Law Commons^™

The Institutional Mismatch Of State Civil Courts, Colleen Shanahan, Jessica Steinberg, Alyx Mark, Anna E. Carpenter

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

State civil courts are central institutions in American democracy. Though designed for dispute resolution, these courts function as emergency rooms for social needs in the face of the failure of the legislative and executive branches to disrupt or mitigate inequality. We reconsider national case data to analyze the presence of social needs in state civil cases. We then use original data from courtroom observation and interviews to theorize how state civil courts grapple with the mismatch between the social needs people bring to these courts and their institutional design. This institutional mismatch leads to two roles of state civil courts …

Cognitive Decline And The Workplace, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

Cognitive decline will increasingly become a workplace concern because of three intersecting trends. First, the American population is aging. In 2019, 16.5 percent of the population, or fifty-four million people, were age 65 and over, and the number is expected to increase to seventy-eight million by 2025. Dementia is not uncommon among older adults, and by the age of eighty-five, between twenty-five and fifty percent of individuals suffer from this condition. Second, individuals are postponing retirement and prolonging their working lives. For example, about a quarter of physicians are over sixty-five, as are fifteen percent of attorneys. The average age …

Court Review: Journal Of The American Judges Association, Vol. 58, No. 1, Eve M. Brank, David Dreyer, David Prince

Court Review: Journal of the American Judges Association

The Road to a Federal Family Court; Jane M. Spinak

The Role of Information Sharing to Improve Case Management in Child Welfare; Sarah J. Beal, Paul DeMott, Rich Bowlen, and Mary V. Greiner

Timely Permanency for Children in Foster Care: Revisiting Core Assumptions about Children’s Options and Outcomes; Sarah A. Font and Lindsey Palmer

The Deportation of America’s Adoptees; DeLeith Duke Gossett

Editor’s Note; Eve Brank

President’s Column; Yvette Mansfield Alexander

Crossword; Vic Fleming

Thoughts from Canada: The Impact of Anti-Black Racism on the Sentencing of “Black Offenders” in Canada: What Is the Correct Approach?; Wayne K. Gorman

The Resource …

Court Review: Journal Of The American Judges Association, Vol. 58, No. 3, Eve M. Brank, David Dreyer, David Prince

Court Review: Journal of the American Judges Association

Civil Cases in the Supreme Court’s October Term 2021; Thomas M. Fisher

Threats to Impartiality in Capital Jury Selection: Addressing Dead-Serious Falsifications; Richard Rogers, Eric Y. Drogin, and Sara E. Hartigan

Science-Based Recommendations for the Collection of Eyewitness Identification Evidence; Margaret Bull Kovera, Jacqueline Katzman, Jennifer M. Jones, and Melanie B. Fessinger

Editor’s Note; David J. Dreyer

President’s Column; Yvette Mansfield Alexander

Crossword; Vic Fleming

Thoughts from Canada: Assessing Credibility: The Impact of a Motive to Lie and the Embellishment of Evidence -- the Canadian Approach; Wayne K. Gorman

The Resource Page: Democracy's Last Line of Defense: A …

Court Review: Journal Of The American Judges Association, Vol. 58, No. 4, Eve M. Brank, David Dreyer, David Prince

Court Review: Journal of the American Judges Association

Interview

Stresses of the Job in Modern Times: Coaching Resilience in Judges, Peer-to-Peer, an Interview with Jan Bouch; David Prince

Articles

Prosecutorial Misconduct: Assessment of Perspectives from the Bench, Saul M. Kassin, Stephanie A. Cardenas, Vanessa Meterko, and Faith Barksdale

Limiting Access to Remedies: Select Criminal Law and Procedure Cases from the Supreme Court’s 2021-22 Term, Eve Brensike Primus and Justin Hill

You Can Change Judging and Justice, Thomas R. French

The Online Courtroom: Leveraging Remote Technology in Litigation American Bar Association, Tort, Trial, and Insurance Practice Section, J. Gary Hastings

Departments

Editor’s Note, Eve Brank, David Dreyer, and David …

A Tale Of Two Civil Procedures, Pamela K. Bookman, Colleen F. Shanahan

Faculty Scholarship

In the United States, there are two kinds of courts: federal and state. Civil procedure classes and scholarship tend to focus on the federal, but refer to and make certain assumptions about state courts. While this dichotomy makes sense when discussing some issues, like federal subject matter jurisdiction, for many aspects of procedure this breakdown can be misleading. When understanding American civil justice, two different categories of courts are just as salient: those that routinely include lawyers, and those where lawyers are fundamentally absent.

