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Sex On The Bench: Do Women Judges Matter To The Legitimacy Of International Courts?, Nienke Grossman Jan 2012

Sex On The Bench: Do Women Judges Matter To The Legitimacy Of International Courts?, Nienke Grossman

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This article seeks to advance our understanding of international courts' legitimacy and its relationship to who sits on the bench. It asks whether we should care that few women sit on international court benches. After providing statistics on women's participation on eleven of the world's most important courts and tribunals, the article argues that under-representation of one sex affects normative legitimacy because it endangers impartiality and introduces bias when men and women approach judging differently. Even if men and women do not think differently, a sex un-representative bench harms sociological legitimacy for constituencies who believe they do nonetheless. For groups …


Beyond Saints And Sinners: Discretion And The Need For New Narratives In The U.S. Immigration System, Elizabeth Keyes Jan 2012

Beyond Saints And Sinners: Discretion And The Need For New Narratives In The U.S. Immigration System, Elizabeth Keyes

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Beyond Saints and Sinners examines the forces affecting the exercise of discretion in American immigration courts, and argues that in this present age of immigration anxiety, the same facts that place an individual in deportation proceedings may constitute the reasons a judge will, relying on discretion, deny them relief for which they are otherwise eligible. The article explores the polarized narratives told about "good" and "bad" immigrants, the exceptionally difficult task of adjudicating in overburdened immigration courts, and the ways in which these polarized narratives interact with psychological short-cuts, or heuristics, that affect judicial exercises of discretion. After engaging in …


Locking The Doors To Discovery? Assessing The Effects Of Twombly And Iqbal On Access To Discovery, Jonah B. Gelbach Jan 2012

Locking The Doors To Discovery? Assessing The Effects Of Twombly And Iqbal On Access To Discovery, Jonah B. Gelbach

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Many observers believe the Supreme Court’s Twombly and Iqbal opinions have curtailed access to civil justice. But previous empirical studies looking only at Rule 12(b)(6) grant rates have failed to capture the full effect of these cases because they have not accounted for party selection—changes in party behavior that can be expected following changes in pleading standards. In this Note, I show how party selection can be expected to undermine the empirical usefulness of simple grant-rate comparisons. I then use a conceptual model of party behavior that allows me to derive an adjusted measure of Twombly/Iqbal’s impact and show …