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Full-Text Articles in Law

Stalking Secret Law: What Predicts Publication In The United States Courts Of Appeals , Deborah J. Merritt, James J. Brudney Jan 2001

Stalking Secret Law: What Predicts Publication In The United States Courts Of Appeals , Deborah J. Merritt, James J. Brudney

Faculty Scholarship

Nearly four fifths of federal court of appeals opinions are unpublished. For more than 25 years, judges and scholars have debated the wisdom and fairness of this body of "secret" law. The debate over unpublished opinions recently intensified when the Eighth Circuit held that the Constitution requires courts to give these opinions precedential value. Despite continued controversy over unpublished opinions, limited empirical evidence exists on the nature of those opinions. Working with an especially complete dataset of labor law opinions and multivariate statistical methods, we were able to identify the factors that predict publication. Some of those factors, such as …


Rational Recreation And The Law: The Transformation Of Popular Urban Leisure In Victorian England , Rachel Vorspan Jan 2000

Rational Recreation And The Law: The Transformation Of Popular Urban Leisure In Victorian England , Rachel Vorspan

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, Rachel Vorspan investigates the complex role played by the courts in the social and cultural transformation of Victorian England. Through focusing on judicial rulings in the recreational as well as political and industrial contexts she explains how the English judiciary played an important function in "rationalizing" the major institutions and practices of urban leisure


Discontinuous Tradition Of Sentencing Discretion: Koon's Failure To Recognize The Reshaping Of Judicial Discretion Under The Guidelines, The, Ian Weinstein Jan 1999

Discontinuous Tradition Of Sentencing Discretion: Koon's Failure To Recognize The Reshaping Of Judicial Discretion Under The Guidelines, The, Ian Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

Can a judge exercise discretion and follow the law? Some think it impossible, seeing discretion as the opposite of law. Others have harmonized the two ideas, viewing discretion as the exercise of judgment according to and within the bounds of the law. Those who decry judicial discretion urge legislatures to enact more specific laws and leave less room for the vice of inconsistent results. Those who defend discretion would channel it to achieve the virtue of individualized justice. The tension between individualization and uniformity in the law is often unnecessarily heightened by an inadequate analysis of judicial discretion. The exercise …


Tribute To Justice Stewart G. Pollock, A A Tribute To Justice Stewart G. Pollock, Howard M. Erichson Jan 1999

Tribute To Justice Stewart G. Pollock, A A Tribute To Justice Stewart G. Pollock, Howard M. Erichson

Faculty Scholarship

Stewart Pollock knows how to make a play. On his favorite kind of court - the kind with a net in the middle - he can set up the winning volley with a perfectly placed approach shot. On the court on which he served for the past twenty years, the New Jersey Supreme Court, Justice Pollock proved himself an equally gifted playmaker, earning a reputation as one who could forge consensus through judicial craftsmanship and common sense. Appellate judging is a team sport, though one would hardly know it by looking at recent United States Supreme Court cases, with all …


Judicial Hostility Toward Labor Unions--Applying The Social Background Model To A Celebrated Concern , James J. Brudney, Sara Schiavoni, Deborah J. Merritt Jan 1999

Judicial Hostility Toward Labor Unions--Applying The Social Background Model To A Celebrated Concern , James J. Brudney, Sara Schiavoni, Deborah J. Merritt

Faculty Scholarship

Brudney, Schiavoni, and Merritt address an important debate dividing lawyers And political scientists: To what extent do extra doctrinal factors such as political party, gender, and professional experience influence judicial decision making? They analyze an area of law, decisions interpreting the National Labor Relations Act, that has long been characterized by assertions of Judicial bias. By including every federal court of appeals decision applying the Act over a seven year period, and controlling for both deference to the administrative agency and differences among issues arising under the Act, the authors are able to identify previously undetected influences on judicial decision …


Multiracial Discourse: Racial Classifications In An Era Of Color-Blind Jurisprudence, Tanya K. Hernandez Jan 1998

Multiracial Discourse: Racial Classifications In An Era Of Color-Blind Jurisprudence, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes the widespread legal ramifications of the Multiracial Category Movement (MCM) and assesses whether the MCM's proposal effectively advances its stated goal of promoting racial equality. After analyzing the legal import of multiracial discourse, the Article determines that the MCM misperception of race and its fluidity inadvertently furthers the progression of color-blind jurisprudence in direct contravention of the MCM goal of promoting racial equality. Part I provides background and identifies the motivating forces behind the MCM as a color-blind movement. Part II critiques the MCM for its adverse effects upon racial justice efforts in furthering the manner in …


Of Labor Law And Dissonance Colloquy, James J. Brudney Jan 1997

Of Labor Law And Dissonance Colloquy, James J. Brudney

Faculty Scholarship

What accounts for the dissonance between the meaning of our national labor law, as decreed primarily by federal judges, and the social and economic realities of workplace relationships addressed by that law? In his darkly eloquent commentary, Professor Getman acknowledges that such dissonance is not unique to the law governing labor-management relations. Yet the courts' often mistrustful approach toward employee rights under the National Labor Relations Act ( NLRA" or "Act") has had a special impact. The NLRA emerged at a time of social turbulence, and was based on a recognized need to redress the fundamental inequality of bargaining power …


Tragic Irony Of American Federalism: National Sovereignty Versus State Sovereignty In Slavery And In Freedom, The Federalism In The 21st Century: Historical Perspectives, Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 1996

Tragic Irony Of American Federalism: National Sovereignty Versus State Sovereignty In Slavery And In Freedom, The Federalism In The 21st Century: Historical Perspectives, Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

