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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Puzzling Non-Consequences Of Societal Distrust Of Courts: Explaining The Use Of Russian Courts, Kathryn Hendley Oct 2012

The Puzzling Non-Consequences Of Societal Distrust Of Courts: Explaining The Use Of Russian Courts, Kathryn Hendley

Cornell International Law Journal

Russians' lack of trust in courts as an institution has been repeatedly documented through public opinion polling. Yet the caseload data show a steady increase in the use of courts by both individuals and firms in Russia. But these data cannot explain why Russians choose to use the courts. The Article makes use of two publicly available datasets grounded in representative surveys of Russian citizens and firms to investigate this puzzle. The existing literature assumes that the lack of legitimacy of courts in Russia forestalls use. While confirming the societal disdain for courts, the analysis reveals that this attitude has …


Building The Federal Judiciary (Literally And Legally): The Monuments Of Chief Justices Taft, Warren And Rehnquist, Judith Resnik Jul 2012

Building The Federal Judiciary (Literally And Legally): The Monuments Of Chief Justices Taft, Warren And Rehnquist, Judith Resnik

Indiana Law Journal

The “federal courts” took on their now familiar contours over the course of the twentieth century. Three chief justices—William Howard Taft, Earl Warren, and William Rehnquist—played pivotal roles in shaping the institutional, jurisprudential, and physical premises. Taft is well known for promoting a building to house the U.S. Supreme Court and for launching the administrative infrastructure that came to govern the federal courts. Earl Warren’s name has become the shorthand for a jurisprudential shift from state toward federal authority; the Warren Court offered an expansive understanding of the role federal courts could play in enabling access for a host of …


Court Reform And Breathing Space Under The Establishment Clause, Mark C. Rahdert Jun 2012

Court Reform And Breathing Space Under The Establishment Clause, Mark C. Rahdert

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Flast v. Cohen held that federal taxpayers have standing to challenge government spending for religion. While Frothingham v. Mellon generally prohibits taxpayer standing in federal courts, the Court reasoned that the Establishment Clause specifically prohibits taxation in any amount to fund unconstitutional religious spending. For several decades Flast has been settled law that supplied jurisdiction in many leading establishment cases. But Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc. and Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn signal that Flast may soon be overruled. This jurisdictional ferment raises two questions: Why this sudden shift? And what does it signify for the …


Ideology 'All The Way Down'? An Empirical Study Of Establishment Clause Decisions In The Federal Courts, Gregory C. Sisk, Michael Heise May 2012

Ideology 'All The Way Down'? An Empirical Study Of Establishment Clause Decisions In The Federal Courts, Gregory C. Sisk, Michael Heise

Michigan Law Review

As part of our ongoing empirical examination of religious liberty decisions in the lower federal courts, we studied Establishment Clause rulings by federal court of appeals and district court judges from 1996 through 2005. The powerful role of political factors in Establishment Clause decisions appears undeniable and substantial, whether celebrated as the proper integration of political and moral reasoning into constitutional judging, shrugged off as mere realism about judges being motivated to promote their political attitudes, or deprecated as a troubling departure from the aspirational ideal of neutral and impartial judging. In the context of Church and State cases in …


De-Frauding The System: Sham Plaintiffs And The Fraudulent Joinder Doctrine, Matthew C. Monahan May 2012

De-Frauding The System: Sham Plaintiffs And The Fraudulent Joinder Doctrine, Matthew C. Monahan

Michigan Law Review

Playing off the strict requirements of federal diversity jurisdiction, plaintiffs can structure their suits to prevent removal to federal court. A common way to preclude removability is to join a nondiverse party. Although plaintiffs have a great deal of flexibility, they may include only those parties that have a stake in the lawsuit. Put another way, a court will not permit a plaintiff to join a party to a lawsuit when that party is being joined solely to prevent removal. The most useful tool federal courts employ to prevent this form of jurisdictional manipulation is Federal Rule of Civil Procedure …


Echoes From The Past: How The Federal Circuit Continues To Struggle With Patentable Subject Matter Post-Bilski, Jeff Thruston Apr 2012

Echoes From The Past: How The Federal Circuit Continues To Struggle With Patentable Subject Matter Post-Bilski, Jeff Thruston

Missouri Law Review

This Note will examine whether the cases comprising the eligible subject matter trio are inherently inconsistent. In looking at this issue, this Note will ask if Classen Immunotherapies can be reconciled with the patent eligibility trio, or if both the case and Judge Rader's concerns could have been dealt with more effectively by applying 35 U.S.C. § 101 as a last resort, and instead determining patent eligibility via 35 U.S.C. §§ 102, 103, and 112. It is fundamentally more difficult, expensive, and time consuming to ascertain which category of patentable subject matter a claimed invention falls into, or if the …


Congress's Power To Regulate The Federal Judiciary: What The First Congress And The First Federal Courts Can Teach Today's Congress And Courts , Paul Taylor Feb 2012

Congress's Power To Regulate The Federal Judiciary: What The First Congress And The First Federal Courts Can Teach Today's Congress And Courts , Paul Taylor

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.