This essay urges civil procedure teachers and scholars to think about our courts as “lawyered” courts—which …

The Institutional Mismatch Of State Civil Courts, Colleen F. Shanahan, Jessica K. Steinberg, Alyx Mark, Anna E. Carpenter

Faculty Scholarship

State civil courts are central institutions in American democracy. Though designed for dispute resolution, these courts function as emergency rooms for social needs in the face of the failure of the legislative and executive branches to disrupt or mitigate inequality. We reconsider national case data to analyze the presence of social needs in state civil cases. We then use original data from courtroom observation and interviews to theorize how state civil courts grapple with the mismatch between the social needs people bring to these courts and their institutional design. This institutional mismatch leads to two roles of state civil courts …

Mixed Messaging: Should Judges On The Tennessee Supreme Court Be Called Justices?, Ryan E. Cox

Lincoln Memorial University Law Review Archive

Originally published on the LMU Law Review Blog--Off the Record--in February 2021.

Weaponizing En Banc, Neal Devins, Allison Orr Larsen

Faculty Publications

The federal courts of appeals embrace the ideal that judges are committed to rule-of-law norms, collegiality, and judicial independence. Whatever else divides them, these judges generally agree that partisan identity has no place on the bench. Consequently, when a court of appeals sits “en banc,” (i.e., collectively) the party affiliations of the three-judge panel under review should not matter. Starting in the 1980s, however, partisan ideology has grown increasingly important in the selection of federal appellate judges. It thus stands to reason—and several high-profile modern examples illustrate—that today’s en banc review could be used as a weapon by whatever party …

Parity As Comparative Capacity: A New Empirics Of The Parity Debate, Meredith R. Aska Mcbride

University of Cincinnati Law Review

In 1977, Burt Neuborne published an article in the Harvard Law Review proclaiming that parity was a “myth”—that state courts could not be trusted to enforce federal constitutional rights. For the next 15 years, the question of parity (the equivalence of state and federal courts in adjudicating federal causes of action) was at the forefront of federal courts scholarship. But in the early 1990s, the parity debate ground to a halt after important commentators proclaimed it an empirical question that, paradoxically, could not be answered by any existing empirical methods. This article argues that proposition was unfounded at the time …

Law Library Blog (September 2021): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Bar Admission: Lessons From The Pandemic, Leslie C. Levin

Hofstra Law Review

The controversy over how and whether to administer the July 2020 bar examination during the COVID-19 pandemic upended the usual process of lawyer regulation. New actors—including bar applicants—very publicly challenged regulators’ decisions and questioned the safety and fairness of plans for the bar exam. Some advocated for emergency admission without the need to satisfy the bar examination requirement. Joined by law school deans and faculty, the advocacy occurred against the backdrop of the politicization of COVID-19, street protests over police misconduct and racial inequality, and long-standing skepticism about the value and fairness of the bar exam. Regulators throughout the United …

The Founders' Multi-Purpose Chief Justice: The English Origins Of The American Chief Justiceship, Justin W. Aimonetti, Jackson A. Myers

West Virginia Law Review

During the founding era, the American Chief Justice was nearly unrecognizable to modern eyes. Rather than a purely judicial officer, the Chief Justice was a multi-purpose minister, serving as a judge, an administrator, a diplomat, and an advisor. He was what we call the “multi-purpose Chief Justice.” The multi-purpose Chief Justice of the Early Republic originated with the ancient English office of the Lord Chief Justice. English judges historically served as multi-purpose ministers to the king, engaging in administrative and even political tasks. This was especially true for the Lord Chief Justice. Even as other English judges settled into more …

Jobs For Justice(S): Corruption In The Supreme Court Of India, Madhav S. Aney, Shubhankar Dam, Giovanni Ko

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate whether judicial decisions are affected by career concerns of judges by analyzing two questions: Do judges respond to incentives to pander by ruling in favor of the government in the hope of receiving jobs after retiring from the Supreme Court? Does the government reward judges who rule in its favor with prestigious jobs? We construct a data set of Supreme Court of India cases involving the government for 1999–2014. We find that incentives to pander have a causal effect on judicial decision-making, and they are jointly determined by the importance of the case and whether the judge retires …

Private Lives At Home And Public Lives In Court: Protecting The Privacy Of Federal Judges' Home Addresses, Hannah Elias Sbaity

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

Targeted murders of federal judges and their families at their private homes date back to May 29, 1979. Most recently, in July 2020, Judge Esther Salas’s only son, Daniel, was murdered and her husband near-fatally shot at their home. Individuals wishing to inflict such harm or death at federal judges’ homes have been able to do so because of federal judges’ publicly available home addresses. Because personally identifying information (PII) is defined differently from statute to statute, home addresses largely remain public information in most states and can be found in real estate records, data broker websites, social media platforms, …

The Power Of Two Words To Split Circuits, Natalie Whitacre

University of Miami Law Review

28 U.S.C. § 1782 authorizes federal judges to grant assistance to a “foreign or international tribunal” for discovery proceedings. The meaning of the term “foreign or international tribunal” has been the subject of much dispute. In 2019 the Sixth Circuit became the first court of appeals to extend the purview of the statute to private commercial arbitration, creating a circuit split. However, the use of 28 U.S.C. § 1782 in arbitral proceedings raises a number of questions about whether U.S. style discovery would impede the efficiency of arbitration and whether the practice could be extended to international tribunals located within …

