Free Expression, In-Group Bias, And The Court's Conservatives: A Critique Of The Epstein-Parker-Segal Study, 2015 University of Iowa College of Law
Free Expression, In-Group Bias, And The Court's Conservatives: A Critique Of The Epstein-Parker-Segal Study, Todd E. Pettys
Todd E. Pettys
In a recent, widely publicized study, a prestigious team of political scientists concluded that there is strong evidence of ideological in-group bias among the Supreme Court’s members in First Amendment free-expression cases, with the current four most conservative justices being the Roberts Court’s worst offenders. Beneath the surface of the authors’ conclusions, however, one finds a surprisingly sizable combination of coding errors, superficial case readings, and questionable judgments about litigants’ ideological affiliations. Many of those problems likely flow either from shortcomings that reportedly afflict the Supreme Court Database (the data set that nearly always provides the starting point for empirical …
Deciding, 2015 California Superior Court (San Francisco)
Deciding, Curtis E.A. Karnow
Curtis E.A. Karnow
Review of cognitive fallacies judges may encounter, such as expectation fallacies, cognitive dissonance, narrative fallacies and generally problems with associative reasoning
Complexity In Litigation: A Differential Diagnosis, 2015 California Superior Court (San Francisco)
Complexity In Litigation: A Differential Diagnosis, Curtis E.A. Karnow
Curtis E.A. Karnow
This note examines complex litigation with the goal of providing practical options for its management. It is written from a judge’s perspective. I review the definition of a “complex” case and explain its emphasis on the need for a judge to manage the case, with a focus on enabling settlement. I address a series of specific characteristics or aspects of complex cases, explaining how these affect the progress of the case. Then the note explores the many tools and techniques judges have to manage and ameliorate difficult aspects of complex cases. {Pre-print. Final article as published differs substantially and is …
Taking Another Look At Second-Look Sentencing, 2015 Southern Methodist University
Taking Another Look At Second-Look Sentencing, Meghan J. Ryan
Meghan J. Ryan
An unprecedented number of Americans are currently behind bars. Our high rate of incarceration, and the high bills that it generates for American taxpayers, has led to a number of proposals for sentencing reform. For example, a bill recently introduced in Congress would roll back federal mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug offenders, and the Obama Administration has announced a plan to grant clemency to hundreds of non-violent drug offenders. Perhaps the most revolutionary proposal, though, is one advanced by the drafters of the Model Penal Code, namely that judges be given the power to resentence offenders who have been …
El Juez Constitucional Ante El Juicio De Ponderación, 2015 Universidad de Guanajuato
El Juez Constitucional Ante El Juicio De Ponderación, Juan Luis Hernández Macías
Juan Luis Hernández Macías
No abstract provided.
Fearing The Bogeyman: How The Legal System's Overreaction To Perceived Danger Threatens Families And Children, 2015 University of Idaho
Fearing The Bogeyman: How The Legal System's Overreaction To Perceived Danger Threatens Families And Children, David Pimentel
David Pimentel
In the last generation, American parenting norms have shifted dramatically, reflecting a near obsession with child safety and especially the risk of stranger abduction. A growing body of literature shows, however, that the threats to children are more imagined than real, and that the effort to protect children from these “bogeymen” may be doing more harm than good. Advocates of “Free-Range” parenting argue that giving children a long leash can help them learn responsibility, explore the world outside, get physical exercise, and develop self-sufficiency. But the State, usually acting through Child Protective Services (CPS), is likely to second-guess parents’ judgments …
Choosing A Court To Review The Executive, 2015 Cleveland State University
Choosing A Court To Review The Executive, Joseph Mead, Nicholas Fromherz
All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications
For more than one hundred years, Congress has experimented with review of agency action by single-judge district courts, multiple-judge district courts, and direct review by circuit courts. This tinkering has not given way to a stable design. Rather than settling on a uniform scheme—or at least a scheme with a discernible organizing principle—Congress has left litigants with a jurisdictional maze that varies unpredictably across and within statutes and agencies.In this Article, we offer a fresh look at the theoretical and empirical factors that ought to inform the allocation of the judicial power between district and circuit courts in suits challenging …
Get Out From Under Your Overcoat, 2015 Mitchell Hamline School of Law
Get Out From Under Your Overcoat, Jeanne J. Graham
William Mitchell Law Review
No abstract provided.
