Law Commons^™

Where's Rudy?, James E. Moliterno

Scholarly Articles

Choice of law in lawyer discipline matters, and the language among the popular choice of law rules in use matters. The core goals of choice of law principles should not limit the choices to the states in which a lawyer has a full, formal license. Doing so undermines the modern choice of law interests analysis by eliminating jurisdictions that may have the greatest interest in the conduct.

Lawyers cross borders physically and electronically on a daily basis. Accordingly, choice of law rules are critical, especially when a lawyer engages in missions that are targeted at particular jurisdictions, as Rudy Giuliani …

Preserving The Nationwide National Government Injunction To Stop Illegal Executive Branch Activity, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

The Trump Administration’s extravagant claims of executive power have focused the federal courts’ attention on separation of powers, judicial review, and equitable jurisdiction to grant broad injunctions that forbid the administration’s violations of the Constitution and federal statutes. Critics question the federal courts’ power to grant broad injunctions that are effective everywhere. These critics maintain, among other things, that the federal courts lack jurisdiction and that broad injunctions improperly affect nonparties and militate against “percolation” of issues in a variety of courts.

This Article examines the critics’ arguments and finds them unconvincing. Accepting the critics’ arguments would rebalance the separation …

The Constitutionality Of Nationwide Injunctions, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

Opponents of nationwide injunctions have advanced cogent reasons why courts should be skeptical of this sweeping remedy, but one of the arguments is a red herring: the constitutional objection. This Essay focuses on the narrow question of whether the Article III judicial power prohibits nationwide injunctions. It doesn’t.

This Essay confronts and dispels the two most plausible arguments that nationwide injunctions run afoul of Article III. First, it shows that standing jurisprudence does not actually speak to the scope-of-remedy questions that nationwide injunctions present. Second, it demonstrates that the Article III judicial power is not narrowly defined in terms of …

The Defamation Injunction Meets The Prior Restraint Doctrine, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

In Near v. Minnesota, the Supreme Court added the injunction to executive licensing as a prior restraint. Although the Near court circumscribed the injunction as a prior restraint, it approved criminal sanctions and damages judgments. The prior restraint label resembles a death sentence. This article maintains that such massive retaliation is overkill.

A judge’s injunction that forbids the defendant’s tort of defamation tests Near and prior restraint doctrine because defamation isn’t protected by the First Amendment. Arguing that the anti-defamation injunction has outgrown outright bans under the prior restraint rule and the equitable Maxim that “Equity will not enjoin defamation” …

Demystifying Nationwide Injunctions, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

The phenomenon of nationwide injunctions—when a single district court judge completely prevents the government from enforcing a statute, regulation, or policy—has spawned a vigorous debate. A tentative consensus has emerged that an injunction should benefit only the actual plaintiffs to a lawsuit and should not apply to persons who were not parties. These critics root their arguments in various constitutional and structural constraints on federal courts, including due process, judicial hierarchy, and inherent limits on “judicial power.” Demystifying Nationwide Injunctions shows why these arguments fail.

This Article offers one of the few defenses of nationwide injunctions and is grounded in …

Measuring A Civil-Discovery Sanction For Failure To Turn Over Requested Material: Goodyear Tire V. Haeger (15-1406), Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

A sanction that is unrelated to misconduct is criminal and requires criminal instead of civil procedure. In a product liability lawsuit, the respondent, Goodyear, failed to turn over important tests before the parties settled. The petitioners, the Haegers—a couple who alleged Goodyear’s tires caused injuries—sought approval of a sanction based on their attorney fees. Complex and technical civil procedural rules and statutes, contempt, and the court’s inherent power will govern the Supreme Court’s decision. The issue before the Court is the specificity of the causal link between Goodyear’s misconduct and the amount of the civil sanction.

