Law Commons^™

Reentry Court Judges: The Key To The Court, Christopher Salvatore, Venezia Michalsen, Caitlin Taylor

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Over the last few decades, treatment-oriented court judges have moved away from being neutral arbitrators in an adversarial court process to treatment facilitators. In the problem-solving court model, judges are part of a more therapeutic treatment process with program participants and a courtroom workgroup. The shift from the use of the traditional criminal justice process toward the use of more treatment-oriented models for some populations highlights the need to systematically document key elements of treatment court models. In particular, it is important to clearly document the role of Reentry Court Judges because they are a key component of the Reentry …

Here There Be Dragons: The Likely Interaction Of Judges With The Artificial Intelligence Ecosystem, Fredric I. Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

What's The Difference Between A Conclusion And A Fact?, Howard M. Erichson

Faculty Scholarship

In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, building on Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, the Supreme Court instructed district courts to treat a complaint’s conclusions differently from allegations of fact. Facts, but not conclusions, are assumed true for purposes of a motion to dismiss. The Court did little to help judges or lawyers understand this elusive distinction, and, indeed, obscured the distinction with its language. The Court said it was distinguishing “legal conclusions” from factual allegations. The application in Twombly and Iqbal, however, shows that the relevant distinction is not between law and fact, but rather between different types of factual assertions. This …

Dean's Desk: Students Find Clerkships In Smaller Counties Rewarding, Austen L. Parrish

Austen Parrish (2014-2022)

The students at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law come to Bloomington from all over the nation. During their summers, the temptation is for them to work in the country’s largest cities, often with the majority working in Indianapolis, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York. Many others work in our innovative Stewart Fellows global internship program, where students are placed in countries throughout the world.

Fewer students, however, choose to work in Indiana’s smaller towns, and the hundreds of trial court judges working there often need help. Many trial courts have crowded dockets and limited staffing, particularly those in …

Learning From Feminist Judgments: Lessons In Language And Advocacy, Bridget J. Crawford, Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay offers a perspective-shifting approach to meeting some of our pedagogical goals in law school: the study of re-imagined judicial decisions. Our thesis is that exposing students to “alternative judgments”—opinions that have been rewritten by authors who look at the law and the facts differently—will help students develop a more realistic and nuanced view of judicial decision-making: one that is aspirational and based in the real world, and one that allows them to envision their futures as successful advocates. The “alternative judgments” of the feminist judgments projects can enrich the law-school experience in multiple ways. First, seeing a written …

Notoriously Ruthless: The Idolization Of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Lucille Moran

Political Science Honors Projects

It is now a fixture of mainstream commentary in the United States that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become a popular idol on the political left. Yet, while Justice Ginsburg’s image and story has reached an unprecedented level of valorization and even commercialization, scholars have yet to give sustained attention to the phenomenon and to contextualize it: why has this idolization emerged within this context, and what is its impact? This paper situates her portrayal in the cultural imagination as the product of two political forces, namely partisanship and identity politics. Considering parallel scholarly discourses of reputation, celebrity, …

State Constitutionalism In The Age Of Party Polarization, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Judging Judges Fifty Years After – Was Judge Julius Hoffman’S Conduct So Different?, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In Chicago, Illinois--and in courtrooms across the United States--judicial misconduct has affected trial outcomes as long as there have been trials. While Judge Julius Hoffman's conduct in the “Chicago Eight” trial is an egregious example of judicial behavior toward criminal defendants, this piece's examination of at least ten different categories of misconduct in dozens of cases makes the argument that misbehavior by judges is less of an exception to the rule of impartiality than the thinking public might know. In considering these brazen examples, practitioners and academics alike can evaluate how to best confront the extent to which conduct like …

Judging During Crises: Can Judges Protect The Facts?, Lissa Griffin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

With the advent of instantaneous information and the trend toward shrinking adherence to the truth, the conversation surrounding the ability of judges to conduct outside research into the matters before them is gaining urgency. In a “post-truth” world, the role that the judiciary plays in our democracy must shift from trier of fact to guardian of factual integrity. And to do this, the professional ethics rules assigned to the judiciary may need re-evaluation.

This Essay argues that the judiciary's ambivalence to its role as fact finder must be overcome, and where appropriate, judges may be empowered to seek out supplemental …

Law Library Blog (July 2019): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

First Women Lawyers In Rhode Island: Dedication First Women Of The Rhode Island Bar (1920-1979) 04-11-2019, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Fallen Woman (Re) Frame: Judge Jean Hortense Norris, New York City - 1912-1955, Mae C. Quinn

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Fallen Woman Further (Re)Framed: Jewels And Travels, Tragedies And Secrets, Judge Hortense Norris, Mae Quinn

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Stern Claims And Article Iii Adjudication - The Bankruptcy Judge Knows Best, Laura B. Bartell

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The Critical Tax Project, Feminist Theory, And Rewriting Judicial Opinions, Anthony C. Infanti, Bridget J. Crawford

Articles

In this essay, the authors discuss the intellectual foundations for their co-edited book, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions (2017), the first in a series of subject-matter specific volumes published in the U.S. Feminist Judgments Series by Cambridge University Press. Using only the facts and precedents in existence at the time of the original opinion, the contributors to this and other feminist judgments projects around the globe seek to show how application of feminist perspectives could impact, or even change, the holding or reasoning of judicial decisions. Underlying Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions is the belief that the study of taxation …

Reconsidering Judicial Independence: Forty-Five Years In The Trenches And In The Tower, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

Trusting in the integrity of our institutions when they are not under stress, we focus attention on them both when they are under stress or when we need them to protect us against other institutions. In the case of the federal judiciary, the two conditions often coincide. In this essay, I use personal experience to provide practical context for some of the important lessons about judicial independence to be learned from the periods of stress for the federal judiciary I have observed as a lawyer and concerned citizen, and to provide theoretical context for lessons I have deemed significant as …

Law School News The First Circuit At Rwu Law 10/03/2018, Michael M. Bowden, Julia Rubin

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

What Makes A Good Judge?, Brian M. Barry

Reports

This article overviews research demonstrating the factors beyond the law that can affect judicial decision-making.

