Law Commons^™

Information Lost And Found, Frederic M. Bloom

Publications

At the core of every lawsuit is a mix of information-revealing documents that chronicle a party's malfeasance, guarded memos that outline a lawyer's trial strategy, fading memories that recall a jury's key mistakes. Yet the law's system for managing that information is still poorly understood. This Article makes new and better sense of that system. It begins with an original examination of five pieces of our civil information architecture--evidence tampering rules, automatic disclosure requirements, work product doctrine, peremptory challenge law, and bans on juror testimony--and compiles a novel study of how those doctrines intersect and overlap. It then fits these …

State Courts Unbound, Frederic M. Bloom

Publications

We may not think that state courts disobey binding Supreme Court precedent, but occasionally state courts do. In a number of important cases, state courts have actively defied apposite Supreme Court doctrine, and often it is the Court itself that has invited them to.

This Article shows state courts doing the unthinkable: flouting Supreme Court precedent, sometimes at the Court's own behest. The idea of state court defiance may surprise us. It is not in every case, after all, that state courts affirmatively disobey. But rare events still have their lessons, and we should ask how and why they emerge. …

Unconstitutional Courses, Frederic M. Bloom

Publications

By now, we almost expect Congress to fail. Nearly every time the federal courts announce a controversial decision, Congress issues a call to rein in "runaway" federal judges. And nearly every time Congress makes a "jurisdiction-stripping" threat, it comes to nothing.

But if Congress's threats possess little fire, we have still been distracted by their smoke. This Article argues that Congress's noisy calls have obscured another potent threat to the "judicial Power": the Supreme Court itself. On occasion, this Article asserts, the Court reshapes and abuses the "judicial Power"--not through bold pronouncements or obvious doctrinal revisions, but through something more …