Law Commons^™

The Right To A Well-Rested Jury, Caroline Howe

Michigan Law Review

The vast amount of control that state trial judges exercise over the dynamics of their courtrooms is well established. The length of trial days and jury deliberations, however, has received little scholarly attention. Longstanding research has conclusively established the disruptive effects of sleep deprivation on many of the mental facilities necessary for juries to competently fulfill their duties. By depriving juries of sleep, trial judges may be compromising the fair rights of criminal defendants for the sake of efficiency. This Note argues that trial judges must use their discretion to ensure juries are well-rested, keeping jurors’ needs in mind. Further, …

The Lottery Docket, Daniel Epps, William Ortman

Michigan Law Review

We propose supplementing the Supreme Court’s caseload with a “lottery docket” of cases selected at random from final judgments of the circuit courts. The Court currently possesses almost unfettered authority to set its own agenda through its certiorari jurisdiction. By rule and custom, the Court exercises that discretion by selecting cases that it sees as important, in a narrow sense of that term. The Court’s free hand in agenda setting has obvious benefits, but it has drawbacks as well. It deprives the Court of critical information about how the law operates in ordinary cases. It signals to circuit courts that …

Remedial Restraint In Administrative Law, Nicholas Bagley

Articles

When a court determines that an agency action violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the conventional remedy is to invalidate the action and remand to the agency. Only rarely do the courts entertain the possibility of holding agency errors harmless. The courts’ strict approach to error holds some appeal: Better a hard rule that encourages procedural fastidiousness than a remedial standard that might tempt agencies to cut corners. But the benefits of this rule-bound approach are more elusive, and the costs much larger, than is commonly assumed. Across a wide range of cases, the reflexive invalidation of agency action appears wildly …

Unpacking Eme Homer: Cost, Proportionality, And Emissions Reductions, Daniel A. Farber

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Interstate air pollution can prevent even the most diligent downwind state from attaining the air quality levels required by federal law. Allocating responsibility for emissions cuts when multiple upwind states contribute to downwind air quality violations presents a particularly difficult problem. Justice Ginsburg’s opinion for the Court in EPA v. EME Homer City Generator, L.P., gives EPA broad discretion to craft regulatory solutions for this problem. Although the specific statutory provision at issue was deceptively simple, the underlying problem was especially complex because of the large number of states involved. Indeed, neither the majority opinion nor the dissent seems to …

Discretionary (In)Justice: The Exercise Of Discretion In Claims For Asylum, Kate Aschenbrenner

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Section 208(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act provides that asylum may be granted to an applicant who meets the definition of a refugee-that is, someone who has been persecuted or has a well-founded fear of future persecution in her own country on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Asylum is a discretionary form of relief which means that the United States government is not required to grant asylum to every refugee within the United States but instead may decide whether or not to do so. This Article sets out in Part …

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: A Misplaced Trust In Mechanical Justice, Evangeline A. Zimmerman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In 1984 the Sentencing Reform Act was passed, ending fully discretionary sentencing by judges and allowing for the creation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines ("FSG" or "Guidelines"). This Note proposes that the Guidelines failed not only because they ran afoul of the Sixth Amendment, as determined by the Supreme Court in 2005, but also because they lacked a clear underlying purpose, had a misplaced trust in uniformity, and were born of political compromise. Moreover, the effect of the FSG was to blindly shunt discretionary decisions from judges, who are supposed to be neutral parties, to prosecutors, who are necessarily partisan. …

Performing Discretion Or Performing Discrimination: Race, Ritual, And Peremptory Challenges In Capital Jury Selection, Melynda J. Price

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Research shows the mere presence of Blacks on capital juries-- on the rare occasions they are seated--can mean the difference between life and death. Peremptory challenges are the primary method to remove these pivotal participants. Batson v. Kentucky developed hearings as an immediate remedy for the unconstitutional removal of jurors through racially motivated peremptory challenges. These proceedings have become rituals that sanction continued bias in the jury selection process and ultimately affect the outcome of capital trials. This Article deconstructs the role of the Batson ritual in legitimating the removal of African American jurors. These perfunctory hearings fail to meaningfully …

First Amendment Equal Protection: On Discretion, Inequality, And Participation, Daniel P. Tokaji

Michigan Law Review

The tension between equality and discretion lies at the heart of some of the most vexing questions of constitutional law. The considerable discretion that many official decisionmakers wield raises the spectre that violations of equality norms will sometimes escape detection. This is true in a variety of settings, whether discretion lies over speakers' access to public fora, implementation of the death penalty, or the recounting of votes. Is the First Amendment violated, for example, when a city ordinance gives local officials broad discretion to determine the conditions under which political demonstrations may take place? Is equal protection denied where the …

Reply: The Institutional Dimension Of Statutory And Constitutional Interpretation, Richard A. Posner

Michigan Law Review

Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule argue in Interpretation and lnstitutions that judicial interpretation of statutes and constitutions should take account both of the institutional framework within which interpretation takes place and of the consequences of different styles of interpretation; they further argue that this point has been neglected by previous scholars. The first half of the thesis is correct but obvious; the second half, which the authors state in terms emphatic to the point of being immodest, is incorrect. Moreover, the authors offer no feasible suggestions for how the relation between interpretation and the institutional framework might be studied better …

