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Full-Text Articles in Judges
“If Rules They Can Be Called”, Amy J. Griffin
“If Rules They Can Be Called”, Amy J. Griffin
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Who gets to decide what counts as law? The weight of authority in the U.S. legal system is governed almost entirely by unwritten rules—social norms that establish which sources have weight (and how much weight they have). In 2016, Bryan A. Garner and twelve judges published a treatise essentially codifying unwritten rules related to the operation of precedent. That book, The Law of Judicial Precedent, has itself become a source of authority (on legal authority), cited by judges across jurisdictions. In this essay, I question whether the judicial norms governing the operation of precedent are appropriately presented as definitive blackletter …
Law Review Scholarship In The Eyes Of The Twenty-First Century Supreme Court Justices: An Empirical Analysis, Brent Newton
Law Review Scholarship In The Eyes Of The Twenty-First Century Supreme Court Justices: An Empirical Analysis, Brent Newton
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
An analysis of the twenty-first century Justices’ citations of law review scholarship—how often they cite articles, the professional identities of authors of the cited articles, and the rankings of the law reviews in which the cited articles appear—provides an excellent prism through which to assess today’s law reviews. In addition to having had varied and rich legal careers as practitioners, policy-makers, and lower court judges, the majority of the current Justices were, at earlier points in their careers, full-time law professors. Presumably, the Justices are able to separate the wheat from the chaff in the law reviews. The present study …
The Inside Scoop: What Federal Judges Really Think About The Way Lawyers Write, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione
The Inside Scoop: What Federal Judges Really Think About The Way Lawyers Write, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
A recent survey indicates that what troubles federal judges most is not what lawyers say but what they fail to say when writing briefs. Although lawyers do a good job articulating legal issues and citing controlling, relevant legal authority, they are not doing enough with the law itself. Only fifty-six percent of the judges surveyed said that lawyers “always” or “usually” make their client’s best arguments. Fifty-eight percent of the judges rated the quality of the legal analysis as just “good,” as opposed to “excellent” or “very good.” The problem seems to be that briefs lack rigorous analysis, and the …