Judges Commons^™

Exposing Judges' Unaccountability And Consequent Riskless Wrongdoing: Pioneering The News And Publishing Field Of Judicial Unaccountability Reporting, Dr. Richard Cordero Esq.

Dr. Richard Cordero Esq.

This study analyzes official statistics of the Federal Judiciary, legal provisions, and other publicly filed documents. It discusses how federal judges’ life-appointment; de facto unimpeachability and irremovability; self-immunization from discipline through abuse of the Judiciary’s statutory self-policing authority; abuse of its vast Information Technology resources to interfere with their complainants’ communications; the secrecy in which they cover their adjudicative, administrative, disciplinary, and policy-making acts; and third parties’ fear of their individual and close rank retaliation render judges unaccountable. Their unaccountability makes their abuse of power riskless; the enormous amount of the most insidious corruptor over which they rule, money!, …

Exposing Judges' Unaccountability And Consequent Riskless Wrongdoing: Pioneering The News And Publishing Field Of Judicial Unaccountability Reporting, Dr. Richard Cordero Esq.

Dr. Richard Cordero Esq.

This study analyzes official statistics of the Federal Judiciary, legal provisions, and other publicly filed documents. It discusses how federal judges’ life-appointment; de facto unimpeachability and irremovability; self-immunization from discipline through abuse of the Judiciary’s statutory self-policing authority; abuse of its vast Information Technology resources to interfere with their complainants’ communications; the secrecy in which they cover their adjudicative, administrative, disciplinary, and policy-making acts; and third parties’ fear of their individual and close rank retaliation render judges unaccountable. Their unaccountability makes their abuse of power riskless; the enormous amount of the most insidious corruptor over which they rule, money!, …

Fifth Annual Chief Justice Ronald M. George Distinguished Lecture: Veterans In The Judiciary, Lisa Lomba

Ronald M. George Distinguished Lecture Series

Program Handbook for:

October 17, 2013
Fifth Annual Chief Justice Ronald M. George Distinguished Lecture:
Veterans in the Judiciary
Featuring: Associate Justice Ming. W. Chin, Supreme Court of California

AND

October 18, 2013: First Annual Veterans Law Conference
Presented by the Law Students Veterans Coalition of Northern California

The Expert, Nancy Bellhouse May

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

A Nonagenarian Discusses Life As A Senior Circuit Judge, Ruggero J. Aldisert

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Beyond Finality: How Making Criminal Judgments Less Final Can Further The Interests Of Finality, Andrew Chongseh Kim

Andrew Chongseh Kim

Courts and scholars commonly assume that granting convicted defendants more liberal rights to challenge their judgments would harm society’s interests in “finality.” According to conventional wisdom, finality in criminal judgments is necessary to conserve resources, encourage efficient behavior by defense counsel, and deter crime. Thus, under the common analysis, the extent to which convicted defendants should be allowed to challenge their judgments depends on how much society is willing to sacrifice to validate defendants’ rights. This Article argues that expanding defendants’ rights on post-conviction review does not always harm these interests. Rather, more liberal review can often conserve state resources, …

Footnote Online Supplement: State Truancy Law Compilation, Dean H. Rivkin

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

This compilation of state truancy laws is being provided as a footnote supplement to the forthcoming article No Child Left Behind? Representing Youth and Families in Truancy Matters (2013) by Prof. Dean Hill Rivkin and Brenda McGee, of The Education Law Practicum at the University of Tennessee College of Law. It is an updated version of the laws listed in the Juvenile Law Center’s excellent amicus curiae brief in Bellevue School District v. E.S., Brief of Juvenile Law Center, et al., As Amicus Curiae on Behalf of Respondent, Bellevue Sch. Dist. v. E.S., 257 P.3d 570 (Wash. 2011) …

Diversity, Deliberations, And Judicial Opinion Writing., Susan B. Haire, Laura P. Moyer, Shawn Treier

Faculty Scholarship

Underlying scholarly interest in diversity is the premise that a representative body contributes to robust decision-making processes. Using an innovative measure of opinion content, we examine this premise by analyzing deliberative outputs in the US courts of appeals (1997-2002). While the presence of a single female or minority did not affect the attention to issues in the majority opinion, panels composed of a majority of women or minorities produced opinions with significantly more points of law compared to panels with three Caucasian males.

