Judges Commons^™

Everything You Wanted To Know About Justice Scalia But Were Afraid To Ask, Or Don't Look Now But Justice Scalia's Originalism Approach Is Fatally Flawed, Arthur R. Landever

Law Faculty Presentations and Testimony

I do not deny Justice Scalia's valiant efforts to vote based upon his originalist principles. But both a justice and an observer are well advised to understand the implications of the culture surrounding the Supreme Court. Originalism, in assuming present culture plays little part, and in seeking to operate in a closed universe, distorts the reality of judicial decision-making, and to that extent, risks unsound constitutional interpretations.

Reforming The Supreme Court, Roger C. Cramton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Life tenure for Supreme Court Justices has had harmful consequences that could not have been foreseen by the Founders. The seriousness of these harms makes it necessary and proper to use the hindsight we enjoy today to correct them. This Article begins with a brief summary of the constitutional provisions relevant to judicial tenure and examines how the system of life tenure functions today. The harmful consequences of life tenure are then examined, leading to the conclusion that a statutory solution is required. The article then proposes such a solution and examines its constitutionality, concluding that language, history and purpose …

Scalia's Poker: Puzzles And Mysteries In Constitutional Interpretation, 24 Const. Comment. 663 (2007), Timothy P. O'Neill

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Analysis Of The Confirmation Hearings Of The Justices Of The Rehnquist Natural Court, 24 Const. Comment. 127 (2007), Jason J. Czarnezki, William K. Ford, Lori A. Ringhand

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The State Secrets Privilege And Separation Of Powers, Amanda Frost

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has repeatedly invoked the state secrets privilege in cases challenging executive conduct in the war on terror, arguing that the very subject matter of these cases must be kept secret to protect national security. The executive's recent assertion of the privilege is unusual, in that it is seeking dismissal, pre-discovery, of all challenges to the legality of specific executive branch programs, rather than asking for limits on discovery in individual cases. This essay contends that the executive's assertion of the privilege is therefore akin to a claim that the courts lack jurisdiction to …

An Empirical Analysis Of The Confirmation Hearings Of The Justices Of The Rehnquist Natural Court, Jason J. Czarnezki

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Despite the importance of this question, surprisingly little work has been done comparing the statements made by nominees at their confirmation hearings with their subsequent behavior on the Supreme Court. If the hearings reveal substantively valuable information about nominees' views, then we would expect to find a relationship between the Justices' statements and their judicial decisions. This Article is an initial look at that relationship. Specifically, we examine statements involving the nominees' views on stare decisis, originalism and legislative history, and also statements involving their views on the rights of criminal defendants. We then rank order the nominees' confirmation hearings …

The Best Defense: Why Elected Courts Should Lead Recusal Reform, Deborah Goldberg, James J. Sample, David Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, we have seen an escalation of attacks on the independence of the judiciary. Government officials and citizens who have been upset by the substance of judicial decisions are increasingly seeking to rein in the courts by limiting their jurisdiction over controversial matters, soliciting pre-election commitments from judicial candidates, and drafting ballot initiatives with sanctions for judges who make unpopular rulings. Many of these efforts betray ignorance at best, or defiance at worst, of traditional principles of separation of powers and constitutional protections against tyranny of the majority.

The attacks are fueled in part by the growing influence …

Are Senior Judges Unconstitutional?, Ryan W. Scott, David R. Stras

Articles by Maurer Faculty

With burgeoning caseloads and persistent vacancies in many federal courts, senior judges play a vital role in the continued well-being of our federal judiciary. Despite the importance of their participation in the judicial process, however, senior judges raise a host of constitutional concerns that have escaped the notice of scholars and courts. Many of the problems originate with recent changes to the statute authorizing federal judges to elect senior status, including a 1989 law that permits senior judges to fulfill their statutory responsibilities by performing entirely nonjudicial work. Others arise from the ambiguity of the statutory scheme itself, which seems …

The Aggregate Harmony Metric And A Statistical And Visual Contextualization Of The Rehnquist Court: 50 Years Of Data, Peter A. Hook

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article contains aggregated data from fifty years of the annual matrixes of justice inter-agreement for particular Supreme Court terms published by the Harvard Law Review (1956 to 2005 terms). Aggregating how often any two justices sided together on cases for a particular term relative to the amount of cases the two justices heard together allows one to derive a measure of the particular term that reflects the relative amount of agreement or disagreement for the term. This new metric, called the Aggregate Harmony Metric, allows for comparative benchmarks. For instance, the 2005 term, with an aggregate agreement of 70%, …

If The Judicial Confirmation Process Is Broken, Can A Statute Fix It?, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Justice O'Connor And 'The Threat To Judicial Independence': The Cowgirl Who Cried Wolf?, Arthur D. Hellman

Articles

Sandra Day O'Connor retired from active service on the United States Supreme Court in early 2006. As her principal "retirement project," she has taken on the task of defending the independence of the judiciary. In speeches, op-ed articles, and public interviews, she has warned that "we must be ever vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies." Justice O'Connor has done the nation a service by bringing the subject of judicial independence to center stage and by calling attention to the important values it serves. Unfortunately, however, in describing the threats to that independence, she …

Chief Justice Rehnquist's Appointments To The Fisa Court: An Empirical Perspective, Theodore Ruger

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An External Perspective On The Nature Of Noneconomic Compensatory Damages And Their Regulation, Ronald J. Allen, Alexia Brunet, Susan Spies Roth

Publications

No abstract provided.

Process Theory, Majoritarianism, And The Original Understanding, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Radicals in Robes, Cass Sunstein posits that there are four primary approaches to constitutional interpretation: perfectionism, majoritarianism, minimalism, and fundamentalism.' The purpose of his eloquent and compelling book is twofold: Sunstein argues for minimalism, an approach that he contends makes most sense for America today; and with even greater force, Sunstein argues against fundamentalism, which he finds "wrong, dangerous, radical, and occasionally hypocritical."' The "Radicals in Robes" who are the targets of Sunstein's book are judges who embrace fundamentalism, which, in his view, embodies "the views of the extreme wing of [the] Republican Party."'

In Securing Constitutional Democracy: The …

Double-Consciousness In Constitutional Adjudication, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Constitutional theorists are familiar with epistemic and consequentialist reasons why judges might allow their decision making to be shaped by strongly held public opinion. The epistemic approach treats public opinion as an expert indicator, while the consequentialistapproach counsels judges to compromise legally correct interpretations so as not to antagonize a hostile public. But there is also a third reason, which we can think ofas constitutive. In limited circumstances, the fact that the public strongly holds a given view can be one of the factors that together constitute the correct answer to a constitutional question. In those circumstances, what the public …

The "Federalism Five" As Supreme Court Nominees, 1971-1991, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

This article looks back at the Senate confirmation hearing testimonies of five Supreme Court nominees. Following their appointments to the Court, these justices—Chief Justice Rehnquist and Associate Justices O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas—generally voted together in path-breaking federalism cases. They reinvigorated constitutional law limits or decreed new ones on national legislative power, supported the "sovereignty" of state governments, and thus came to be known in some circles as the Rehnquist Court's "Federalism Five." As nominees testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, these "federalism" justices did not announce, or for the most part even much hint at, what came to …