Law Commons^™

Court Packing Is A Chimera, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The dream of the 1930s is alive in Washington. Democrats see

Republicans hemorrhaging voters as Trump struggles with the

economy and the pandemic and are salivating at the prospect of

retaking not only the White House, but also the Senate. Of course, you

should never sell a bearskin until you've caught the bear. But even a

blowout victory can't get Democrats the prize they really want, a

Supreme Court majority. So, in back-to-the-future fashion, many

progressives are pushing the idea of court packing. After all, in politics,

rules are made to be broken.

Eliminating The Criminal Debt Exception For Debtors' Prison, Cortney E. Lollar

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Although the exact number is unknown due to poor documentation, the data available suggests nearly a quarter of the current incarcerated population is detained due to a failure to pay their legal financial obligations. In federal courts alone, the amount of criminal legal debt owed to the U.S. government in fiscal year 2017 totaled more than $27 billion, and to third parties, more than $96 billion, not including interest. In 2004, approximately sixty-six percent of all prison inmates were assessed a fine or fee as part of their criminal sentence.4 Not surprisingly, legal financial obligations disproportionately impact poor defendants and …

Neil M. Gorsuch | Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of United States, Neil M. Gorsuch

The John G. Heyburn II Initiative for Excellence in the Federal Judiciary

The Hon. Neil M. Gorsuch, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, spent Thursday evening on the University of Kentucky campus. He spoke to University of Kentucky College of Law students as well as judges, lawyers and clerks from across Kentucky.

Justice Gorsuch was here as part of the John G. Heyburn II Initiative for Excellence in the Federal Judiciary.

“The Heyburn Initiative enhances the academic experience for our students by providing them with the opportunity to listen to, and engage with, some of our nation’s top leaders in law. The College of Law is one of …

Keeping Up With New Legal Titles, Tina M. Brooks

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this book review, Tina M. Brooks discusses Voters' Verdicts: Citizens, Campaigns, and Institutions in State Supreme Court Elections by Chris W. Bonneau and Damon M. Cann.

Resorting To External Norms And Principles In Constitutional Decision-Making, Alvin L. Goldman

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Given the very significant role of constitutional law in the American political system and the fact that Supreme Court Justices are appointed through a political process, it is understandable that the appropriate judicial approach to resolving constitutional issues often is the subject of political commentary. Unfortunately, discourse by politicians concerning this issue seldom rises to the deserved level of wisdom. One of President George W. Bush's public mantras is illustrative of political commentary respecting federal judicial appointments: "I'm going to put strict constructionists on the bench." On its face, and as understood by politically naive audiences, the statement appears to …

The Constitutionality Of An Executive Spending Plan, Paul E. Salamanca

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Operation of government in the absence of appropriations has become relatively common in the United States, particularly when projected expenses exceed projected revenue, making adoption of a budget a difficult task for the legislature. This Article focuses on the budget crisis in the Commonwealth of Kentucky from 2002 through 2003. In Part I, this Article recapitulates the history of the spending plan, including the action filed in Franklin Circuit Court to affirm its constitutionality. In Part II, this Article discusses certain theoretical, historical, and legal principles that inform analysis of the plan. In Part III, it considers certain deviations and …

Communis Opinio And The Methods Of Statutory Interpretation: Interpreting Law Or Changing Law, Michael P. Healy

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Interpretive methodology lies at the core of the Supreme Court's persistent modern debate about statutory interpretation. Supreme Court Justices have applied two fundamentally different methods of interpretation. One is the formalist method, which seeks to promote rule-of-law values and purports to constrain the discretion of judges by limiting them to the autonomous legal text. The second is the nonformalist or antiformalist method, which may consider the legislature's intent or purpose or other evidence as context for understanding the statutory text. The debate within the current Court is commonly framed and advanced by Justices Stevens and Scalia. Justice Scalia is now …

Modifying The Kentucky Rules Of Evidence—A Separation Of Powers Issue, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

