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Articles 1 - 22 of 22
Full-Text Articles in Law
Incitement, Insurrection, Impeachment: Inside The Second Trump Impeachment, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden
Incitement, Insurrection, Impeachment: Inside The Second Trump Impeachment, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden
School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events
No abstract provided.
Law School News: Whitehouse, Cicilline To Offer 'Inside View' Of 2nd Trump Impeachment Trial 02-17-2021, Michael M. Bowden
Law School News: Whitehouse, Cicilline To Offer 'Inside View' Of 2nd Trump Impeachment Trial 02-17-2021, Michael M. Bowden
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
Law Library Blog (November 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Law Library Blog (November 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Law Library Newsletters/Blog
No abstract provided.
Reconsidering Judicial Independence: Forty-Five Years In The Trenches And In The Tower, Stephen B. Burbank
Reconsidering Judicial Independence: Forty-Five Years In The Trenches And In The Tower, Stephen B. Burbank
All Faculty Scholarship
Trusting in the integrity of our institutions when they are not under stress, we focus attention on them both when they are under stress or when we need them to protect us against other institutions. In the case of the federal judiciary, the two conditions often coincide. In this essay, I use personal experience to provide practical context for some of the important lessons about judicial independence to be learned from the periods of stress for the federal judiciary I have observed as a lawyer and concerned citizen, and to provide theoretical context for lessons I have deemed significant as …
Rights And Retrenchment In The Trump Era, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Rights And Retrenchment In The Trump Era, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
All Faculty Scholarship
Our aim in this essay is to leverage archival research, data and theoretical perspectives presented in our book, Rights and Retrenchment: The Counterrevolution against Federal Litigation, as a means to illuminate the prospects for retrenchment in the current political landscape. We follow the scheme of the book by separately considering the prospects for federal litigation retrenchment in three lawmaking sites: Congress, federal court rulemaking under the Rules Enabling Act, and the Supreme Court. Although pertinent data on current retrenchment initiatives are limited, our historical data and comparative institutional perspectives should afford a basis for informed prediction. Of course, little in …
Deference To Deference: Examining The Relationship Between The Courts And The Political Branches Through Judicial Deference And The Chevron Doctrine, Christopher Yao
Deference To Deference: Examining The Relationship Between The Courts And The Political Branches Through Judicial Deference And The Chevron Doctrine, Christopher Yao
Honors Theses
Judicial review of agency rulemaking sits atop a nexus between all three branches of American government, the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Chevron v. NRDC (1984), a landmark case in administrative law, and its resulting doctrine of strong judicial deference to agencies in their interpretations of statute, are paradoxical in their creation. Although Chevron was decided at the height of Reagan-era deregulation, it greatly enhanced the power of administrative agencies, allowing them to reinterpret the meaning of their statutory directives as needed to justify changes to regulations with less scrutiny from the courts. It is only in recent years …
Judicial Innovation And Sexual Harassment Doctrine In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Holley Takersley
Judicial Innovation And Sexual Harassment Doctrine In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Holley Takersley
Laura Moyer
The determination that sexual harassment constituted “discrimination based on sex” under Title VII was first made by the lower federal courts, not Congress. Drawing from the literature on policy diffusion, this article examines the adoption of hostile work environment standards across the U.S. Courts of Appeals in the absence of controlling Supreme Court precedent. The results bolster recent findings about the influence of female judges on their male colleagues and suggest that in addition to siding with female plaintiffs, female judges also helped to shape legal rules that promoted gender equality in the workplace.
Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Sean Farhang
The program of regulation through private litigation that Democratic Congresses purposefully created starting in the late 1960s soon met opposition emanating primarily from the Republican party. In the long campaign for retrenchment that began in the Reagan administration, consequential reform proved difficult and ultimately failed in Congress. Litigation reformers turned to the courts and, in marked contrast to their legislative failure, were well-rewarded, achieving growing rates of voting support from an increasingly conservative Supreme Court on issues curtailing private enforcement under individual statutes. We also demonstrate that the judiciary’s control of procedure has been central to the campaign to retrench …
Courtroom To Classroom: Judicial Policymaking And Affirmative Action, Dylan Britton Saul
Courtroom To Classroom: Judicial Policymaking And Affirmative Action, Dylan Britton Saul
Political Science Honors Projects
The judicial branch, by exercising judicial review, can replace public policies with ones of their own creation. To test the hypothesis that judicial policymaking is desirable only when courts possess high capacity and necessity, I propose an original model incorporating six variables: generalism, bi-polarity, minimalism, legitimization, structural impediments, and public support. Applying the model to a comparative case study of court-sanctioned affirmative action policies in higher education and K-12 public schools, I find that a lack of structural impediments and bi-polarity limits the desirability of judicial race-based remedies in education. Courts must restrain themselves when engaging in such policymaking.
