Law Commons^™

"Downright Indifference": Examining Unpublished Decisions In The Federal Courts Of Appeals, Merritt E. Mcalister

Michigan Law Review

Nearly 90 percent of the work of the federal courts of appeals looks nothing like the opinions law students read in casebooks. Over the last fifty years, the so-called “unpublished decision” has overtaken the federal appellate courts in response to a caseload volume “crisis.” These are often short, perfunctory decisions that make no law; they are, one federal judge said, “not safe for human consumption.”

The creation of the inferior unpublished decision also has created an inferior track of appellate justice for a class of appellants: indigent litigants. The federal appellate courts routinely shunt indigent appeals to a second-tier appellate …

Digging Into The Foundations Of Evidence Law, David H. Kaye

Michigan Law Review

Review of The Psychological Foundations of Evidence Law by Michael J. Saks and Barbara A. Spellman.

Consumer Preferences For Performance Defaults, Franklin G. Snyder, Ann M. Mirabito

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Commercial law in the United States is designed to facilitate private transactions, and thus to enforce the presumed intent of the parties, who generally are free to negotiate the terms they choose. But these contracts inevitably have gaps, both because the parties cannot anticipate every situation that might arise from their relationship, and because negotiation is not costless. When courts are faced with these gaps in a litigation context, they supply default terms to fill them. These defaults usually are set to reflect what courts believe similar parties would have agreed to if they had addressed the issue. These “majoritarian” …

Stubborn Things: An Empirical Approach To Facts, Opinions, And The First Amendment, Daniel E. Herz-Roiphe

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

This essay offers an empirical approach to the problem, rooted in an argument that the underlying rationale for the fact/opinion distinction in compelled speech doctrine tells us something about how this distinction should be policed. Commercial speech enjoys protection by virtue of its value to listeners, it is from the listener's vantage point, then, that courts should assess whether a compelled disclosure is fact or opinion. And if we are interested in learning how disclosures will affect listeners, we might try asking them, just as courts adjudicating trademark suits frequently use consumer surveys to determine how customers understand the meaning …

The Most-Cited Law Review Articles Of All Time, Fred R. Shapiro, Michelle Pearse

Michigan Law Review

This Essay updates two well-known earlier studies (dated 1985 and 1996) by the first coauthor setting forth lists of the most-cited law review articles. New research tools from the HeinOnline and Web of Science databases now allow lists to be compiled that are more thorough and more accurate than anything previously possible. Tables printed here present the 100 most-cited legal articles of all time, the 100 most-cited articles of the last twenty years, and some additional rankings. Characteristics of the top-ranked publications, authors, and law schools are analyzed as are trends in schools of legal thought. Data from the all-time …

Free Speech Federalism, Adam Winkler

Michigan Law Review

For decades, constitutional doctrine has held that the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech applies equally to laws adopted by the federal, state, and local governments. Nevertheless, the identity of the government actor behind a law may be a significant, if unrecognized, factor in free speech cases. This Article reports the results of a comprehensive study of core free speech cases decided by the federal courts over a 14-year period. The study finds that speech-restrictive laws adopted by the federal government are far more likely to be upheld than similar laws adopted by state and local governments. Courts applying strict …

A Reality Check On An Empirical Study: Comments On "Inside The Administrative State", Sally Katzen

Michigan Law Review

Presidential control is the term used for the process (or some would say, the model) by which agency decision-making (more particularly, rulemaking) is brought under the direction of the president to "render such decision- making accountable and effective." Until now scholars, who have generally endorsed both the theory and the practice of the process, have written from the perspective of those who exercise presidential control - those at the White House or the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs ("OIRA"). In a recent article in the Michigan Law Review, Lisa Schultz Bressman and Michael Vandenbergh ("the authors") decided to …

Legitimacy, Selectivity, And The Disunitary Executive: A Reply To Sally Katzen, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Michigan Law Review

This reply addresses the thoughtful comments that former OIRA Administrator Sally Katzen has provided on our Article, Inside the Administrative State: A Critical Look at the Practice of Presidential Control. Our Article is the first to investigate the agency perspective on White House involvement in agency rule-making. We interviewed 30 of the 35 top political officials in the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") during the George H.W. Bush ("Bush I") and the William J. Clinton Administrations during 1989-2001. Prior to our study, empirical studies of White House involvement in agency rule-making had focused almost exclusively on the White House side, …

Stories About Miranda, George C. Thomas Iii

Michigan Law Review

It is no exaggeration to say that Yale Kamisar was present at the creation of Miranda v. Arizona. To be sure, the seeds of Miranda had been sown in earlier cases, particularly Escobedo v. Illinois, but Escobedo was a Sixth Amendment right to counsel case. Professor Kamisar first saw the potential for extending the theory of Escob edo to the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination. Escob edo theorized that a healthy criminal justice system requires that the accused know their rights and are encouraged to exercise them. The Escobedo Court read history to teach that no system …

Affirmative Action On Law Reviews: An Empirical Study Of Its Status And Effect, Frederick Ramos

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note discusses the issues involved in affirmative action on law reviews. Part I examines law review affirmative action admissions schemes and alternative types of affirmative action programs. Part II considers the arguments supporting and opposing the implementation of affirmative action programs by law reviews. Part III presents the results of a survey of law reviews concerning affirmative action. This Note concludes that affirmative action programs are the most effective means of increasing minority membership on law reviews, but that law reviews may increase minority membership through other methods.