Law Commons^™

The Courtroom Technology Wars Are Here!, Fredric I. Lederer

Fredric I. Lederer

No abstract provided.

Technology Augmented Litigation--Systemic Revolution, Fredric I. Lederer

Fredric I. Lederer

This article reviews key aspects of high technology litigation, including technology augmented court records, two-way video arraignment and testimony, and technology based evidence display, and posits some of the critical jurisprudential and pragmatic issues posed by the use of such technologies

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

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 …

Comparison Excluding Commitments: Incommensurability, Adjudication, And The Unnoticed Example Of Trade Disputes, Sungjoon Cho, Richard Warner

Sungjoon Cho

An Approach To The Regulation Of Spanish Banking Foundations, Miguel Martínez

Miguel Martínez

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the legal framework governing banking foundations as they have been regulated by Spanish Act 26/2013, of December 27th, on savings banks and banking foundations. Title 2 of this regulation addresses a construct that is groundbreaking for the Spanish legal system, still of paramount importance for the entire financial system insofar as these foundations become the leading players behind certain banking institutions given the high interest that foundations hold in the share capital of such institutions.

The Rise Of Judicial Governance In The Supreme Court Of India, Manoj Mate

Manoj S. Mate

Efficient Contextualism, Juliet P. Kostritsky, Peter M. Gerhart

Juliet P Kostritsky

This Article recommends an economic methodology of contract interpretation that enables the court to maximize the benefits of exchange for the parties and thereby enhance the institution of contracting. We recommend a methodology that asks the parties to identify the determinants of a surplus maximizing interpretation so that the court can determine whether the determinants raise issues that need to be tried. We thus avoid the false choice between textualist and contextualist methodologies, while allowing the parties and the court to avoid costly litigation. For textualist courts, our methodology helps the judge determine when the terms the parties used are …

Halliburton, Basic And Fraud On The Market: The Need For A New Paradigm, Charles W. Murdock

Charles W. Murdock

Summary: Halliburton, Basic and Fraud on the Market: The Need for a New Paradigm

If defrauded securities plaintiffs cannot bring a class-action lawsuit, there often will be no effective remedy since the amount at stake for individual plaintiffs is not sufficient to warrant the substantial costs of litigation. To surmount the problem of individualized reliance and establish commonality, federal courts for twenty-five years have been employing the Basic fraud-on-the-market theory which posits that, in an efficient market, investors rely on the integrity of the market price.

While class certification at one time was a matter of course, today it is …

Costs Of Codification, Dru Stevenson

Dru Stevenson

Between the Civil War and World War II, every state and the federal government shifted toward codified versions of their statutes. Academia has so far ignored the systemic effects of this dramatic change. For example, the consensus view in the academic literature about rules and standards has been that precise rules present higher enactment costs for legislatures than would general standards, while vague standards present higher information costs for courts and citizens than do rules. Systematic codification – featuring hierarchical format and numbering, topical arrangement, and cross-references – inverts this relationship, lowering transaction costs for legislatures and increasing information costs …

Revisitando El Debate Sobre Los Abogados Integrantes Y La Independencia Del Poder Judicial, Sergio Verdugo Sverdugor@Udd.Cl, Carla Ottone

Sergio Verdugo R.

Se revisa el debate sobre la conveniencia del sistema de reemplazo judicial basado en los abogados integrantes y se analiza especialmente la crítica que sostiene que ellos no son independientes de los intereses del Poder Ejecutivo. Para ello, se examina el comportamiento de votación de los abogados integrantes de la tercera sala de la Corte Suprema en causas de indemnización de perjuicios donde el Fisco es parte, y se compara con la manera en que votan los ministros titulares. Se concluye que casi todos los jueces de esta sala votan de una manera generalmente favorable al interés fiscal, aunque esta …

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 …

Seeing The Forest Through The Trees: Thinking Critically About Mental Health Courts, John A. Bozza

John A Bozza

The almost universal acceptance of the problem-solving court concept by both the courts and the academic community provides a good example of the hazards of the bandwagon effect on the de-velopment of public policy. The proponents of therapeutic juris-prudence have successfully promoted the adoption of these pro-grams by repeating and then having others repeat a mantra of success that grossly belies reality and ignores the compelling is-sues they raise. Not surprisingly, this has led to the develop-ment of an extensive bureaucracy fueled almost entirely by fed-eral money and encouraged by cheerleaders entrenched in the self-serving subculture of therapeutic jurisprudence. Unfortunately, …

