Judges Commons^™

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Essay/Art Contest 2024, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

The Role Of A Judge In An Electoral Autocracy, Aparna Chandra

Popular Media

In a year where 64 countries are holding elections, courts around the world must engage with a range of questions around electoral integrity and dysfunction, i.e., with the judicialization of electoral processes. How should democratically inclined judges respond to attempts by incumbent autocrats at leveraging laws to hold on to power?

Changemakers: Terrence Haas : Juris Doctorate : Adventures In Law, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Melissa Dubose L'04 Confirmed To Federal District Court 3-12-2024, Suzi Morales

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Judicial Libraries As Predictors For Effective Administration Of Justice In Nigeria, Emmanuel Owushi

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The study examined judicial libraries as predictors for effective administration of justice in Nigeria. The population involved all legal practitioners and legal educators in Nigeria. 4000 respondents were sampled. Due to unavailability of the population at the time of the study, the adopted convenience sampling technique to sample 4000 respondents across legal professional bodies in Nigeria. A structured questionnaire titled ‘Use of Judicial Library and Administration of Justice Scale’ was used for data collection. The questionnaire was structured with the 4-point Likert scale response style, designed on Google form and distributed to the respondents via various social media platforms. A …

Fireside Chat With Chief Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton And Professor Nikolas Bowie: A Discussion About The Relevance And Impact Of State Constitutional Law, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Four Futures Of Chevron Deference, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

In two upcoming cases, the Supreme Court will consider whether to overturn the Chevron doctrine, which, since 1984, has required courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of otherwise ambiguous statutes. In this short essay, I defend the proposition that, even on death’s door, Chevron deference is likely to be resurrected, and I offer a simple positive political theory model that helps explain why. The core insight of this model is that the prevailing approach to judicial review of agency interpretations of law is politically contingent—that is, it is likely to represent an equilibrium that efficiently maximizes the Supreme Court’s …

Not Even A Federal Judge Can Make Texas Protect Kids, Patrick Michels

UDC Law Faculty in the News

In a thirteenth-floor courtroom in downtown Dallas, Jackie Juarez took the witness stand to testify about years of mistreatment under the system that raised her. Now eighteen years old, she stood a little over four and a half feet tall, with dark curls that fell atop a long, cream-colored cardigan. She pulled By Patrick Michels the microphone close as she spoke. At eleven years old, she had been placed in the state’s custody, for reasons that remain confidential. She was removed from a group home after reporting inappropriate text messages from a male staffer—he remained employed at the facility, while …

Ukraine’S Supreme Court: Upholding Justice Amid War, Olena Kibenko, Cristobal Diaz

Judicature International

No abstract provided.

Institutional Design And The Predictability Of Judicial Interruptions At Oral Argument, Tonja Jacobi, Patrick Leslie, Zoë Robinson

Faculty Articles

Examining oral argument in the Australian High Court and comparing to the U.S. Supreme Court, this article shows that institutional design drives judicial interruptive behavior. Many of the same individual- and case-level factors predict oral argument behavior. Notably, despite orthodoxy of the High Court as “apolitical,” ideology strongly predicts interruptions, just as in the United States. Yet, important divergent institutional design features between the two apex courts translate into meaningful behavioral differences, with the greater power of the Chief Justice resulting in differences in interruptions. Finally, gender effects are lower and only identifiable with new methodological techniques we develop and …

Toward A Better Criminal Legal System: Improving Prisons, Prosecution, And Criminal Defense, David A. Harris, Created And Presented Jointly By Students From State Correctional Institution - Greene, Waynesburg, Pa, And University Of Pittsburgh School Of Law, Chief Editor: David A. Harris

Articles

During the Fall 2023 semester, 15 law (Outside) students from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and 13 incarcerated (Inside) students from the State Correctional Institution – Greene, in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, took a full semester class together called Issues in Criminal Justice and Law. The class, occurring each week at the prison, utilized the Inside-Out Prison Exchange pedagogy, and was facilitated by Professor David Harris. Subjects include the purposes of prison, addressing crime, the criminal legal system and race, and issues surrounding victims and survivors of crime. The course culminated in a Group Project; under the heading “improving the …

Can Judges Help Ease Mass Incarceration?, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

A scholar considers how judges have contributed to historically high incarceration rates -- and how they can help reverse the trend.

