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2005

University of Michigan Law School

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Judges

Brown And Lawrence (And Goodridge), Michael J. Klarman Dec 2005

Brown And Lawrence (And Goodridge), Michael J. Klarman

Michigan Law Review

One year shy of the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the Justices issued another equality ruling that is likely to become a historical landmark. In Lawrence v. Texas, the Court invalidated a state law that criminalized same-sex sodomy. This article contrasts these historic rulings along several dimensions, with the aim of shedding light on how Supreme Court Justices decide cases and how Court decisions influence social reform movements. Part I juxtaposes Brown and Lawrence to illustrate how judicial decisionmaking often involves an uneasy reconciliation of traditional legal sources with broader social and political mores and …

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Testing Minimalism: A Reply, Cass R. Sunstein Oct 2005

Testing Minimalism: A Reply, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

Some judges are less ambitious than others; they have minimalist tendencies. Minimalists are unambitious along two dimensions. First, they seek to rule narrowly rather than broadly. In a single case, they do not wish to resolve other, related problems that might have relevant differences. They are willing to live with the costs and burdens of uncertainty, which they tend to prefer to the risks of premature resolution of difficult issues. Second, minimalists seek to rule shallowly rather than deeply, in the sense that they favor arguments that do not take a stand on the foundational debates in law and politics. …

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Bayes' Law, Sequential Uncertainties, And Evidence Of Causation In Toxic Tort Cases, Neal C. Stout, Peter A. Valberg Jul 2005

Bayes' Law, Sequential Uncertainties, And Evidence Of Causation In Toxic Tort Cases, Neal C. Stout, Peter A. Valberg

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Judges are the gatekeepers of evidence. Arguably, the most difficult duty for a judicial gatekeeper is to screen the reliability of expert opinions in scientific fields such as medicine that are beyond the ken of most judges. Yet, judges have a duty to scrutinize such expert opinion evidence to determine its reliability and admissibility. In toxic tort cases, the issue of causation-whether the alleged exposures actually caused the plaintiffs injury-is nearly always the central dispute, and determining admissibility of expert causation opinion is a daunting challenge for most judges. We present a comprehensive review of the courts' struggles with the …

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The Appeal, Alex Kozinski, Alexander Volokh May 2005

The Appeal, Alex Kozinski, Alexander Volokh

Michigan Law Review

Appeal from the United States District Court. Hermann Bendemann, District Judge, Presiding. Argued and Submitted July 3, 1926. Filed May 1, 2005. Before: Alex K., Bucephalus and Godot, Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge Alex K.

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Rule-Oriented Realism, Emily Sherwin May 2005

Rule-Oriented Realism, Emily Sherwin

Michigan Law Review

In his new book The Law and Ethics of Restitution, Hanoch Dagan undertakes to explain and justify the American law of restitution. He offers a broad theoretical account of this poorly understood subject, designed not only to fortify the substantive law of restitution but also to clarify the role and methodology of courts in developing the field. Dagan's book also provides lively discussion of the role of restitution in some of the most highly publicized legal developments of recent years. Those who think of restitution as an obscure branch of "legal remedies" may be surprised to read about the …

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Against Interpretive Supremacy, Saikrishna Prakash, John Yoo May 2005

Against Interpretive Supremacy, Saikrishna Prakash, John Yoo

Michigan Law Review

Many constitutional scholars are obsessed with judicial review and the many questions surrounding it. One perennial favorite is whether the Constitution even authorizes judicial review. Another is whether the other branches of the federal government must obey the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution and what, if anything, the other branches must do to execute the judiciary's judgments. Marbury v. Madison has been a full-employment program for many constitutional law scholars, including ourselves. Larry Kramer, the new Dean of Stanford Law School, shares this passion. He has devoted roughly the last decade of his career, with two lengthy law review …

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Against Dictionaries: Using Analogical Reasoning To Achieve A More Restrained Textualism, Jason Weinstein Apr 2005

Against Dictionaries: Using Analogical Reasoning To Achieve A More Restrained Textualism, Jason Weinstein

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note argues that new textualists should abandon dictionaries as a source for legal interpretation. Textualists believe in restricting judges to the intent discernible from the words of a statute and contend that legislative history is unacceptable as a source of this intention. Both of these sentiments lead textualists to dictionaries as the intuitively correct solution for ambiguities in a text. The author argues, however, that dictionaries by their very nature cannot help discern between reasonable definitions at the margins of meaning. The use of dictionaries in these situations allows for a sham formalism, unrestrictive in result and unrevealing of …

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Crawford Surprises: Mostly Unpleasant, Richard D. Friedman Jan 2005

Crawford Surprises: Mostly Unpleasant, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

Crawford v. Washington should not have been surprising. The Confrontation Clause guarantees a criminal defendant the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him." The doctrine of Ohio v. Roberts, treating the clause as a general proscription against the admission of hearsay-except hearsay that fits within a "firmly rooted" exception or is otherwise deemed reliable-had so little to do with the constitutional text, or with the history or principle behind it, that eventually it was bound to be discarded. And the appeal of a testimonial approach to the clause seemed sufficiently strong to yield high hopes that ultimately the …

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How Earl Warren's Twenty-Two Years In Law Enforcement Affected His Work As Chief Justice, Yale Kamisar Jan 2005

How Earl Warren's Twenty-Two Years In Law Enforcement Affected His Work As Chief Justice, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Before becoming governor of California, Earl Warren had spent his entire legal career, twenty-two years, in law enforcement. Professor Kamisar maintains that this experience significantly influenced Warren's work as a Supreme Court justice and gave him a unique perspective into police interrogation and other police practices. This article discusses some of Warren's experiences in law enforcement and searches for evidence of that experience in Warren's opinions. For example, when Warren was head of the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, he and his deputies not only relied on confessions in many homicide cases but also themselves interrogated homicide suspects. The seeds …

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Decline Of Title Vii Disparate Impact: The Role Of The 1991 Civil Rights Act And The Ideologies Of Federal Judges, Michael J. Songer Jan 2005

Decline Of Title Vii Disparate Impact: The Role Of The 1991 Civil Rights Act And The Ideologies Of Federal Judges, Michael J. Songer

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This study employs various statistical techniques to test the efficacy of the 1991 Civil Rights Act in moderating the highly restrictive disparate impact regime imposed by Wards Cove, and to evaluate the hypothesis that political ideology should be a more powerful predictor of case outcomes following the 1991 Act. Part I of the paper describes the evolution of disparate impact doctrine from 1971 to the present. Part II analyzes data from randomly selected disparate impact cases brought by African American plaintiffs and finds that the current disparate impact doctrine emanating from the 1991 Civil Rights Act dramatically decreases the likelihood …

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Earl Warren: Law Enforcement Leads To Defendants' Rights, Yale Kamisar Jan 2005

Earl Warren: Law Enforcement Leads To Defendants' Rights, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Before becoming governor of California, Earl Warren spent 22 years in law enforcement: five as a deputy district attorney (1920- 25); thirteen as head of the Alameda County district attorney's office (1925-38); and four as state attorney general (1939-42). My thesis is that Warren's many years in law enforcement significantly affected his work as Chief Justice of the United States.

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