Precedent And Preclusion, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

Preclusion rules prevent parties from revisiting matters that they have already litigated. A corollary of that principle is that preclusion usually does not apply to nonparties, who have not yet benefited from their own “day in court.” But precedent works the other way around. Binding precedent applies to litigants in a future case, even those who never had an opportunity to participate in the precedent-creating lawsuit. The doctrines once operated in distinct spheres, but today they often govern the same questions and apply under the same circumstances, yet to achieve opposite ends. Why, then, does due process promise someone a …

Judgment Without Notice: The Unconstitutionality Of Constructive Notice Following Citizens United, Carliss N. Chatman

Scholarly Articles

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission positions a corporation as an entity entitled to constitutional rights equal to the rights of natural persons. In many situations, this holding may be the impetus for reform and reconsideration of state restrictions on corporate rights that were problematic before the decision. The operation of corporate statutes on corporations chartered in one state but doing business in another state as a foreign corporation is an area in need of this Citizens United-inspired review. Although most corporations operate as foreign corporations outside of their state of incorporation, neither the constitutional validity of corporate withdrawal …

The Other Side Of The Rabbit Hole: Reconciling Recent Supreme Court Personal Jurisdiction Jurisprudence With Jurisdiction To Terminate Parental Rights, Joan M. Shaughnessy

Scholarly Articles

This Essay contrasts the jurisdictional regime followed in termination of parental rights and other child custody cases with the regime that has dominated recent Supreme Court personal jurisdiction cases. Jurisdiction in child custody cases has long been based upon the connection of the child, not the defendant parent, to the jurisdiction. Recent Supreme Court cases, on the other hand, have focused nearly exclusively on the defendant’s connection to the forum state. This Essay argues that the Supreme Court cases betray a failure of the Court to provide a consistent constitutional justification for the jurisdictional limitations it has imposed. The Essay …

Brief Of Thirty-Four Law Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of Appellants: Altera Corp. V. Papst Licensing Gmbh, Christopher B. Seaman

Scholarly Articles

The amici curiae are law professors who teach and write on civil procedure and/or patent law and policy. As such, amici are interested in the effective functioning of the courts and the patent system in general. Amici believe that this Court’s rigid rule restricting personal jurisdiction in patent declaratory judgment actions both flouts Supreme Court precedent and frustrates the public policy of clearing invalid patents. Although amici hold different views on other aspects of modern patent law and policy, they are united in their professional opinion that this Court should overturn its inflexible jurisdictional rule.

Personal Jurisdiction And The "Interwebs", Alan M. Trammell, Derek E. Bambauer

Scholarly Articles

For nearly twenty years, lower courts and scholars have struggled to figure out how personal jurisdiction doctrine should apply in the Internet age. When does virtual conduct make someone amenable to jurisdiction in any particular forum? The classic but largely discredited response by courts has been to give primary consideration to a commercial Web site’s interactivity. That approach distorts the current doctrine and is divorced from coherent jurisdictional principles. Moreover, scholars have not yielded satisfying answers. They typically have argued either that the Internet is thoroughly exceptional and requires its own rules, or that it is largely unexceptional and can …

A Tale Of Two Jurisdictions, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

The Supreme Court has recently clarified one corner of personal jurisdiction—a court’s power to hale a defendant into court—and pointed the way toward a coherent theory of the rest of the doctrine. For nearly seventy years, the Court has embraced two theories of when jurisdiction over a defendant is permissible. The traditional theory, general jurisdiction, authorizes jurisdiction when there is a tight connection between the defendant and the forum. The modern theory, specific jurisdiction, focuses more on the connection between the lawsuit itself and the forum. Although the two theories should have developed in tandem, the doctrine has become a …

Isolating Litigants: A Response To Pamela Bookman, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

In a recent article, Litigation Isolationism, Pamela Bookman identifies a phenomenon that similarly changes hue depending on one’s perspective or disposition. Bookman argues that four doctrines (personal jurisdiction, forum non conveniens, abstention comity, and the presumption against extraterritoriality) conspire to make U.S. courts significantly less hospitable to transnational litigation. In Bookman’s assessment, such isolationism is counterproductive because the doctrines often fail to vindicate their stated goals of respecting the separation of powers, international comity, and defendants’ interests. The article is crisp and elegant. It synthesizes disparate areas of law to elucidate a broader development in civil litigation. And it makes …

