Courts Commons^™

Creating A People-First Court Data Framework, Lauren Sudeall, Charlotte S. Alexander

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Most court data are maintained--and most empirical court research is conducted--from the institutional vantage point of the courts. Using the case as the common unit of measurement, data-driven court research typically focuses on metrics such as the size of court dockets, the speed of case processing, judicial decision-making within cases, and the frequency of case events occurring within or resulting from the court system.

This Article sets forth a methodological framework for reconceptualizing and restructuring court data as "people-first"-centered not on the perspective of courts as institutions but on the people who interact with the court system. We reorganize case-level …

Integrating The Access To Justice Movement, Lauren Sudeall

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Last fall, advocates of social change came together at the A2J Summit at Fordham University School of Law and discussed how to galvanize a national access to justice movement - who would it include, and what would or should it attempt to achieve? One important preliminary question we tackled was how such a movement would define "justice," and whether it would apply only to the civil justice system. Although the phrase "access to justice" is not exclusively civil in nature, more often than not it is taken to have that connotation. Lost in the interpretation is an opportunity to engage …

Practitioners' Perception Of Court-Connected Mediation In Five Regions: An Empirical Study, Shahla F. Ali

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Courts throughout the world face the challenge of designing court mediation programs to provide opportunities for party-directed reconciliation on the one hand, while ensuring access to formal legal channels on the other. In some jurisdictions, mandated programs require initial attempts at mediation, while in others, voluntary programs encourage party-selected participation. This Article explores the attitudes and perceptions of eighty-three practitioners implementing court mediation programs in five regions in order to understand the dynamics, challenges, and lessons learned from the perspectives of those directly engaged in the work of administering, representing, and mediating civil claims. Given the highly contextual nature of …

Appellate Courts, Historical Facts, And The Civil-Criminal Distinction, Chad M. Oldfather

Vanderbilt Law Review

Among the pieties of our legal system is the notion that appellate courts do not engage in factual evaluation. Murky though the distinction between "fact" and "law" may be,' there is general agreement that somewhere along the fact-law spectrum lies a point beyond which appellate courts ought not venture. Past it exist questions of "historical fact," the "who, when, what, and where" series of questions that we have deemed only juries or trial judges to be capable of answering.

Just as well accepted is the reasoning behind this juridical line in the sand. Simply put, we believe that appellate courts …

Hypnotic Memories And Civil Sexual Abuse Trials, Jacqueline Kanovitz

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the next few paragraphs, the reader will eavesdrop on a psycho- therapy session. During this session, the therapist uses hypnosis, a common technique in clinical practice today. In the past, the legal system has paid little attention to the memory retrieval techniques used in psychotherapy because statutes of limitations have prevented patients from using memories of childhood wrongs uncovered in adult psycho-therapies to bring suit. However, recent changes will force the legal system to examine whether the memory restoring techniques used in psychotherapy can produce memory that is trustworthy enough for the legal system to accept. What follows is …

Summary Proceedings In Direct Contempt Cases, Thomas R. Allen

Vanderbilt Law Review

That the "power and majesty" of the law, personified by the court and its decrees, could not be lightly brushed aside even by a prince was a settled fact by the time of Shakespeare; it remains so today. But the proceedings by which such an offense may be punished is another matter. At the present time a large number of contempts are disposed of by summary proceedings. It was not always so, and recently a number of highly respected judges and writers have begun to argue that the practice should be discontinued. This revival of interest is the raison d'etre …