Judges Commons^™

Justice On Appeal—One Way Or Many?, Michael E. Smith

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

After two centuries of our nation's existence, discussions of federalism are certain to sound familiar. The ground of argument has been worked so thoroughly, there is hardly a patch left unturned. Conventional watchwords suggest the competing interests: adaptability to local circumstances contrasted with efficiencies of scale, circumscribed experimentation contrasted with prevention of forum-shopping, local self-government contrasted with the cosmopolitan perspective. The most that can be done now, absent exceptional insight, is to display these choices in a fresh context.

What follows is yet another variation on the theme. It concerns the propriety, perhaps the desirability, of diversity among the federal …

Judicial Administration And Invisible Justice, Mary Murphy Schroeder

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

My theme here is the conflict between the visibility of the appellate judge and recent procedural changes designed to cope with the quantum leaps in the numbers and complexity of cases. I will develop that theme, first, by suggesting the ways that three of the major controls on the system, namely the selection, evaluation, and discipline of judges, depend upon the exercise of recognizable and individual judicial responsibility; second, by illustrating how this "imperative" can be undermined if devices intended to cope with increased volume are adopted without vigilance; and finally by pointing up some approaches to permit courts to …