Law Commons^™

Batson: Then And Now, Part Ii, John H. Blume, Elizabeth Piliavin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Qualitative Dimension Of Fourth Amendment "Reasonableness", Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Supreme Court doctrine protects two seemingly distinct kinds of interests under the heading of privacy rights: one "substantive," the other "procedural." The Fourth Amendment guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures" has been generally interpreted to protect procedural privacy. Searches are typically defined as governmental inspections of activities and locations in which an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy from observation. In the typical case, this reasonable expectation of privacy may be breached only where the government has acquired a quantitatively substantial objective basis for believing that the search would uncover evidence of a crime. Substantive privacy rights have not …

Feminist Legal Theory, Feminist Lawmaking, And The Legal Profession, Cynthia Grant Bowman, Elizabeth M. Schneider

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court 1997 Term -- Foreword: The Limits Of Socratic Deliberation, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Measuring The Deterrent Effect Of Punitive Damages, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Professor Viscusi's article differs from the dominant mode of law and economics scholarship on punitive damages. The usual punitive damages article contains purely theoretical considerations about when punitive damages are appropriate and about their optimal level; no effort is made to ascertain whether the existing pattern of punitive awards corresponds with the theory. This is part of a larger problem: the dearth of empirical evidence in law and economics scholarship. Viscusi, on the other hand, provides empirical tests of whether punitive damages accomplish their goals, and he makes creative use of publicly available data sources. For the goal of his …

Remedies And The Psychology Of Ownership, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Forest Jourden

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Charting The Influences On The Judicial Mind: An Empirical Study Of Judicial Reasoning, Gregory C. Sisk, Michael Heise, Andrew P. Morriss

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In 1988, hundreds of federal district judges were suddenly confronted with the need to render a decision on the constitutionality of the Sentencing Reform Act and the newly promulgated criminal Sentencing Guidelines. Never before has a question of such importance and involving such significant issues of constitutional law mandated the immediate and simultaneous attention of such a large segment of the federal trial bench. Accordingly, this event provides an archetypal model for exploring the influence of social background, ideology, judicial role and institution, and other factors on judicial decisionmaking. Based upon a unique set of written decisions involving an identical …

Professional Secrecy And Its Exceptions: Spaulding V. Zimmerman Revisited, Roger C. Cramton, Lori P. Knowles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Contents Of Legal Information On The Internet: U.S. Perspectives, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

This article examines the contents of legal data and information on the Internet, with a special focus on the United States. It then evaluates the quality of the data, its impact on legal research and access to legal information, and addresses some issues raised by the digital medium, such as its reliability and permanent access concerns.

Aggravation And Mitigation In Capital Cases: What Do Jurors Think?, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Capital Jury Project in South Carolina interviewed jurors who sat in forty-one capital murder cases. The Project asked jurors a range of questions relating to crime, the defendant, the victim, the victim's family, the jurors' deliberations, the conduct of counsel, and background characteristics of the jurors. In this essay, Professor Stephen P. Garvey presents and examines data from the Project relating to the importance jurors attach to various aggravating and mitigating factors. The results suggest that jurors have a discernible moral compass. According to the data, jurors found especially brutal killings, killings with child victims, future dangerousness, and lack …

Batson: Then And Now, Part I, John H. Blume, Elizabeth Piliavin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Death By Default: State Procedural Default Doctrine In Capital Cases, John H. Blume, Pamela A. Wilkins

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Before 1991, South Carolina capital defendants benefitted from lenient policies of error preservation. However, in 1991 the South Carolina Supreme Court put an end to these policies and began enforcing default rules that are more draconian than those of any other American jurisdiction with a death penalty. Furthermore, the South Carolina Supreme Court’s decisions have made it difficult for trial practitioners to discern the rules under which they must operate. Taken in combination, the strictness of the new procedural policy, the lack of clarity regarding the applicable rules, and the South Carolina Supreme Court’s often ad hoc approach to enforcing …

Acts Of God Or Toxic Torts? Applying Tort Principles To The Problem Of Climate Change, Eduardo M. Peñalver

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The problem of climate change continues to be an intractable one for policymakers. Uncertainties over the likely costs of climate change as well as over the costs of proposed remedies have hampered the formation of a consensus regarding the best course of action. The principles of tort law provide a useful means of analyzing the problem of climate change, particularly the issue of who should bear the costs associated with its effects. The two major goals of tort law (reducing the costs of accidents and corrective justice) both point towards the appropriateness of placing the costs of climate change on …

Undoing The New Deal Through The New Presidentialism, Cynthia R. Farina

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Justice Blackmun's Federal Tax Jurisprudence, Robert A. Green

