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Social and Behavioral Sciences

Judicial decisionmaking

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Legislative History Is Dead; Long Live Legislative History, Genevieve B. Tung Jan 2018

Legislative History Is Dead; Long Live Legislative History, Genevieve B. Tung

Librarian Scholarship at Penn Law

Review of Victoria Nourse, Misreading Law, Misreading Democracy (Harvard 2016)

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Predicting Danger In Immigration Courts, Emily Ryo Dec 2017

Predicting Danger In Immigration Courts, Emily Ryo

Emily Ryo

Every year, the US government detains thousands of noncitizens in removal proceedings on the basis that they might pose a threat to public safety if released during the pendency of their removal proceedings. Using original audio recording data on immigration bond hearings, this study examines immigration judges’ determinations regarding which noncitizens pose a danger to the community. My multivariate analysis that controls for a variety of detainee background characteristics and criminal conviction-related measures produced three main findings. First, I find that Central Americans are more likely to be deemed dangerous than non-Central Americans. Second, I find that detainees with attorneys …

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Reading Blackstone In The Twenty-First Century And The Twenty-First Century Through Blackstone, Jessie Allen Jan 2014

Reading Blackstone In The Twenty-First Century And The Twenty-First Century Through Blackstone, Jessie Allen

Book Chapters

If the Supreme Court mythologizes Blackstone, it is equally true that Blackstone himself was engaged in something of a mythmaking project. Far from a neutral reporter, Blackstone has some stories to tell, in particular the story of the hero law. The problems associated with using the Commentaries as a transparent window on eighteenth-century American legal norms, however, do not make Blackstone’s text irrelevant today. The chapter concludes with my brief reading of the Commentaries as a critical mirror of some twenty-first-century legal and social structures. That analysis draws on a long-term project, in which I am making my way through …

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The Persistence Of Proximate Cause: How Legal Doctrine Thrives On Skepticism, Jessie Allen Jan 2012

The Persistence Of Proximate Cause: How Legal Doctrine Thrives On Skepticism, Jessie Allen

Articles

This Article starts with a puzzle: Why is the doctrinal approach to “proximate cause” so resilient despite longstanding criticism? Proximate cause is a particularly extreme example of doctrine that limps along despite near universal consensus that it cannot actually determine legal outcomes. Why doesn’t that widely recognized indeterminacy disable proximate cause as a decision-making device? To address this puzzle, I pick up a cue from the legal realists, a group of skeptical lawyers, law professors, and judges, who, in the 1920s and 1930s, compared legal doctrine to ritual magic. I take that comparison seriously, perhaps more seriously, and definitely in …

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Judges' Gender And Employment Discrimination Cases: Emerging Evidence-Based Empirical Conclusions, Pat K. Chew Jan 2011

Judges' Gender And Employment Discrimination Cases: Emerging Evidence-Based Empirical Conclusions, Pat K. Chew

Articles

This article surveys the emerging empirical research on the relationship between the judges' gender and the results in employment discrimination cases.

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The Missing Minority Judges, Pat K. Chew, Luke T. Kelley-Chew Jan 2010

The Missing Minority Judges, Pat K. Chew, Luke T. Kelley-Chew

Articles

This essay documents the lack of Asian-American judges and considers the consequences.

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