Federal Court Rulemaking And Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Federal Court Rulemaking And Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
All Faculty Scholarship
The purpose of this article is to advance understanding of the role that federal court rulemaking has played in litigation reform. For that purpose, we created original data sets that include (1) information about every member of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules who served from 1960 to 2013, and (2) every proposal for amending the Federal Rules that the Advisory Committee approved for consideration by the Standing Committee during the same period and that had implications for private enforcement. We show that, beginning in 1971, when a succession of Chief Justices appointed by Republican Presidents have chosen committee members, …
Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
All Faculty Scholarship
The program of regulation through private litigation that Democratic Congresses purposefully created starting in the late 1960s soon met opposition emanating primarily from the Republican party. In the long campaign for retrenchment that began in the Reagan administration, consequential reform proved difficult and ultimately failed in Congress. Litigation reformers turned to the courts and, in marked contrast to their legislative failure, were well-rewarded, achieving growing rates of voting support from an increasingly conservative Supreme Court on issues curtailing private enforcement under individual statutes. We also demonstrate that the judiciary’s control of procedure has been central to the campaign to retrench …
Punishment First: A Study Of Juvenile Pretrial Detention, Richard V. Foster, David Tanenhaus, Heather Lynn Lusty
Punishment First: A Study Of Juvenile Pretrial Detention, Richard V. Foster, David Tanenhaus, Heather Lynn Lusty
McNair Poster Presentations
How society and the legal system should respond to youth crime is a volatile issue. Much research exists on this topic broadly. A largely overlooked subset exists regarding the rights of juveniles in the United States who face pretrial confinement, specifically how juveniles accused of delinquency are treated by the courts. Delinquency or a delinquent act, in the context of this study, is “an act that would be considered a crime if committed by an adult.”7. Adults and children are processed by the courts differently, each with their own rights and court mandated procedures to follow. This report analyzes …
Recusal, Government Ethics, And Superannuated Constitutional Theory, Keith Swisher
Recusal, Government Ethics, And Superannuated Constitutional Theory, Keith Swisher
Keith Swisher
Something good and something bad happened recently in government and judicial ethics; no one has truly noticed yet for some reason. The Supreme Court all but banned First Amendment analysis as applied to recusal laws, both legislative and judicial. That, actually, is the good thing, or so I argue. The bad thing is that the Court, in doing so, used a geriatric approach to constitutional theory. The approach is unduly reverent of anything “old;” and old is not limited to the practices of the Founding Fathers, but also includes “traditional” practices within some undefined range. But what is old is …
Judicial Innovation And Sexual Harassment Doctrine In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Holley Takersley
Judicial Innovation And Sexual Harassment Doctrine In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Holley Takersley
Faculty Scholarship
The determination that sexual harassment constituted “discrimination based on sex” under Title VII was first made by the lower federal courts, not Congress. Drawing from the literature on policy diffusion, this article examines the adoption of hostile work environment standards across the U.S. Courts of Appeals in the absence of controlling Supreme Court precedent. The results bolster recent findings about the influence of female judges on their male colleagues and suggest that in addition to siding with female plaintiffs, female judges also helped to shape legal rules that promoted gender equality in the workplace.