How do you modify laws that simultaneously exist as statutes and rules of court? For reasons that are described elsewhere and need not be repeated here, the Kentucky Rules of Evidence (K.R.E.) came into existence through concurrent enactment by the General Assembly and Kentucky Supreme Court and thus are endowed with all the attributes of both statutes and rules of court. So, how do you change them when the inevitable need to do so arises, a question made both interesting and difficult by the fact that there is no institutional mechanism for concurrent lawmaking by the General Assembly and supreme …

Interpretation Of The Kentucky Rules Of Evidence—What Happened To The Common Law?, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Kentucky Rules of Evidence, which became effective on July 1, 1992, dramatically transformed the method by which lawyers and judges address evidence issues. Before the adoption of the Rules, the law of evidence consisted mostly of a vast collection of common law rulings, accumulated over two centuries and inaccessible to lawyers and judges for all practical purposes. In addressing an evidence issue, participants had to first deal with the problem of "finding" the law-distilling from a morass of conflicting common law precedents the ones applicable to the issue at hand, a task regularly producing contention rather than agreement and, …

The Supreme Court And Our Culture Of Irresponsibility, Mary J. Davis

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article chronicles the Supreme Court's expansion of the “culture of irresponsibility,” where institutional defendants are freed from tort liability with no check on the abuse of such immunity. Professor Davis describes the Court's progression toward immunity in products liability decisions of the past decade including East River Steamship, Boyle, Cipollone, and Lohr. Noting the effect of the Court's decisions in promoting institutional irresponsibility, Professor Davis encourages the Court to use its “cultural influence” and reconsider its broad extension of immunity which has spread to situations and institutional defendants the Court never imagined.

"I Vote This Way Because I'M Wrong": The Supreme Court Justice As Epimenides, John M. Rogers

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Possibly the most unsettling phenomenon in the Supreme Court's 1988 term was Justice White's decision to vote contrary to his own exhaustively stated reasoning in Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co. His unexplained decision to vote against the result of his own analysis lends support to those who argue that law, or at least constitutional law, is fundamentally indeterminate. Proponents of the indeterminacy argument sometimes base their position on the allegedly inescapable inconsistency of decisions made by a multi-member court. There is an answer to the inconsistency argument, but it founders if justices sometimes vote, without explanation, on the basis of …

Comments On Professor Rotunda's Essay, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this comment, Professor Richard H. Underwood provides a response to An Essay on the Constitutional Parameters of Federal Impeachment, by Professor Ronald D. Rotunda. Rotunda’s essay was published in the Kentucky Law Journal, Vol. 76, No. 3, pp. 707-732.

Voir Dire In Kentucky: An Empirical Study Of Voir Dire In Kentucky Circuit Courts, William H. Fortune

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Voir dire is the stage of a jury trial at which prospective jurors are questioned under oath by court or counsel to determine their suitability as jurors in the case to be tried. Kentucky's high court has repeatedly recognized the importance of voir dire to the exercise of for-cause and peremptory challenges.

The trial judge's wide discretion in voir dire, however, necessarily makes a review of appellate decisions of minimal assistance in ascertaining what actually occurs during this important phase of a jury trial. Published opinions provide little guidance in this area; information about voir dire must come from a …

Cecil Pendleton, By His Next Friend, William F. Gadd V. Pendleton, Et Al., Reply Brief (P) 1972-Sc-0313

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Cecil Pendleton, By His Next Friend, William F. Gadd V. Pendleton, Et Al., Petition For Rehearing 1972-Sc-0313

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

William C. Jacobs V. Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government And Ed Hahn, County Sheriff, Miscellaneous Supplement 1976-Sc-0086

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Delia G. Belcher, Kathleen V. Lawton And Clay D. Sharp V. Delmas Gish, Individually And As Superintendent Of The Central City Board Of Education, And P.A. Shaver, Jr., William M. Shaver, Marion F. Tinsley, Morris Richey, Dan Carroll, Individually And As Members Of The Central City Board Of Education., Reply Brief (P) 1974-Sc-1118

