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Full-Text Articles in Law

Trust Me, I’M A Judge: Why Binding Judicial Notice Of Jurisdictional Facts Violates The Right To Jury Trial, William M. Carter Jr. Jan 2003

Trust Me, I’M A Judge: Why Binding Judicial Notice Of Jurisdictional Facts Violates The Right To Jury Trial, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

The conventional model of criminal trials holds that the prosecution is required to prove every element of the offense beyond the jury's reasonable doubt. The American criminal justice system is premised on the right of the accused to have all facts relevant to his guilt or innocence decided by a jury of his peers. The role of the judge is seen as limited to deciding issues of law and facilitating the jury's fact-finding. Despite these principles,judges are reluctant to submit to the jury elements of the offense that the judge perceives to be . routine, uncontroversial or uncontested.

One such …


Preventive Detention: Prisoners, Suspected Terrorists And Permanent Emergency, Jules Lobel Jan 2003

Preventive Detention: Prisoners, Suspected Terrorists And Permanent Emergency, Jules Lobel

Articles

Central to the United States government’s strategy after the September 11th attacks has been a shift from punishing unlawful conduct to pre-empting possible or potential dangers. This strategy threatens to undermine fundamental principles of both constitutional law and international law which prohibit certain government action based on mere suspicion or perceived threat. The law normally requires that the government wait until a person or nation has committed or is attempting to commit a criminal act before it may employ force in response. The dangers of a policy of preventive detention have been analyzed from a number of perspectives. Historians have …


The Reliability Of The Administrative Office Of The U.S. Courts Database: An Initial Empirical Analysis, Theodore Eisenberg, Margo Schlanger Jan 2003

The Reliability Of The Administrative Office Of The U.S. Courts Database: An Initial Empirical Analysis, Theodore Eisenberg, Margo Schlanger

Articles

Researchers have long used federal court data assembled by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO) and the Federal Judicial Center (FJC). The data include information about every case filed in federal district court and every appeal filed in the twelve nonspecialized federal appellate courts. Much research using the AO data spans subject matter areas, and includes articles on appeals, caseloads and case-processing times, case outcomes, the relation between demographics and case outcomes, class actions, diversity jurisdiction, and litigation generally. Other research using the AO data covers particular subject matter areas, such as inmate cases, contract cases, corporate litigation, …


Inmate Litigation, Margo Schlanger Jan 2003

Inmate Litigation, Margo Schlanger

Articles

In 1995, prison and jail inmates brought about 40,000 new lawsuits in federal court nearly a fifth of the federal civil docket. Court records evidence a success rate for inmate plaintiffs under fifteen percent. These statistics highlight two qualities long associated with the inmate docket: its volume and the low rate of plaintiffs' success. Then, in 1996, Congress enacted the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), which dramatically altered the litigation landscape, restricting inmates' access to federal court in a variety of ways. This Article examines inmate litigation before and after the PLRA. Looking first at the litigation process itself, it …