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 …

The Greatest Legal Movie Of All Time: Proclaiming The Real Winner, Grant H. Morris

Grant H Morris

In August, 2008, the ABA Journal featured an article entitled: “The 25 Greatest Legal Movies.” A panel of experts, described in the article as “12 prominent lawyers who teach film or are connected to the business” selected “the best movies ever made about lawyers and the law.” This distinguished panel ranked its twenty-five top legal movies, choosing To Kill a Mockingbird as its number one legal movie. The panel also selected twenty-five films as “honorable mentions,” which were listed in alphabetical order. In my opinion, however, the real greatest legal movie of all time was not selected as the winner. …

Unifying The Field Of Comparative Judicial Politics: Towards A General Theory Of Judicial Behaviour, Arthur Dyevre

Arthur Dyevre

The field of judicial politics had long been neglected by political scientists outside the United States. But the past twenty years have witnessed considerable change. There is now a large body of scholarship on European courts and judges. And judicial politics is on its way to become a sub-field of comparative politics in its own right. Examining the models used in the literature, this article suggests that the geographical convergence is also bringing about theoretical convergence. One manifestation of theoretical convergence is that models of judicial decision-making once deemed inapplicable in Europe are now used in studies of European courts …

Let My People Go: Ethnic In-Group Bias In Judicial Decisions – Evidence From A Randomized Natural Experiment, Oren Gazal-Ayal, Raanan Sulitzeanu-Kenan

Oren Gazal-Ayal

Does ethnic identity affect judicial decisions? We provide new evidence on ethnic biases in judicial behavior, by examining the decisions of Arab and Jewish judges in first bail hearings of Arab and Jewish suspects in Israeli courts. Our setting avoids the potential bias from unobservable case characteristics by exploiting the random assignment of judges to cases during weekends, and by focusing on the difference in ethnic disparity between Arab and Jewish judges. The study concentrates on the early-stage decisions in the judicial criminal process, controlling for the state's position, and excluding agreements, thereby allowing us to distinguish judicial bias from …

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, …

"Let's Do The Time Warp Again": Assessing The Competence Of Counsel In Mental Health Conservatorship Proceedings, Grant H. Morris

Grant H Morris

Thirty years ago, I wrote an article on mental health conservatorships in California and the role of counsel for persons for whom a conservatorship has been proposed. Data was gathered on the performance of attorneys in court hearings conducted in San Diego County Superior Court. The data revealed that lawyers representing proposed conservatees were inactive and ineffective in representing their clients’ interests. The lawyers did not consider themselves advocates in an adversary process in which conservatorship was to be avoided. A year after the article was published, the California Supreme Court, citing that article as authority for the “paternalistic attitude” …

Deliberative Democracy And Weak Courts: Constitutional Design In Nascent Democracies, Edsel F. Tupaz

Edsel F Tupaz

This Article addresses the question of constitutional design in young and transitional democracies. It argues for the adoption of a “weak” form of judicial review, as opposed to “strong” review which typifies much of contemporary adjudication. It briefly describes how the dialogical strain of deliberative democratic theory might well constitute the normative predicate for systems of weak review. In doing so, the Article draws from various judicial practices, from European supranational tribunals to Canadian courts and even Indian jurisprudence. The Article concludes with the suggestion that no judicial apparatus other than the weak structure of judicial review can better incite …

The Intersection Of Judicial Attitudes And Litigant Selection Theories: Explaining U.S. Supreme Court Decision Making, Jeff L. Yates, Elizabeth Coggins

Jeff L Yates

Two prominent theories of legal decision making provide seemingly contradictory explanations for judicial outcomes. In political science, the Attitudinal Model suggests that judicial outcomes are driven by judges' sincere policy preferences -- judges bring their ideological inclinations to the decision making process and their case outcome choices largely reflect these policy preferences. In contrast, in the law and economics literature, Priest and Klein's well-known Selection Hypothesis posits that court outcomes are largely driven by the litigants' strategic choices in the selection of cases for formal dispute or adjudication -- forward thinking litigants settle cases where potential judicial outcomes are readily …

The Bridge Connecting Pontius Pilate's Sentencing Of Jesus To The New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission's Concerns Over Executing The Innocent: When Human Beings With Human Flaws Determine Guilt Or Innocence And Life Or Death, James B. Johnston

James B Johnston

No abstract provided.

