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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
Keeping Up With Your Sister Court: Unpublished Memorandums, No-Citation Rules, And The Superior Court Of Pennsylvania, Logan Hetherington
Keeping Up With Your Sister Court: Unpublished Memorandums, No-Citation Rules, And The Superior Court Of Pennsylvania, Logan Hetherington
Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)
As Pennsylvania’s intermediate appellate court of general jurisdiction, the Pennsylvania Superior Court decides thousands of cases each year. The vast majority of those cases are disposed of via unpublished memorandums. These unpublished memorandums are designated as non-precedential and may not be cited by parties before the Superior Court. As a result, litigants and their counsel may not even persuasively cite an unpublished memorandum in briefs or other papers submitted to the Court. Thus, if counsel finds an unpublished memorandum deciding the identical issue of the case at hand and counsel is before the Superior Court judge who authored that opinion, …
To Say What The Law Is: Rules, Results, And The Dangers Of Inferential Stare Decisis, Adam N. Steinman
To Say What The Law Is: Rules, Results, And The Dangers Of Inferential Stare Decisis, Adam N. Steinman
Faculty Scholarship
Judicial decisions do more than resolve disputes. They are also crucial sources of prospective law, because stare decisis obligates future courts to follow those decisions. Yet there remains tremendous uncertainty about how we identify a judicial decision’s lawmaking content. Does stare decisis require future courts to follow the rules stated in a precedent-setting opinion? Or must future courts merely reconcile their decisions with the ultimate result of the precedent-setting case? Although it is widely assumed that a rule-based approach puts greater constraints on future courts, two recent Supreme Court decisions—Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes and Ashcroft v. Iqbal—turn this conventional …
Clear As Mud: How The Uncertain Precedential Status Of Unpublished Opinions Muddles Qualified Immunity Determinations, David R. Cleveland
Clear As Mud: How The Uncertain Precedential Status Of Unpublished Opinions Muddles Qualified Immunity Determinations, David R. Cleveland
Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Much Ado About Pluralities: Pride And Precedent Amidst The Cacophy Of Concurrences, And Re-Percolation After Rapanos, Donald J. Kochan, Melissa M. Berry, Matthew J. Parlow
Much Ado About Pluralities: Pride And Precedent Amidst The Cacophy Of Concurrences, And Re-Percolation After Rapanos, Donald J. Kochan, Melissa M. Berry, Matthew J. Parlow
Donald J. Kochan
Conflicts created by concurrences and pluralities in court decisions create confusion in law and lower court interpretation. Rule of law values require that individuals be able to identify controlling legal principles. That task is complicated when pluralities and concurrences contribute to the vagueness or uncertainty that leaves us wondering what the controlling rule is or attempting to predict what it will evolve to become. The rule of law is at least handicapped when continuity or confidence or confusion infuse our understanding of the applicable rules. This Article uses the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Rapanos v. United States to …
Congressional Repair Of The Erie Derailment, Leonard V. Quigley
Congressional Repair Of The Erie Derailment, Leonard V. Quigley
Michigan Law Review
It is the thesis of this article that such legislative review and repair is required today on the part of the federal legislature in regard to the diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts. Such reconsideration is particularly appropriate where, as in the analogous commerce clause area, the subject matter has been committed specifically to the Congress by the Constitution.