Transactionalism Costs, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

Modern civil litigation is organized around the “transaction or occurrence,” a simple and fluid concept that brings together logically related claims in one lawsuit. It was a brilliant innovation a century ago, but its time has passed. Two inherent defects always lurked within transactionalism, but modern litigation realities have exacerbated them. First, transactionalism represents a crude estimate about the most efficient structure of a lawsuit. Often that estimate turns out to be wrong. Second, the goals of transactionalism are in tension. To function properly, the transactional approach must be simultaneously flexible (when structuring a lawsuit at the beginning of litigation) …

Toil And Trouble: How The Erie Doctrine Became Structurally Incoherent (And How Congress Can Fix It), Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

The Erie doctrine is still a minefield. It has long been a source of frustration for scholars and students, and recent case law has exacerbated the troubles. Although other scholars have noted and criticized these developments, this Article explores a deeper systemic problem that remains undeveloped in the literature. In its present form, the Erie doctrine fails to protect any coherent vision of the structural interests that supposedly are at its core—federalism, separation of powers, and equality.

This Article argues that Congress has the power to fix nearly all of these problems. Accordingly, it proposes a novel statute to revamp …

Class Actions, Heightened Commonality, And Declining Access To Justice, A. Benjamin Spencer

Scholarly Articles

A prerequisite to being certified as a class under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is that there are "questions of law or fact common to the class." Although this “commonality” requirement had heretofore been regarded as something that was easily satisfied, in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes the Supreme Court gave it new vitality by reading into it an obligation to identify among the class a common injury and common questions that are "central" to the dispute. Not only is such a reading of Rule 23’s commonality requirement unsupported by the text of the rule, but …

Remedies: A Guide For The Perplexed, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

Remedies is one of a law student’s most practical courses. Remedies students and their professors learn to work with their eyes on the question at the end of litigation: what can the court do for the successful plaintiff? Remedies develops students’ professional identities and broadens their professional horizons by reorganizing their analysis of procedure, torts, contracts, and property around choosing and measuring relief - compensatory damages, punitive damages, an injunction, specific performance, disgorgement, and restitution. This article discusses the law-school course in Remedies - the content of the Remedies course, the Remedies classroom experience, and Remedies outside the classroom through …

Jurisdictional Sequencing, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

Jurisdictional sequencing taps into fundamental questions about the nature and role of subject matter jurisdiction and what, if anything, a court may do before it has established jurisdiction. Because the Supreme Court has not rooted the doctrine in a clear theory, jurisdictional sequencing has engendered confusion among judges and scholars, who have been at a loss to explain it. Although a number of courts have embraced the leeway that the doctrine offers—the ability to dismiss a case on easier grounds before taking up harder jurisdictional questions—most scholars have criticized it as illegitimate or incoherent. This Article is the first to …

The Restrictive Ethos In Civil Procedure, A. Benjamin Spencer

Scholarly Articles

Those of us who study civil procedure are familiar with the notion that federal procedure under the 1938 civil rules was generally characterized by a "liberal ethos," meaning that it was originally designed to promote open access to the courts and to facilitate a resolution of disputes on the merits. Most of us are also aware of the fact that the reality of procedure is not always access-promoting or fixated on merits-based resolutions as a priority. Indeed, I would say that a "restrictive ethos" characterizes procedure today, with many rules being developed, interpreted, and applied in a manner that frustrates …

Iqbal And The Slide Toward Restrictive Procedure, A. Benjamin Spencer

Scholarly Articles

Last term, in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the Supreme Court affirmed its commitment to more stringent pleading standards in the ordinary federal civil case. Although the decision is not a watershed, since it merely underscores the substantial changes to pleading doctrine wrought in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, Iqbal is disconcerting for at least two reasons. First, the Court treated Iqbal’s factual allegations in a manner that further erodes the assumption-of-truth rule that has been the cornerstone of modern federal civil pleading practice. The result is an approach to pleading that is governed by a subjective, malleable standard that permits judges …