Robbing A Barren Vault: The Implication Of Dukes V. Wal-Mart For Cases Challenging Subjective Employment Practices, Elizabeth Tippett Jan 2012

Robbing A Barren Vault: The Implication Of Dukes V. Wal-Mart For Cases Challenging Subjective Employment Practices, Elizabeth Tippett

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

This article examines federal opinions from 2005-2011 challenging subjective employment practices under a 'disparate impact' or 'pattern or practice' theory to assess the likely impact of Dukes v. Wal-Mart on such cases. Although the Wal-Mart ruling favors employers, results suggest that the ruling’s effect on employer selection practices will be muted by the low prevalence of such claims. An average employer’s litigation risk in connection with such claims is so vanishingly small that I surmise they rarely examine or alter their subjective selection practices in response. However, the risk of a lawsuit challenging subjective employment practices was not homogenous across …


Eastern Enterprises As The Canary In The Coalmine: Will The Supreme Court Hamper The Gulf Workforce By Continuing To Confuse The Constitutionality Of Retrograde Liability Provisions?, Jacob Claveloux Jan 2012

Eastern Enterprises As The Canary In The Coalmine: Will The Supreme Court Hamper The Gulf Workforce By Continuing To Confuse The Constitutionality Of Retrograde Liability Provisions?, Jacob Claveloux

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.


The Tangled Thicket Of Health Care Reform: The Judicial System In Action, Gene Magidenko Jan 2012

The Tangled Thicket Of Health Care Reform: The Judicial System In Action, Gene Magidenko

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

On March 23, 2010, after a lengthy political debate on health care reform, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) into law. A week later, he signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which amended certain provisions of PPACA. But far from ending the intense national debate on the issue, these enactments opened a new front of battle in the federal courts that will almost certainly make its way to the United States Supreme Court. Much of this litigation focuses on § 1501 of PPACA, which contains the controversial individual mandate requiring …


Fill The Bench And Empty The Docket: Filibuster Reform For District Court Nominations, Jeremy Garson Jan 2012

Fill The Bench And Empty The Docket: Filibuster Reform For District Court Nominations, Jeremy Garson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Judges are, without question, vital to our justice system. They interpret, adapt, and apply the law. They resolve disputes for the parties to the case at issue and provide guidance to others in analogous situations. They are the gears that keep the wheels of justice moving. Unfortunately, in the case of our federal courts, many of these gears are missing. Eighty-three of our 874 federal judgeships are vacant, including thirty-four that have been declared “judicial emergencies.” Our Constitution vests the President with the power to nominate federal judges and the Senate with the power to confirm or reject them, and …


Clarification Needed: Fixing The Jurisdiction And Venue Clarification Act, William Baude Jan 2012

Clarification Needed: Fixing The Jurisdiction And Venue Clarification Act, William Baude

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

One hates to seem ungrateful. Judges and scholars frequently call for Congress to fix problems in the law of jurisdiction and procedure, and Congress doesn't usually intervene. In that light, the Jurisdiction and Venue Clarification Act ("JVCA"),[1] signed into law on December 7, 2011, ought to be a welcome improvement. And hopefully, on balance, it will be. But in at least one area that it attempts to clarify, the JVCA leaves much to be desired. Professor Arthur Hellman has called the JVCA "the most far-reaching package of revisions to the Judicial Code since the Judicial Improvements Act of 1990."[2] The …


Understanding The Value Of Judicial Diversity Through The Native American Lens, Paige E. Hoster Jan 2012

Understanding The Value Of Judicial Diversity Through The Native American Lens, Paige E. Hoster

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.


Article Iii And Removal Jurisdiction: The Demise Of The Complete Diversity Rule And A Proposed Return To Minimal Diversity, Rodney K. Miller Jan 2012

Article Iii And Removal Jurisdiction: The Demise Of The Complete Diversity Rule And A Proposed Return To Minimal Diversity, Rodney K. Miller

Oklahoma Law Review

The complete diversity rule is broken. Although easily applied in theory (federal courts can exercise subject matter jurisdiction over an action on diversity grounds only when no party is of the same citizenship as any adverse party), over time the number of judicially and legislatively created exceptions to the rule, as well as their varying and inconsistent application by the federal courts, has created an environment in which similarly situated parties are treated differently based solely on the forum in which the litigation is brought. In the removal context, depending upon the forum in which an action is filed, a …


The "Miscellaneous Employee": Exploring The Boundaries Of The Fair Labor Standards Act's Administrative Exemption, Blake R. Bertagna Jan 2012

The "Miscellaneous Employee": Exploring The Boundaries Of The Fair Labor Standards Act's Administrative Exemption, Blake R. Bertagna

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Medical Professional Liability Litigation In West Virginia: Part Ii, Thomas J. Hurney Jr., Jennifer M. Mankins Jan 2012

Medical Professional Liability Litigation In West Virginia: Part Ii, Thomas J. Hurney Jr., Jennifer M. Mankins

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.


Unlikely To Succeed: How The Second Circuit's Adherence To The Serious Questions Standard For The Granting Of Preliminary Injunctions Contradicts Supreme Court Precedent And Turns And Extraordinary Remedy Into An Ordinary One, Jacob S. Crawford Jan 2012

Unlikely To Succeed: How The Second Circuit's Adherence To The Serious Questions Standard For The Granting Of Preliminary Injunctions Contradicts Supreme Court Precedent And Turns And Extraordinary Remedy Into An Ordinary One, Jacob S. Crawford

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.