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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Keys To The Kingdom: Judges, Pre-Hearing Procedure, And Access To Justice, Colleen F. Shanahan
The Keys To The Kingdom: Judges, Pre-Hearing Procedure, And Access To Justice, Colleen F. Shanahan
Faculty Scholarship
Judges see themselves as – and many reforming voices urge them to be – facilitators of access to justice for pro se parties in our state civil and administrative courts. Judges’ roles in pro se access to justice are inextricably linked with procedures and substantive law, yet our understanding of this relationship is limited. Do we change the rules, judicial behavior, or both to help self-represented parties? We have begun to examine this nuanced question in the courtroom, but we have not examined it in a potentially more promising context: pre-hearing motions made outside the courtroom. Outside the courtroom, judges …
Weighing Democracy And Judicial Legitimacy In Judicial Selection, Kenneth S. Klein
Weighing Democracy And Judicial Legitimacy In Judicial Selection, Kenneth S. Klein
Faculty Scholarship
For over two centuries Americans have debated whether judges should be elected or appointed. While the explicitly-framed tension has been about the relative importance of judicial independence and judicial accountability in a democracy, the underlying issue has been about which structure better promotes the legitimacy of the judiciary. An institution has legitimacy when it enjoys diffuse support even for controversial decisions. Judicial legitimacy is in inherent tension with a judiciary in a democracy, since democracy implicitly assumes political elements to selection of all leaders (including judges), while judicial legitimacy is undermined by politics. The contemporary work on the relationship between …
Studying The "New" Civil Judges, Anna E. Carpenter, Jessica K. Steinberg, Colleen F. Shanahan, Alyx Mark
Studying The "New" Civil Judges, Anna E. Carpenter, Jessica K. Steinberg, Colleen F. Shanahan, Alyx Mark
Faculty Scholarship
We know very little about the people and institutions that make up the bulk of the United States civil justice system: state judges and state courts. Our understanding of civil justice is based primarily on federal litigation and the decisions of appellate judges. Staggeringly little legal scholarship focuses on state courts and judges. We simply do not know what most judges are doing in their day-to-day courtroom roles or in their roles as institutional actors and managers of civil justice infrastructure. We know little about the factors that shape and influence judicial practices, let alone the consequences of those practices …