Judges Commons^™

Stacking In Criminal Procedure Adjudication;Symposium On Criminal Procedure: Judicial Proceedings, Luke M. Milligan

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The institutionalist branch of "Law and Courts" studies how judges incorporate institutional constraints into their decision-making processes. Congressional constraints on judicial review, as the literature currently stands, fall into one of two general classes: overrides and Court-curbing measures. This taxonomy, however, is incomplete. Neither overrides nor curbing measures are needed to explain the not uncommon situation where a policy-oriented Justice deviates from a preferred vote based on the belief that such a vote will prompt Congress to alter an "insulated base rule" in a way that disrupts the Justice's larger policy agenda. An "insulated base rule" is a Congressional policy …

Imagining Judges That Apply Law: How They Might Do It, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

"Judges should apply the law, not make it." That plea appears perennially in American politics. American legal scholars belittle it as a simple-minded demand that is silly and misleading. A glance beyond our shores dispels the notion that the American public is naive to expect judges to apply rather than to make law.

American obsession with judicial lawmaking has its price: indifference to judicial law applying. If truth be told, practically we have no method for judges, as a matter of routine, to apply law to facts. Our failure leads American legal scholars to question whether applying law to facts …

Here Comes The Judge! Gender Distortion On Tv Reality Court Shows, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

In the judicial world of television court shows women constitute a majority of the judges and where non-white women and men dominate. In real life most judges are white and male. This essay looks at the gender and racial composition and demeanor of these television reality judges. It asks whether women TV reality judges behave differently from their male counterparts and whether women’s increased visibility as judges on daytime reality court shows reinforces or diminishes traditional negative stereotypes about women, especially non-white women.

Federal And State Judicial Selection In An Interest Group Perspective, Rafael Gely, Michael E. Solimine

Faculty Publications

The literature on judicial selection systems has given considerable attention to the role that politicians and their parties - through their legislative roles - have played in the adoption and operation of these judicial selection systems. Less attention, however, has been given to both the effect that interest groups, broadly defined, have in the creation and implementation of judicial selection systems and the effect that these systems have on the strategies adopted by interest groups to accomplish their goals. This Article seeks to fill this gap. Using the framework advanced by William M. Landes and Richard A. Posner in their …

Obama's Second Chance To Make History, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

This short article provides a view of the circumstances and issues surrounding President Obama's nomination of federal circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

With President Barack Obama's nomination of federal circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, his judicial appointment team has been presented with an early introduction to what has become one the most challenging areas of presidential governance over the last several decades.

The nominations to the nation's highest court have generated controversies going back to Ronald Reagan's failed attempt to elevate the highly controversial federal Judge Robert Bork to the court in the …

Juristocracy In The Trenches: Problem-Solving Judges And The Therapeutic Jurisprudence In Drug Treatment Courts And Unified Family Courts, Richard C. Boldt, Jana B. Singer

Jana B. Singer

This article explores the role of judges on two types of “problem-solving courts”: drug treatment courts and unified family courts. It compares the behavior these “problem-solving” judges to more traditional models of judicial behavior and to activist judging at the appellate level. The authors conclude that the judges who serve on these problem-solving courts have largely repudiated the classical judicial virtues of restraint, disinterest and modesty in favor of a more activist and therapeutic stance. However, the causes and consequences of this role-shift are complex. In particular, the authors suggest that the proliferation of problem solving courts and judges is …

Does Anyone Get Stopped At The Gate? An Empirical Assessment Of The Daubert Trilogy In The States, Eric Helland, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s trilogy of evidence cases, Daubert, Joiner, and Kumho Tire appear to mark a significant departure in the way scientific and expert evidence is handled in federal court. By focusing on the underlying methods used to generate the experts’ conclusions, Daubert has the potential to impose a more rigorous standard on experts. Given this potential, some individuals have called for states to adopt the Daubert standards to purge “junk science” from state courts. However, there is relatively little empirical support for the notion that Daubert affects the quality of expert evidence. Using a large dataset of state court …

Brief Of The Conference Of Chief Justices As Amicus Curiae In Support Of Neither Party, Caperton V. A.T. Massey Coal Co., No. 08-22 (U.S. Jan. 5, 2009), Roy A. Schotland

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Judicial Diversity On State Supreme Courts, John D. Castiglione, Gregory L. Acquiaviva

John D. Castiglione

State courts of last resort are, in many ways, the primary expositors of law in the United States. Criminal law, contracts, family law, wills, trusts, and estates -- just to name a few -- fall within their purview. And yet, we know surprisingly little about just who sits on these courts -- state supreme court judges have been described as “perhaps the most important and least written about group within the judicial system” of the United States. Indeed, the last study on the characteristics and experiences of the state supreme court justices is almost fifteen years old. This Article presents …

