Judges Commons^™

Judgments V Reasons In Federal Court Refugee Claim Judicial Reviews: A Bad Precedent, Sean Rehaag, Pierre-André Thériault

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article offers an empirical examination of policies on the publication of refugee law decisions in Canada’s Federal Court. In 2015, the Court issued a notice describing the Court’s general practice of publishing written reasons in cases that the deciding judge considers as having precedential value and of issuing unpublished judgments in cases that the deciding judge does not view as precedential. In 2018, the Court reversed course and issued a new notice. This time, the Court indicated that all final decisions on the merits will be published.

Drawing on data obtained via automated data scraping processes from thousands of …

Self-Determination In American Discourse: The Supreme Court’S Historical Indoctrination Of Free Speech And Expression, Jarred Williams

Honors Theses

Within the American criminal legal system, it is a well-established practice to presume the innocence of those charged with criminal offenses unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Such a judicial framework-like approach, called a legal maxim, is utilized in order to ensure that the law is applied and interpreted in ways that legislative bodies originally intended.

The central aim of this piece in relation to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution is to investigate whether the Supreme Court of the United States has utilized a specific legal maxim within cases that dispute government speech or expression regulation. …

Law School News: Professor Gonzalez Is 2020 Rhode Island Lawyer Of The Year 01/11/21, Barry Bridges, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Restoring Stare Decisis In The Wake Of Janus V. Afscme, Council 31, James Tilghman

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Applying Maimonides’ Hilkhot Teshuvah–Laws Of Repentance – In The Criminal Law System Of The State Of Israel: An Israeli Judge’S Perspectives, Moshe Drori

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

How The Prohibition On "Under-Ruling" Distorts The Judicial Function (And What To Do About It), A. Christopher Bryant, Kimberly Breedon

Pepperdine Law Review

Lower courts face a dilemma when forced to choose between older Supreme Court precedent that directly controls the present legal dispute and an intervening Supreme Court ruling that relies on rationale which erodes or undermines the rationale of the direct precedent. Nearly thirty years ago, the Supreme Court announced a rule requiring lower courts to follow the older precedent and disregard any inconsistency resulting from intervening rulings, effectively barring lower courts from “under-ruling” the older Supreme Court precedent. This prohibition on “under-ruling,” here referred to as the “Agostini Rule,” reflects a departure from the core rule-of-law values requiring similar cases …

Judicial Innovation And Sexual Harassment Doctrine In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Holley Takersley

Laura Moyer

The determination that sexual harassment constituted “discrimination based on sex” under Title VII was first made by the lower federal courts, not Congress. Drawing from the literature on policy diffusion, this article examines the adoption of hostile work environment standards across the U.S. Courts of Appeals in the absence of controlling Supreme Court precedent. The results bolster recent findings about the influence of female judges on their male colleagues and suggest that in addition to siding with female plaintiffs, female judges also helped to shape legal rules that promoted gender equality in the workplace.

The New Old Legal Realism, Tracey E. George, Mitu Gulati, Ann C. Mcginley

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Inferiority Complex: Should State Courts Follow Lower Federal Court Precedent On The Meaning Of Federal Law?, Amanda Frost

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The conventional wisdom is that state courts need not follow lower federal court precedent when interpreting federal law. Upon closer inspection, however, the question of how state courts should treat lower federal court precedent is not so clear. Although most state courts now take the conventional approach, a few contend that they are obligated to follow the lower federal courts, and two federal courts of appeals have declared that their decisions are binding on state courts. The Constitution’s text and structure send mixed messages about the relationship between state and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court has never squarely …

Overruling Precedent: "A Derelict In The Stream Of The Law", Michael Leroy

Michael H LeRoy

Will the Supreme Court overrule Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. N.L.R.B., 535 U.S. 137 (2002), its precedent that treats unlawful alien workers as criminals and denies them backpay for a violation of a labor law? More generally, what are the statistical indicators of a precedent that the Supreme Court overrules— and how well does Hoffman Plastic fit that profile? To answer these research questions, I analyze two unique databases— 128 federal and state rulings from 2002-2012 that involved Hoffman Plastic’s remedy issue, and a sample of 154 Supreme Court pairings of an overruled precedent, and the decision that explicitly …

At&T V. Concepcion: The Problem Of A False Majority, Lisa Tripp, Evan R. Hanson

Lisa Tripp

The Supreme Court’s 2011 decision in AT&T v. Concepcion is the first case where the Supreme Court explores the interplay between state law unconscionability doctrine and the vast preemptive power of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). Although it is considered by many to be a landmark decision which has the potential for greatly expanding the already impressive preemptive power of the FAA, something is amiss with Concepcion.

