Judges Commons^™

The Way Pavers: Eleven Supreme Court-Worthy Women, Meg Penrose

Meg Penrose

Four women have served as Associate Justices on the United States Supreme Court. Since the Court’s inception in 1789, 162 individuals have been nominated to serve as Supreme Court Justices. Five nominees, or roughly 3 percent, have been women. To help put this gender dearth in perspective, more men named “Samuel” have served as Supreme Court Justices than women. Thirteen U.S. Presidents have nominated more people to the Supreme Court than the total number of women that have served on the Court. Finally, there are currently more Catholics serving on the Supreme Court than the number of women appointed in …

Magistrate Judges, Settlement, And Procedural Justice, Nancy A. Welsh

Nancy Welsh

This Article begins, in Part I, with an overview of magistrate judges’ history and role generally, including a discussion of the mechanism of “blind consent” that must be undertaken before a magistrate judge may conduct a trial. Part I then turns to magistrate judges’ role in settlement and ADR, outlines the procedural and ethical rules governing judges’ role in settlement, and highlights research revealing lawyers’ concerns regarding judges’ role in settlement. In Part II, the Article provides a brief overview of mediation in the federal courts and considers the relationship between judge-hosted settlement sessions and mediation. With this background regarding …

High Court Pretense, Lower Court Candor: Judicial Impartiality After Capterton V. Massey Coal Co., Lynne H. Rambo

Lynne H. Rambo

Apolitical, impartial judging has always been our judicial ideal. In the last twenty years, however, special interest groups have sought power over (and through) judges by pouring millions into judicial elections, and the Court has recognized their first amendment right to do so. In the midst of this politicization of judicial elections, the Court five years ago reinforced the impartiality ideal, holding very broadly in Caperton v. Massey Coal Co. that it violates due process for a judge to sit whenever there is a “probability of bias,” i.e., whenever the average judge is unlikely to be neutral. Caperton involved a …

Randomized Judicial Review, Andrei Marmor

Andrei Marmor

One of the main arguments in support of constitutional judicial review points to the need to curtail the legal and political power of majority rule instantiated by democratic legislative institutions. This article aims to challenge the counter majoritarian argument for judicial review by showing that there is very little difference, at least morally speaking, between the current structure of constitutional judicial review in the US, and a system that would impose limits on majoritarian decisions procedures by an entirely randomized mechanism. The argument is based on a hypothetical model of a randomized system of judicial review, and proceeds to show …

'A Body Of Sound Practical Common Sense': Law Reform Through Lay Judges, Public Choice Theory, And The Transformation Of American Law, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

... [T]hree of the earliest and most influential proponents of the argument that public choice theory implies that courts produce better rules than legislators are Judge Frank Easterbrook, Judge Richard Posner, and Justice Antonin Scalia. These proponents of social choice theory conclude from this that judicial decisions are more to be trusted than legislative decisions and therefore favor a variety of devices to expand judicial power. These include interpreting statutes restrictively, which leaves the decision up to the pre-existing judge-made law; interpreting statutes in a common-law fashion, which allows judges their traditional rule-making powers; and ignoring legislative intent, which leaves, …

Deceptively Simple: Framing, Intuition And Judicial Gatekeeping Of Forensic Feature-Comparison Methods Evidence, Jane Campbell Moriarty

Jane Campbell Moriarty

Merit Selection: Current Status, Procedures, And Issues, Jona Goldschmidt

Jona Goldschmidt

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Federal Law Clerk Hiring, Aaron L. Nielson

Aaron L. Nielson

The market for federal law clerks has been upended. Beginning in 2003, the Federal Judges Law Clerk Hiring Plan was implemented to regulate clerkship hiring. According to the Plan, a judge could not interview or hire a potential law clerk before the beginning of the applicant’s third year of law school. The Plan, however, never worked well, constantly got worse, and has now officially collapsed. Across the country, clerkship hiring once again regularly occurs during the second year of law school. This Article addresses the rise and inevitable fall of the Plan. In particular, it submits that the Plan never …

The Color Of Perspective: Affirmative Action And The Constitutional Rhetoric Of White Innocence, Cecil J. Hunt Ii

Cecil J. Hunt II

This Article discusses the Supreme Court's use of the rhetoric of White innocence in deciding racially-inflected claims of constitutional shelter. It argues that the Court's use of this rhetoric reveals its adoption of a distinctly White-centered perspective, representing a one-sided view of racial reality that distorts the Court's ability to accurately appreciate the true nature of racial reality in contemporary America. This Article examines the Court's habit of using a White-centered perspective in constitutional race cases. Specifically, it looks at the Court's use of the rhetoric of White innocence in the context of the Court's concern with protecting "innocent" Whites …

Exemplary Legal Writing 2016: Books Selected By Our Respectable Authorities: Five Recommendations, Femi Cadmus

Femi Cadmus

No abstract provided.

Predicting Danger In Immigration Courts, Emily Ryo

Emily Ryo

Artificial Intelligence And Role-Reversible Judgment, Stephen E. Henderson, Kiel Brennan-Marquez

Stephen E Henderson

The Supreme Court's Political Docket: How Ideology And The Chief Justice Control The Court's Agenda And Shape Law, Benjamin B. Johnson

Benjamin Johnson

Certiorari, Universality, And A Patent Puzzle, Tejas N. Narechania

Tejas N. Narechania