Law Commons^™

Toward A Less Adversarial Relationship Between Chevron And Gardner, James D. Ridgway

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Veterans benefits are a creature of statute. As such, nearly every veterans benefits issue presented to the courts for resolution involves the interpretation of a statute, regulation, or sub-regulatory authority. Although veterans law has been subject to judicial review for over twenty-five years, the courts still have yet to develop a coherent doctrine regarding when to resolve ambiguity in favor of the veteran versus when to defer to the interpretations of the Department of Veterans Affairs. This Article explores three possible approaches to developing a coherent vision of how veteran friendliness and agency deference can coexist and provide more predictability …

The Role Of The Courts In Time Of War, William C. Banks

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The role of the courts in judging the actions of government in wartime has ranged from extreme deference to careful probing of alleged government excesses over more than two centuries. The courts’ record has reflected the nature of the armed conflicts the United States has engaged in and the legal bases for the actions at issue. In the aggregate, the courts have served as a necessary counterweight to government overreaching in times of national security crisis. It is easy to underestimate the institutional problems confronting judges who are asked to make momentous decisions in times of national crisis—difficulties of fact-finding …

A Spectrum Of International Criminal Procedure: Shifting Patterns Of Power Distribution In International Criminal Courts And Tribunals, Jessica Peake

Pace International Law Review

Using the pure adversarial model expounded in part I (a) as the baseline for analysis, Parts II, III and IV of this article will explore the procedural evolution that has taken place at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (II), the International Criminal Court (III) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (IV). Part V will then plot the structural and procedural shifts that have taken place at those courts onto the spectrum of procedure identified in part I (c), before concluding, in Part VI, with what these shifts teach us about the convergence of adversarial …

A Failure To Supervise: How The Bureaucracy And The Courts Abandoned Their Intended Roles Under Erisa, Lauren R. Roth

Pace Law Review

This Article addresses how courts failed to adequately supervise employers administering pension plans before ERISA. Relying on a number of different legal theories—from an initial theory that pensions were gratuities offered by employers to the recognition that pension promises could create contractual rights—the courts repeatedly found ways to allow employers to promise much and provide little to workers expecting retirement security. In Section III, this Article addresses how Congress failed to create an effective structure for strong bureaucratic enforcement and the bureaucratic agencies with enforcement responsibilities failed to fulfill those functions. Finally, in Section IV, this Article discusses how the …

Fulton County Business Court: A Specialized Solution For The Modern Business Community, Megan K. Johnson

Georgia State University Law Review

Business courts or complex commercial divisions are growing in popularity as an effective tool to channel the most complex civil cases into one place before experienced judges with the background and training necessary to resolve the sophisticated issues often presented in those cases. According to North Carolina Business Court Judge Ben F. Tennille, one of the first judicial advocates of the business court model, the evolution of specialty business courts is a necessary response to “‘the rapidly increasing complexity, rate of change and globalization of business.’”

In 2005, Fulton County Superior Court launched a Business Case Division (“Fulton Business Court”) …

Attitudes Toward The Way Courts Deal With Criminals, Chelsea Van Aken

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

The way courts treat criminals depends on a variety of factors. This paper examines how age, sex, and race affect an offender’s treatment during sentencing. These variables were collected using the 2010 General Social Survey and were tested using the SPSS 20.0 Student Version Statistical Software. The independent variables include age, race, and sex, while the dependent variable is the way courts deal with criminals. The hypotheses that were tested stated that older individuals, nonwhite persons, and men would believe that courts deal too harshly with criminals. The conclusion found that none of the variables showed a significant correlation; therefore, …

Beyond The Verdict: Why The Courts Must Protect Jurors From The Public Before, During, And After High-Profile Cases, Scott Ritter

Indiana Law Journal

In a time when more and more criminal trials are saturated in news coverage, media outlets race to get as much information as possible to the public. That access to the criminal justice system is a right protected by the First Amendment. But where does the access stop? This Note explores those limits, and the intersection between the First and Fourth Amendments.

The Unreviewable Irredeemable Child: Why The District Of Columbia Needs Reverse Waiver, Jamie Stevens

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

In 2005 the U.S. Department of Justice estimated that adult criminal courts prosecuted 23,000 cases involving defendants under the age of eighteen nationwide. 2 This means that those defendants faced conviction and sentencing in adult courts. Transfer of those under eighteen into adult criminal court has become the states' first line of defense in the fight against youth crime. However, recent Supreme Court decisions have cast doubt on the wisdom, and even the constitutionality of that approach. Roper v. Simmons held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the death penalty for anyone under eighteen years of age. 3 Graham v. Florida …

Lost Without Translation?: Cross-Referencing And A New Global Community Of Courts, Antje Wiener, Philip Liste

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Anne-Marie Slaughter has described the "new world order" as characterized by some "conceptual shifts," including an increasing cooperation of domestic courts across nation-state boundaries. The cross-jurisdictional referencing of legal norms and decisions, as Slaughter holds, would lead into a "global community of courts." This article takes issue with that observation. We argue that for such a community to emerge, cross-referencing would need to be followed by an effective transmission of meaning from one (legal) context to another. Following recent insights in the field of International Relations norm research, however, we can expect such meanings to be contested-in particular, when different …

Constitutional Conflict And Congressional Oversight, Andrew Mccanse Wright

Marquette Law Review

In matters of oversight, Congress and the President have fundamentally incompatible views of their institutional roles within the constitutional structure. This Article offers an explanation of divergent branch behavior and legal doctrine. Congress, much like a party to litigation, views itself as having fixed substantive rights to obtain desired information from the Executive and private parties. In contrast, the Executive views itself like a party to a business transaction, in which congressional oversight requests are the opening salvo in an iterative negotiation process to resolve competing interests between co-equal branches. In general, legislators want to litigate and executive officers want …