Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Legal History Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 30 of 33

Full-Text Articles in Legal History

A Formulaic Recitation Will Not Do: Why The Federal Rules Demand More Detail In Criminal Pleading, Charles Eric Hintz Jan 2021

A Formulaic Recitation Will Not Do: Why The Federal Rules Demand More Detail In Criminal Pleading, Charles Eric Hintz

All Faculty Scholarship

When a plaintiff files a civil lawsuit in federal court, her complaint must satisfy certain minimum standards. Specifically, under the prevailing understanding of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a), a complaint must plead sufficient factual matter to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face, rather than mere conclusory statements. Given the significantly higher stakes involved in criminal cases, one might think that an even more robust requirement would exist in that context. But in fact a weaker pleading standard reigns. Under the governing interpretation of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 7(c), indictments that simply parrot the …


Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang Jan 2017

Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

All Faculty Scholarship

In this article we situate consideration of class actions in a framework, and fortify it with data, that we have developed as part of a larger project, the goal of which is to assess the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we have documented how the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court (wielding both judicial power under Article III of the Constitution and delegated legislative power under the Rules Enabling Act) fared in efforts to reverse or dull the effects of statutory and other incentives for …


Choice Of Law And Jurisdictional Policy In The Federal Courts, Tobias Barrington Wolff Jan 2017

Choice Of Law And Jurisdictional Policy In The Federal Courts, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

For seventy-five years, Klaxon v. Stentor Electric Manufacturing has provided a one-line answer to choice-of-law questions in federal diversity cases: Erie requires the federal court to employ the same law that a court of the state would select. The simplicity of the proposition likely accounts for the unqualified breadth with which federal courts now apply it. Choice of law doctrine is difficult, consensus in hard cases is elusive, and the anxiety that Erie produces over the demands of federalism tends to stifle any reexamination of core assumptions. The attraction of a simple answer is obvious. But Klaxon cannot bear the …


Procedure And Pragmatism, Stephen B. Burbank Jan 2016

Procedure And Pragmatism, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, prepared as part of a festschrift for the Italian scholar, Michele Taruffo, I portray him as a pragmatic realist of the sort described by Richard Posner in his book, Reflections on Judging. Viewing him as such, I salute Taruffo for challenging the established order in domestic and comparative law thinking about civil law systems, the role of lawyers, courts and precedent in those systems, and also for casting the light of the comparative enterprise on common law systems, particularly that in the United States. Speaking as one iconoclast of another, however, I also raise questions about Taruffo’s …


Scott V. Harris And The Future Of Summary Judgment, Tobias Barrington Wolff Jul 2015

Scott V. Harris And The Future Of Summary Judgment, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s decision in Scott v. Harris has quickly become a staple in many Civil Procedure courses, and small wonder. The cinematic high-speed car chase complete with dash-cam video and the Court’s controversial treatment of that video evidence seem tailor-made for classroom discussion. As is often true with instant classics, however, splashy first impressions can mask a more complex state of affairs. At the heart of Scott v. Harris lies the potential for a radical doctrinal reformation: a shift in the core summary judgment standard undertaken to justify a massive expansion of interlocutory appellate jurisdiction in qualified immunity cases. …


Discretion In Class Certification, Tobias Barrington Wolff Jan 2014

Discretion In Class Certification, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

A district court has broad discretion in deciding whether a suit may be maintained as a class action. Variations on this phrase populate the class action jurisprudence of the federal courts. The power of the federal courts to exercise discretion when deciding whether to permit a suit to proceed as a class action has long been treated as an elemental component of a representative proceeding. It is therefore cause for surprise that there is no broad consensus regarding the nature and definition of this judicial discretion in the certification process. The federal courts have not coalesced around a clear or …


Advocacy Revalued, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., Dana A. Remus Jan 2011

Advocacy Revalued, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., Dana A. Remus

All Faculty Scholarship

A central and ongoing debate among legal ethics scholars addresses the moral positioning of adversarial advocacy. Most participants in this debate focus on the structure of our legal system and the constituent role of the lawyer-advocate. Many are highly critical, arguing that the core structure of adversarial advocacy is the root cause of many instances of lawyer misconduct. In this Article, we argue that these scholars’ focuses are misguided. Through reflection on Aristotle’s treatise, Rhetoric, we defend advocacy in our legal system’s litigation process as ethically positive and as pivotal to fair and effective dispute resolution. We recognize that advocacy …


On The Road To Civil Gideon: Five Lessons From The Enactment Of A Right To Counsel For Indigent Homeowners In Federal Civil Forfeiture Proceedings, Louis S. Rulli Jan 2011

On The Road To Civil Gideon: Five Lessons From The Enactment Of A Right To Counsel For Indigent Homeowners In Federal Civil Forfeiture Proceedings, Louis S. Rulli

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Greater And Lesser Powers Of Tort Reform: The Primary Jurisdiction Doctrine And State-Law Claims Concerning Fda-Approved Products, Catherine T. Struve Jan 2008

Greater And Lesser Powers Of Tort Reform: The Primary Jurisdiction Doctrine And State-Law Claims Concerning Fda-Approved Products, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Preclusion In Class Action Litigation, Tobias Barrington Wolff Jan 2005

Preclusion In Class Action Litigation, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

