Law Commons^™

Law School News: Victorious Verdict 2-21-2024, Michelle Choate

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

To Write Or Not To Write: The Ethics Of Judicial Writings And Publishing, Nick Badgerow, Michael Hoeflich, Sarah Schmitz

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Judges are bound by the Model Code of Judicial Conduct promulgated by the American Bar Association and adopted most states, including the federal judiciary. Within these rules governing judicial conduct, Judges owe duties to the public and to their calling, to be (and appear to be) objective, fair, judicious, and independent. When judges venture into the realm of extrajudicial writing—in the form of fiction novels, short stories, legal books, children’s books, and the like—they must consider the ethical bounds of that expression. The Model Code of Judicial Conduct imposes five main constraints upon extrajudicial writings: (a) a judge may not …

2022 Esther Clark Moot Court Competition Finals, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (September 2021): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

The Ambiguity And Unfairness Of Dismissing Bad Writing, Benjamin D. Raker

Cleveland State Law Review

Courts routinely choose to explicitly dismiss arguments and issues raised by parties, regardless of their merit, based on unexplained determinations that the briefing was bad. This practice, which I call abandonment by poor presentation, is sometimes justified by practicality, by pointing to federal and local rules, by waiver and forfeiture doctrines, and by the norm of party presentation. None of these justifications hold water. I contend that the real reason judges find abandonment by poor presentation is agenda control: judges rely on the practice as a means of retaining control over how they decide cases. This unexplained, poorly justified, and …

Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall—Biased Impartiality, Appearances, And The Need For Recusal Reform, Zygmont A. Pines

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The article focuses on a troubling aspect of contemporary judicial morality.

Impartiality—and the appearance of impartiality—are the foundation of judicial decision-making, judicial morality, and the public’s trust in the rule of law. Recusal, in which a jurist voluntarily removes himself or herself from participating in a case, is a process that attempts to preserve and promote the substance and the appearance of judicial impartiality. Nevertheless, the traditional common law recusal process, prevalent in many of our state court systems, manifestly subverts basic legal and ethical norms.

Today’s recusal practice—whether rooted in unintentional hypocrisy, wishful thinking, or a pathological cognitive dissonance— …

What Probate Courts Cite: Lessons From The New York County Surrogate’S Court 2017-2018, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

By knowing what a judge cites, one may better understand what the judge believes is important, how the judge understands her work will be used, and how the judge conceives of the judicial role. Empirical scholars have devoted serious attention to the citation practices and patterns of the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Courts of Appeals, and multiple state supreme courts. Remarkably little is known about what probate courts cite. This Article makes three principal claims — one empirical, one interpretative, and one normative. This Article demonstrates through data, derived from a study of all decrees …

Law School News: National Admiralty Champs! April 4, 2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Take Inventory Each Year, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

One Judge's "Ten Tips For Effective Brief Writing" (Part Ii), Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Chief United States Bankruptcy Judge Terrence L. Michael (N.D.OKLA.) has written "Ten Tips for Effective Brief Writing" and posted them on the court's website. In the Journal's September-October issue, part 1 of this article began by discussing Tip #9 ("leave the venom at home"). That part proceeded to discuss Tips 1-4.

This final part discusses the remaining Tips. All 10 thoughtful Tips warrant careful consideration from advocates who prepare submissions for trial courts or appellate courts.

Judges And Their Editors, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Issue 2: Table Of Contents

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (October 2017): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Long Live The Student-Edited Law Review, Mary Garvey Algero

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Attracting Undue Scrutiny On Appeal: An Appellate Judge's Perspective, Marshall L. Davidson Iii

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (October 2016): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Deciding Not To Decide: A Limited Defense Of The Silent Concurrence, Alexander I. Platt

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

The Meaning Of The Constitution And The Selection Of Judges, Harold See

Law Faculty Scholarship

In the ongoing debate over the best method for choosing judges, the focus has been on the perceived drawbacks of judicial election without commensurate consideration of either the advantages of popular elections or the disadvantages of the commission system-usually styled the "Missouri plan" or "merit selection." One such consideration is the means of defining the judicial power.

Joseph Story, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Joseph Story (1779-1845) was one of the greatest and most influential American lawyers of all time. Both as a Supreme Court Justice and as a professor at Harvard Law School, his work and thought were, and still are, of great importance. Today’s private international law would look different without him, both in the United States and in the rest of the world. At the same time, his approach to the field cannot be properly understood unless placed within his broader work on law, and the specific American background against which it was developed.

The High Price Of Poverty: A Study Of How The Majority Of Current Court System Procedures For Collecting Court Costs And Fees, As Well As Fines, Have Failed To Adhere To Established Precedent And The Constitutional Guarantees They Advocate., Trevor J. Calligan

Trevor J Calligan

No abstract provided.

