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Articles 1 - 9 of 9
Full-Text Articles in Judges
The Endgame Of Court-Packing, Kyle Rozema, Daniel Epps, Adam Chilton, Maya Sen
The Endgame Of Court-Packing, Kyle Rozema, Daniel Epps, Adam Chilton, Maya Sen
Scholarship@WashULaw
At several points in history, politicians and commentators have proposed adding seats to the Supreme Court to accomplish partisan ends. We explore the incentives for a political party to initiate “court-packing” and what the Supreme Court would look like in a world where political parties engage in repeated partisan court- packing. To do so, we use an Agent-Based Model and different data sources to calibrate the behaviors of Presidents, Congresses, and Supreme Court justices. We then simulate the future composition of the Court in worlds with and without court-packing. The simulations suggest that a political party with an initial minority …
Political Ideology And Judicial Administration: Evidence From The Covid-19 Pandemic, Kyle Rozema, Adam Chilton, Christopher Anthony Cotropia, David L. Schwartz
Political Ideology And Judicial Administration: Evidence From The Covid-19 Pandemic, Kyle Rozema, Adam Chilton, Christopher Anthony Cotropia, David L. Schwartz
Scholarship@WashULaw
We study the effect of political ideology on the administration of the judiciary by investigating how the chief judges of federal district courts set courthouse policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To do so, we use novel data on the geographic boundaries of federal courts and on the contents of pandemic orders. We account for state and local conditions and policies by leveraging district courts in states that have multiple judicial districts and that have courthouses in multiple counties, and we isolate the effect of chief ideology by using simulations that difference out unobserved district-level effects. We find no …
Nonpartisan Supreme Court Reform And The Biden Commission, Daniel Epps
Nonpartisan Supreme Court Reform And The Biden Commission, Daniel Epps
Scholarship@WashULaw
Prior to his election to the Presidency, Joe Biden promised to create a bipartisan commission that would consider and evaluate reforms to the Supreme Court of the United States. Shortly after his inauguration, he did just that, announcing a thirty-six-member Commission on the Supreme Court. Made up of distinguished scholars and lawyers, the Commission was charged with drafting a report that would describe and analyze historical and current debates about reforming the Court. The eventual report seemed to make few observers happy. It reached few firm conclusions on the legality of any reform proposals and even fewer conclusions on any …
Judge Theodore Mcmillian: Beacon Of Hope And Champion For Justice, Karen L. Tokarz
Judge Theodore Mcmillian: Beacon Of Hope And Champion For Justice, Karen L. Tokarz
Scholarship@WashULaw
“Judge Theodore McMillian: Beacon of Hope and Champion for Justice” illuminates the heroic groundbreaking accomplishments of Judge McMillian, who was a trailblazer in Missouri courts. Judge McMillian was Missouri’s first Black judge to sit on the state circuit court, state appellate court, and federal appellate court. Professor Tokarz traces Judge McMillian’s early life and career to demonstrate his life-long dedication to challenging disparities in the community and in the legal system. She discusses the Judge’s role on the St. Louis City Circuit Court, especially the Juvenile Court where he pushed for the expansion of constitutional rights for juveniles; his groundbreaking …
Supreme Court Reform And American Democracy, Daniel Epps, Ganesh Sitaraman
Supreme Court Reform And American Democracy, Daniel Epps, Ganesh Sitaraman
Scholarship@WashULaw
In "How to Save the Supreme Court," we identified the legitimacy challenge facing the Court, traced it to a set of structural flaws, and proposed novel reforms. Little more than a year later, the conversation around Supreme Court reform has only grown louder and more urgent. In this Essay, we continue that conversation by engaging with critics of our approach. The current crisis of the Supreme Court is, we argue, inextricable from the question of the Supreme Court’s proper role in our democracy. For those interested in reform, there are three distinct strategies for ensuring the Supreme Court maintains its …
Teacher For The Nation, Daniel Epps
Teacher For The Nation, Daniel Epps
Scholarship@WashULaw
In these brief remarks, delivered at the Hastings Law Journal's Symposium on the Jurisprudence of Justice Kennedy, I discuss Justice Kennedy's impact on American law. I reflect on the events that led to Justice Kennedy's appointment to the Supreme Court and discuss his vision of the Justices as teachers for the nation and how that vision seems to have informed his view of judicial review.
Rethinking The Principal-Agent Theory Of Judging, Rafael I. Pardo, Jonathan Remy Nash
Rethinking The Principal-Agent Theory Of Judging, Rafael I. Pardo, Jonathan Remy Nash
Scholarship@WashULaw
This Essay offers new insights into understanding the relationship between higher and lower courts and responds to the extant literature that has characterized the relationship as one involving a principal and an agent. We challenge the underpinnings of the principal-agent understanding of judicial hierarchies and identify problems with the theory’s applicability in this context. While principals ordinarily select their agents, higher court judges usually do not select lower court judges. Moreover, while lower court judges may cast votes with an eye to the possibility of elevation to a higher court, the higher court judges who review the lower court’s decisions …
Does Ideology Matter In Bankruptcy? Voting Behavior On The Courts Of Appeals, Rafael I. Pardo, Jonathan Remy Nash
Does Ideology Matter In Bankruptcy? Voting Behavior On The Courts Of Appeals, Rafael I. Pardo, Jonathan Remy Nash
Scholarship@WashULaw
This Article empirically examines the question of whether courts of appeals judges cast ideological votes in the context of bankruptcy. The empirical study is unique insofar as it is the first to specifically examine the voting behavior of circuit court judges in bankruptcy cases. More importantly, it focuses on a particular type of dispute that arises in bankruptcy - debt-dischargeability determinations. The study implements this focused approach in order to reduce heterogeneity in result. We find, contrary to our hypotheses, no evidence that circuit court judges engage in ideological voting in bankruptcy cases. We do find, however, non-ideological factors - …
The Utility Of Opacity In Judicial Selection, Rafael I. Pardo
The Utility Of Opacity In Judicial Selection, Rafael I. Pardo
Scholarship@WashULaw
Does too much transparency in the selection of judges undermine the independence of the judiciary? This Essay seeks to provide insight into answering this question by focusing on the opaque process by which federal bankruptcy judges are selected. Part I begins with an account that anchors the concepts of judicial independence and judicial accountability to the concept of judicial quality. It proceeds to situate within this account the selection process, suggesting that the process can function as a form of judicial accountability, albeit one that diminishes judicial quality in those instances where the process becomes politicized. A brief discussion follows …