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Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Law
“She Blinded Me With Science”: The Use Of Science Frames In Abortion Litigation Before The Supreme Court, Laura Moyer
“She Blinded Me With Science”: The Use Of Science Frames In Abortion Litigation Before The Supreme Court, Laura Moyer
Faculty Scholarship
While much of the work on amicus briefs focuses on whether such briefs affect Supreme Court outcomes or doctrine, much less is known about the content of these briefs, particularly how groups opt to frame issues as part of their litigation strategy. In this study, I leverage an approach to content analysis that has previously been used to analyze judicial opinions and use it to assess the frames used by amicus groups in a single policy area over four decades. Using an original dataset of amicus briefs filed in Supreme Court cases on the right to abortion, I test the …
Assessing President Obama’S Appointment Of Women To The Federal Appellate Courts, Laura Moyer
Assessing President Obama’S Appointment Of Women To The Federal Appellate Courts, Laura Moyer
Faculty Scholarship
A major legacy of the Obama presidency was the mark he left on the federal courts with respect to increasing judicial diversity. In particular, President Obama’s appointments of women to the federal judiciary exceeded all previous presidents in terms of both absolute numbers and as a share of all judges; he also appointed a record-setting number of women of color to the lower federal courts. In this Article, I take an intersectional approach to exploring variation in the professional backgrounds, qualifications, and Senate confirmation experiences of Obama’s female appeals court appointees, comparing them with George W. Bush and Bill Clinton …
Opposition To Abortion, Then And Now: How Amicus Briefs Use Policy Frames In Abortion Litigation, Laura Moyer, Alyson Hendricks-Benton, Megan Balcom
Opposition To Abortion, Then And Now: How Amicus Briefs Use Policy Frames In Abortion Litigation, Laura Moyer, Alyson Hendricks-Benton, Megan Balcom
Faculty Scholarship
Early in the debate over abortion, opposition to the procedure was primarily described in terms that reflected moral concerns about the protection of “the unborn.” Indeed, much of the media coverage and public discourse describing opposition to abortion since the time of Roe characterizes the movement as focused on securing rights for all human beings from the moment of conception (Huff 2014, 39). However, interviews with activists and movement leaders suggest that antiabortion groups have employed an array of public outreach strategies over time. As seen above, the former director of the antiabortion group National Right to Life …
Trailblazers And Those That Followed : Personal Experiences, Gender, And Judicial Empathy., Laura P. Moyer, Susan B. Haire
Trailblazers And Those That Followed : Personal Experiences, Gender, And Judicial Empathy., Laura P. Moyer, Susan B. Haire
Faculty Scholarship
This paper investigates one causal mechanism that may explain why female judges on the federal appellate courts are more likely than men to side with plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases. To test whether personal experiences with inequality are related to empathetic responses to the claims of female plaintiffs, we focus on the first wave of female judges, who attended law school during a time of severe gender inequality. We find that female judges are more likely than their male colleagues to support plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases, but that this difference is seen only in judges who graduated law school …
The Value Of Precedent : Appellate Briefs And Judicial Opinions In The U.S. Courts Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Todd A. Collins, Susan B. Haire
The Value Of Precedent : Appellate Briefs And Judicial Opinions In The U.S. Courts Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Todd A. Collins, Susan B. Haire
Faculty Scholarship
This study of appellate advocacy examines factors that affect judicial treatment of precedents identified in litigant briefs. Although we find some attorney and party characteristics influence whether a court addresses precedent cited by a party, legal resources are not as influential in determining whether the court adopts a party’s use of a precedent. At times, ideological congruence between the circuit panel and the litigant can increase the likelihood that the court’s opinion will use a precedent in the same way as presented by the litigants. There is also some support for the importance of attorney experience. Even when their clients …
Diversity, Deliberations, And Judicial Opinion Writing., Susan B. Haire, Laura P. Moyer, Shawn Treier
Diversity, Deliberations, And Judicial Opinion Writing., Susan B. Haire, Laura P. Moyer, Shawn Treier
Faculty Scholarship
Underlying scholarly interest in diversity is the premise that a representative body contributes to robust decision-making processes. Using an innovative measure of opinion content, we examine this premise by analyzing deliberative outputs in the US courts of appeals (1997-2002). While the presence of a single female or minority did not affect the attention to issues in the majority opinion, panels composed of a majority of women or minorities produced opinions with significantly more points of law compared to panels with three Caucasian males.