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Ingrid Anger Sullivan And John P. Sullivan V. James Levin, Petition For Rehearing 1975-Sc-0712

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Delia G. Belcher, Kathleen V. Lawton And Clay D. Sharp V. Delmas Gish, Individually And As Superintendent Of The Central City Board Of Education, And P.A. Shaver, Jr., William M. Shaver, Marion F. Tinsley, Morris Richey, Dan Carroll, Individually And As Members Of The Central City Board Of Education., Petition For Rehearing 1974-Sc-1118

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

International Association Of Firefighters, Local 526, Afl-Cio, And Richard Wilson, Et Al V. Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, Reply Brief (P) 1975-Sc-0529

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

International Association Of Firefighters, Local. 526, Afl-Cio, And Richard Wilson, Et Al V. Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, Petition For Rehearing 1975-Sc-0440

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Dale Allen Baker V. Commonwealth Of Kentucky, Reply Brief (P) 1976-Sc-0030

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Dale Allen Baker V. Commonwealth Of Kentucky, Petition For Rehearing 1976-Sc-0030

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Jean Carter Powell V. Commonwealth Of Kentucky, Petition For Rehearing 1976-Sc-0475

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Board Of Trustees Of The University Of Kentucky, Nancy Spiller, Ruby Land, James Evans, Sylvia Hardin, And Earl J. Hilton, Individually And As Representative Of Those Non-Academic Employees Who Not Designated Public Employees Council No. 51 To Represent Them As Their Bargaining Representative V. Public Employees Council No. 51, American Federation Of State, County And Municipal Employees, Afl-Cio, By And Through Robert Kessler, Individually And As Representative Of Said Union, International Representative, Public Employees Council No. 51, American Federation Of State, County And Municipal Employees, Afl-Cio, Richard Kessler, Individually And As Representative Of The Non-Academic Employees Of The University Of Kentucky Who Have Designated Public Employees Council No. 51 As Their Bargaining Representative, James Embry, Individually And As Representative Of The Non-Academic Employees Of The University Of Kentucky Who Have Designated Public Employees Council No. 51 As Their Bargaining Representative, Chester Collier, Individually And As Representative Of The Non-Academic Employees Of The University Of Kentucky Who Have Designated Public Employees Council No. 51 As Their Bargaining Representative, Reply Brief 1976-Sc-0346

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Board Of Trustees Of The University Of Kentucky, Nancy Spiller, Ruby Land, James Evans, Sylvia Hardin, And Earl J. Hilton, Individually And As Representative Of Those Non-Academic Employees Who Not Designated Public Employees Council No. 51 To Represent Them As Their Bargaining Representative V. Public Employees Council No. 51, American Federation Of State, County And Municipal Employees, Afl-Cio, By And Through Robert Kessler, Individually And As Representative Of Said Union, International Representative, Public Employees Council No. 51, American Federation Of State, County And Municipal Employees, Afl-Cio, Richard Kessler, Individually And As Representative Of The Non-Academic Employees Of The University Of Kentucky Who Have Designated Public Employees Council No. 51 As Their Bargaining Representative, James Embry, Individually And As Representative Of The Non-Academic Employees Of The University Of Kentucky Who Have Designated Public Employees Council No. 51 As Their Bargaining Representative, Chester Collier, Individually And As Representative Of The Non-Academic Employees Of The University Of Kentucky Who Have Designated Public Employees Council No. 51 As Their Bargaining Representative, Miscellaneous Supplement 1976-Sc-0346

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Suzanne Jett V. John Doe And Kentucky Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Co., Other 1973-Sc-1068

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Suzanne Jett V. John Doe And Kentucky Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Co., Other 1973-Sc-1068

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Betty Jo Garrison V. Dr. Horace W. Addams, Petition For Rehearing 1975-Sc-1035

1970-1979

No abstract provided.

Betty Jo Garrison V. Dr. Horace W. Addams, Reply Brief (P) 1975-Sc-1035

1970-1979

No abstract provided.