2013-14 International Women Judges Graduate Fellow Announced, Lisa Lomba

Press Releases

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Judicial Court In Its Fourth Century: Meeting The Challenge Of The "New Constitutional Revolution", Charles H. Baron

Charles H. Baron

In the mid-19th century, when the United States was confronted with daunting changes wrought by its expanding frontiers and the advent of the industrial revolution, its state supreme courts developed the principles of law which facilitated the nation's growth into the great continental power it became. First in influence among these state supreme courts was the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts-whose chief justice, Lemuel Shaw, came widely to be known as "America's greatest magistrate." It is this tradition that the court brings with it as it develops its place in the "new constitutional revolution" presently sweeping our state supreme courts. …

Naalj Membership Application And Questionnaire, Tiffany Bacon

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Agenda: Arizona V. California At 50: The Legacy And Future Of Governance, Reserved Rights, And Water Transfers, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

Arizona v. California at 50: The Legacy and Future of Governance, Reserved Rights, and Water Transfers (Martz Summer Conference, August 15-16)

The Colorado River is an economic, environmental and cultural lifeline of the southwestern United States, and the allocation of its scarce waters are a source of ongoing controversy. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Arizona v. California. While the case was an important landmark in the still-evolving relationship between these two Lower Basin states, it remains most relevant today by the way in which it clarified federal rights and responsibilities. This is especially true in the areas of federal (including tribal) reserved rights, the role of the Interior Secretary in Lower Basin water …

The Battle For The Soul Of International Shoe, Eric H. Schepard

Eric H Schepard

In 2011, Justice Kennedy’s plurality opinion in J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro repeatedly cited International Shoe v. Washington, a 1945 decision that transformed the law of personal jurisdiction. Kennedy believed that International Shoe broadly supported his position that a state may hear a suit arising from a within-state workplace injury to its citizen only if the foreign (out-of-state) corporate defendant specifically markets its products to that state. This article reexamines the jurisprudence of International Shoe’s author, Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, to argue that Kennedy hijacked International Shoe’s half-buried legacy of judicial restraint. Scholars have suggested that Stone hoped …

Remedies Unified In Nine Verses, Caprice Roberts

Caprice L. Roberts

An original substantive poem with footnotes that makes three bold claims: (i) Remedies shapes substantive rights, (ii) the scholarly quest for a unified theory of Remedies is ill-fated, and (iii) Remedies properly reasoned will unify across borders, doctrinal and geographic.

Roscoe Pound Round-Table Discussion, Judith Resnik, Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr., Margaret H. Marshall, Clifford W. Taylor, Lucy A. Dalglish, Luke Bierman, Mark S. Curriden

Luke Bierman

Conference of Chief Justices and Conference of State Court Administrators Annual Meeting July 29-August 2, 2006 Indianapolis, Indiana.

Beyond Merit Selection, Luke Bierman

Luke Bierman

This Article reviews some of the factors that have diminished the appeal of merit selection for judges. It examines why merit selection has never been an entirely successful answer for reformers looking for nonpartisan solutions. It advocates addressing other aspects of the judicial office to promote judicial independence. It concludes by suggesting that there be an educational credential for becoming a judge. Such a solution, it is argued, would offer legitimacy to judicial aspirants and would provide independent, accountable, impartial, and well-trained judges regardless of selection method.

Help Wanted: Is There A Better Way To Select Judges?, Luke Bierman

Luke Bierman

This article gives an anecdotal account of the authors attempt to apply for a position as a State Court Judge that he saw posted in the newspaper. The article uses the job posting concept as a starting point to argue that the system of judicial appointment in New York needs to be reworked and there needs to be new and creative solutions brought into the discussion.

Altering Attention In Adjudication, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Judges decide complex cases in rapid succession but are limited by cognitive constraints. Consequently judges cannot allocate equal attention to every aspect of a case. Case outcomes might thus depend on which aspects of a case are particularly salient to the judge. Put simply, a judge focusing on one aspect of a case might reach a different outcome than a judge focusing on another. In this Article, we report the results of a series of studies exploring various ways in which directing judicial attention can shape judicial outcomes. In the first study, we show that judges impose shorter sentences when …

Reflections On The End Of The Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan, Aaron L. Nielson

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

As applicants, federal judges, and law school career counselors everywhere frantically come to terms with the new clerkship landscape, one truth is inescapable: the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan ("the Plan") is dead. On January 29, 2013, the D.C. Circuit-the Plan's last and best defender-announced that it would no longer follow the Plan. The consequences of that announcement have been swift. For the last several months, months earlier than almost anyone expected, untold numbers of federal judges across the country have been rushing to hire law clerks. For these judges, the unregulated clerkship market of the pre-Plan era is back. …

U.S. Judicial Independence: Victim In The “War On Terror”, Wayne Mccormack

Wayne McCormack

One of the principal victims in the U.S. so-called "war on terror" has been the independence of the U.S. Judiciary. Time and again, challenges to assertedly illegal conduct on the part of government officials have been turned aside without addressing the merits, either because of overt deference to the Government or because of special doctrines such as state secrets and standing requirements. This paper catalogs the principal cases first by the nature of the government action challenged and then by the special doctrines invoked. The U.S. judiciary has virtually relinquished its valuable role of judicial review. In the face of …

The Role Of The Federal Judge In The Constitutional Structure: An Originalist Perspective, Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain

San Diego Law Review

Join me now in examining some of the structural features of our Constitution. And let’s do so by focusing upon cases that have come before my court—the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the second highest federal court in the land, inferior only to the Supreme Court of the United States. My goal is to present, in modest outline, an originalist perspective on the federal judge’s role, particularly my role as a circuit judge, in the constitutional order.

