Law Commons^™

Judicial Innovation And Sexual Harassment Doctrine In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Holley Takersley

Faculty Scholarship

The determination that sexual harassment constituted “discrimination based on sex” under Title VII was first made by the lower federal courts, not Congress. Drawing from the literature on policy diffusion, this article examines the adoption of hostile work environment standards across the U.S. Courts of Appeals in the absence of controlling Supreme Court precedent. The results bolster recent findings about the influence of female judges on their male colleagues and suggest that in addition to siding with female plaintiffs, female judges also helped to shape legal rules that promoted gender equality in the workplace.

Jewish Identity And Judging: Seymour Simon Of Illinois, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

Illinois Supreme Court Justice Seymour F. Simon (1915-2006) would have filled the stereotype of the righteous man in Jewish lore. He was a man of principle, communicated those principles in an insistent tone to anyone who would listen, worked hard to further the cause of justice and earned a reputation as a committed public servant. Justice Simon served as Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court from 1980-1988 after having served on the Illinois Appellate Court from 1974-1980. Before winning election to the courts, Justice Simon was a politician, serving, inter alia, as an alderman in the City of Chicago and …

The Role Of Case Complexity In Judicial Decision Making., Laura P. Moyer

Faculty Scholarship

The literature on ideology and decision making offers conflicting expectations about how judges’ ideology should affect their votes in cases that raise many legal issues. Using cases from the U.S. Courts of Appeals, I examine the strength of ideology as a predictor of sincere voting in single and multi-issue cases and test whether the same effect for ideology can be seen for liberal and conservative judges. For all judges, ideology yields a larger effect as the number of issues increases; however, conservative judges are much more likely than liberal judges to cast sincere votes at all levels of complexity.

Modern Odysseus Or Classic Fraud - Fourteen Years In Prison For Civil Contempt Without A Jury Trial, Judicial Power Without Limitation, And An Examination Of The Failure Of Due Process, Mitchell J. Frank

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Chief Justice Christine M. Durham: Trailblazer, Pioneer, Exemplar, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

In 1978, Christine M. Durham was appointed, in a historic moment, to serve as trial judge to the third judicial district court in the state of Utah by then Governor Scott Matheson. Lost in the appropriate fanfare connected to her groundbreaking appointment as the first woman to serve as a general jurisdiction judge in the state of Utah, was the fact that she would also become the youngest person ever appointed to a judicial post in that great state. Just four years later, this young thirty-something female judge would be elevated by Matheson to sit on the Supreme Court of …

Derrick Bell: Godfather Provocateur, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Derrick Bell, the originator and founder of Critical Race Theory, passed away on October 5, 2011 at the age of 80. Around the world he is considered a hero, mentor, friend and exemplar. Known as a creative innovator and agitator, Professor Bell often sacrificed his career in the name of principles and objectives, inspiring a generation of scholars of color and progressive lawyers everywhere. Bell resigned a tenured position on the Harvard Law School faculty to protest Harvard’s refusal to hire and tenure women of color onto its law school faculty. For the past twenty years, Professor Bell taught …

Legal Ethics For The Millennials Avoiding The Compromise Of Integrity, Helia Garrido Hull

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Touched By Greatness, Shruti Rana

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Evaluating And Improving The Mdl Process, Francis Mcgovern, John G. Heyburn

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Pragmatic Court: Reinterpreting The Supreme People’S Court Of China, Taisu Zhang

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the institutional motivations that underlie several major developments in the Supreme People's Court of China's recent policy-making. Since 2007, the SPC has sent off a collection of policy signals that escapes sweeping ideological labeling: it has publically embraced a populist view of legal reform by encouraging the use of mediation in dispute resolution and popular participation in judicial policy-making, while continuing to advocate legal professionalization as a long-term policy objective. It has also eagerly attempted to enhance its own institutional competence by promoting judicial efficiency, simplifying key areas of civil law, and expanding its control over lower …

Sonia Sotomayor And The Construction Of Merit, Guy-Uriel Charles, Daniel L. Chen, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

The appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court in 2009 was criticized as sacrificing merit on the altar of identity politics. According to critics, Sotomayor was simply “not that smart”. For some conservative critics, her selection illustrated the costs of affirmative action policies, in that this particular choice was going to produce a lower quality Supreme Court. For liberal critics, many were concerned that the President, by selecting Sotomayor, was squandering an opportunity to appoint an intellectual counterweight to conservative justices like Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and John Roberts. Using a set of basic measures of judicial merit, such …

The Micro And Macro Causes Of Prison Growth, John F. Pfaff

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Standing The Test Of Time: The Breadth Of Majority Coalitions And The Fate Of U.S. Supreme Court Precedents, Stuart M. Benjamin, Bruce A. Desmarais

Faculty Scholarship

Should a strategic Justice assemble a broader coalition for the majority opinion than is necessary, even if that means accommodating changes that move the opinion away from the author’s ideal holding? If the author’s objective is to durably move the law to his or her ideal holding, the conventional answer is no, because there is a cost and no corresponding benefit. We consider whether attracting a broad majority coalition can placate future courts. Controlling for the size of the coalition, we find that cases with ideologically narrow coalitions are more likely to be treated negatively by later courts. Specifically, adding …

Elected Judges And Statutory Interpretation, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers whether differences in methods of judicial selection should influence how judges approach statutory interpretation. Courts and scholars have not given this question much sustained attention, but most would probably embrace the “unified model,” according to which appointed judges (such as federal judges) and elected judges (such as many state judges) are supposed to approach statutory text in identical ways. There is much to be said for the unified model—and we offer the first systematic defense of it. But the Article also attempts to make the best case for the more controversial but also plausible contrary view: that …

Do Female “Firsts” Still Matter?: Why They Do For Women Of Color, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Amber Shanahan-Fricke

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that diversifying the federal judiciary with more women and men of color, but particularly with more women of color, is essential to moving forward and strengthening this country’s democracy. Specifically, this Article responds to arguments by prominent feminists that having female “firsts” on the bench is not as critical as having the “right” women on the bench—“right” meaning those women who are invested in and supportive of what are traditionally viewed as women’s issues. In so responding, this Article acknowledges the appeal of such arguments regarding judicial service from the “right” women, but contends that, while achieving …

Introduction, Paul Finkelman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Courthouse Iconography And Chayesian Judical Practice, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis emphasize in Representing Justice that the traditional iconography of courthouses is incongruent with the current practices of the institutions that inhabit them. The key elements of traditional iconography – the blindfolded, scale-balancing Justitia and the courtroom configured for the trial – connote adjudication. Yet, the fraction of judicial work that involves deciding cases on the merits or conducting trials has decreased dramatically. Most judicial work today is basically managerial.

We could reduce this incongruity, on the one hand, by reviving the practical adjudicatory focus of the past or, on the other, by revising the iconography …

"Deference" Is Too Confusing – Let's Call Them "Chevron Space" And "Skidmore Weight", Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay suggests an underappreciated, appropriate, and conceptually coherent structure to the Chevron relationship of courts to agencies, grounded in the concept of "allocation." Because the term "deference" muddles rather than clarifies the structure's operation, this Essay avoids speaking of "Chevron deference" and "Skidmore deference." Rather, it argues, one could more profitably think in terms of "Chevron space" and "Skidmore weight." "Chevron space" denotes the area within which an administrative agency has been statutorily empowered to act in a manner that creates legal obligations or constraints – that is, its allocated authority. "Skidmore weight" …