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Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Law
Solving The Lawyer Problem In Criminal Cases, George C. Thomas Iii
Solving The Lawyer Problem In Criminal Cases, George C. Thomas Iii
Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers
We are learning that the vaunted American adversarial system too often fails to protect innocent defendants. Part of the problem is that indigent criminal defenders, in many parts of the country, are overburdened to the point that they cannot always provide an adequate adversarial testing of the State’s case. Part of the problem is the emotional burn out that many defenders experience. A less well known part of the problem is that the very nature of the adversarial mentality too often causes prosecutors to cut corners and thus threaten innocent defendants. “Solving the Lawyer Problem in Criminal Cases,” a 9,000 …
Chain Reaction: How Property Begets Property, Sabrina Safrin
Chain Reaction: How Property Begets Property, Sabrina Safrin
Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers
Classic theories for the evolution of property rights consider the emergence of private property to be a progressive development reflecting a society’s movement to a more efficient property regime. This article argues that instead of this progressive dynamic, a more subtle and damaging chain reaction dynamic can come into play that traditional theories for intellectual and other property rights neither anticipate nor explain. The article suggests that the expansion of intellectual and other property rights have an internally generative dynamic. Drawing upon contemporary case studies, the article argues that property rights evolve in reaction to each other. The creation of …
Constitutional Tipping Points: Civil Rights, Social Change, And Fact-Based Adjudication, Suzanne B. Goldberg
Constitutional Tipping Points: Civil Rights, Social Change, And Fact-Based Adjudication, Suzanne B. Goldberg
Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers
Judicial opinions typically rely on facts about a social group to justify or reject limitations on group members' rights, especially when traditional views about the status or capacity of group members are in contest. Yet the fact based approach to decision making obscures the normative judgments that actually determine whether restrictions on individual rights are reasonable. This article offers an account of how and why courts intervene in social conflicts by focusing on facts rather than declaring norms. In part, it argues that this approach preserves judicial flexibility to retain traditional justifications for restricting group members' rights in some settings …
Strategic Judging Under The United States Sentencing Guidelines: Positive Political Theory And Evidence, Max M. Schanzenbach, Emerson Tiller
Strategic Judging Under The United States Sentencing Guidelines: Positive Political Theory And Evidence, Max M. Schanzenbach, Emerson Tiller
Public Law and Legal Theory Papers
We present a positive political theory of criminal sentencing and test it using data from the United States Sentencing Commission. The theory posits that, faced with appellate review, federal district court judges applying the Sentencing Guidelines strategically use "sentencing instruments" -- fact-based and law-based determinations made during the sentencing phase -- to maximize the judges' sentencing preferences subject to the Guideline’s constraints. Specifically, district court judges are more likely to use law-based departures when they share the same party ideology with the overseeing circuit court than when there is no party alignment between the two courts. Fact-based adjustments, on the …
What Is Legal Doctrine, Emerson Tiller, Frank B. Cross
What Is Legal Doctrine, Emerson Tiller, Frank B. Cross
Public Law and Legal Theory Papers
Legal doctrine is the currency of the law. In many respects, doctrine is the law, at least as it comes from courts. Judicial opinions create the rules or standards that comprise legal doctrine. Yet the nature and effect of legal doctrine has been woefully understudied. Researchers from the legal academy and from political science departments have conducted extensive research on the law, but they have largely ignored the others’ efforts. Part of the reason for this unfortunate disconnect is that neither has effectively come to grips with the descriptive meaning of legal doctrine. In this article, we attempt to describe …
Turning Gold Into Epg: Lessons From Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism For Electronic Rulemaking And Other Ventures In Cyberdemocracy , Peter M. Shane
Turning Gold Into Epg: Lessons From Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism For Electronic Rulemaking And Other Ventures In Cyberdemocracy , Peter M. Shane
The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Working Paper Series
Empowered Participatory Governance, or EPG, is a model of governance developed by Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright that seeks to connect a set of normative commitments for strengthening democracy with a set of institutional design prescriptions intended to meet that objective. It is derived partly from democratic theory and partly from the study of real-world attempts to institutionalize transformative strategies for democratizing social and political decision making. This paper reviews Fung and Wright's recent volume, Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance, and considers the relevance of the authors' and other contributors' insights for the future of a …
Brown’S Legacy: The Promises And Pitfalls Of Judicial Relief, Deborah Jones Merritt
Brown’S Legacy: The Promises And Pitfalls Of Judicial Relief, Deborah Jones Merritt
The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Working Paper Series
Brown v. Board of Education marked a turning point for both civil rights and judicial activism. During the half century since Brown, social activists of all kinds have sought policy changes from the courts rather than legislatures. That trend has produced social benefits but, over time, it has also shifted political power to elites. This essay explores the possibility of retaining Brown's promise for racial equality while reinvigorating an electoral politics that would better represent many of the people Brown intended to benefit.
Institutions, Incentives, And Consumer Bankruptcy Reform, Todd Zywicki
Institutions, Incentives, And Consumer Bankruptcy Reform, Todd Zywicki
George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series
Consumer bankruptcy filing rates have soared during the past 25 years. From 225,000 filings in 1979, consumer bankruptcies topped 1.5 million during 2004. This relentless upward trend is striking in light of the generally high prosperity, low interest rates, and low unemployment during that period. This anomaly of ever-upward bankruptcy filing rates during a period of economic prosperity had spurred calls to reform the Bankruptcy Code to place new conditions on bankruptcy relief. Although bankruptcy reform has drawn broad bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, these proposals have proven controversial within the academy. Critics have argued that these reforms are unnecessary …
Social Security, Generational Justice, And Long-Term Deficits, Neil H. Buchanan
Social Security, Generational Justice, And Long-Term Deficits, Neil H. Buchanan
Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers
This paper assesses current methods for evaluating the long-term viability and desirability of government activities, especially Social Security and other big-ticket budget items. I reach four conclusions: (1) There are several simple ways to improve the current debate about fiscal policy by adjusting our crude deficit measures, improvements which ought not to be controversial, (2) Separately measuring Social Security’s long-term balance is inappropriate and misleading, (3) The methods available to measure very long-term government financing (Fiscal Gaps and their cousins, Generational Accounts) are of very limited value in setting public policy today, principally because there is no reliable baseline of …
What Is Fiscal Responsibility? Long-Term Deficits, Generational Accounting, And Capital Budgeting, Neil H. Buchanan
What Is Fiscal Responsibility? Long-Term Deficits, Generational Accounting, And Capital Budgeting, Neil H. Buchanan
Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers
This article assesses three basic approaches to assessing the future effects of the government’s fiscal policies: traditional measures of the deficit, measures associated with Generational Accounting, and measures derived from applying Capital Budgeting to the federal accounts. I conclude that Capital Budgeting is the best of the three approaches and that Generational Accounting is the least helpful. Acknowledging that there might be some value in learning what we can from a variety of approaches to analyzing fiscal policy, I nevertheless conclude that Generational Accounting is actually a misleading or--at best--empty measure of future fiscal developments. The best approach to providing …