Nationwide Personal Jurisdiction For Our Federal Courts, A. Benjamin Spencer

Scholarly Articles

Rule 4 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure limits the territorial jurisdiction of federal district courts to that of the courts of their host states. This limitation is a voluntary rather than obligatory restriction, given district courts' status as courts of the national sovereign. Although there are sound policy reasons for limiting the jurisdictional reach of our federal courts in this manner, the limitation delivers little benefit from a judicial administration or even a fairness perspective, and ultimately costs more to implement than is gained in return. The rule should be amended to provide that district courts have personal …

Understanding Pleading Doctrine, A. Benjamin Spencer

Scholarly Articles

Where does pleading doctrine, at the federal level, stand today? The Supreme Court's revision of general pleading standards in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly has not left courts and litigants with a clear or precise understanding of what it takes to state a claim that can survive a motion to dismiss. Claimants are required to show "plausible entitlement to relief" by offering enough facts "to raise a right to relief above the speculative level." Translating those admonitions into predictable and consistent guidelines has been illusory. This Article proposes a descriptive theory that explains the fundaments of contemporary pleading doctrine in …

Plausibility Pleading, A. Benjamin Spencer

Scholarly Articles

Last Term, in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically reinterpreted Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a) (2), which requires a "short and plain" statement of a plaintiffs claim. The Court was unabashed about this change of course: it explicitly abrogated a core element of its 1957 decision in Conley v. Gibson, which until recently was the bedrock case undergirding the idea that ours is a system of notice pleading in which detailed facts need not be pleaded. Departing from this principle, the Court in Twombly required the pleading of facts that demonstrate the plausibility of the …

Candor, Zeal, And The Substitution Of Judgment: Ethics And The Mentally Ill Criminal Defendant, John D. King

Scholarly Articles

This Article explores the tension between autonomy and paternalism that characterizes the attorney-client relationship when a criminal defense attorney represents a mentally impaired client. Specifically, the Article analyzes the ethical frameworks that constrain the discretion of the attorney in this situation and proposes a new paradigm for ethical decisionmaking when an attorney represents a marginally competent client.

The criminal defense attorney is both a zealous advocate for her client and an officer of the legal system. In representing a marginally competent client, the initial ethical dilemma facing the attorney is whether she has an obligation to alert the court to …

Pleading Civil Rights Claims In The Post-Conley Era, A. Benjamin Spencer

Scholarly Articles

Much has been made of the Supreme Court's recent pronouncements on federal civil pleading standards during the latter half of the 2006-2007 Term. Specifically, what will be the fallout from the Court's decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, a case that abrogated Conley v. Gibson's famous no set of facts formulation and supplanted it with a new plausibility pleading standard? This Article attempts to examine and distill the impact of Twombly on the pleading standards that lower federal courts are applying when scrutinizing civil rights claims. Two main approaches emerge: that of courts that choose to continue to apply …

The Preservation Obligation: Regulating And Sanctioning Pre-Litigation Spoliation In Federal Court, A. Benjamin Spencer

Scholarly Articles

The issue of discovery misconduct, specifically as it pertains to the pre-litigation duty to preserve and sanctions for spoliation, has garnered much attention in the wake of decisions by two prominent jurists whose voices carry great weight in this area. In Pension Committee of University of Montreal Pension Plan v. Bank of America Securities, Judge Shira Scheindlin - of the Zubulake e-discovery cases - penned a scholarly and thorough opinion setting forth her views regarding the triggering of the duty to preserve potentially relevant information pending litigation and the standards for determining the appropriate sanctions for various breaches of that …

Terminating Calder: "Effects" Based Jurisdiction In The Ninth Circuit After Schwarzenegger V. Fred Martin Motor Co., A. Benjamin Spencer

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Simplification- A Civil Procedure Perspective, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Comment On Judge Joseph F. Weis, Jr., Service By Mail--Is The Stamp Of Approval From The Hague Convention Always Enough?, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

Not available.

For The Civil Practitioner: Review Of Fourth Circuit Opinions In Civil Cases Decided November 1, 1991 Through December 31, 1992: Vii - Federal Civil Procedure, Joan M. Shaughnessy

Scholarly Articles

Review of Fourth Circuit Opinions in Civil Cases.