"Despite the intense focus that courts and commentators have trained upon class litigation for the last twenty-five years, a central feature of the class-action lawsuit has received no sustained attention: the preclusive effect that a judgment in a class action should have upon the other, non-class claims of absentees. The omission is a serious one. If claim and issue preclusion were to operate in their normal mode when a claim is certified for class treatment, absentees would sometimes face a serious threat of having their high-value individual claims compromised. Such a threat, in turn, can create ex ante conflicts of …


Doctors, The Adversary System, And Proceudral Reform In Medical Liability Litigation, Catherine T. Struve Jan 2004

Doctors, The Adversary System, And Proceudral Reform In Medical Liability Litigation, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Tribal Immunity And Tribal Courts, Catherine T. Struve Jan 2004

Tribal Immunity And Tribal Courts, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Jurisdictional Conflict And Jurisdictional Equilibration: Paths To A Via Media, Stephen B. Burbank Jan 2004

Jurisdictional Conflict And Jurisdictional Equilibration: Paths To A Via Media, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Defeating Class Certification In Securities Fraud Actions, Kermit Roosevelt Iii Jan 2003

Defeating Class Certification In Securities Fraud Actions, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Exhaustion Under The Prison Litigation Reform Act: The Consequence Of Procedural Error, Kermit Roosevelt Iii Jan 2003

Exhaustion Under The Prison Litigation Reform Act: The Consequence Of Procedural Error, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Paradox Of Delegation: Interpreting The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Catherine T. Struve Jan 2002

The Paradox Of Delegation: Interpreting The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Uncontrollable Urges And Irrational People, Stephen J. Morse Jan 2002

Uncontrollable Urges And Irrational People, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Bitter With The Sweet: Tradition, History, And Limitations On Federal Judicial Power--A Case Study, Stephen B. Burbank Jan 2000

The Bitter With The Sweet: Tradition, History, And Limitations On Federal Judicial Power--A Case Study, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Foreword: Causes And Limits Of Pessimism, Stephen B. Burbank Jan 2000

Foreword: Causes And Limits Of Pessimism, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Myth Of Choice Of Law: Rethinking Conflicts, Kermit Roosevelt Iii Jan 1999

The Myth Of Choice Of Law: Rethinking Conflicts, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

All Faculty Scholarship

Choice of law is a mess. That much has become a truism. It is a "dismal swamp," a morass of confusion, a body of doctrine "killed by a realism intended to save it," and now "universally said to be a disaster." One way to demonstrate its tribulations would be to look at the academic dissensus and the hopelessly underdeterminative Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws. Another would be to examine the Supreme Court's abdication of the task of articulating constitutional constraints on state choice-of-law rules. This article will do both. At the outset, though, I want to suggest that one …


An Historical Analysis Of The Binding Nature Of Class Suits, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., John L. Gedid, Stephen Sowie Jan 1998

An Historical Analysis Of The Binding Nature Of Class Suits, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., John L. Gedid, Stephen Sowie

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Retroactivity And Legal Change: An Equilibrium Approach, Jill E. Fisch Jan 1997

Retroactivity And Legal Change: An Equilibrium Approach, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, Professor Fisch assesses currrent retroactivity doctrine and proposes a new framework for retroactivity analysis. Current law has failed to reflect the complexity of defining retroactivity and to harmonize the conflicting concerns of efficiency and fairness that animate retroactivity doctrine. By drawing a sharp distinction between adjudication and legislation, the law has also overlooked the similarity of the issues that retroactivity raises in both contexts. Professor Fisch's analysis, influenced by the legal process school, uses an equilibrium approach to connect retroactivity analysis to theories of legal change. Instead of focusing on the nature of the new legal rule, …


The Vanishing Precedent: Eduardo Meets Vacatur, Jill E. Fisch Jan 1994

The Vanishing Precedent: Eduardo Meets Vacatur, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Foreword: The Law Of Federal Judicial Discipline And The Lessons Of Social Science, Stephen B. Burbank, Sheldon Jay Plager Jan 1993

Foreword: The Law Of Federal Judicial Discipline And The Lessons Of Social Science, Stephen B. Burbank, Sheldon Jay Plager

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Federal Judgments Law: Sources Of Authority And Sources Of Rules, Stephen B. Burbank Jun 1992

Federal Judgments Law: Sources Of Authority And Sources Of Rules, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Transformation Of American Civil Procedure: The Example Of Rule 11, Stephen B. Burbank Jan 1989

The Transformation Of American Civil Procedure: The Example Of Rule 11, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Discovery Vices And Trans-Substantive Virtues In The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr. Jan 1989

Discovery Vices And Trans-Substantive Virtues In The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Chancellor's Boot, Stephen B. Burbank Jan 1988

The Chancellor's Boot, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Of Rules And Discretion: The Supreme Court, Federal Rules And Common Law, Stephen B. Burbank Jan 1988

Of Rules And Discretion: The Supreme Court, Federal Rules And Common Law, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Procedural Rulemaking Under The Judicial Councils Reform And Judicial Conduct And Disability Act Of 1980, Stephen B. Burbank Dec 1982

Procedural Rulemaking Under The Judicial Councils Reform And Judicial Conduct And Disability Act Of 1980, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.