Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Democratic (Il)Legitimacy Of Assembly-Line Litigation, Jessica Steinberg, Colleen F. Shanahan, Anna E. Carpenter, Alyx Mark
The Democratic (Il)Legitimacy Of Assembly-Line Litigation, Jessica Steinberg, Colleen F. Shanahan, Anna E. Carpenter, Alyx Mark
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
In response to Daniel Wilf-Townsend’s Assembly-Line Plaintiffs we take a panoramic picture of state civil courts, and debt cases in particular, and name specific features of the courts that must be taken into account in crafting reform prescriptions. In doing so, we question both the democratic legitimacy of debt collection courts and the adequacy of incremental reform that targets the structure of litigation. Part I contributes two critical components to Wilf-Townsend’s rich description of consumer debt cases: pervasive intersectional inequality among pro se defendants and a record of fraud among top filers. We add a sharper focus on the racial, …
The Institutional Mismatch Of State Civil Courts, Colleen F. Shanahan, Jessica Steinberg, Alyx Mark, Anna E. Carpenter
The Institutional Mismatch Of State Civil Courts, Colleen F. Shanahan, Jessica Steinberg, Alyx Mark, Anna E. Carpenter
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
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 …
How Should The Court Respond To The Combination Of Political Polarity, Legislative Impotence, And Executive Branch Overreach?, Richard J. Pierce Jr
How Should The Court Respond To The Combination Of Political Polarity, Legislative Impotence, And Executive Branch Overreach?, Richard J. Pierce Jr
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
In this essay, Professor Pierce discusses two related problems that the Supreme Court must address—the large increase in nationwide preliminary injunctions issued by district judges to prohibit the executive branch from implementing major federal actions and the large increase in the number of cases in which the Supreme Court either stays or refuses to stay preliminary injunctions without providing an adequate explanation for its action. He begins by describing the sources of the two problems and the many ways in which they threaten our system of justice. He then urges the Court to issue an opinion in which it provides …
Review Of Shucheng Wang, Law As An Instrument: Sources Of Chinese Law For Authoritarian Legality (Cambridge University Press 2022), Donald C. Clarke
Review Of Shucheng Wang, Law As An Instrument: Sources Of Chinese Law For Authoritarian Legality (Cambridge University Press 2022), Donald C. Clarke
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This brief note reviews Shucheng Wang’s Law as an Instrument: Sources of Chinese Law for Authoritarian Legality. It finds that the author provides a well-informed, in-depth exploration of the sources of Chinese law and offers rich food for thought on these and other questions in the world of Chinese legal studies. The author brings a good sense of the political realities of the Chinese legal system to his study.