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Judicial Peremptory Challenges As Access Enhancers, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Discussions regarding diminishing access to justice have centered on the high disputing costs, gradual contraction of substantive rights, and increasingly defendant-friendly procedure. The importance of the ideological, experiential, and jurisprudential orientation of the judges presiding over litigation at the trial level has received much less-and insufficient-attention. Because so much focus has been on federal appellate courts, commentators have largely overlooked a potentially powerful tool for improving access and promoting a fair airing of claims at the trial level: a litigant's automatic ability to transfer a case to a different judge as a matter of right to avoid judges who are …