Law Commons^™

Changemakers: Juris Doctorate: Saad Ahmad: Immigration Lawyer Saad Ahmad L'00 Shows That Appellate Practice Isn't Just For Large Firms, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: 'You Can't Help Being In Awe' 1-30-2018, Michael M. Bowden, Edward Fitzpatrick

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Judicial Conflicts And Voting Agreement: Evidence From Interruptions At Oral Argument, Tonja Jacobi, Kyle Rozema

Faculty Articles

This Article asks whether observable conflicts between Supreme Court justices—interruptions between the justices during oral arguments—can predict breakdowns in voting outcomes that occur months later. To answer this question, we built a unique dataset based on the transcripts of Supreme Court oral arguments and justice votes in cases from 1960 to 2015. We find that on average a judicial pair is seven percent less likely to vote together in a case for each interruption that occurs between them in the oral argument for that case. While a conflict between the justices that leads to both interruptions and a breakdown in …

The Retirement Strategy Of Supreme Court Justices: An Economic Approach, Kayla M. Joyce

Honors Scholar Theses

Previous research has identified strategic behavior in the nomination, confirmation, and retirement processes of the Supreme Court, each independently. This paper analyzes the interaction between the justices, the president, and the Senate in these processes. I constructed a game theoretic model to consider the nomination and approval process of Supreme Court justices and the change in dynamics that might result from an impending election. I hypothesize that sitting justices take into account the party affiliations of the president and the Senate when they are deciding whether it is the optimal time to retire to achieve their own strategic objectives. The …

Trending @ Rwu Law: Dean Yelnosky's Post: 24: Dean Style 3-6-2017, Michael Yelnosky

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Confirming Supreme Court Justices In A Presidential Election Year, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Justice Antonin Scalia’s death prompted United States Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to argue that the President to be inaugurated on January 20, 2017—not Barack Obama—must fill the empty Scalia post. Obama in turn expressed sympathy for the Justice’s family and friends, lauded his consummate public service, and pledged to nominate a replacement “in due time,” contending that eleven months remained in his administration for confirming a worthy successor. Obama admonished that the President had a constitutional duty to nominate a superlative aspirant to the vacancy, which must not have persisted for …

Three Supreme Court “Failures” And A Story Of Supreme Court Success, Corinna Barrett Lain

Law Faculty Publications

Plessy v. Ferguson. Buck v. Bell. Korematsu v. United States. Together, these three decisions legitimated ‘separate but equal,’ sanctioned the forced sterilization of thousands, and ratified the removal of Japanese Americans from their homes during World War II. By Erwin Chemerinsky’s measure in The Case Against the Supreme Court, all three are Supreme Court failures—cases in which the Court should have protected vulnerable minorities, but failed to do so. Considered in historical context, however, a dramatically different impression of these cases, and the Supreme Court that decided them, emerges. In two of the cases—Plessy and Buck—the Court’s ruling reflected the …

Addressing Three Problems In Commentary On Catholics At The Supreme Court By Reference To Three Decades Of Catholic Bishops' Amicus Briefs, Kevin C. Walsh

Law Faculty Publications

Much commentary about Catholic Justices serving on the Supreme Court suffers from three related shortcomings: (1) episodic, one-case-at-a-time commentary; (2) asymmetric causal attributions resulting from inattention to cases in which Catholic Justices vote for outcomes opposite those advocated by the Catholic Bishops' Conference; and (3) inattention to broader jurisprudential and ideological factors. This article uses an overlooked resource to identify and counteract these shortcomings. It assesses the votes of the Justices-Catholic and non-Catholic alike-in the full set of cases from the Rehnquist Court and the Roberts Court (through June 2014) in which the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops filed …

No College, No Prior Clerkship: How Jim Marsh Became Justice Jackson’S Law Clerk, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In his first four years on the Supreme Court, Justice Robert H. Jackson employed, in sequence, three young attorneys as his law clerks. The first, John F. Costelloe, was a Harvard Law School graduate and former Harvard Law Review editor who until summer 1941 was, like then attorney general Jackson, working at the U.S. Department of Justice. Costelloe became Justice Jackson’s first law clerk shortly after his July 1941 appointment to the Court and stayed for a little over two years. Jackson’s next law clerk, Phil C. Neal, came to Jackson in 1943 after graduating from Harvard Law School, …

Partiality And Disclosure In Supreme Court Opinions, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

