Judges Commons^™

Civility And Collegiality—Unreasonable Judicial Expectations For Lawyers As Officers Of The Court?, Lonnie T. Brown

Scholarly Works

It is a well-settled and often-recited fact that lawyers are “officers of the court.” That title, however, is notoriously hortatory and devoid of meaning. Nevertheless, the Eleventh Circuit recently took the somewhat unprecedented step of utilizing the officer-of-the-court label to, in effect, sanction an attorney for the purportedly uncivil act of failing to provide defendant attorneys with pre-suit notice. While the author applauds the court’s desire to place greater emphasis on lawyer-to-lawyer collegiality as a component of officer-of-the-court status, the uncertainty the decision creates in terms of a lawyer’s role will potentially force litigators to compromise important client-centered duties. This …

The Supreme Court’S Regulation Of Civil Procedure: Lessons From Administrative Law, Lumen N. Mulligan, Glen Staszewski

Faculty Works

In this Article, we argue that the Supreme Court should route most Federal Rules of Civil Procedure issues through the notice-and-comment rulemaking process of the Civil Rules Advisory Committee instead of issuing judgments in adjudications, unless the case can be resolved solely through the deployment of traditional tools of statutory construction. While we are not the first to express a preference for rulemaking on civil procedure issues, we advance the position in four significant ways. First, we argue that the Supreme Court in the civil procedure arena is vested with powers analogous to most administrative agencies. Second, building upon this …

Modern Odysseus Or Classic Fraud - Fourteen Years In Prison For Civil Contempt Without A Jury Trial, Judicial Power Without Limitation, And An Examination Of The Failure Of Due Process, Mitchell J. Frank

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When Staying Discovery Stays Justice: Analyzing Motions To Stay Discovery When A Motion To Dismiss Is Pending, Kevin J. Lynch

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Due to the important costs and benefits of discovery, decisions that affect the scope, timing, or availability of discovery are enormously consequential. For civil litigation in federal court, district and magistrate judges make many decisions about discovery that affect the cases before them. They decide the length and number of depositions that may be taken, compel or protect against the production of large numbers of documents and electronic data searches, serve as gatekeepers for expert witness testimony, and even decide whether the parties may take discovery at all until any motions to dismiss have been resolved. This Article focuses squarely …

The Paradox Of Political Power: Post-Racialism, Equal Protection, And Democracy, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

Racial minorities have achieved unparalleled electoral success in recent years. Simultaneously, they have continued to rank at or near the bottom in terms of health, wealth, income, education, and the effects of the criminal justice system. Social conservatives, including those on the Supreme Court, have latched onto evidence of isolated electoral success as proof of “post-racialism,” while ignoring the evidence of continued disparities for the vast majority of people of color.

This Essay will examine the tension between the Court's conservatives' repeated calls for minorities to achieve their goals through the political process and the Supreme Court's increasingly restrictive "colorblind" …

Locking The Doors To Discovery? Assessing The Effects Of Twombly And Iqbal On Access To Discovery, Jonah B. Gelbach

All Faculty Scholarship

Many observers believe the Supreme Court’s Twombly and Iqbal opinions have curtailed access to civil justice. But previous empirical studies looking only at Rule 12(b)(6) grant rates have failed to capture the full effect of these cases because they have not accounted for party selection—changes in party behavior that can be expected following changes in pleading standards. In this Note, I show how party selection can be expected to undermine the empirical usefulness of simple grant-rate comparisons. I then use a conceptual model of party behavior that allows me to derive an adjusted measure of Twombly/Iqbal’s impact and show …