A plurality on the Supreme Court seeks to establish a state-sovereignty based theory of federalism that imposes sharp limitations on Congress's legislative powers. Using history as authority, they admonish a return to the constitutional "first principles" of the Founders. These "first principles," in their view, attribute all governmental authority to "the consent of the people of each individual state, not the consent of the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole." Because the people of each state are the source of all governmental power, they maintain, "where the Constitution is silent about the exercise of a particular power-that is, …


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 …


Impeachment Exception To The Exclusionary Rules: Policies, Principles, And Politics, The , James L. Kainen Jan 1991

Impeachment Exception To The Exclusionary Rules: Policies, Principles, And Politics, The , James L. Kainen

Faculty Scholarship

The exclusionary evidence rules derived from the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments continue to play an important role in constitutional criminal procedure, despite the intense controversy that surrounds them. The primary justification for these rules has shifted from an "imperative of judicial integrity" to the "deterrence of police conduct that violates... [constitutional] rights." Regardless of the justification it uses for the rules' existence, the Supreme Court continues to limit their breadth "at the margin," when "the acknowledged costs to other values vital to a rational system of criminal justice" outweigh the deterrent effects of exclusion. The most notable limitation on …


Common-Law Background Of Nineteenth-Century Tort Law, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 1990

Common-Law Background Of Nineteenth-Century Tort Law, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

A century ago Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., examined the history of negligence in search of a general theory of tort. He concluded that from the earliest times in England, the basis of tort liability was fault, or the failure to exercise due care. Liability for an injury to another arose whenever the defendant failed "to use such care as a prudent man would use under the circumstances.” A decade ago Morton J. Horwitz reexamined the history of negligence for the same purpose and concluded that negligence was not originally understood as carelessness or fault. Rather, negligence meant "neglect or failure …


Foreword Report: Foreword, John D. Feerick, Cyrus Vance Jan 1989

Foreword Report: Foreword, John D. Feerick, Cyrus Vance

Faculty Scholarship

The last few years have been particularly bad for government integrity in New York. Since 1985, New York City has been rocked by a series of highly publicized scandals, arguably the worst since the days of Tammany Hall. One borough president was convicted of felonies; another committed suicide while under investigation; a congressman was recently convicted of bribery and extortion; former party chairmen in two boroughs were convicted of serious crimes; and a number of agency heads, judges, and lesser officials either have been convicted or forced to resign under a cloud of suspicion. And the City does not have …


Self-Love And The Judicial Power To Appoint A Special Prosecutor Symposium On Special Prosecutions And The Role Of The Independent Counsel, James A. Cohen Jan 1987

Self-Love And The Judicial Power To Appoint A Special Prosecutor Symposium On Special Prosecutions And The Role Of The Independent Counsel, James A. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

Judicial appointment of private attorneys as special prosecutors has occurred and is permitted to occur in a variety of contexts other than when the executive branch is faced with a potential or actual conflict of interest. Until recently, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and, of course, district courts within the Second Circuit, have interpreted Rule 42(b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to permit judicial appointment of a private attorney to prosecute conduct allegedly violative of a court order as criminal contempt. Courts have been most active in appointing private attorneys as special prosecutors in cases involving counterfeit …


Revolutionary Constitutionalism In The Era Of The Civil War And Reconstruction , Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 1986

Revolutionary Constitutionalism In The Era Of The Civil War And Reconstruction , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

The meaning and scope of the fourteenth amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 remain among the most controversial issues in American constitutional law. Professor Kaczorowski contends that the issues have generated more controversy than they warrant, in part because scholars analyzing the legislative history of the amendment and statute have approached their task with preconceptions reflecting twentieth century legal concerns. He argues that the most important question for the framers was whether national or state governments possessed primary authority to determine and secure the status and rights of American citizens. Relying on records of the congressional debates as …


Nineteenth Century Interpretations Of The Federal Contract Clause: The Transformation From Vested To Substantive Rights Against The State , James L. Kainen Jan 1982

Nineteenth Century Interpretations Of The Federal Contract Clause: The Transformation From Vested To Substantive Rights Against The State , James L. Kainen

Faculty Scholarship

During the early nineteenth century, the contract clause served as the fundamental source of federally protected rights against the state. Yet the Supreme Court gradually eased many of the restrictions on state power enforced in the contract clause cases while developing the doctrine of substantive due process after the Civil War. By the end of the nineteenth century, the due process clause had usurped the place of the contract clause as the centerpiece in litigation about individual rights. Most analyses of the history of federally protected rights against the state have emphasized the rise of substantive due process to the …


Judicial Overload: The Reasons And The Remedies , Maria Marcus Jan 1978

Judicial Overload: The Reasons And The Remedies , Maria Marcus

Faculty Scholarship

Animosity towards lawyers, perennial in our social history long before Watergate, parallels a contradictory and equally persistent belief in judges as problem-solvers for a variety of personal, economic, educational and political ills. An increasing number of litigants are bringing to the courts not only the class of disputes that has been the traditional fare of judicial decision-making, but also an array of issues that were formerly resolved in private meetings, at hospitals, in schools, or at home. The causes of this explosion of lawsuits and the possible buffers to an eventual implosion in our judicial system will be discussed below


Searching For The Intent Of The Framers Of Fourteenth Amendment , Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 1972

Searching For The Intent Of The Framers Of Fourteenth Amendment , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

IN 1946 JUSTICE HUGO BLACK DECLARED that one of the objects of the fourteenth amendment was to apply the Bill of Rights to the States. He was confident that an analysis of the intent of the framers of the amendment would support his assertion. A few years later the Supreme Court requested such an investigation, but when the analysis was made and the results presented to it, the Supreme Court concluded that the framers' intent could not be determined. The uncertainty surrounding the intent of the framers of the fourteenth amendment has had profound implications on the application of that …