compare Andean and European jurisprudence in three key areas: whether the tribunals treat the founding integration treaties as constitutions for their respective communities, whether the ATJ and ECJ have implied powers for community institutions that are not expressly enumerated in the founding treaties, and how the tribunals conceive of …
Evaluating Judges And Judicial Institutions: Reorienting The Perspective, Mitu Gulati, David E. Klein, David F. Levi
Evaluating Judges And Judicial Institutions: Reorienting The Perspective, Mitu Gulati, David E. Klein, David F. Levi
Faculty Scholarship
Empirical scholarship on judges, judging, and judicial institutions, a staple in political science, is becoming increasingly popular in law schools. We propose that this scholarship can be improved and enhanced by greater collaboration between empirical scholars, legal theorists, and the primary subjects of the research, the judges. We recently hosted a workshop that attempted to move away from the conventional mode of involving judges and theorists in empirical research, where they serve as commentators on empirical studies that they often see as reductionist and mis-focused. Instead, we had the judges and theorists set the discussion agenda for the empiricists by …
The Costs Of Judging Judges By The Numbers, Marin K. Levy, Kate Stith, Jose A. Cabranes
The Costs Of Judging Judges By The Numbers, Marin K. Levy, Kate Stith, Jose A. Cabranes
Faculty Scholarship
This essay discredits current empirical models that are designed to “judge” or rank appellate judges, and then assesses the harms of propagating such models. First, the essay builds on the discussion of empirical models by arguing that (1) the judicial virtues that the legal empiricists set out to measure have little bearing on what actually makes for a good judge; and (2) even if they did, the empiricists’ chosen variables have not measured those virtues accurately. The essay then concludes that by generating unreliable claims about the relative quality of judges, these studies mislead both decision-makers and the public, degrade …
Bias In Judicial Citations: A Window Into The Behavior Of Judges?, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi
Bias In Judicial Citations: A Window Into The Behavior Of Judges?, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi
Faculty Scholarship
This article tests for the presence of bias in judicial citations within federal circuit court opinions. Our findings suggest bias along three dimensions. First, judges base outside-circuit citation decisions in part on the political party of the cited judge. Judges tend to cite judges of the opposite political party less often than would be expected considering the fraction of the total pool of opinions attributable to judges of the opposite political party. Second, judges are more likely to engage in biased citation practices in certain high-stakes situations. These high-stakes situations include opinions dealing with certain subject matters (such as individual …
Courts, Congress, And Public Policy, Part I: The Fda, The Courts, And The Regulation Of Tobacco, Jeffrey R. Lax, Mathew D. Mccubbins
Courts, Congress, And Public Policy, Part I: The Fda, The Courts, And The Regulation Of Tobacco, Jeffrey R. Lax, Mathew D. Mccubbins
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Conditions For Judicial Independence, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger Noll, Barry R. Weingast
Conditions For Judicial Independence, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger Noll, Barry R. Weingast
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Courts, Congress, And Public Policy, Part Ii: The Impact Of The Reapportionment Revolution On Congress And State Legislatures, Jeffrey R. Lax, Mathew D. Mccubbins
Courts, Congress, And Public Policy, Part Ii: The Impact Of The Reapportionment Revolution On Congress And State Legislatures, Jeffrey R. Lax, Mathew D. Mccubbins
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Checks And Balances: Congress And The Federal Court, Paul D. Carrington
Checks And Balances: Congress And The Federal Court, Paul D. Carrington
Faculty Scholarship
This essay was published as a chapter in Reforming the Supreme Court: Term Limits for Justices (Paul D. Carrington & Roger Cramton eds, Carolina Academic Press 2006). Its point is that Congress has long neglected its duty implicit in the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers to constrain the tendency of the Court, the academy and the legal profession to inflate the Court's status and power. The term "life tenure" is a significant source of a sense of royal status having not only the adverse cultural effects noted by Nagel, but also doleful effects on the administration and enforcement of …
The Norm Of Prior Judicial Experience And Its Consequences For Career Diversity On The U.S. Supreme Court, Lee Epstein, Jack Knight, Andrew D. Martin
The Norm Of Prior Judicial Experience And Its Consequences For Career Diversity On The U.S. Supreme Court, Lee Epstein, Jack Knight, Andrew D. Martin
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Specialized Trial Courts: Concentrating Expertise On Fact, Arti K. Rai
Specialized Trial Courts: Concentrating Expertise On Fact, Arti K. Rai
Faculty Scholarship
In the absence of a specialized patent trial court with expertise in fact-finding, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit often reviews de novo the many factual questions that pervade patent law. De novo review of fact by an appellate court is problematic. In the area of patent law, as in other areas of law, there are sound institutional justifications for the conventional division of labor that gives trial courts primary responsibility for questions of law. This Article identifies the problems created by de novo appellate review of fact and argues for the creation of a specialized trial court …
Marshall’S Questions, Walter E. Dellinger Iii, H. Jefferson Powell
Marshall’S Questions, Walter E. Dellinger Iii, H. Jefferson Powell
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.