Law Commons^™

Courts Without Court, Andrew G. Ferguson

Vanderbilt Law Review

What role does the physical courthouse play in the administration of criminal justice? This Article uses recent experiments with virtual courts to reimagine a future without criminal courthouses at the center. The key insight of this Article is to reveal how integral physical courts are to carceral control and how the rise of virtual courts helps to decenter power away from judges. This Article examines the effects of online courts on defendants, lawyers, judges, witnesses, victims, and courthouse officials and offers a framework for a better and less court-centered future. By studying post-COVID-19 disruptions around traditional conceptions of place, time, …

Some Comments On The Litigation Explosion, John W. Wade

Vanderbilt Law Review

My comment must start with a strong commendation of Attorney General Bell for recognizing the crisis created by the current "litigation explosion" in our courts and for providing leadership in seeking means for alleviating and perhaps even solving it. I am sure that the Justice Department's new Section on Improvement in the Administration of Justice will prove invaluable, both as an originator and a clearinghouse for compiling and evaluating new ideas and as a means for putting them into effect. Dan Meador makes an ideal selection as assistant attorney general to head it. I also must commend the Justice Department …

An End, And Perhaps A Beginning, Tom C. Clark

Vanderbilt Law Review

As one who has devoted his professional lifetime, now in its fifty-first year, to the development of procedures and techniques for the improvement of the administration of justice, I say that there is no substitute for the original research furnished by the Race Relations Law Survey in the race relations field. It has made the most practical contribution to the improvement of race relations of any publication. One might compare this contribution to that of our law clerks here on the Court, who research and report on state and federal decisions previously made on a given topic. However, the Survey …

Parajudges And The Administration Of Justice, Tom C. Clark

Vanderbilt Law Review

The parajudge idea, like the paramedical and paralegal proposals, has met with opposition. Many persons have objected on the ground that since the judiciary's work has become increasingly complex and specialized, it is foolish to expect a nonprofessional with less training to handle it properly. On the other hand, many persons have raised more pragmatic objections based upon the argument that past parajudge systems have, regardless of the reasons, led to inadequate adjudication without reducing the strain on the judiciary. To evaluate these criticisms, we must first understand both the desperate condition of our judicial system today and the most …

The Collateral Consequences Of A Criminal Conviction, Thomas R. Mccoy

Vanderbilt Law Review

As a general matter [civil disability law] has simply not been rationally designed to accommodate the varied interests of society and the individual convicted person. There has been little effort to evaluate the whole system of disabilities and disqualifications that has grown up. ...As a result, convicted persons are generally subjected to numerous disabilities and disqualifications which have little relation to the crime committed, the person committing it or,consequently, the protection of society. They are often harsh out of all proportion to the crime committed.

Book Reviews, Maurice H. Merrill, Tom C. Clark, Anthony Platt

Vanderbilt Law Review

Discretionary Justice: A Preliminary Inquiry

By Kenneth Culp Davis Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1969. Pp. xii,233. $8.50

reviewer: Maurice H. Merrill

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Gambling and Organized Crime

By Rufus King Washington:Public Affairs Press, 1969. Pp. viii, 239. $6.00

reviewer: Tom C. Clark

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The Throwaway Children

By Lisa Aversa Richette New York:J.B. Lippincott, 1969. Pp. x, 342. $6.95

reviewer: Anthony Platt

The Local Administrative Agencies, Maurice H. Merrill

Vanderbilt Law Review

We have become accustomed to the concept, once thoroughly horrendous to most lawyers, that the dispensation of justice may, be properly entrusted to those tribunals which, for want of a better term, we label administrative. In past years they were considered the illicit offspring of miscegenatious commingling of powers which,constitutionally, should have been kept in rigid segregation. In the last half century, this habit of thought has all but disappeared; our concern has been rather with the full acknowledgment and acceptance of these agencies into the family of makers and appliers of the law. We have undertaken to nurture and …

International Law, National Tribunals And The Rights Of Aliens: The Latin American Experience, Frank G. Dawson

Vanderbilt Law Review

Latin America is today undergoing a profound technological revolution for which the United States is largely responsible, and which is transforming the continent in a manner and at a pace never envisioned by nineteenth century alien entrepreneurs. Communication and transportation media developed within the last fifty years have created new demands for, and dependencies upon, the commercial products and luxuries of the mechanized world and have precipitated demands for radical change in outmoded economic and political patterns. This has inspired programs for economic integration on the international level, and, within individual nations, for industrialization and product diversification to limit dependence …

The Right To Effective Counsel In Criminal Cases, Ernest G. Kelly, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

Under the Constitution of the United States as well as the laws of many states, a defendant in a criminal action is entitled not merely to the formality of representation by any counsel but also to some degree of efficacy in this representation. Determining whether this right to effective counsel has been violated is a difficult problem. One source of difficulty is the potential conflict between two strong public policy considerations: the desire to spare a defendant the injustices which can result from ineffective representation as opposed to the need for finality of judgments and the orderly functioning of the …

The Lawyer's Response To The Demand For Both Stability And Change Through Law, Orison S. Marden

Vanderbilt Law Review

We need not worry about the lawyer's response to the need for stability in the law. The average lawyer is a conservative chap who does not favor change unless the need for it has been proved to the hilt.Nor need we tender full apologies for this hardheaded attitude, for,as Judge Cardozo once said, "certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly to be sacrificed. Above all is this true when honest men have shaped their conduct upon the faith of the pronouncement." At times, however, we have allowed these considerations, important as they are, to outweigh even more compelling reasons for …