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The Distinctiveness Of Appellate Adjudication, Heidi Li Feldman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper concerns two topics which, I hope to show, are vitally connected. One is the distinctive importance of appellate adjudication in the legal system of United States. The other is the workings of entangled concepts in the law. That appellate adjudication is important in some sense may seem obvious to everybody (to a few it will seem obvious that appellate adjudication is unimportant). My point will be that via appellate adjudication courts engineer entangled legal concepts, and it is this aspect of appellate adjudication that is both crucial and unique to it, at least in the U.S. legal system. …