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Full-Text Articles in Law
Bottomheavy: Legal Footnotes, Joan Ames Magat
Bottomheavy: Legal Footnotes, Joan Ames Magat
Faculty Scholarship
For decades, legal footnotes have been the deserving target of both ample criticism and self-mockery. Apart from their complaints as to footnotes’ mere existence, most critics draw a bead on the ballooning of footnote content. Some journal editors, aspiring to respond to this sound theme, hopefully inform their authors of a preference for “light footnoting.” But where does an author begin to trim, and what editor has the audacity to slash what the author (or her research assistant) has so laboriously compiled below the line? Changing our footnote habits is about benefits and costs. To gain the former, we must …
What Do Federal District Judges Want?: An Analysis Of Publications, Citations, And Reversals, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Eric A. Posner
What Do Federal District Judges Want?: An Analysis Of Publications, Citations, And Reversals, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Eric A. Posner
Faculty Scholarship
We report evidence from a dataset of federal district judges from 2001 to 2002 that district judges adjust their opinion-writing practices to minimize their workload while maximizing their reputation and chance for elevation to a higher court. District judges in circuits with politically uniform circuit judges are better able to predict what opinions will get affirmed by the circuit court, leading to higher publication rates and a higher affirmance rate. In contrast, district judges in circuits with politically diverse circuit judges are less able to predict the preferences of the reviewing circuit court panel, leading district judges to publish fewer …