Legal Ethics And Campaign Contributions: The Professional Responsibility To Pay For Justice, Keith Swisher
Legal Ethics And Campaign Contributions: The Professional Responsibility To Pay For Justice, Keith Swisher
Keith Swisher
Lawyers as johns, and judges as prostitutes? Across the United States, attorneys (“johns,” as the analogy goes) are giving campaign money to judges (“prostitutes”) and then asking those judges for legal favors in the form of rulings for themselves and their clients. Despite its pervasiveness, this practice has been rarely mentioned, much less theorized, from the attorneys’ ethical point of view. With the surge of money into judicial elections (e.g., Citizens United v. FEC), and the Supreme Court’s renewed interest in protecting justice from the corrupting effects of campaign money (e.g., Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co.), these conflicting currents …
On The Study Of Judicial Behaviors: Of Law, Politics, Science And Humility, Stephen B. Burbank
On The Study Of Judicial Behaviors: Of Law, Politics, Science And Humility, Stephen B. Burbank
All Faculty Scholarship
In this paper, which was prepared to help set the stage at an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Indiana (Bloomington) in March, I first briefly review what I take to be the key events and developments in the history of the study of judicial behavior in legal scholarship, with attention to corresponding developments in political science. I identify obstacles to cooperation in the past – such as indifference, professional self-interest and methodological imperialism -- as well as precedents for cross-fertilization in the future. Second, drawing on extensive reading in the political science and legal literatures concerning judicial behavior, …
All Judges Are Political—Except When They Are Not: Acceptable Hypocrisies And The Rule Of Law, Keith J. Bybee
All Judges Are Political—Except When They Are Not: Acceptable Hypocrisies And The Rule Of Law, Keith J. Bybee
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
This paper contains the introduction to the new book, All Judges Are Political—Except When They Are Not: Acceptable Hypocrisies and the Rule of Law (Stanford University Press, 2010).
The book begins with the observation that Americans are divided in their beliefs about whether courts operate on the basis of unbiased legal principle or of political interest. This division in public opinion in turn breeds suspicion that judges do not actually mean what they say, that judicial professions of impartiality are just fig leaves used to hide the pursuit of partisan purposes.
Comparing law to the practice of common courtesy, the …
Pro-Prosecution Judges: "Tough On Crime," Soft On Strategy, Ripe For Disqualification, Keith Swisher
Pro-Prosecution Judges: "Tough On Crime," Soft On Strategy, Ripe For Disqualification, Keith Swisher
Keith Swisher
In this Article, I take the most extensive look to date at pro-prosecution judges and ultimately advance the following, slightly scandalous claim: Particularly in our post-Caperton, political-realist world, “tough on crime” elective judges should recuse themselves from all criminal cases. The contextual parts to this claim are, in the main, a threefold description: (i) the "groundbreaking" Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal decision, its predecessors, and its progeny; (ii) the judicial ethics of disqualification; and (iii) empirical and anecdotal evidence of pro-prosecution (commonly called "tough on crime") campaigns and attendant electoral pressures. Building on this description and the work of empiricists, …
Administrative Law Agonistes, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger Noll, Barry R. Weingast, Daniel B. Rodriguez
Administrative Law Agonistes, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger Noll, Barry R. Weingast, Daniel B. Rodriguez
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Much Ado About Pluralities: Pride And Precedent Amidst The Cacophy Of Concurrences, And Re-Percolation After Rapanos, Donald J. Kochan, Melissa M. Berry, Matthew J. Parlow
Much Ado About Pluralities: Pride And Precedent Amidst The Cacophy Of Concurrences, And Re-Percolation After Rapanos, Donald J. Kochan, Melissa M. Berry, Matthew J. Parlow
Donald J. Kochan
Conflicts created by concurrences and pluralities in court decisions create confusion in law and lower court interpretation. Rule of law values require that individuals be able to identify controlling legal principles. That task is complicated when pluralities and concurrences contribute to the vagueness or uncertainty that leaves us wondering what the controlling rule is or attempting to predict what it will evolve to become. The rule of law is at least handicapped when continuity or confidence or confusion infuse our understanding of the applicable rules. This Article uses the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Rapanos v. United States to …
Judicial Accountability To The Past, Present, And Future: Precedent, Politics And Power, Stephen B. Burbank
Judicial Accountability To The Past, Present, And Future: Precedent, Politics And Power, Stephen B. Burbank
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Role Of Law In The Functioning Of Federal Systems, George A. Bermann
The Role Of Law In The Functioning Of Federal Systems, George A. Bermann
Faculty Scholarship
Federal systems are about the distribution of legal and political power, but law is not only one of the currencies of federalism, it is also one of federalism's most important supports; this chapter considers the role that law plays in establishing and enforcing the system by which both legal and political power are distributed within the USA and the EU. Bermann explores the various ways in which the courts can, and choose to, enforce the principles of federalism beyond the classical ‘political’ and ‘procedural’ safeguards provided by the institutional structures themselves and the constraints on the deliberative process. He describes …