Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Gephi Output Files, Folder 3, Part 2: Co-Citation Network Data Files, Joseph S. Miller

Faculty Datasets

This data subset created and collected by Joseph Miller and digitally preserved here is in support of his forthcoming article "A Judge Never Writes More Freely: A Separate-Opinions Citation-Network Approach to Assessing Judicial Ideology". From the article's abstract:

"This Article is the first to apply a novel empirical method—citation network analysis—to particular appellate jurists’ separate judicial opinions (e.g., concurrences, dissents) in an effort to provide a more detailed picture of a judge’s ideological preferences. It focuses on the separate opinions of Justices Scalia and Thomas through the end of October Term 2019: they served for a similar number …

Underlying Citation Data, Folder 4, Part 1: Census Of Scalia Cites, Joseph S. Miller

Faculty Datasets

This data subset created and collected by Joseph Miller and digitally preserved here is in support of his forthcoming article "A Judge Never Writes More Freely: A Separate-Opinions Citation-Network Approach to Assessing Judicial Ideology". From the article's abstract:

"This Article is the first to apply a novel empirical method—citation network analysis—to particular appellate jurists’ separate judicial opinions (e.g., concurrences, dissents) in an effort to provide a more detailed picture of a judge’s ideological preferences. It focuses on the separate opinions of Justices Scalia and Thomas through the end of October Term 2019: they served for a similar number …

Underlying Citation Data, Folder 4, Part 2: Census Of Thomas Cites, Joseph S. Miller

Faculty Datasets

This data subset created and collected by Joseph Miller and digitally preserved here is in support of his forthcoming article "A Judge Never Writes More Freely: A Separate-Opinions Citation-Network Approach to Assessing Judicial Ideology". From the article's abstract:

"This Article is the first to apply a novel empirical method—citation network analysis—to particular appellate jurists’ separate judicial opinions (e.g., concurrences, dissents) in an effort to provide a more detailed picture of a judge’s ideological preferences. It focuses on the separate opinions of Justices Scalia and Thomas through the end of October Term 2019: they served for a similar number …

Gephi Output Files, Folder 3, Part 1: Citation Network Data Files, Joseph S. Miller

Faculty Datasets

This data subset created and collected by Joseph Miller and digitally preserved here is in support of his forthcoming article "A Judge Never Writes More Freely: A Separate-Opinions Citation-Network Approach to Assessing Judicial Ideology". From the article's abstract:

"This Article is the first to apply a novel empirical method—citation network analysis—to particular appellate jurists’ separate judicial opinions (e.g., concurrences, dissents) in an effort to provide a more detailed picture of a judge’s ideological preferences. It focuses on the separate opinions of Justices Scalia and Thomas through the end of October Term 2019: they served for a similar number …

Gephi Force Directed Map Files, Folder 1, Part 1: Scalia Maps, Joseph S. Miller

Faculty Datasets

This data subset created and collected by Joseph Miller and digitally preserved here is in support of his forthcoming article "A Judge Never Writes More Freely: A Separate-Opinions Citation-Network Approach to Assessing Judicial Ideology". From the article's abstract:

"This Article is the first to apply a novel empirical method—citation network analysis—to particular appellate jurists’ separate judicial opinions (e.g., concurrences, dissents) in an effort to provide a more detailed picture of a judge’s ideological preferences. It focuses on the separate opinions of Justices Scalia and Thomas through the end of October Term 2019: they served for a similar number …

Gephi Force Directed Map Files, Folder 1, Part 2: Thomas Maps, Joseph S. Miller

Faculty Datasets

This data subset created and collected by Joseph Miller and digitally preserved here is in support of his forthcoming article "A Judge Never Writes More Freely: A Separate-Opinions Citation-Network Approach to Assessing Judicial Ideology". From the article's abstract:

"This Article is the first to apply a novel empirical method—citation network analysis—to particular appellate jurists’ separate judicial opinions (e.g., concurrences, dissents) in an effort to provide a more detailed picture of a judge’s ideological preferences. It focuses on the separate opinions of Justices Scalia and Thomas through the end of October Term 2019: they served for a similar number …

Gephi Network Files, Folder 2, Part 2: Co-Citation Network Files, Joseph S. Miller

Faculty Datasets

This data subset created and collected by Joseph Miller and digitally preserved here is in support of his forthcoming article "A Judge Never Writes More Freely: A Separate-Opinions Citation-Network Approach to Assessing Judicial Ideology". From the article's abstract:

"This Article is the first to apply a novel empirical method—citation network analysis—to particular appellate jurists’ separate judicial opinions (e.g., concurrences, dissents) in an effort to provide a more detailed picture of a judge’s ideological preferences. It focuses on the separate opinions of Justices Scalia and Thomas through the end of October Term 2019: they served for a similar number …