The Federal Question Jurisdiction Under Article Iii: “First In The Minds Of The Framers,” But Today, Perhaps, Falling Short Of The Framers’ Expectations, Arthur D. Hellman

Articles

As Chief Justice Marshall explained, “the primary motive” for creating a “judicial department” for the new national government was “the desire of having a [national] tribunal for the decision of all national questions.” Thus, although Article III of the Constitution lists nine kinds of “Cases” and “Controversies” to which the “judicial Power” of the United States “shall extend,” “the objects which stood first in the minds of the framers” were the cases “arising under” the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States. Today we refer to this as the federal question jurisdiction.

Of all federal question cases, the Framers …

Fears, Faith, And Facts In Environmental Law, William W. Buzbee

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Environmental law has long been shaped by both the particular nature of environmental harms and by the actors and institutions that cause such harms or can address them. This nation’s environmental statutes remain far from perfect, and a comprehensive law tailored to the challenges of climate change is still elusive. Nonetheless, America’s environmental laws provide lofty, express protective purposes and findings about reasons for their enactment. They also clearly state health and environmental goals, provide tailored criteria for action, and utilize procedures and diverse regulatory tools that reflect nuanced choices.

But the news is far from good. Despite the ambitious …

Sentencing In An Era Of Plea Bargains, Jeffrey Bellin, Jenia I. Turner

Faculty Publications

The literature offers inconsistent answers to a question that is foundational to criminal law: Who imposes sentences? Traditional narratives place sentencing responsibility in the hands of the judge. Yet, in a country where 95% of criminal convictions come from guilty pleas (not trials), modern American scholars center prosecutors—who control plea terms—as the deciders of punishment. This Article highlights and seeks to resolve the tension between these conflicting narratives by charting the pathways by which sentences are determined in a system dominated by plea bargains.

After reviewing the empirical literature on sentence variation, examining state and federal plea-bargaining rules and doctrines, …

Historical Kinship And Categorical Mischief: The Use And Misuse Of Doctrinal Borrowing In Intellectual Property Law, Mark Bartholomew, John Tehranian

Journal Articles

Analogies are ubiquitous in legal reasoning, and, in copyright jurisprudence, courts frequently turn to patent law for guidance. From introducing doctrines meant to regulate online intermediaries to evaluating the constitutionality of resurrecting copyrights to works from the public domain, judges turn to patent law analogies to lend ballast to their decisions. At other times, however, patent analogies with copyright law are quickly discarded and differences between the two regimes highlighted. Why? In examining the transplantation of doctrinal frameworks from one intellectual property field to another, this Article assesses the circumstances in which courts engage in doctrinal borrowing, discerns their rationale …

2023 Women In Robes, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Originalism After Dobbs, Bruen, And Kennedy: The Role Of History And Tradition, Randy E. Barnett, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In three recent cases, the constitutional concepts of history and tradition have played important roles in the reasoning of the Supreme Court. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization relied on history and tradition to overrule Roe v. Wade. New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen articulated a history and tradition test for the validity of laws regulating the right to bear arms recognized by the Second Amendment. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District looked to history and tradition in formulating the test for the consistency of state action with the Establishment Clause.

These cases raise important questions about …

Law School News: A Courtroom Drama Worth Watching 10-22-2023, Suzi Morales

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Bending The Rules Of Evidence, Edward K. Cheng, G. Alexander Nunn, Julia Simon-Kerr

Faculty Scholarship

The evidence rules have well-established, standard textual meanings—meanings that evidence professors teach their law students every year. Yet, despite the rules’ clarity, courts misapply them across a wide array of cases: Judges allow past acts to bypass the propensity prohibition, squeeze hearsay into facially inapplicable exceptions, and poke holes in supposedly ironclad privileges. And that’s just the beginning.

The evidence literature sees these misapplications as mistakes by inept trial judges. This Article takes a very different view. These “mistakes” are often not mistakes at all, but rather instances in which courts are intentionally bending the rules of evidence. Codified evidentiary …

Twenty Years After Krieger V Law Society Of Alberta: Law Society Discipline Of Crown Prosecutors And Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Krieger v. Law Society of Alberta held that provincial and territorial law societies have disciplinary jurisdiction over Crown prosecutors for conduct outside of prosecutorial discretion. The reasoning in Krieger would also apply to government lawyers. The apparent consensus is that law societies rarely exercise that jurisdiction. But in those rare instances, what conduct do Canadian law societies discipline Crown prosecutors and government lawyers for? In this article, I canvass reported disciplinary decisions to demonstrate that, while law societies sometimes discipline Crown prosecutors for violations unique to those lawyers, they often do so for violations applicable to all lawyers — particularly …