Ripe Standing Vines And The Jurisprudential Tasting Of Matured Legal Wines – And Law & Bananas: Property And Public Choice In The Permitting Process, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

From produce to wine, we only consume things when they are ready. The courts are no different. That concept of “readiness” is how courts address cases and controversies as well. Justiciability doctrines, particularly ripeness, have a particularly important role in takings challenges to permitting decisions. The courts largely hold that a single permit denial does not give them enough information to evaluate whether the denial is in violation of law. As a result of this jurisprudential reality, regulators with discretion have an incentive to use their power to extract rents from those that need their permission. Non-justiciability of permit denials …

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 …

The Cy Pres Problem And The Role Of Damages In Tort Law, Goutam U. Jois

Goutam U Jois

Class action litigation presents a common problem that has received little discussion in the academic literature. In almost every case, the plaintiff class’s recovery is not fully distributed. For example, all possible plaintiffs may not come forward with their claims, the plaintiffs may not be ascertainable, or claims may not be timely submitted. Administrators are regularly posed with the problem of what to do with these residual funds. Currently, courts are free to do virtually anything with such funds. The system is ad hoc, unpredictable, and unguided by any normative principle. In these cases, I propose that the funds should …

Judicial Selection, Appointments Gridlock, And The Nuclear Option, David S. Law, Lawrence B. Solum

David S. Law

In this paper, we employ simple formal models drawn from political science to explain the occurrence of gridlock in the federal judicial selection process, and to explore the implications of the nuclear option, by which a bare majority of senators employs parliamentary tactics to abolish the filibuster with respect to judicial nominations. Our application of a pivotal politics model leads us to reject the notion that appointments gridlock is a straightforward consequence of divided government. Instead, meaningful changes to the ideological balance of the federal bench require a more demanding ideological alignment of multiple veto players relative to the status …

The “Csi Effect”: Better Jurors Through Television And Science?, Michael Mann

Michael D. Mann

This Comment explores how television shows such as CSI and Law & Order have created heightened juror expectations in courtrooms across America. Surprise acquitals often have prosectors scratching their heads as jurors hold them to this new "Hollywood" standard. The Comment also analyzes the CSI phenomena by reflecting on past legal television shows that have influenced the public's perception of the legal profession and how the "CSI effect" has placed an even greater burden on parties to proffer some kind of forensic evidence at trial.

The Comment was published in volume 24 of the Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal (2006).

Setting The Table Doesn't Mean The Guests Will Come To Dinner: Televised Courts In Australia, Jane Johnston

Jane Johnston

The Australian courts are entering their second decade of experimentation with televised court proceedings. Yet, the process has been slow and largely unfulfilling for both the courts and the television networks. Developments in this field, compared to other countries, notably the United States, Canada and New Zealand, have progressed only on an ad hoc basis. A preliminary study indicates that the management in television newsrooms, notably news directors, have not been proactive in gaining camera access in any systematic or unified way. Indeed, the courts have argued: “we got the table set but nobody came to dinner”. In contrast, the …

Agenda Setting, Issue Priorities, And Organizational Maintenance: The U.S. Supreme Court, 1955 To 1994, Jeff L. Yates, Andrew B. Whitford, William Gillespie

Jeff L Yates

In this study, we examine agenda setting by the U.S. Supreme Court, and ask the question of why the Court allocates more or less of its valuable agenda space to one policy issue over others. Our study environment is the policy issue composition of the Court's docket: the Court's attention to criminal justice policy issues relative to other issues. We model the Court's allocation of this agenda space as a function of internal organizational demands and external political signals. We find that this agenda responds to the issue priorities of the other branches of the federal government and the public. …

Appointing Federal Judges: The President, The Senate, And The Prisoner's Dilemma, David S. Law

David S. Law

This article argues that the expansion of the White House's role in judicial appointments since the late 1970s, at the expense of the Senate, has contributed to heightened levels of ideological conflict and gridlock over the appointment of federal appeals court judges, by making a cooperative equilibrium difficult to sustain. Presidents have greater electoral incentive to behave ideologically, and less incentive to cooperate with other players in the appointments process, than do senators, who are disciplined to a greater extent in their dealings with each other by the prospect of retaliation over repeat play. The possibility of divided government exacerbates …