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

During his tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Blackmun was widely regarded as the Court's authority on tax matters. Justice Blackmun viewed tax law not merely as a technical specialty, but as a microcosm of the legal system. His numerous tax opinions involve a wide range of issues of constitutional law, criminal law, administrative procedure, court procedure, and statutory interpretation. This Article begins by discussing two of Justice Blackmun's tax opinions involving constitutional issues. Justice Blackmun refused to create special constitutional rules for tax cases. Instead, he applied generally applicable principles, but with great sensitivity to how those principles would …

Protecting Endangered Species Without Regulating Private Landowners: The Case Of Endangered Plants, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Relevance Of Federal Norms For State Separation Of Powers, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Post-Mccleskey Racial Discrimination Claims In Capital Cases, John H. Blume, Theodore Eisenberg, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In federal habeas corpus proceedings, Earl Matthews, an African American, South Carolina death row inmate, alleged that his death sentence was the result of invidious racial discrimination that violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. To support his contention, Matthews presented statistical evidence showing that in Charleston County, where a jury convicted him and sentenced him to death, the prosecutor was far more likely to seek a death sentence for a Black defendant accused of killing a white person than for any other racial combination of victims and defendants, and also that such a Black defendant was more …

But Was He Sorry? The Role Of Remorse In Capital Sentencing, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

What role does remorse really play in capital sentencing? We divide this basic question in two. First, what makes jurors come to believe a defendant is remorseful? Second, does a belief in the defendant's remorse affect the jury's final judgment of life or death? Here we present a systematic, empirical analysis that tries to answer these questions.

What makes jurors think a defendant is remorseful? Among other things, we find that the more jurors think that the crime is coldblooded, calculated, and depraved and that the defendant is dangerous, the less likely they are to think the defendant is remorseful. …

God And Man In The Yale Dormitories, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Tribute To Theodore J. St. Antoine, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Article predates the author's affiliation with Cornell Law School.

Infinity Within The Brackets, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The ethnographic subjects of this article are UN-sponsored international conferences and their legal documents. Drawing upon fieldwork among Fiji delegates at these conferences, in this article I demonstrate the centrality of matters of form, as distinct from questions of “meaning,” in the negotiation of international agreements. A parallel usage of documents and of mats among Fijian negotiators provides a heuristic device for exploring questions of pattern and scale in the aesthetics of negotiation.

Can Shaming Punishments Educate?, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

So-called "shaming" penalties have received a fair amount of attention in the popular press and, thanks primarily to the work of Dan Kahan and Toni Massaro, in the legal literature as well. Unfortunately, the current debate focuses on "shame" as the main way to understand what these penalties are all about. I argue that at least some of these so-called shaming penalties are better understood as "educative" penalties. I develop this "educating model" and contrast it with the "shaming model." I also suggest that penalties fitting the educating model have more normative appeal than those fitting the shaming model.

On Misusing “Revolution” And “Reform”: Procedural Due Process And The New Welfare Act, Cynthia R. Farina

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

After a long dry spell, the debate over procedural due process flows again. The Supreme Court has announced the first major doctrinal revision in years; Congress has gutted the regulatory program that underlay Goldberg v. Kelly; and Richard Pierce has published an essay in the Columbia Law Review prophesying a radical de-evolution of due process doctrine that will bring constitutional law into line with the profound political and social revolution evidenced by welfare “reform.” My essay takes Professor Pierce's recent work as a springboard for reengaging the debate about the direction of procedural due process. I begin by recapitulating …

Equal Educational Opportunity And Constitutional Theory: Preliminary Thoughts On The Role Of School Choice And The Autonomy Principle, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Inadequate schools impede America's long-standing quest for greater equal educational opportunity. The equal educational opportunity doctrine, traditionally moored in terms of race, has expanded to include notions of educational adequacy. Educational adequacy is frequently construed in terms of educational spending and framed in terms largely incident to constitutional litigation.

This paper explores the potential intersections of the school choice and school finance movements, particularly as they relate to litigation and policy. The paper argues that school choice policies constitute a viable remedy for successful school finance litigation and form a remedy that simultaneously advances individual autonomy, one critical constitutional principle.

Unconscious Racism And The Criminal Law, Sheri Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ranking And Explaining The Scholarly Impact Of Law Schools, Theodore Eisenberg, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article measures 32 law schools' academic reputations by citations to their faculties' works. Yale, Chicago, Harvard, and Stanford rank alone at the top. Seven or eight schools compose the next group. We also explore the relation between scholarly impact and entry-level or lateral hire status, gender, minority status, subjects taught, and years in teaching. Lateral hires systematically outperform entry-level hires. We find no substantial evidence of male-female differences. We find some evidence of lower citations for minority females, but this difference is largely attributable to those in teaching fewer than 8 years. For faculty members in teaching more than …

Achieving Consensus On Defective Product Design, James A. Henderson Jr., Aaron Twerski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Positive Psychological Theory Of Judging In Hindsight, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Politics Of The Products Liability Restatement, James A. Henderson Jr., Aaron Twerski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.