Restrictions On Publication And Citation Of Judicial Opinions: A Reassessment, Robert J. Martineau

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In response to the "crisis of volume," state and federal appellate courts have been restricting the opinions they write to those opinions which will: (1) establish a new. rule of law or expand, alter, or modify an existing rule; (2) involve a legal issue of continuing public interest; (3) criticize existing law; or (4) resolve a conflict of authority. All other opinions are limited to brief statements of the reasons for the decision, go unpublished, and generally carry a prohibition against their being cited as precedent. Recently, critics have alleged a number of faults with this practice, including the supposed …

Political Questions In International Trade: Judicial Review Of Section 301?, Erwin P. Eichmann, Gary N. Horlick

Michigan Journal of International Law

Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 ("Section 301") has become an increasingly potent and widely-used tool in the U.S. arsenal of trade policy measures. The past few years have seen a proliferation of Section 301 cases, affecting the trade of goods and services in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Even so, in the debate over the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 ("Omnibus Trade Act"), Congress expressed impatience with the President's discretion in not undertaking more Section 301 retaliations. But while much attention has focused on the politics and policy aspects of Section 301, little has been …

Statutory Obsolescence And The Judicial Process: The Revisionist Role Of The Courts In Federal Banking Regulation, Donald C. Langevoort

Michigan Law Review

What do - or should - courts do when asked to interpret an apparently "obsolete" statute? This question is an important one half a century or more after the enactment of much of the fundamental federal legislation in such fields of economic regulation as labor, communications, antitrust, securities, and - the subject of this study banking. For a variety of reasons, including political inertia and special interest pressure, many of these statutes remain substantially unchanged even though the assumptions about marketplace structure and conditions that formed the basis for the legislation have long since ceased to hold true.

Extended Voluntary Departure: Limiting The Attorney General's Discretion In Immigration Matters, Lynda J. Oswald

Michigan Law Review

Fifteen times in the past quarter-century, the Attorney General has decreed that aliens of certain nationalities could temporarily remain in the United States regardless of their visa status. Government officials have characterized these grants of blanket extended voluntary departure (EVD) as a means of protecting aliens from life-threatening conditions in their homelands. The Attorney General's actions were apparently undertaken for humanitarian reasons and went largely unnoticed by the public.

Part I of this Note defines EVD and distinguishes it from related forms of deportation relief. Part II describes the Employees Union court's holding. The evolution of American perceptions of immigration …

Reassessing The Role Of The Trial Judge In Verdictless Dispositions Of Criminal Cases, H. Richard Uviller

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Passive Judiciary by Abraham S. Goldstein

The Quantum Of Evidence Required To Extradite From The United States, Robert J. Rosoff

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article argues that it is appropriate to require that requesting countries meet the uniform federal bindover standard to obtain extradition from the United States, rather than a more stringent state standard. The federal bindover standard of probable cause accomplishes the purpose of United States extradition procedure better than any other evidentiary standard. It affords an alleged fugitive more protection from unjustified extradition than is available in most countries. Furthermore, the reasons advanced by advocates of a more stringent bindover standard in the domestic criminal setting do not apply to extradition hearings.

Procedural Unvertainty Attending The Assertion Of The Political Offense Exception In Extradition Hearings, Charles R. Meyer Iii

Michigan Journal of International Law

The American approach to the political offense exception to extradition is under increasing attack. Unfavorable commentary, sparked in part by the recent decision In re McMullen, has noted the confusion present in the operation of the exception. This article will trace some of the difficulties to the uncertain procedural burdens of raising and proving the exception in the judicial hearing. The current practice should be reformed to ameliorate the confusion. To this end, the United States Congress or Supreme Court must intervene to unify the procedural approaches taken by U.S. magistrates with respect to raising and proving the political …

Protecting The Rights Of The Requested Person In Extradition Proceedings: An Argument For A Humanitarian Exception, Leslie Anderson

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article will first define the types of post-extradition treatment which requested persons have raised as requiring judicial attention. It will next survey judicial responses to these claims and then consider the scope of executive review. The article concludes that the courts have exaggerated the range of executive discretion to deny extradition. As extradition currently operates in the United States, there is the serious possibility that a bona fide claim of unfair treatment would not receive adequate consideration by either the judicial or executive branch.

Labor Law - Labor-Management Relations Act- Extent Of Discretion Exercised By District Courts In Issuing Temporary Injunctions Against Alleged Unfair Labor Practice, John A. Beach S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

The Labor-Management Relations Act gives federal district courts jurisdiction to grant injunctions in two different situations, notwithstanding the general policy against granting in junctions in labor disputes not involving fraud or violence set by the Norris-LaGuardia Act. The grant of limited injunctive jurisdiction given by section 208 in one situation, national emergencies, will not be discussed. This comment will deal only with the other, the grant of jurisdiction in sections 10(j) and (l) to enjoin alleged unfair labor practices at the request of the National Labor Relations Board's regional officer, pending a disposition of the charges by the …