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Full-Text Articles in Courts
Judicial Fact-Finding In An Age Of Rapid Change: Creative Reforms From Abroad, Allison Orr Larsen
Judicial Fact-Finding In An Age Of Rapid Change: Creative Reforms From Abroad, Allison Orr Larsen
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Measuring Circuit Splits: A Cautionary Note, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl
Measuring Circuit Splits: A Cautionary Note, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl
Faculty Publications
A number of researchers have recently published new measures of the Supreme Court’s behavior in resolving conflicts in the lower courts. These new measures represent an improvement over prior, cruder approaches, but it turns out that measuring the Court’s resolutions of conflicts is surprisingly difficult. The aim of this methodological comment is to describe those difficulties and to establish several conclusions that follow from them. First, the new measures of the Court’s behavior are certainly imprecise and may reflect biased samples. Second, using the Supreme Court Database, which some studies rely on to assemble a dataset of cases resolving conflicts, …
Oasis Or Mirage: The Supreme Court's Thirst For Dictionaries In The Rehnquist And Roberts Eras, James J. Brudney, Lawrence Baum
Oasis Or Mirage: The Supreme Court's Thirst For Dictionaries In The Rehnquist And Roberts Eras, James J. Brudney, Lawrence Baum
William & Mary Law Review
The Supreme Court’s use of dictionaries, virtually non-existent before 1987, has dramatically increased during the Rehnquist and Roberts Court eras to the point where as many as one-third of statutory decisions invoke dictionary definitions. The increase is linked to the rise of textualism and its intense focus on ordinary meaning. This Article explores the Court’s new dictionary culture in depth from empirical and doctrinal perspectives. We find that while textualist justices are heavy dictionary users, purposivist justices invoke dictionary definitions with comparable frequency. Further, dictionary use overall is strikingly ad hoc and subjective. We demonstrate how the Court’s patterns of …
Dicta, Schmicta: Theory Versus Practice In Lower Court Decision Making, David Klein, Neal Devins
Dicta, Schmicta: Theory Versus Practice In Lower Court Decision Making, David Klein, Neal Devins
William & Mary Law Review
The distinction between dictum and holding is at once central to the American legal system and largely irrelevant. In the first systematic empirical study of lower court invocations of the distinction, we show that lower courts hardly ever refuse to follow a statement from a higher court because it is dictum. Specifically, federal courts of appeals meaningfully invoke the distinction in about 1 in 4000 cases; federal district courts in about 1 in 2000 cases; and state courts in about 1 in 4000 cases. In this Essay, we report these findings, describe our coding system, and offer a preliminary assessment …
When Is Finality Final? Second Chances At The Supreme Court, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl
When Is Finality Final? Second Chances At The Supreme Court, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl
Popular Media
No abstract provided.
Law Versus Ideology: The Supreme Court And The Use Of Legislative History, David S. Law, David Zaring
Law Versus Ideology: The Supreme Court And The Use Of Legislative History, David S. Law, David Zaring
William & Mary Law Review
Much of the social science literature on judicial behavior has focused on the impact of ideology on how judges vote. For the most part, however, legal scholars have been reluctant to embrace empirical scholarship that fails to address the impact of legal constraints and the means by which judges reason their way to particular outcomes. This Article attempts to integrate and address the concerns of both audiences by way of an empirical examination of the Supreme Court’s use of a particular interpretive technique— namely, the use of legislative history to determine the purpose and meaning of a statute. We analyzed …
Ideological Cohesion And Precedent (Or Why The Court Only Cares About Precedent When Most Justices Agree With Each Other), Neal Devins
Faculty Publications
This Article examines the profound role that ideological cohesion plays in explaining the Supreme Court's willingness to advance a coherent vision of the law - either by overruling precedents inconsistent with that vision or by establishing rule-like precedents intended to bind the Supreme Court and lower courts in subsequent cases. Through case studies of the New Deal, Warren, and Rehnquist Courts, this Article calls attention to key differences between Courts in which five or more Justices pursue the same substantive objectives and Courts which lack a dominant voting block. In particular, when five or more Justices pursue the same substantive …
Statutory Interpretation In Econotopia, Nathan B. Oman
Statutory Interpretation In Econotopia, Nathan B. Oman
Faculty Publications
Much of the debate in the recent revival of interest in statutory interpretation centers on whether or not courts should use legislative history in construing statutes. The consensus in favor of this practice has come under sharp attack from public choice critics who argue that traditional models of legislative intent are positively and normatively incoherent. This paper argues that in actual practice, courts look at a fairly narrow subset of legislative history. By thinking about the power to write that legislative history as a property right and legislatures as markets, it is possible to use Coase's Theorem and the concept …
Book Review Of Courts Of Appeal In The Federal Judicial System: A Study Of The Second, Fifth, And District Of Columbia Circuits, Peter G. Fish
Book Review Of Courts Of Appeal In The Federal Judicial System: A Study Of The Second, Fifth, And District Of Columbia Circuits, Peter G. Fish
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.