Judges Commons^™

Why Courts Fail To Protect Privacy: Race, Age, Bias, And Technology, Bernard Chao, Catherine Durso, Ian Farrell, Christopher Robertson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable “searches and seizures,” but in the digital age of stingray devices and IP tracking, what constitutes a search or seizure? The Supreme Court has held that the threshold question depends on and reflects the “reasonable expectations” of ordinary members of the public concerning their own privacy. For example, the police now exploit the “third party” doctrine to access data held by email and cell phone providers, without securing a warrant, on the Supreme Court’s intuition that the public has no expectation of privacy in that information. Is that assumption correct? If judges’ intuitions about …

The Lock-In Effect Of Preliminary Injunctions, Kevin J. Lynch

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Judges suffer from the same cognitive biases that afflict the rest of us. Judges use shortcuts to help them deal with the uncertainty and time pressure inherent in the judicial process. Judges should be aware of the conditions when those shortcuts lead to systemic biases in decision-making, and adjust legal standards in order to reduce or avoid such bias altogether.

One important bias that has been identified by economists and psychologists is the lock-in effect. The lock-in effect causes a decision-maker who must revisit an earlier decision to be locked-in to the earlier decision. The effect is particularly pronounced where …

A Case Study Of Patent Litigation Transparency, Bernard Chao, Derigan Silver

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

By focusing on a single high profile patent case, Monsanto v. DuPont, this article explores the problem of transparency in patent litigation from two perspectives. First, this article provides metrics for understanding the nature and quantity of documents that were filed under seal in the Monsanto case. Second, this article scrutinizes particular aspects of the case to provide a more nuanced understanding of what the public cannot see. Although primarily descriptive, this article critically analyzes the sealing of so many documents by questioning the level of judicial oversight applied in decisions to seal court filings. It then goes on to …

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 …

No-Drop Civil Protection Orders: Exploring The Bounds Of Judicial Intervention In The Lives Of Domestic Violence Victims, Tamara L. Kuennen

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Whatever approach a judge takes to a victim's motion to vacate, there will be a risk. Women who are victims of domestic violence will be threatened or hurt or even killed, and the danger of this happening may increase or decrease based in part on the judge's decision. In the face of such risk, this article argues that on balance, the cost of sacrificing victim autonomy in these cases is too great, and that courts should defer to the victim's decision to vacate, except in the limited circumstance in which doing so is detrimental to an identifiable third party - …

Introduction To The Online Colorado Litigator's Handbook, Robert S. Anderson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The Litigator's Handbook includes surveys of district court judges throughout the state with detailed questions of each judge's preferences and proscriptions for practice and procedure; answers to some questions that attorneys want to know but may be afraid to ask; and commentary that indicates the court's general level of receptiveness to particular types of requests.

Are Some Words Better Left Unpublished?: Precedent And The Role Of Unpublished Decisions, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The practice of unpublished decisions and their precedential value causes much controversy. The practice of unpublished opinions creates a solution for how to deal effectively with heavy caseloads. Electronic databases make unpublished decisions readily available, which removes any secrecy that critics fear. Unpublished opinions are treated in one of three ways by the courts. In addition, three pragmatic issues are created by allowing opinions to go unpublished: 1) the availability of these decisions, 2) the quality of the reasoning in unpublished decisions, and 3) the treatment of unpublished opinions as precedent.