Gephi Network Files, Folder 2, Part 1: Citation Network Files, Joseph S. Miller

Faculty Datasets

This data subset created and collected by Joseph Miller and digitally preserved here is in support of his forthcoming article "A Judge Never Writes More Freely: A Separate-Opinions Citation-Network Approach to Assessing Judicial Ideology". From the article's abstract:

"This Article is the first to apply a novel empirical method—citation network analysis—to particular appellate jurists’ separate judicial opinions (e.g., concurrences, dissents) in an effort to provide a more detailed picture of a judge’s ideological preferences. It focuses on the separate opinions of Justices Scalia and Thomas through the end of October Term 2019: they served for a similar number …

Overruling Mcculloch?, Mark A. Graber

Arkansas Law Review

Daniel Webster warned Whig associates in 1841 that the Supreme Court would likely declare unconstitutional the national bank bill that Henry Clay was pushing through the Congress. This claim was probably based on inside information. Webster was a close association of Justice Joseph Story. The justices at this time frequently leaked word to their political allies of judicial sentiments on the issues of the day. Even if Webster lacked first-hand knowledge of how the Taney Court would probably rule in a case raising the constitutionality of the national bank, the personnel on that tribunal provided strong grounds for Whig pessimism. …

Justice Begins Before Trial: How To Nudge Inaccurate Pretrial Rulings Using Behavioral Law And Economic Theory And Uniform Commercial Laws, Michael Gentithes

William & Mary Law Review

Injustice in criminal cases often takes root before trial begins. Overworked criminal judges must resolve difficult pretrial evidentiary issues that determine the charges the State will take to trial and the range of sentences the defendant will face. Wrong decisions on these issues often lead to wrongful convictions. As behavioral law and economic theory suggests, judges who are cognitively busy and receive little feedback on these topics from appellate courts rely upon intuition, rather than deliberative reasoning, to resolve these questions. This leads to inconsistent rulings, which prosecutors exploit to expand the scope of evidentiary exceptions that almost always disfavor …

Certainty Versus Flexibility In The Conflict Of Laws, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

All Faculty Scholarship

Traditional choice of law theory conceives of certainty and flexibility as opposed values: increase one, and you inevitably decrease the other. This article challenges the received wisdom by reconceptualizing the distinction. Rather than caring about certainty or flexibility for their own sake, it suggests, we care about them because each makes it easier to promote a certain cluster of values. And while there may be a necessary tradeoff between certainty and flexibility, there is no necessary tradeoff between the clusters of values. It is possible to improve a choice of law system with regard to both of them. The article …

Doctrinal Reasoning As A Disruptive Practice, Jessie Allen

Articles

Legal doctrine is generally thought to contribute to legal decision making only to the extent it determines substantive results. Yet in many cases, the available authorities are indeterminate. I propose a different model for how doctrinal reasoning might contribute to judicial decisions. Drawing on performance theory and psychological studies of readers, I argue that judges’ engagement with formal legal doctrine might have self-disrupting effects like those performers experience when they adopt uncharacteristic behaviors. Such disruptive effects would not explain how judges ultimately select, or should select, legal results. But they might help legal decision makers to set aside subjective biases.

Judge Posner’S Simple Law, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

The world is complex, Richard Posner observes in his most recent book, Reflections on Judging. It follows that, to resolve real-world disputes sensibly, judges must be astute students of the world’s complexity. The problem, he says, is that, thanks to disposition, training, and professional incentives, they aren’t. Worse than that, the legal system generates its own complexity precisely to enable judges “to avoid rather than meet and overcome the challenge of complexity” that the world delivers. Reflections concerns how judges needlessly complexify inherently simple law, and how this complexification can be corrected.

Posner’s diagnoses and prescriptions range widely—from the Bluebook …

Empirical Doctrine, Jessie Allen

Articles

We can observe and measure how legal decision makers use formal legal authorities, but there is no way to empirically test the determinative capacity of legal doctrine itself. Yet, discussions of empirical studies of judicial behavior sometimes conflate judges’ attention to legal rules with legal rules determining outcomes. Doctrinal determinacy is not the same thing as legal predictability. The extent to which legal outcomes are predictable in given contexts is surely testable empirically. But the idea that doctrine’s capacity to produce or limit those outcomes can be measured empirically is fundamentally misguided. The problem is that to measure doctrinal determinacy, …

Behavioral International Law, Tomer Broude

Tomer Broude

Economic analysis and rational choice have in the last decade made significant inroads into the study of international law and institutions, relying upon standard assumptions of perfect rationality of states and decision-makers. This approach is inadequate, both empirically and in its tendency towards outdated formulations of political theory. This article presents an alternative behavioral approach that provides new hypotheses addressing problems in international law while introducing empirically grounded concepts of real, observed rationality. First, I address methodological objections to behavioral analysis of international law: the focus of behavioral research on the individual; the empirical foundations of behavioral economics; and behavioral …