Rethinking Critical Mass In The Federal Appellate Courts., Laura Moyer
Rethinking Critical Mass In The Federal Appellate Courts., Laura Moyer
Faculty Scholarship
This article draws from critical mass studies of gender in other political institutions to inform an application to the US Courts of Appeals. The results demonstrate the utility of considering court-level aspects of diversity. As mixed-sex panels become more common within a circuit, both male and female judges increasingly support plaintiffs in civil rights claims, though the magnitude of the effect is larger for women. The presence of a female chief judge is also positively associated with pro-plaintiff decisions by men and women in sex discrimination cases.
Judicial Innovation And Sexual Harassment Doctrine In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Holley Takersley
Judicial Innovation And Sexual Harassment Doctrine In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Holley Takersley
Faculty Scholarship
The determination that sexual harassment constituted “discrimination based on sex” under Title VII was first made by the lower federal courts, not Congress. Drawing from the literature on policy diffusion, this article examines the adoption of hostile work environment standards across the U.S. Courts of Appeals in the absence of controlling Supreme Court precedent. The results bolster recent findings about the influence of female judges on their male colleagues and suggest that in addition to siding with female plaintiffs, female judges also helped to shape legal rules that promoted gender equality in the workplace.
Gender, Race, And Intersectionality On The Federal Appellate Bench., Todd Collins, Laura Moyer
Gender, Race, And Intersectionality On The Federal Appellate Bench., Todd Collins, Laura Moyer
Faculty Scholarship
While theoretical justifications predict that a judge’s gender and race may influence judicial decisions, empirical support for these arguments has been mixed. However, recent increases in judicial diversity necessitate a reexamination of these earlier studies. Rather than examining individual judges on a single characteristic, such as gender or race alone, this research note argues that the intersection of individual characteristics may provide an alternative approach for evaluating the effects of diversity on the federal appellate bench. The results of cohort models examining the joint effects of race and gender suggest that minority female judges are more likely to support criminal …
Advocacy Through Briefs In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Susan B. Haire, Laura P. Moyer
Advocacy Through Briefs In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Susan B. Haire, Laura P. Moyer
Faculty Scholarship
The focus of this paper is to evaluate the role of advocates in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit by examining the characterization of issues offered in appellate briefs against the issues addressed in the court's decisions. Specifically, in an environment in which attorneys are expected to frame the issues on appeal and judges are expected to respond to those issues, what accounts for judges addressing some issues while suppressing others? By explicitly focusing on how the substantive content of an opinion is shaped, we depart from other, earlier scholarship on the advantages of "repeat player" litigants …
Client Responsibility For Lawyer Conduct: Examining The Agency Nature Of The Lawyer-Client Relationship., Grace M. Giesel
Client Responsibility For Lawyer Conduct: Examining The Agency Nature Of The Lawyer-Client Relationship., Grace M. Giesel
Faculty Scholarship
In the 1962 decision of Link v. Wabash Railroad Co., the United States Supreme Court reviewed a district court's sua sponte dismissal of a diversity negligence action. Six years after the plaintiff filed the matter, the district court scheduled a pretrial conference and gave counsel two weeks notice of the scheduled conference. On the day of the conference, plaintiffs counsel called the court to say that he would be unable to attend the conference, giving the impolitic reason that he was busy preparing some documents for the state supreme court. The attorney did not attend the conference, and the district …
A Constitutional Amendment To Reform Kentucky’S Courts, Kurt Metzmeier
A Constitutional Amendment To Reform Kentucky’S Courts, Kurt Metzmeier
Faculty Scholarship
Responding to a confused patchwork of trial courts with overlapping jurisdiction, uneven justice around the state, and a growing backlog of appellate cases, voters in Kentucky went to the polls on November 4, 1975, to approve a sweeping constitutional amendment that radically revised Kentucky’s court system. Although reformers had decried Kentucky’s confusing court system since the 1940s, the real roots of the revision of the judicial article can be found in the failed movement in the late 1960s to replace Kentucky’s 1891 constitution. Unbowed by the defeat, judicial reformers immediately set out to pass a separate amendment reforming the courts, …
Specifying Grounds For Judicial Disqualification In Federal Courts., Leslie W. Abramson
Specifying Grounds For Judicial Disqualification In Federal Courts., Leslie W. Abramson
Faculty Scholarship
One essential component of equal justice under the law is a neutral and detached judge to preside over the court proceedings. Public confidence in the legal system is maintained when a judge has no interest in the parties, attorneys or subject matter of the litigation. Sua sponte or by motion of a party, a federal judge is subject to disqualification for conflicts of interest on both constitutional and statutory grounds