Inclusiveness: Advancing Environmental Justice In A Diverse Democracy, Irma S. Russell, Alexandra D. Dunn

Faculty Works

Today, environmental justice (EJ) is more than a significant and meaningful social movement. EJ has now emerged—after at least five decades—as a major initiative for the federal government and for many state governments. Since the beginnings of the EJ movement, its proponents have sought redress for the disproportionate and negative impacts of generations of environmental policy and siting decisions that resulted in adverse effects on the health, environment, economics, and climate of disadvantaged communities. Scientific research and “big data” programs now provide evidence supporting community EJ claims, and laws such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction …

Four Pathbreaking Women Judges To Participate In Iu Conference And Public Discussion Monday, Sept. 25, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Four distinguished women judges from the Middle East and North Africa—including the first female judge in Jordanian history—will visit the Indiana University Bloomington campus Sept. 25-26 for a conference titled “Women Judges in Dialogue,” where they will discuss their own experience as women in the judiciary as well as issues surrounding constitutional adjudication in the region. They will be joined by faculty from the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies and the Maurer School of Law.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Middle East (CSME) at HLS and the Center for Constitutional Democracy (CCD) …

How Are You Holding Up? The State Of Judges' Well-Being: A Report On The 2019 National Judicial, Terry Maroney, David X. Swenson, Joan Bibelhausen, David Marc

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Judges have always faced significant stressors, including the burden of consequential decision-making, exposure to disturbing evidence, and isolation. While every judicial assignment has its own mix of concerns, challenge is a constant. Recurrent experiences of serious stressors place judges at risk of burn-out, secondary trauma, poor mental and physical health, and substance use disorders.

Historically, such issues have been addressed primarily in the context of judicial fitness - that is, only when individual judges were suffering to the degree that they could no longer competently perform their duties would the system respond, and then usually for the purpose of discipline …

When Machines Can Be Judge, Jury, And Executioner: Justice In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence (Book Review), Stacy Fowler

Faculty Articles

In When Machines Can Be Judge, Jury, and Executioner, former federal judge Katherine Forrest raises concerns over the pervasive use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the American justice system to produce risks and need assessments (RNA) regarding the probability of recidivism for citizens charged with a crime. Forrest’s argument centers on AI’s primary focus on utilitarian outcomes when assessing liberty for individual citizens. This approach leads Forrest to the conclusion that in its current form, AI is “ill-suited to the criminal justice context.” Forrest contends that AI should instead be programmed to focus on John Rawl’ 'concept of justice as …

Former Colombian Constitutional Judge And Ut-Austin Professor Join Ccd Board, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

On Friday, August 11, and following the recent appointment of Brady Harman and Greg Zoeller, the Center for Constitutional Democracy added two new members to its Advisory Board: Professor Richard Albert (University of Texas at Austin) and Justice Manuel Cepeda (former President of the Constitutional Court of Colombia).

Law School News: A More Perfect Union Through A Diverse Judiciary 08-07-2023, Gregory W. Bowman

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Major Questions About Presidentialism: Untangling The “Chain Of Dependence” Across Administrative Law, Jed Handelsman Shugerman, Jodi L. Short

Faculty Scholarship

A contradiction about the role of the president has emerged between the Roberts Court’s Article II jurisprudence and its Major Questions Doctrine jurisprudence. In its appointment and removal decisions, the Roberts Court claims that the president is the “most democratic and politically accountable official in Government” because the president is “directly accountable to the people through regular elections,” an audacious new interpretation of Article II; and it argues that tight presidential control of agency officials lends democratic legitimacy to the administrative state. We identify these twin arguments about the “directly accountable president” and the “chain of dependence” as the foundation …

Legal Clutter: How Concurring Opinions Create Unnecessary Confusion And Encourage Litigation, Meg Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

Good judges are clear writers. And clear writers avoid legal clutter. Legal clutter occurs when judges publish multiple individually written opinions that are neither useful nor necessary. This essay argues that concurring opinions are the worst form of legal clutter. Unlike majority opinions, concurring opinions are legal asides, musings of sorts—often by a single judge—that add length and confusion to an opinion often without adding meaningful value. Concurring opinions do not change the outcome of a case. Unlike dissenting opinions, they do not claim disagreement with the ultimate decision. Instead, concurring opinions merely offer an idea or viewpoint that failed …

Ukraine’S Supreme Court: Born Amid Crisis, Now Under Siege, Sergii Koziakov, David Collins

Judicature International

No abstract provided.