The Judicial Ethics Of Criminal Law Adjudication, Keith Swisher

Keith Swisher

Judges in the United States regularly (and often harshly) are disciplined for “bad” criminal law decisions. On a number of levels, it is baffling that this ethical “Rule” — punishing judges for errors of adjudication — has never been the subject of in-depth critical analysis. Thus, this Article is surprisingly the first scholarly work fully deconstructing the Rule (along with attendant considerations in criminal law adjudication) and addressing directly many of the tough questions that have been avoided or mistreated. This Article begins by examining an unexamined, “yet earthshaking” movement—that is, the modern invention of using judicial conduct commissions (“judge …

Here Comes The Judge! Gender Distortion On Tv Reality Court Shows, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

In the judicial world of television court shows women constitute a majority of the judges and where non-white women and men dominate. In real life most judges are white and male. This essay looks at the gender and racial composition and demeanor of these television reality judges. It asks whether women TV reality judges behave differently from their male counterparts and whether women’s increased visibility as judges on daytime reality court shows reinforces or diminishes traditional negative stereotypes about women, especially non-white women.

Human Rights Hero - Sandra Day O'Connor, Stephen Wermiel, Michael S. Greco

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Judges Judging Judicial Candidates: Should Currently Serving Judges Participate In Commissions To Screen And Recommend Article Iii Candidates Below The Supreme Court Level?, Mary Clark

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In the lead-up to the 2008 presidential election, the American Bar Association (ABA), among others, called upon the next president to reform the federal judicial selection process by using bipartisan commissions to screen and recommend Article III candidates for presidential nomination and Senate confirmation below the Supreme Court level. This proposal may well find support in the Obama administration, given the new president’s emphasis on bipartisan consensus-building and transparency of government operations. This Article addresses one question that the ABA and others have not: Should currently serving judges participate in bi-partisan commissions to screen and recommend Article III candidates below …

Legal Holes, Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In the years that followed the events of September 11, 2001, a debate crystallized between those who think that “legal grey and black holes”—which I call simply “legal holes”—are necessary and integral to U.S. law and those who think that they are dangerous and should be abolished. Legal black holes “arise when statutes or legal rules ‘either explicitly exempt[] the executive from the requirements of the rule of law or explicitly exclude[] judicial review of executive action.’” Grey holes, in contrast, “arise when ‘there are some legal constraints on executive action . . . but the[y] are so insubstantial …

Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Race matters in the criminal justice system. Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants. Why? Implicit bias is one possibility. Researchers, using a well-known measure called the implicit association test, have found that most white Americans harbor implicit bias toward Black Americans. Do judges, who are professionally committed to egalitarian norms, hold these same implicit biases? And if so, do these biases account for racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system? We explored these two research questions in a multi-part study involving a large sample of trial judges drawn from around the country. Our results …

Reluctant Judicial Factfinding: When Minimalism And Judicial Modesty Go Too Far, Scott A. Moss

Publications

No abstract provided.

Are Judges Overpaid?: A Skeptical Response To The Judicial Salary Debate, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Eric A. Posner

Faculty Scholarship

The public debate over the need to raise judicial salaries has been one-sided. Sentiment appears to be that judges are underpaid. But neither theory nor evidence provides much support for this view. The primary argument being made in favor of a pay increase is that it will raise the quality of judging. Theory suggests that increasing judicial salaries will improve judicial performance only if judges can be sanctioned for performing inadequately or if the appointments process reliably screens out low-ability candidates. However, federal judges and many state judges cannot be sanctioned, and the reliability of screening processes is open to …

Chief William's Ghost: The Problematic Persistence Of The Duty To Sit Doctrine, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The duty to sit concept or “doctrine”—or at least what I term the “pernicious” version of the concept—emphasizes a judge's obligation to hear and decide cases unless there is a compelling ground for disqualification and creates a situation in which judges are erroneously pushed to resolve close disqualification issues against recusal when the presumption should run in exactly the opposite direction. In close cases, judges should err on the side of recusal in order to enhance public confidence in the judiciary and to ensure that subtle, subconscious, or hard-to-prove bias, prejudice, or partiality does not influence decision-making. The pernicious version …

What's Left Of Solidarity? Reflections On Law, Race, And Labor History, Martha R. Mahoney

Articles

No abstract provided.

Myth Of The Color-Blind Judge: An Empirical Analysis Of Racial Harassment Cases, Pat K. Chew, Robert E. Kelley

Articles

This empirical study of over 400 federal cases, representing workplace racial harassment jurisprudence over a twenty-year period, found that judges' race significantly affects outcomes in these cases. African American judges rule differently than White judges, even when we take into account their political affiliation and case characteristics. At the same time, our findings indicate that judges of all races are attentive to relevant facts of the cases but interpret them differently. Thus, while we cannot predict how an individual judge might act, our study results strongly suggest that African American judges as a group and White judges as a group …

A Review Of “How Judges Think” By Richard A Posner, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a short review of How Judges Think by Richard Posner.

L'Épreuve Orale. Les Magistrats Administratifs Face Aux Audiences De Reconduite À La Frontière, Mathilde Cohen

Mathilde Cohen

We Have Met The Special Interests, And We Are They, Michael R. Dimino

Michael R Dimino