Judges Commons^™

Who's Afraid Of Judicial Activism? Reconceptualizing A Traditional Paradigm In The Context Of Specialized Domestic Violence Court Programs, Jennifer L. Thompson

Maine Law Review

The Specialized Domestic Violence Pilot Project (Pilot Project), implemented in York and Portland in July and August 2002, is the result of the collaborative efforts of the District Court system, law enforcement, prosecutors, members of the defense bar, and various community agencies offering services to victims and perpetrators. District court judges are largely responsible for overseeing the changes in court procedures and implementing the new protocols in domestic violence cases. The Pilot Project, and the changes it is making to the role that courts play in domestic violence cases, represents a significant departure from the procedures followed by traditional court …

Judges, Racism, And The Problem Of Actual Innocence, Stephen J. Fortunato Jr.

Maine Law Review

The facts and data are in and the conclusion they compel is bleak: the American criminal justice system and its showpiece, the criminal trial, harbor at their core a systemic racism. For decades, criminologists, law professors, sociologists, government statisticians, and others have been collecting and collating data on crime, punishment, and incarceration in the United States. These intrepid scholars have looked at crime, criminals, and the justice system from all angles—the race of defendants and victims; the relationship of poverty to criminality; severity of crime; severity of punishment; incarceration rates for different racial groups; sentencing and sentence disparities; and so …

Reforming Recusal Rules: Reassessing The Presumption Of Judicial Impartiality In Light Of The Realities Of Judging And Changing The Substance Of Disqualification Standards To Eliminate Cognitive Errors, Melinda A. Marbes

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

In recent years, high profile disqualification disputes have caught the attention of the public. In each instance there has been an outcry when a presiding jurist was asked to recuse but declined. Unfortunately, even if the jurist explains his refusal to recuse, the reasons given often are unsatisfying and do little to quell suspicions of bias. Instead, litigants, the press, and the public question whether the jurist actually is unbiased and doubt the impartiality of the judiciary as a whole. This negative reaction to refusals to recuse is caused, at least in part, by politically charged circumstances that cause further …

Electronic Social Media: Friend Or Foe For Judges, M. Sue Kurita

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

The use of electronic social communication has grown at a phenomenal rate. Facebook, the most popular social networking website, has over 1,968,000,000 users—a number that has exponentially grown since its inception in 2004. The number of judges accessing and using electronic social media (ESM) has also increased. However, unlike the general population, judges must consider constitutional, ethical, technical, and evidentiary implications when they use and access ESM. The First Amendment forbids “abridging the freedom of speech” and protects the expression of personal ideas, positions, and views. However, the American Bar Association’s Model Code of Judicial Conduct and the Texas Code …

The Phenomenology Of Medico-Legal Causation, Nicholas Hooper

Dalhousie Law Journal

The language of counterfactual causation employed from the bench obscures the analytical vacuity of the "butfor" test. This paper takes issue with the consistent recourse to "common sense" as a methodological tool for determining the deeply complex issue of causality. Despite manifestly empty gestures to, e.g., robust pragmatism, the current approach imposes the dominant values of the judiciary in a manner that perpetuates the current distribution of power. Whatever the merits of counterfactual inquiry, its legal iteration requires judges to construct a hypothetical narrative about "how things generally happen." This, in turn, impels a uniquely comprehensive brand ofjudicialcreativity. The results …

Judicial Elections And Issue Advertising: A Two-State Study, Christopher Terry, Mitchell T. Bard

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Popular Elections, Former Justice Robert L. Brown

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tailored Judicial Selection, Dmitry Bam

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Putting Equality To A Vote: Individual Rights, Judicial Elections, And The Arkansas Supreme Court, Billy Corriher

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Living With Judicial Elections, Raymond J. Mckoski

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Enhanced Campaing Finance Disclosure And Recusal Rules To Offset The Influence Of Dark Money In State Supreme Court Elections, Cathy R. Silak, Emily Siess Donnellan

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recalibrating Judicial Renominations In The Trump Administration, Carl Tobias

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Now that President Donald Trump has commenced the fifth month of his administration, federal courts experience 121 circuit and district court vacancies. These statistics indicate that Mr. Trump has a valuable opportunity to approve more judges than any new President. The protracted open judgeships detrimentally affect people and businesses engaged in federal court litigation, because they restrict the expeditious, inexpensive and equitable disposition of cases. Nevertheless, the White House has been treating crucial issues that mandate careful attention—specifically establishing a government, confirming a Supreme Court Justice, and keeping numerous campaign promises. How, accordingly, can President Trump fulfill these critical duties …

Injustice Under Law: Perpetuating And Criminalizing Poverty Through The Courts, Judge Lisa Foster

Georgia State University Law Review

Money matters in the justice system. If you can afford to purchase your freedom pretrial, if you can afford to immediately pay fines and fees for minor traffic offenses and municipal code violations, if you can afford to hire an attorney, your experience of the justice system both procedurally and substantively will be qualitatively different than the experience of someone who is poor. More disturbingly, through a variety of policies and practices—some of them blatantly unconstitutional—our courts are perpetuating and criminalizing poverty. And when we talk about poverty in the United States, we are still talking about race, ethnicity, and …

Combating The Ninth Circuit Judicial Vacancy Crisis, Carl Tobias

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Some Thoughts Raised By Magna Carta: The Popular Re-Election Of Judges, W. Hamilton Bryson

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Of Great Use And Interest: Constitutional Governance And Judicial Power- The History Of The California Supreme Court, Donald Warner

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Narratives Of Self-Government In Making The Case, Benjamin L. Berger

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

University Of Baltimore School Of Law Center On Applied Feminism's 9th Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference On Applied Feminism Today: Keynote Speaker Judge Nancy Gertner, Former United States Federal Judge For The United States District Court For The District Of Massachusetts, Nancy Gertner

University of Baltimore Law Review

Below is a transcription of the keynote speech from the University of Baltimore School of Law Center on Applied Feminism’s 9th Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference: Applied Feminism Today. Judge Nancy Gertner, former United States Federal Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, gave the keynote speech on March 4, 2016.

I was on the bench for seventeen years, and I intend to write about that experience. The problem is that while my memoir was funny, this book—on judging—is not. In my memoir, I describe the fact that the only way I could face the …

How Conservative Justices Are Undertermining Our Democracy (Or What's At Stake In Choosing Justice Scalia, Alan E. Garfield

Indiana Law Journal

In this essay, Professor Garfield contends that the conservative justices on the Supreme Court have allowed elected officials to manipulate laws to entrench themselves in office and to disenfranchise voters who threaten their power. The justices’ unwillingness to curb these abuses has largely redounded to the benefit of the Republican Party because Republicans control the majority of state legislatures and have used this power to gerrymander legislative districts and to enact voter‑suppressive laws such as voter ID laws. With Justice Antonin Scalia’s unexpected passing during the administration of a Democratic president, the conservatives’ control of the Court has been put …

Judges As Politicians: The Enduring Tension Of Judicial Elections In The Twenty-First Century, Richard Lorren Jolly

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Elections transform the basis of judicial legitimacy. Whereas a permanently appointed judiciary finds support in its supposed neutrality, the democratic judiciary demands responsiveness. Yet while this is obvious to scholars, the electorate, and most judges—and is in fact confirmed by much statistical data—the Supreme Court and others continue to insist that judicial campaigns can be sculpted to ensure robust democratic debate without compromising the bench’s impartiality. This Essay rejects the notion that the court can be both democratic and disinterested. It reviews the volatile history of judicial elections as well as the modern web of distinctions between protected and proscribable …