Litigation Academy Helps Lawyers Hone Skills 4-30-2018, Katie Mulvaney, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Court Capture, Jonas Anderson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Capture — the notion that a federal agency can become controlled by the industry the agency is supposed to be regulating — is a fundamental concern for administrative law scholars. Surprisingly, however, no thorough treatment of how capture theory applies to the federal judiciary has been done. The few scholars who have attempted to apply the insights of capture theory to federal courts have generally concluded that the federal courts are insulated from capture concerns.

This Article challenges the notion that the federal courts cannot be captured. It makes two primary arguments. As an initial matter, this Article makes the …

The Disruptive Neuroscience Of Judicial Choice, Anna Spain Bradley

Publications

Scholars of judicial behavior overwhelmingly substantiate the historical presumption that most judges act impartially and independent most of the time. The reality of human behavior, however, says otherwise. Drawing upon untapped evidence from neuroscience, this Article provides a comprehensive evaluation of how bias, emotion, and empathy—all central to human decision-making—are inevitable in judicial choice. The Article offers three novel neuroscientific insights that explain why this inevitability is so. First, because human cognition associated with decision-making involves multiple, and often intersecting, neural regions and circuits, logic and reason are not separate from bias and emotion in the brain. Second, bias, emotion, …

Justice As Fair Division, Ian C. Bartrum

Scholarly Works

The current hyperpoliticization of the Court grows out of a feedback loop between politicized appointments and politicized decision-making. This Article suggests a change in the internal procedures by which the Court hears and decides particular cases. A three-Justice panel hears and decides each case. Appeal to an en banc sitting of the entire Court would require a unanimous vote of all non-recused Justices. This Article explores several possible approaches in selecting the three-Justice panel. This Article proposes that applying a fair division scheme to the Court's decision-making process might act to reverse this loop and work to depoliticize the Court …

The Keys To The Kingdom: Judges, Pre-Hearing Procedure, And Access To Justice, Colleen F. Shanahan

Faculty Scholarship

Judges see themselves as – and many reforming voices urge them to be – facilitators of access to justice for pro se parties in our state civil and administrative courts. Judges’ roles in pro se access to justice are inextricably linked with procedures and substantive law, yet our understanding of this relationship is limited. Do we change the rules, judicial behavior, or both to help self-represented parties? We have begun to examine this nuanced question in the courtroom, but we have not examined it in a potentially more promising context: pre-hearing motions made outside the courtroom. Outside the courtroom, judges …

The Subversions And Perversions Of Shadow Vigilantism, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This excerpt from the recently published Shadow Vigilantes book argues that, while vigilantism, even moral vigilantism, can be dangerous to a society, the real danger is not of hordes of citizens, frustrated by the system’s doctrines of disillusionment, rising up to take the law into their own hands. Frustration can spark a vigilante impulse, but such classic aggressive vigilantism is not the typical response. More common is the expression of disillusionment in less brazen ways by a more surreptitious undermining and distortion of the operation of the criminal justice system.

Shadow vigilantes, as they might be called, can affect the …

Weighing Democracy And Judicial Legitimacy In Judicial Selection, Kenneth S. Klein

Faculty Scholarship

For over two centuries Americans have debated whether judges should be elected or appointed. While the explicitly-framed tension has been about the relative importance of judicial independence and judicial accountability in a democracy, the underlying issue has been about which structure better promotes the legitimacy of the judiciary. An institution has legitimacy when it enjoys diffuse support even for controversial decisions. Judicial legitimacy is in inherent tension with a judiciary in a democracy, since democracy implicitly assumes political elements to selection of all leaders (including judges), while judicial legitimacy is undermined by politics. The contemporary work on the relationship between …

Studying The "New" Civil Judges, Anna E. Carpenter, Jessica K. Steinberg, Colleen F. Shanahan, Alyx Mark

Faculty Scholarship

We know very little about the people and institutions that make up the bulk of the United States civil justice system: state judges and state courts. Our understanding of civil justice is based primarily on federal litigation and the decisions of appellate judges. Staggeringly little legal scholarship focuses on state courts and judges. We simply do not know what most judges are doing in their day-to-day courtroom roles or in their roles as institutional actors and managers of civil justice infrastructure. We know little about the factors that shape and influence judicial practices, let alone the consequences of those practices …

Law School Dedicates Appellate Courtroom To Judge Selya 10-15-2017, Edward Fitzpatrick, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Leach, Billy (Fa 1040), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1040. Paper titled "Folklore in the Kentucky Courtroom" in which Billy Leach challenges courtroom stereotypes by collecting anecdotal evidence from a local judge.

Judging Justice - How Solicitors' Expertise Can Improve The Courts System, Brian M. Barry

Reports

This article details the initial findings of a nationwide interview study undertaken by the author of litigation solicitors in Ireland on their views of the Irish courts system and the Irish judiciary.

The Life And Legacy Of Chief Judge Lawrence H. Cooke: "Truly An Exemplary Life. A Life Well Lived", Jay C. Carlisle

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

It is an appropriate tribute to the late Chief Judge of New York, Lawrence H. Cooke, that this article be devoted to a man who many leaders of the bench, bar, and academia consider to be the greatest jurist to ever serve on New York State's highest court. Chief Judge Cooke, better known as Larry, served with honor and distinction as an associate judge of the Court of Appeals, and later as Chief Judge.