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Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Law
Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall—Biased Impartiality, Appearances, And The Need For Recusal Reform, Zygmont A. Pines
Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall—Biased Impartiality, Appearances, And The Need For Recusal Reform, Zygmont A. Pines
Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)
The article focuses on a troubling aspect of contemporary judicial morality.
Impartiality—and the appearance of impartiality—are the foundation of judicial decision-making, judicial morality, and the public’s trust in the rule of law. Recusal, in which a jurist voluntarily removes himself or herself from participating in a case, is a process that attempts to preserve and promote the substance and the appearance of judicial impartiality. Nevertheless, the traditional common law recusal process, prevalent in many of our state court systems, manifestly subverts basic legal and ethical norms.
Today’s recusal practice—whether rooted in unintentional hypocrisy, wishful thinking, or a pathological cognitive dissonance— …
Punishment Without Process: Victim Impact Proceedings For Dead Defendants, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe
Punishment Without Process: Victim Impact Proceedings For Dead Defendants, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe
Articles & Chapters
After Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in jail, two judges allowed his accusers to speak in court. This article argues that the proceedings were inappropriate because the criminal case ends when the defendant dies. If the conviction and appeal are not final, there is no finding of guilt, and the defendant is still presumed innocent. Allowing accusers to speak at this time violates the principle of due process and threatens to undermine faith in judges and the criminal justice system in general. While courts are at times legally required to hear from victims of crimes, they were not allowed to do …
Impartiality In Judicial Ethics: A Jurisprudential Analysis, W. Bradley Wendel
Impartiality In Judicial Ethics: A Jurisprudential Analysis, W. Bradley Wendel
W. Bradley Wendel
No abstract provided.
Recusal, Government Ethics, And Superannuated Constitutional Theory, Keith Swisher
Recusal, Government Ethics, And Superannuated Constitutional Theory, Keith Swisher
Maryland Law Review
No abstract provided.
Justice Stevens And The Obligations Of Judgment, David Pozen
Justice Stevens And The Obligations Of Judgment, David Pozen
Faculty Scholarship
How to sum up a corpus of opinions that spans dozens of legal fields and four decades on the bench? How to make the most sense of a jurisprudence that has always been resistant to classification, by a jurist widely believed to have "no discernible judicial philosophy"? These questions have stirred Justice Stevens' former clerks in recent months. Since his retirement, many of us have been trying to capture in some meaningful if partial way what we found vital and praiseworthy in his approach to the law. There may be something paradoxical about the attempt to encapsulate in a formula …
Impartiality In Judicial Ethics: A Jurisprudential Analysis, W. Bradley Wendel
Impartiality In Judicial Ethics: A Jurisprudential Analysis, W. Bradley Wendel
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Jurisprudence And Judicial Ethics, W. Bradley Wendel
Jurisprudence And Judicial Ethics, W. Bradley Wendel
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
The fundamental value in judicial ethics is impartiality. This means that a judge is duty-bound to decide cases on their merits, be open to persuasion, and not influenced by improper considerations. The paradigm case of unethical behavior by a judge is taking a bribe to decide a case in favor of one of the parties. This kind of corruption, which is fortunately rare in many developed countries, is also relatively uninteresting from an intellectual point of view. A more difficult case of failure of impartiality, conceptually speaking, involves a judge who relies on extra-legal factors as the basis for a …