Judges As Superheroes: The Danger Of Confusing Constitutional Decisions With Cosmic Battles, H. Jefferson Powell

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Nava Wins Inaugural Judicial Fellowship 06/23/2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Adjunct Professor Of The Year 2021: David Coombs 05/19/2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Taking Stock Of Chapter 11, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, written for a symposium honoring Sam Gerdano, I offer an assessment of current Chapter 11 theory and practice. The most distinctive feature of current Chapter 11 practice is the extent to which the parties now enter into intercreditor agreements, restructuring support agreements and other actual contracts governing their rights and responsibilities. One question raised by the dramatic shift in bankruptcy practice is whether the leading normative theory of bankruptcy, the Creditors’ Bargain Theory, is now obsolete, as some scholars have suggested. The Creditors’ Bargain Theory explains bankruptcy as a solution to coordination problems that might lead to …

The Jurisprudence Of The First Woman Judge, Florence Allen: Challenging The Myth Of Women Judging Differently, Tracy A. Thomas

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Article delves into the life and work of Judge [Florence] Allen to provide insight to the contributions and jurisprudence of the first woman judge. For history questions what difference putting a woman on the bench might have made. Part I explores Allen’s early influences on her intellectual development grounded in her progressive and politically active family, and her close network of female professional friends. Part II discusses her pivotal work with the women’s suffrage movement, working with the national organizations in New York and leading the legal and political efforts in Ohio. This proactive commitment to gender justice, however, …

Judges And The Deregulation Of The Lawyer's Monopoly, Jessica Steinberg, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen F. Shanahan, Alyx Mark

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In a revolutionary moment for the legal profession, the deregulation of legal services is taking hold in many parts of the country. Utah and Arizona, for instance, are experimenting with new regulations that permit nonlawyer advocates to play an active role in assisting citizens who may not otherwise have access to legal services. In addition, amendments to the Rules of Professional Conduct in both states, as well as those being contemplated in California, now allow nonlawyers to have a partnership stake in law firms, which may dramatically change the way capital for the delivery of legal services is raised as …

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Just Guarantees In The Judges Awards & Decisions – Between The Legitimate Condition And The Lawful Organizing In The Republic Of Yemen Legislation

UAEU Law Journal

This study has surveyed the importance of justice in the modern societies. It focuses on the role of the judiciary and system in Solidifying strengthening justice for the sake of human welfare.

The key element in the study is the role of the judge. In its finest part the study deals with the external factors which influence the judge and which should be avoided to insure justice. It also deals with the judiciary conditions in general such as setting the proper circumstances for trial and some are related to the judge's personality such as being just, knowledgeable, and being male. …

The Elastics Of Snap Removal: An Empirical Case Study Of Textualism, Thomas O. Main, Jeffrey W. Stempel, David Mcclure

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article reports the findings of an empirical study of textualism as applied by federal judges interpreting the statute that permits removal of diversity cases from state to federal court. The “snap removal” provision in the statute is particularly interesting because its application forces judges into one of two interpretive camps—which are fairly extreme versions of textualism and purposivism, respectively. We studied characteristics of cases and judges to find predictors of textualist outcomes. In this Article, we offer a narrative discussion of key variables, and we detail the results of our logistic regression analysis. The most salient predictive variable was …

Can There Be Too Much Specialization? Specialization In Specialized Courts, Melissa F. Wasserman, Jonathan D. Slack

Northwestern University Law Review

While modern society has embraced specialization, the federal judiciary continues to prize the generalist jurist. This disconnect is at the core of the growing debate on the optimal level of specialization in the judiciary. To date, this discussion has largely revolved around the creation of specialized courts. Opinion specialization, however, provides an alternative, underappreciated method to infuse specialization into the judiciary. In contrast to specialized courts, opinion specialization is understudied and undertheorized.

This Article makes two contributions to the literature. First, this Article theorizes whether opinion specialization is a desirable practice. It argues that the practice’s costs and benefits are …

Law School News: Meet The Rbg Essay Contest Winners! 03/03/2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

2nd Annual Women In Law Leadership Lecture: A Fireside Chat With Debra Katz, Esq. 03-03-2021, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

The Race To The Top To Reduce Prosecutorial Misconduct, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

This Essay offers an unconventional approach to deterring prosecutorial misconduct. Trial judges should use their inherent authority to forbid prosecutors from appearing and handling cases in their courtrooms until the prosecutors have completed training on Brady v. Maryland, Batson v. Kentucky, and other types of prosecutorial misconduct. If a single trial judge in a medium-sized or large jurisdiction imposes training prerequisites on prosecutors, it could set off a race to the top that encourages other judges to adopt similar (or perhaps even more rigorous) training requirements. A mandate that prosecutors receive ethics training before handling any cases is …

One Of The Good Guys: The Making Of A Justice–Reflections On My First 94 Years, Jamal Greene

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.