Judges Commons^™

Look Back At The Rehnquist Era And An Overview Of The 2004 Supreme Court Term, Erwin Chemerinsky

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Dimensions Of Judicial Impartiality, Charles Gardner Geyh

Florida Law Review

Scholars have traditionally analyzed judicial impartiality piecemeal, in disconnected debates on discrete topics. As a consequence, current understandings of judicial impartiality are balkanized and muddled. This Article seeks to reconceptualize judicial impartiality comprehensively, across contexts. In an era when “we are all legal realists now,” perfect impartiality—the complete absence of bias or prejudice—is at most an ideal; “impartial enough” has, of necessity, become the realistic goal. Understanding when imperfectly impartial is nonetheless impartial enough is aided by conceptualizing judicial impartiality in three distinct dimensions: a procedural dimension, in which impartiality affords parties a fair hearing; a political dimension, in which …

Judicial Logrolling, F. Andrew Hessick, Jathan P. Mclaughlin

Florida Law Review

In the federal judicial system, multiple judges hear cases on appeal. Although assigning cases to multiple judges provides a number of benefits, it also generates the potential for conflict. Because each judge has his own set of preferences and values, judges on appellate panels often disagree with each other. Judges currently resolve these disagreements by filing separate opinions or drafting compromise opinions. A different way to resolve these disagreements is to allow vote trading across cases. Scholars and judges have condemned this practice, however, and judges have insisted that it does not occur.

This Article argues that the blanket condemnation …

The Confusing Standards For Discretionary Review In Washington And A Proposed Framework For Clarity, Judge Stephen Dwyer

Seattle University Law Review

It has now been more than thirty-five years since the Washington Rules of Appellate Procedure (RAP) became effective in 1976 and replaced all prior rules governing appellate procedure. One significant change that those rules made was to clearly describe and delineate a procedural mechanism for seeking interlocutory review of trial court decisions. The ultimate effect on practitioners is both obvious and unavoidable. Many lawyers, rather than stake out a clear position regarding the applicability of the various considerations governing discretionary review, simply argue that any and every consideration that is even arguably applicable is satisfied by the trial court’s determination. …

Introduction: Judicial Assistants Or Junior Judges: The Hiring, Utilization, And Influence Of Law Clerks, Chad Oldfather, Todd C. Peppers

Marquette Law Review

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Bonus Babies Escape Golden Handcuffs: How Money And Politics Has Transformed The Career Paths Of Supreme Court Law Clerks, Artemus Ward, Christina Dwyer, Kiranjit Gill

Marquette Law Review

Job prospects for former Supreme Court law clerks have radically changed in recent years. Beginning in 1986, skyrocketing law firm signing bonuses caused a transformation from the natural sorting system, where clerks chose among private practice, government, academic, and public interest positions, to a Bonus Baby Regime where former clerks almost always choose to work in private firms after they leave the Court. This development is a result of both financial and ideological factors. While the more conservative clerking corps of recent years has been increasingly drawn to private practice, the firms themselves hire along ideological lines. Still, while former …

Law Clerks And The Institutional Design Of The Federal Judiciary, Albert Yoon

Marquette Law Review

This Essay highlights the evolving institutional changes in the federal judiciary—a protracted confirmation process, higher caseload demands, and declining real salaries—in concurrence with evidence suggesting greater reliance by judges on their law clerks when writing opinions. These dynamic forces arguably undermine the integrity of the judicial process and counsel for legislative action to address judicial working conditions or for changes by judges in the hiring of law clerks.

An Overview Of The October 2005 Supreme Court Term, Erwin Chemerinsky

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Historical Antecedents Of Challenges Facing The Georgia Appellate Courts, Michael B. Terry

Georgia State University Law Review

The Georgia appellate courts face challenges common to many courts in these days of reduced governmental resources. At the same time, the Georgia appellate courts face unusual challenges that can be traced to their historical antecedents and one unique constitutional provision: the “Two-Term Rule.” Just as “[t]he law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries,” the current rules and practices of both the Supreme Court of Georgia and the Court of Appeals of Georgia embody the story of the development of those courts since their founding.

Several aspects of the history of the courts directly impact the …

Appellate Division, Second Department, Smith V. Marrus, Elaine Yang

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Does Religion Have A Role In Criminal Sentencing?, Jack B. Weinstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Statutory Interpretation, Margaret H. Lemos

Notre Dame Law Review

In a new book, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner describe and defend the textualist methodology for which Justice Scalia is famous. For Scalia and Garner, the normative appeal of textualism lies in its objectivity: by focusing on text, context, and canons of construction, textualism offers protection against ideological judging—a way to separate law from politics. Yet, as Scalia and Garner well know, textualism is widely regarded as a politically conservative methodology. The charge of conservative bias is more common than it is concrete, but it reflects the notion that textualism narrows the …

The Danger Of Nonrandom Case Assignment: How The Southern District Of New York's "Related Cases" Rule Shaped Stop-And-Frisk Rulings, Katherine A. Macfarlane

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The Southern District of New York’s local rules are clear: “[A]ll active judges . . . shall be assigned substantially an equal share of the categories of cases of the court over a period of time.” Yet for the past fourteen years, Southern District Judge Shira Scheindlin has been granted near-exclusive jurisdiction over one category of case: those involving wide-sweeping constitutional challenges to the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) stop-and-frisk policies. In 1999, Judge Scheindlin was randomly assigned Daniels v. City of New York, the first in a series of high-profile and high-impact stop-and-frisk cases. Since then, she has overseen …

The Philosophy And Jurisprudence Of Chief Justice Roberts, Kiel Brennan-Marquez

Utah Law Review

A thicket of commentary has blossomed around the figure of Chief Justice Roberts. The bulk of it, however, has either focused exclusively on his role in the 2011 term or has lumped him in uncritically with the Court’s conservative wing. In response, this Article takes a wider view of his tenure, arguing that Chief Justice Roberts is best understood as an idealist, a true believer in the rule of law, with a special sensitivity toward issues of constitutional structure. In the first Part of the Article, I explore Chief Justice Roberts’s penchant for infusing his opinions with “teaching moments”—a tendency …

Institutional Stress And The Federal District Courts: Judicial Emergencies, Vertical Norms, And Pretrial Dismissals, Daniel J. Knudsen

Utah Law Review

This Article examines the effects of judicial emergencies on the federal district courts. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts declares judicial emergencies when a weighted statistic of filings and vacancy days exceeds certain thresholds. This Article presents evidence on the relationship between emergency status in a judicial circuit and the frequency of pretrial disposition in federal district courts within that circuit: a federal district court is statistically more likely to dismiss a case before trial if its corresponding circuit court is in emergency. This evidence suggests that emergency status may affect normative expectations between the federal district courts and …

What Reversals And Close Cases Reveal About Claim Construction: The Sequel, 13 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 525 (2014), Thomas Krause, Heather Auyang

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

This article updates and elaborates on last year’s What Close Cases and Reversals Reveal About Claim Construction at the Federal Circuit. Like the previous article, this article provides empirical insight into claim construction at the Federal Circuit, by approaching the question with two unique and distinct subsets of data: (1) “reversals” of all district court claim construction decisions since Phillips v. AWH, and (2) “close cases,” or post-Markman claim construction cases that had dissents in which a currently-active judge participated. The past year’s reversals data once again confirms that district courts persistently favor narrow claim interpretations in cases in which …