This Essay begins by identifying the various kinds of partiality the Justices of the Supreme Court can have in the cases they decide. Although there is widespread recognition of the influence these biases might have, for the most part the Justices continue to write opinions as if they (and other judges) were entirely disinterested. This practice is often thought to be justified as a source of judicial legitimacy, but there are a number of reasons to doubt that a pretense of impersonality is actually important for maintaining respect for the Court. Consequently, the possibility has to be considered that the …

Choosing Justices: How Presidents Decide, Joel K. Goldstein

All Faculty Scholarship

Presidents play the critical role in determining who will serve as justices on the Supreme Court and their decisions inevitably influence constitutional doctrine and judicial behavior long after their terms have ended. Notwithstanding the impact of these selections, scholars have focused relatively little attention on how presidents decide who to nominate. This article contributes to the literature in the area by advancing three arguments. First, it adopts an intermediate course between the works which tend to treat the subject historically without identifying recurring patterns and those which try to reduce the process to empirical formulas which inevitably obscure considerations shaping …

How The Dissent Becomes The Majority: Using Federalism To Transform Coalitions In The U.S. Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Vanessa A. Baird

Faculty Articles

This Article proposes that dissenting Supreme Court Justices provide cues in their written opinions about how future litigants can reframe case facts and legal arguments in similar future cases to garner majority support. Questions of federal-state power cut across most other substantive legal issues, and this can provide a mechanism for splitting existing majorities in future cases. By signaling to future litigants when this potential exists, dissenting judges can transform a dissent into a majority in similar future cases.

We undertake an empirical investigation of dissenting opinions in which the dissenting Justice suggests that future cases ought to be framed …

Remaking The United States Supreme Court In The Courts' Of Appeals Image, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We argue that Congress should remake the United States Supreme Court in the U.S. courts' of appeals image by increasing the size of the Court's membership, authorizing panel decision making, and retaining an en banc procedure for select cases. In so doing, Congress would expand the Court's capacity to decide cases, facilitating enhanced clarity and consistency in the law as well as heightened monitoring of lower courts and the other branches. Remaking the Court in this way would not only expand the Court's decision making capacity but also improve the Court's composition, competence, and functioning.

Setting The Size Of The Supreme Court, F. Andrew Hessick, Samuel P. Jordan

All Faculty Scholarship

As with any institutional feature, the size of the Supreme Court should be informed by a definition of functional goals. This article describes how the current size of the Supreme Court is largely untethered from any such definition, and it begins the process of understanding how size and Court performance might interact. To do so, it identifies a list of institutional goals for the Supreme Court and explores how changing the size of the Court promotes or obstructs the attainment of those goals. Given that the Court's institutional goals are numerous and occasionally in tension, there is no definitive answer …

Remaking The United States Supreme Court In The Courts' Of Appeals Image, Tracey E. George, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We argue that Congress should remake the United States Supreme Court in the U.S. courts' of appeals image by increasing the size of the Court's membership, authorizing panel decision making, and retaining an en banc procedure for select cases. In so doing, Congress would expand the Court's capacity to decide cases, facilitating enhanced clarity and consistency in the law as well as heightened monitoring of lower courts and the other branches. Remaking the Court in this way would not only expand the Court's decision making capacity but also improve the Court's composition, competence, and functioning.

Tiresias And The Justices: Using Information Markets To Predict Supreme Court Decisions, Miriam A. Cherry, Robert L. Rogers

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In ancient Greek mythology, oracles and seers could foretell the actions of gods and kings. With these predictions, ordinary citizens could glimpse the future actions of their rulers, and the recipients treasured those insights.

Such knowledge may be more than myth. This Article explores the power of the information market, an economic instrument that allows groups of participants to merge their collective knowledge to make predictions. Specifically, we discuss the application of information markets to predicting Supreme Court decisions. The implications are significant: Supreme Court rulings determine issues critical to American politics and business, ranging from the Fifth Amendment …

Laugh Track, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court may have its own police force, its own museum curator, and even its own basketball court, but unlike the courts of yore it has no Jester. As a result, the responsibility of delivering humor within the hallowed halls of One First Street falls squarely on the backs of the nine Justices themselves. But which Justice provides the best comic entertainment for the court watchers, lawyers, and staff that make up the Court’s audience on any given argument day? Surely many believe that Justice Scalia, with his acerbic wit and quick tongue, has provided the most laughs from …

Systematic Justice: A Proposed Constitutional Amendment To Establish Fixed, Staggered Terms For Members Of The United States Supreme Court, Philip D. Oliver

Faculty Scholarship

The United States Supreme Court's role as final interpreter of the laws and Constitution of the United States makes it the most important judicial body in the world. This Article will advance a proposal to change the term of office of the Justices who wield this power.