Neoliberalism And The Law: How Historical Materialism Can Illuminate Recent Governmental And Judicial Decision Making, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Neoliberalism can be understood as the deregulation of the economy from political control by deliberate action or inaction of the state. As such it is both constituted by the law and deeply affects it. I show how the methods of historical materialism can illuminate this phenomenon in all three branches of the the U.S. government. Considering the example the global financial crisis of 2007-08 that began with the housing bubble developing from trade in unregulated and overvalued mortgage backed securities, I show how the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which established a firewall between commercial and investment banking, allowed this …

The Persistence Of Proximate Cause: How Legal Doctrine Thrives On Skepticism, Jessie Allen

Articles

This Article starts with a puzzle: Why is the doctrinal approach to “proximate cause” so resilient despite longstanding criticism? Proximate cause is a particularly extreme example of doctrine that limps along despite near universal consensus that it cannot actually determine legal outcomes. Why doesn’t that widely recognized indeterminacy disable proximate cause as a decision-making device? To address this puzzle, I pick up a cue from the legal realists, a group of skeptical lawyers, law professors, and judges, who, in the 1920s and 1930s, compared legal doctrine to ritual magic. I take that comparison seriously, perhaps more seriously, and definitely in …

Heidegger And The Essence Of Adjudication, George Souri

George Souri

This paper presents an account of adjudication based on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. As this paper argues, we can only hope to better understand adjudication if we recognize that adjudication is a socio-temporally situated activity, and not a theoretical object. Heidegger’s philosophical insights are especially salient to such a project for several reasons. First, Heidegger’s re-conception of ontology, and his notion of being-in-the-world, provide a truer-to-observation account of how human beings come to understand their world and take in the content of experience towards completing projects. Second, Heidegger’s account of context, inter-subjectivity, and common understanding provide a basis upon …

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 …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

When Should Judges Appoint Experts?: A Law And Economics Perspective, Jonathan T. Tomlin, David Cooper

ExpressO

The Supreme Court’s decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals placed federal judges in the role of “gatekeepers” empowered to evaluate the reliability of often complex expert testimony. Many judges, commentators, and legal scholars have argued that court-appointed experts can assist judges in appropriately carrying out their gatekeeping role. However, previous literature has not evaluated the role of court-appointed experts in a rigorous framework that considers the complex interaction of the incentives of expert witnesses, the impact of expert witnesses on the decision-making of the fact finder, and the knowledge of the judge. In this article, we provide such a …

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

Review Essay: Radicals In Robes , Dru Stevenson

ExpressO

This essay reviews and critiques Cass Sunstein’s new book entitled Radicals in Robes. After a discussion of Sunstein’s (somewhat misleading) rhetorical nomenclature, this essay argues that Sunstein’s proposed “minimalist” methodology in constitutional jurisprudence is beneficial, but not for the reasons Sunstein suggests. Sunstein alternatively justifies judicial restraint or incrementalism on epistemological self-doubt (cautiousness being an outgrowth of uncertainty) and his fear that accomplishments by Progressives in the last century will be undone by conservative judges in the present. Constitutional incrementalism is more convincingly justified on classical economic grounds. While affirming Sunstein’s overall thesis, this essay offers an alternative rationale for …

Reverse Bifurcation, Dru Stevenson

ExpressO

Reverse bifurcation is a trial procedure in which the jury determines damages first, before determining liability. The liability phase of the trial rarely occurs, because the parties usually settle once they know the value of the case. This procedure is already being used in thousands of cases – nearly all the asbestos and Fen-phen cases – but this is the first academic article devoted to the subject. This article explains the history of the procedure and analyzes why it encourages settlements, simplifies jury instructions, and produces better outcomes for the parties.

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Good Faith In The Cisg: Interpretation Problems In Article 7, Benedict C. Sheehy

ExpressO

ABSTRACT: This article examines the dispute concerning the meaning of Good Faith in the CISG. Although there are good reasons for arguing a more limited interpretation or more limited application of Good Faith, there are also good reasons for a broader approach. Regardless of the correct interpretation, however, practitioners and academics need to have a sense of where the actual jurisprudence is going. This article reviews every published case on Article 7 since its inception and concludes that while there is little to suggest a strong pattern is developing, a guided pattern while incorrect doctrinally is preferable to the current …

What Do We Mean By "Judicial Independence"?, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

In this article, the author argues that the concept of "judicial independence" has served more as an object of rhetoric than it has of sustained study. He views the scholarly literatures that treat it as ships passing in the night, each subject to weaknesses that reflect the needs and fashions of the discipline, but all tending to ignore courts other than the Supreme Court of the United States. Seeking both greater rigor and greater flexibility than one usually finds in public policy debates about, and in the legal and political science literatures on, judicial independence, the author attributes much of …

The Architecture Of Judicial Independence, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.