From Commitment To Compliance: Enforceability Of Remedial Orders Of African Human Rights Bodies, 2015 Brooklyn Law School
From Commitment To Compliance: Enforceability Of Remedial Orders Of African Human Rights Bodies, Roger-Claude Liwanga
Brooklyn Journal of International Law
Over the last seven decades, there has been a global proliferation of international and regional human rights tribunals. But with no coercive power to enforce their judgments, these international tribunals rely either on the good faith of the State parties or on the political process for the implementation of their remedial orders. This nonjudicial approach to enforcement has showed its limits, as most State parties are noncompliant with international judgments to the detriment of human rights victims. This article recommends a new approach involving the judicialization of the post-adjudicative stage of international proceedings as an avenue to increase the enforceability …
Gossiping About Judges, 2015 New England School of Law
Gossiping About Judges, Jordan M. Singer
Florida State University Law Review
Gossip about judges is an essential source of information to civil litigators. Hearing third party assessments of a judge’s personality, demeanor, intelligence, curiosity, and openness to new interpretations of the law can substantially affect a lawyer’s strategic decisions during the course of litigation, and sometimes whether litigation occurs at all. Yet gossip about judges rarely merits mention and has evaded serious study. This Article brings attorney gossip about judges out into the open, identifying its strategic benefits and drawbacks and explaining how attorneys use gossip (and other secondhand information on judges) to anticipate the likely outcome of judicial decisions. It …
God, Civic Virtue, And The American Way: Reconstructing Engel, 2015 University of Richmond
God, Civic Virtue, And The American Way: Reconstructing Engel, Corinna Barrett Lain
Law Faculty Publications
If ever a decision embodied the heroic, counter majoritarian function we romantically ascribe to judicial review, it was the 1962 decision that struck down school prayer-Engel v. Vitale. Engel provoked more outrage, more congres- sionalattemptsto overturnit, andmoreattackson theJusticesthanperhapsany other decision in Supreme Court history. Indeed, Engel's counter majoritarian narrative is so strong that scholars have largely assumed that the historical record supports our romanticized conception of the case.Itdoesnot. Usingprimary source materials, this Article reconstructs the story of Engel, then explores the implicationsof this reconstructednarrative. Engel is not the countermajoritarian case it seems, but recognizing that allows us to see Engel …
Filling The Federal Appellate Court Vacancies, 2015 University of Richmond
Filling The Federal Appellate Court Vacancies, Carl W. Tobias
Law Faculty Publications
Multiple observers have criticized President Barack Obama’s discharge of his Article II constitutional responsibility to nominate and confirm federal judges. Senators have blamed the administration for slowly making nominations, liberals have contended that the executive appointed myriad candidates who are not sufficiently centrist, and conservatives have alleged that President Obama proffered many nominees who could become liberal judicial activists. Despite the sharp criticisms, the President has actually realized much success when nominating and confirming well qualified moderate jurists. President Obama has named more judges than Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton had at this juncture in their tenure, while …
Addressing Three Problems In Commentary On Catholics At The Supreme Court By Reference To Three Decades Of Catholic Bishops' Amicus Briefs, 2015 The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law
Addressing Three Problems In Commentary On Catholics At The Supreme Court By Reference To Three Decades Of Catholic Bishops' Amicus Briefs, Kevin C. Walsh
Scholarly Articles
Much commentary about Catholic Justices serving on the Supreme Court suffers from three related shortcomings: (1) episodic, one-case-at-a-time commentary; (2) asymmetric causal attributions resulting from inattention to cases in which Catholic Justices vote for outcomes opposite those advocated by the Catholic Bishops' Conference; and (3) inattention to broader jurisprudential and ideological factors. This article uses an overlooked resource to identify and counteract these shortcomings. It assesses the votes of the Justices-Catholic and non-Catholic alike-in the full set of cases from the Rehnquist Court and the Roberts Court (through June 2014) in which the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops filed …
Judicial Selection In Congress’ Lame Duck Session, 2015 University of Richmond
Judicial Selection In Congress’ Lame Duck Session, Carl W. Tobias
Indiana Law Journal
This Article first scrutinizes the Obama Administration confirmation and nomination processes. It then critically explores selection and concludes that Republican obstruction instigated the most open positions the longest time. Because this deficiency undermines swift, economical, and fair case resolution, the Article suggests ideas to promptly decrease the remaining unoccupied judgeships after the session commences.