"The Hindrance Of A Law Degree": Justice Kagan On Law And Experience, Laura Krugman Ray

Laura K. Ray

No abstract provided.

A Government Of Laws Not Of Precedents 1776-1876: The Google Challenge To Common Law Myth, James Maxeiner

James R Maxeiner

Conventional wisdom holds that the United States is a common law country of precedents where, until the 20th century (the “Age of Statutes”), statutes had little role. Digitization by Google and others of previously hard to find legal works of the 19th century challenges this common law myth. At the Centennial in 1876 Americans celebrated that “The great fact in the progress of American jurisprudence … is its tendency towards organic statute law and towards the systematizing of law; in other words, towards written constitutions and codification.” This article tests the claim of the Centennial Writers of 1876 and finds …

On Reading The Language Of Statutes (Book Review), Linda D. Jellum

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Linda D. Jellum reviews Lawrence M. Solan, The Language of Statutes: Laws and Their Interpretation (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2010), ISBN-13: 978-0-226-76796-3.

Tell Us A Story, But Don't Make It A Good One: Resolving The Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories And Federal Rule Of Evidence 403, Cathren Page

Cathren Page

Abstract: Tell Us a Story, But Don’t Make It A Good One: Resolving the Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories and Federal Rule of Evidence 403 by Cathren Koehlert-Page Courts need to reword their opinions regarding Rule 403 to address the tension between the advice to tell an emotionally evocative story at trial and the notion that evidence can be excluded if it is too emotional. In the murder mystery Mystic River, Dave Boyle is kidnapped in the beginning. The audience feels empathy for Dave who as an adult becomes one of the main suspects in the murder of his friend Jimmy’s …

Behavioral International Law, Tomer Broude

Tomer Broude

Economic analysis and rational choice have in the last decade made significant inroads into the study of international law and institutions, relying upon standard assumptions of perfect rationality of states and decision-makers. This approach is inadequate, both empirically and in its tendency towards outdated formulations of political theory. This article presents an alternative behavioral approach that provides new hypotheses addressing problems in international law while introducing empirically grounded concepts of real, observed rationality. First, I address methodological objections to behavioral analysis of international law: the focus of behavioral research on the individual; the empirical foundations of behavioral economics; and behavioral …

What Might Have Been: 25 Years Of Robert Bork On The United States Supreme Court, Benjamin Pomerance

Belmont Law Review

This Article tries to briefly attempt an answer to what would have happened if Robert Bork had sat on the Supreme Court bench. Part I examines the backgrounds of Judge Bork and Justice Kennedy, and then studies some of the major cases decided by the Court in four key areas — abortion, freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and civil rights — during the last twenty-five years. Part II then evaluates the voting record of Justice Kennedy in these cases, as well as the views held by Judge Bork — based on Bork’s own writings, on opinions that …

Metaphor And Analogy: The Sun And Moon Of Legal Persuasion, Linda L. Berger

Linda L. Berger

Drawing on recent studies in social cognition, decision making, and analogical processing, this article will recommend that lawyers turn to novel characterizations and metaphors to solve a particular kind of persuasion problem that is created by the way judges and juries think and decide. According to social cognition researchers, we perceive and interpret new information by following a process of schematic cognition, analogizing the new data we encounter to the knowledge structures embedded in our memories. Decision-making researchers differentiate between intuitive and reflective processes (System 1 and System 2), and they agree that in System 1 decision making, only the …

Judicial Selection In Tennessee: Deciding “The Decider”, Margaret L. Behm, Candi Henry

Belmont Law Review

This article includes an overview of judicial selection in Tennessee, as well as providing the author's personal perspectives on the subject. The quality of judges and the manner of selecting them matters; this is a basic premise underpinning the rule of law in the United States. From the inception of the United States’ democratic system, the judiciary’s Damoclean Sword has been the threat of subrogation at the hands of the Legislature, and perhaps the easiest way to rattle the sword has been to legislatively interfere with judicial selection — whether by changing the manner of appointment or by simply refusing …

Legal Writing As Good Writing; Tips From The Trenches, Michael A. Zuckerman, Andrey Spektor

Michael A. Zuckerman

No abstract provided.

Assuring "Detached But Passionate Investigation And Decision": The Role Of Guardians Ad Litem In Saikewicz-Type Cases, Charles Baron

Charles H. Baron

The author focuses this Article upon the aspect of the Saikewicz decision which determines that the kind of "proxy consent" question involved in that case required for its decision "the process of detached but passionate investigation and decision that forms the ideal on which the judicial branch of government was created." This aspect of the decision has drawn much criticism from the medical community on the ground that it embroils what doctors believe to be a medical question in the adversarial processes of the court system. The author criticizes the decision from an entirely opposite perspective, arguing that the court's …