AT&T v. Concepcion is ostensibly a 5-4 majority decision with a concurring opinion. However, the differences in the majority and concurring opinions are so profound that it appears that Justice Thomas actually …

Introduction, Ronald F. Phillips

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Precedent: What It Is And What It Isn't; When Do We Kiss It And When Do We Kill It?, Ruggero J. Aldisert

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judicial Innovation And Sexual Harassment Doctrine In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Holley Takersley

Faculty Scholarship

The determination that sexual harassment constituted “discrimination based on sex” under Title VII was first made by the lower federal courts, not Congress. Drawing from the literature on policy diffusion, this article examines the adoption of hostile work environment standards across the U.S. Courts of Appeals in the absence of controlling Supreme Court precedent. The results bolster recent findings about the influence of female judges on their male colleagues and suggest that in addition to siding with female plaintiffs, female judges also helped to shape legal rules that promoted gender equality in the workplace.

Transtemporal Separation Of Powers In The Law Of Precedent, Randy Beck

Scholarly Works

The rule of stare decisis creates a presumption that a court’s ruling on a legal question remains binding in later decisions by the same court or hierarchically inferior courts. This presumption promotes stability in the law and protects reliance interests. Decisions that narrowly construe or overrule prior opinions can therefore seem like unprincipled threats to the rule of law.

This article seeks to highlight some countervailing themes in the case law, showing that stability and the protection of reliance interests are not the exclusive concerns underlying the law of precedent. The relevant doctrine attempts to balance these objectives with competing …

Clear As Mud: How The Uncertain Precedential Status Of Unpublished Opinions Muddles Qualified Immunity Determinations, David R. Cleveland

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Celebrating Thurgood Marshall: The Prophetic Dissenter, Susan Low Bloch

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Thurgood Marshall was born 100 years ago into a country substantially divided along color lines. Marshall could not attend the University of Maryland School of Law because he was a Negro; he had trouble locating bathrooms that were not for “whites only.” Today, by contrast, we celebrate his life and accomplishments. Broadway has a play called Thurgood devoted to him; Baltimore/Washington International Airport is now BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport; even the University of Maryland renamed its law library in his honor. How did we come this far? How far do we still have to go? This article will consider what …

A Review Of “How Judges Think” By Richard A Posner, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a short review of How Judges Think by Richard Posner.

Much Ado About Pluralities: Pride And Precedent Amidst The Cacophy Of Concurrences, And Re-Percolation After Rapanos, Donald J. Kochan, Melissa M. Berry, Matthew J. Parlow

Donald J. Kochan

Conflicts created by concurrences and pluralities in court decisions create confusion in law and lower court interpretation. Rule of law values require that individuals be able to identify controlling legal principles. That task is complicated when pluralities and concurrences contribute to the vagueness or uncertainty that leaves us wondering what the controlling rule is or attempting to predict what it will evolve to become. The rule of law is at least handicapped when continuity or confidence or confusion infuse our understanding of the applicable rules. This Article uses the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Rapanos v. United States to …

The View From The Trenches: Report On The Breakout Sessions At The 2005 National Conference On Appellate Justice, Arthur D. Hellman

Articles

In November 2005, four prominent legal organizations sponsored the second National Conference on Appellate Justice. One purpose was to take a fresh look at the operation of appellate courts 30 years after the first National Conference. As part of the 2005 Conference, small groups of judges and lawyers gathered in breakout sessions to discuss specific issues about the operation of the appellate system. This article summarizes and synthesizes the participants' comments. The article is organized around three major topics, each of which builds on a different contrast with the 1975 conference.

First, the participants in the earlier conference apparently assumed …

Cynicism, Reconsidered, Pauline Kim

Scholarship@WashULaw

Occasionally I encounter among students the suspicion that law is nothing but politics. In the field in which I teach-employment law-this attitude amounts to the cynical belief that if judges (or at least those judges hostile to workers) can possibly find a way for the employee to lose and the employer to win, they will do so. While I must admit my own misgivings about the extent to which doctrine and precedent actually decide cases, I push these students to try to understand case outcomes as something other than pure politics. Believing that it is important for law students, as …

What's An Opinion For? (Special Issue: Judicial Opinion Writing), James Boyd White

Articles

The question the papers in this Special Issue address is whether it matters how judicial opinions are written, and if so why. My hope here is to suggest a way of elaborating the ques­tion that may provide the reader with a useful point of departure for reading the more extensive papers that follow.

Judging The Judges: Three Opinions, James Boyd White

Articles

For some time I have been working on the problem of judicial criticism, focusing especially on the question: What is it in the work of a judge that leads us to admire a judicial opinion with the result of which we disagree, or to condemn an opinion that "comes out" the way we would do if we were charged with the responsibility of decision? The response I have been making is that this kind of judicial excellence (and its opposite too) lies in the sort of social and intellectual action in which the opinion engages: in the character the court …

Congressional Repair Of The Erie Derailment, Leonard V. Quigley

Michigan Law Review

It is the thesis of this article that such legislative review and repair is required today on the part of the federal legislature in regard to the diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts. Such reconsideration is particularly appropriate where, as in the analogous commerce clause area, the subject matter has been committed specifically to the Congress by the Constitution.