Judge Posner’S Simple Law, 2015 University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
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 …
The Collapse Of The House That Ruth Built: The Impact Of The Feeder System On Female Judges And The Federal Judiciary, 1970-2014, 2015 American University Washington College of Law
The Collapse Of The House That Ruth Built: The Impact Of The Feeder System On Female Judges And The Federal Judiciary, 1970-2014, Alexandra G. Hess
American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law
No abstract provided.
Changing The Rules Of The (International) Game: How International Law Is Turning National Courts Into International Political Actors, 2015 University of Washington School of Law
Changing The Rules Of The (International) Game: How International Law Is Turning National Courts Into International Political Actors, Osnat Grady Schwartz
Washington International Law Journal
Courts are known to be political actors. National courts play the political game in the national domain. International courts play it in the international sphere. This article studies the transformation of national courts into international political actors (IPAs), and the part international law plays in so making them. The article identifies, categorizes, and demonstrates the influence of national courts and judges on international relations (IR), separating the influence into two main categories: direct and indirect. Direct influence, is the effect of a national court taking a position on international issues in concrete situations with immediate IR implications. Indirect influence is …
Reasoned Awards In International Commercial Arbitration: Embracing And Exceeding The Common Law-Civil Law Dichotomy, 2015 Emory University School of Law
Reasoned Awards In International Commercial Arbitration: Embracing And Exceeding The Common Law-Civil Law Dichotomy, S. I. Strong
Faculty Articles
The primary focus of this Article is to analyze various process-oriented and structural issues relating to reasoned awards in international commercial arbitration so as to improve the practical and theoretical understanding of international awards. That discussion, which is found in Section IV, considers various factors from both the common law and civil law perspectives so as to take into account the blended nature of international commercial arbitration.
Of course, to be fully comprehensible, the detailed analysis in Section IV must first be put into context. Therefore, Section II describes the difficulties associated with defining a reasoned award in international commercial …
Inferiority Complex: Should State Courts Follow Lower Federal Court Precedent On The Meaning Of Federal Law?, 2015 American University Washington College of Law
Inferiority Complex: Should State Courts Follow Lower Federal Court Precedent On The Meaning Of Federal Law?, Amanda Frost
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
The conventional wisdom is that state courts need not follow lower federal court precedent when interpreting federal law. Upon closer inspection, however, the question of how state courts should treat lower federal court precedent is not so clear. Although most state courts now take the conventional approach, a few contend that they are obligated to follow the lower federal courts, and two federal courts of appeals have declared that their decisions are binding on state courts. The Constitution’s text and structure send mixed messages about the relationship between state and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court has never squarely …
Judicial Rhetoric & Lawyers' Roles, 2015 Touro Law Center
Judicial Rhetoric & Lawyers' Roles, Samuel J. Levine
Scholarly Works
Notwithstanding the rich scholarly literature debating the proper roles of lawyers and the precise contours of lawyers’ ethical conduct, as a descriptive matter, the American legal system operates as an adversarial system, premised in part upon clear demarcations between the functions of different lawyers within the system. Broadly speaking, prosecutors have the distinct role of serving justice, which includes the duty to try to convict criminal defendants who are deserving of punishment, in a way that is consistent with both substantive and procedural justice. In contrast, private attorneys have a duty to zealously represent the best interests of their clients, …