Judges Commons^™

Restoring The Civil Jury In A World Without Trials, Dmitry Bam

Faculty Publications

Early in this nation’s history, the civil jury was the most important institutional check on biased and corrupt judges. Recently, concerns about judicial bias, especially in elected state judiciaries, have intensified as new studies demonstrate the extent of that bias. But the jury of Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson is nowhere to be found. In fact, the civil jury is virtually dead. It is used in less than 1% of all civil cases, and even when it makes a rare appearance, the jury’s powers have been significantly curtailed.

This article argues that we must reimagine the civil jury to match the …

Our Unconstitutional Recusal Procedure, Dmitry Bam

Faculty Publications

In this article, I argue that the recusal procedure used in state and federal courts for nearly all of American history is unconstitutional. For centuries, recusal procedure in the United States has largely resembled that of England before American independence. To this day, in most American courtrooms, the judge hearing the case decides whether recusal is required under the applicable substantive recusal rules. If the judge determines that she can act impartially, or that her impartiality could not reasonably be questioned, the judge remains on the case. And although the judge’s decision is typically subject to appellate review — with …

Recusal Failure, Dmitry Bam

Faculty Publications

The American judiciary is suffering from a terrible affliction: biased judges. I am not talking about the subconscious or unconscious biases — stemming from different backgrounds, experiences, ideologies, etc. — that everyone, including judges, harbors. Rather, I am describing invidious, improper biases that lead judges to favor one litigant over another for reasons that almost everyone would agree should play no role in judicial decision-making: the desire to repay a debt of gratitude to those who helped the judge get elected and be reelected.

In this article, I argue that that recusal has failed to prevent biased judges from rendering …

Justice Souter And The Civil Rules, Scott Dodson

Faculty Publications

Justice Souter’s recent retirement from the Court after nearly twenty years presents a unique opportunity to comment on his legacy. No doubt others will eulogize or castigate him for his membership in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey troika, but there is much more to the man and his jurisprudence. Indeed, the danger is that Justice Souter will be pigeonholed into one opinion, an opinion that he wrote early in his Supreme Court career, to the detriment of understanding the complex justice that he was. And what it finds is a justice deeply committed to the fair treatment of the litigants …

A New Look At Judicial Impact: Attorney's Fees In Securities Class Actions After Goldberger V. Integrated Resources, Inc., Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey Miller, Michael A. Perino

Faculty Publications

Political scientists have long been interested in what impact judicial decisions have on their intended audiences. Compliance has been defined as the lower court's proper application of standards the superior court has enunciated in deciding all cases raising similar or related questions. Most studies find widespread compliance in lower courts, with only rare instances of overt defiance.

This Article attempts to address three questions in the extant judicial impact literature. First, existing studies use rather insensitive measures of compliance and thus may fail to identify instances of subtle resistance to higher court rulings. Second, judicial impact literature has a restrained …

Law, Ideology, And Strategy In Judicial Decisonmaking: Evidence From Securities Fraud Actions, Michael A. Perino

Faculty Publications

Legal academics and political scientists continue to debate whether the legal, attitudinal, or strategic model best explains judicial decision making. One limitation in this debate is the high-court bias found in most studies. This article, by contrast, examines federal district court decisions, specifically interpretations of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Initial interpretations of the Act articulated distinct liberal and conservative positions. The data compiled here support the hypothesis that the later emergence of an intermediate interpretation was the result of strategic statutory interpretation rather than simply judges acting consistently with their ideological preferences, although there is some …

Justice Scalia: Standing, Environmental Law And The Supreme Court, Michael A. Perino

Faculty Publications

President Reagan's appointment of Antonin Scalia to the United States Supreme Court raises concern among liberals that Justice Scalia will help lead the Court away from a number of liberal positions toward a new conservatism. The Reagan Administration's requirement that judicial appointments advance the Administration's preference for judicial restraint and strict constructionism enhances this concern. These new executive requirements mean that federal courts should accord greater authority to the democratically elected branches of the government. Justice Scalia's primary areas of study, administrative law and separation of powers, reflect his adherence to judicial self-restraint.

One aspect of administrative law and separation …