Holmes, Cardozo, And The Legal Realists: Early Incarnations Of Legal Pragmatism And Enterprise Liability, Edmund Ursin

San Diego Law Review

The theory of enterprise liability is associated with the tort lawmaking of the liberal California Supreme Court of the 1960s and 1970s. Legal pragmatism, in turn, is associated with the conservative jurist Richard Posner. This Article explains that early incarnations of each can be found in the works of four giants in American law: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Judge—later Justice—Benjamin Cardozo, and the Legal Realists Leon Green and Karl Llewellyn. As will be seen, these scholars and judges shared a common view of the lawmaking role of courts. Stated simply, this shared view was that judges are lawmakers and policy …

Overruling Precedent: "A Derelict In The Stream Of The Law", Michael Leroy

Michael H LeRoy

Will the Supreme Court overrule Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. N.L.R.B., 535 U.S. 137 (2002), its precedent that treats unlawful alien workers as criminals and denies them backpay for a violation of a labor law? More generally, what are the statistical indicators of a precedent that the Supreme Court overrules— and how well does Hoffman Plastic fit that profile? To answer these research questions, I analyze two unique databases— 128 federal and state rulings from 2002-2012 that involved Hoffman Plastic’s remedy issue, and a sample of 154 Supreme Court pairings of an overruled precedent, and the decision that explicitly …

Antimonopoly And The Radical Lochean Origins Of Western Water Law, Michael Blumm

Michael Blumm

This review of David Schorr's book, The Colorado Doctrine: Water Rights, Corporations, and Distributive Justice on the American Frontier, maintains that the book is a therapeutic corrective to the standard history of the origins of western water law as celebration of economic efficiency and wealth maximization. Schorr's account convincingly contends that the roots of prior appropriation water law--the "Colorado Doctrine"--lie in distributional justice concerns, not in the supposed efficiency advantages of private property over common property. The goals of the founders of the Colorado doctrine, according to Schorr, were to advance Radical Lochean principles such as widespread distibution of water …

Justice Florence Kerins Murray: The Legacy Of A Pioneer In The Rhode Island Courts, Marian M. Desrosiers Ph.D.

Journal of Interdisciplinary Feminist Thought

This essay discusses the professional and personal life of Florence Kerins Murray (1916-2004), a senator and judge, whose career had a profound effect onRhode Islandgovernment, public service, and the judiciary. The author uses twenty oral history interviews conducted by the author from 2007-12 with men and women working in the courts, in state and local governments, in public service organizations, and in the media. The research was funded by a scholar grant from the Rhode Island Council on the Humanities.

The Contours Of Judicial Tenure In State Courts Of Last Resort: Accountability Vs. Independence, Todd A. Curry

Todd A. Curry

The study of state courts of last resort is a field which has, up until recently, been significantly underrepresented in political science (Baum 1987, Dubois 1980). The bulk of work in judicial politics over the last fifty years has focused on the federal system. Furthermore, the study of state courts allows for a true comparative analysis. The methods of selection used for the staffing of state courts of last resort are highly varied. There are five distinctly different methods which are used for judicial selection in the states, and many states have institutional nuances that provide further variation for study. …

Gender And Difference Among Brazilian Lawyers And Judges: Public And Private Practice In The Global Periphery, Maria Da Gloria Bonelli

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article examines the ways in which Brazilian lawyers and judges experience difference. It focuses on how gender and diversity intersect in identity formation among women and men in public and private practice in the state of Sdo Paulo, Brazil. In attempting not to attach one fixed meaning to the concept of difference, the research works with Avtar Brah's typology, which aids in detecting how difference is perceived and experienced by the interviewees. The results provide a look at the specificities of professional practice in the global periphery, comparing the gender composition of law firms and gender stratification within legal …

Religiously Devout Judges: A Decision-Making Framework For Judicial Disqualification, Michelle L. Jones

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

For The Times They Are A-Changin': Explaining Voting Patters Of U.S. Supreme Court Justices Through Identification Of Micro-Publics, Jeff Yates, Justin Moeller, Brian Levey

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

In assessing how social forces may shape U.S. Supreme Court Justices’ decision-making it has been presumed that there is a singular public opinion and that this opinion affects each individual Justice in largely the same fashion. We suggest that it is more likely the case that Justices’ world views are informed and shaped by a myriad of social concerns and group identities upon which the Justices structure and process their experiences and develop and refine their personal schemas. While some have already begun to question the proposition of a monolithic public opinion influence on judicial behavior and have begun to …

Interagency Litigation And Article Iii, Joseph Mead

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

Agencies of the United States often find themselves on opposite sides of the "v." in disputes ranging from alleged unfair labor practices in federal agencies to competing statutory interpretations to run-of-the mill squabbles over money. Yet Article III's case-or-controversy requirement includes—at a minimum—adverse parties and standing. Courts have disagreed with one another over the extent to which litigation between the sovereign and itself meets Article III standards. Despite the volume of scholarship on Article III standing, relatively little attention has been paid to Article III's requirement of adverse parties in general, or the justiciability of intrabranch litigation in particular. Looking …