Law Commons^™

Constitutional Dignity And The Criminal Law, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Criminal law is important because it helps to define who we are as a constitutional democracy. There is much that distinguishes our form of government from others, but certainly much of that distinction is found in the Bill of Rights and in two simple words: due process. All of which help to affirm the value and sanctity of the individual in our society. Broadly then, criminal law helps to define who we are as a nation that values both order and liberty.

That is what many of the greatest judicial debates are about, like those involving Holmes, Hand, Jackson, and …

The War On Terrorism And The Constitution, Michael I. Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

Discussion of civil liberties during wartime often omit the fact that there can be no meaningful liberty at all if our homes and offices are bombed or our loved ones are killed or injured by acts of terror. The Government must be given the tools necessary to accomplish its vital mission. The first priority must be to win the war against terrorism. There are, however, other priorities. The United States, in its just battle for freedom, must ensure that freedom is preserved during that battle as well. Moreover, care must be taken so that an exaggerated cry of “emergency” is …

Eustitia: Institutionalizing Justice In The European Union, Helen E. Hartnell

Publications

The European Union is installing new infrastructure upon which to build a "genuine European area of justice. This "European judicial area" constitutes a key component of the "area of freedom, security and justice" ("AFSJ"). The Amsterdam Treaty added the AFSJ as a dimension of the Union, in order to promote the free movement of persons. "EUstitia" is a neologism that aims to capture both pragmatic and aspirational aspects of this new European governance project. The term is used here to refer solely to the civil law component of the AFSJ. This article both examines EUstitia's key features, and explores the …

Marbury And Judicial Deference: The Shadow Of Whittington V. Polk And The Maryland Judiciary Battle, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

On the 200th anniversary of Whittington and approaching the 200th anniversary of Marbury, this article revisits these two decisions and challenges legal scholars' assumptions that they were such strong precedents for judicial review.⁵ When one takes into account the broader contexts, both decisions were in fact judicial capitulations to aggressive legislatures and executives. The Maryland General Court asserted its judicial supremacy only in dicta, and the court failed to enforce judicial supremacy when it was legally justified. This article picks apart the court's reasoning step by step, using Whittington to illuminate Marbury and Marbury to illuminate Whittington. …

Judging By Heuristic: Cognitive Illusions In Judicial Decision Making, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Many people rely on mental shortcuts, or heuristics, to make complex decisions, but this sometimes leads to inaccurate inferences, or cognitive illusions. A recent study suggests such cognitive illusions influence judicial decision making.

Judges As Altruistic Hierarchs, Lynn A. Stout

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Conference Of Chief Justices As Amicus Curiae Supporting Respondents, Republican Party Of Minnesota V. Kelly, No. 01-521 (U.S. Feb. 19, 2002), ., Roy A. Schotland

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Getting Right With The Great Chief Justice, R. Kent Newmyer

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Quiet Rebellion Ii: An Empirical Analysis Of Declining Federal Drug Sentences Including Data From The District Level, Frank O. Bowman, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This is the second of two articles in which we seek an explanation for the hitherto unexamined fact that the average length of prison sentences imposed in federal court for narcotics violations declined by more than 15% between 1991-92 and 2000.

Our first article, Quiet Rebellion? Explaining Nearly a Decade of Declining Federal Drug Sentences, 86 Iowa Law Review 1043 (May 2001) ( "Rebellion I" ), examined national sentencing data in an effort to determine whether the decline in federal drug sentences is real (rather than a statistical anomaly), and to identify and analyze possible causes of the decline. We …

U.S. Jury Reform: The Active Jury And The Adversarial Ideal, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In many countries, lay people participate as decision makers in legal cases. Some countries include their citizens in the justice system as lay judges or jurors, who assess cases independently. The legal systems of other nations combine lay and law-trained judges who decide cases together in mixed tribunals. The International Conference on Lay Participation in the Criminal Trial in the 21st Century provided useful contrasts among different methods of incorporating lay voices into criminal justice systems worldwide. Systems with inquisitorial methods are more likely to employ mixed courts, whereas adversarial systems more often use juries. Research presented at the Conference …

Clarence Thomas After Ten Years: Some Reflections, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Clarence Thomas: The First Ten Years Looking For Consistency, Mark Niles

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Business Of Expression: Economic Liberty, Political Factions And The Forgotten First Amendment Legacy Of Justice George Sutherland, 10 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 249 (2002), Samuel R. Olken

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

In The Business of Expression: Economic Liberty, Political Factions And The Forgotten First Amendment Legacy of Justice George Sutherland, Samuel Olken traces the dichotomy that emerged in constitutional law in the aftermath of the Lochner era between economic liberty and freedom of expression. During the 1930s, while a deeply divided United States Supreme Court adopted a laissez faire approach to economic regulation, it viewed with great suspicion laws that restricted the manner and content of expression. During this period, Justice George Sutherland often clashed with the majority consistently insisting that state regulation of private economic rights bear a close and …

A Note On The Neutral Assignment Of Federal Appellate Judges, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Response to J. Robert Brown, Jr. & Allison Herren Lee, Neutral Assignment of Judges at the Court of Appeals, 78 Tex. L. Rev. 1037 (2000).

Dear President Bush, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Professor Tobias offers advice on judicial selection philosophy for the newly-elected President George W. Bush.

Carter's Groundbreaking Appointment Of Women To The Federal Branch: His Other Human Rights Record, Mary Clark

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Paradox Of Judicial Bypass Proceedings, Jamin B. Raskin

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Specialized Trial Courts: Concentrating Expertise On Fact, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

In the absence of a specialized patent trial court with expertise in fact-finding, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit often reviews de novo the many factual questions that pervade patent law. De novo review of fact by an appellate court is problematic. In the area of patent law, as in other areas of law, there are sound institutional justifications for the conventional division of labor that gives trial courts primary responsibility for questions of law. This Article identifies the problems created by de novo appellate review of fact and argues for the creation of a specialized trial court …

Clarence Thomas The First Ten Years: Looking For Consistency, Mark Niles

Faculty Articles

Dean Niles describes his observation and impression of the first ten years of Clarence Thomas’ judgeship. While Dean Niles admits that his own views are more liberal than Clarence Thomas’, he was not initially concerned about those differences. But as the days, weeks and years passed, notwithstanding Dean Niles’ early stoicism, serious concerns about the candidate, and later the Justice, began to arise. These concerns were not based on Justice Thomas' beliefs or ideology, but on a growing set of inconsistencies that began to arise between some of his beliefs and actions. With all due respect to a man who …

Constitutional Law Leading Cases: Judicial Elections, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Changing The Face Of The Law: How Women's Advocacy Groups Put Women On The Federal Judicial Appointments Agenda, Mary Clark

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Judging By Heuristic: Cognitive Illusions In Judicial Decision Making, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The institutional legitmacy of the judiciary depends on the quality of the judgments that judges make. Even the most talented and dedicated judges surely make occasional mistakes, but the public expects judges to avoid making systematic errors that favor particular parties or writing opinions that embed these mistakes into the substantive law. Psychological research on human judgment, however, suggests that this expectation might be unrealistic.

Judicial Selection And Political Culture, Jonathan L. Entin

Faculty Publications

This article proceeds in four stages. Part I examines the major rulings, relating to tort reform and school funding, that prompted the harsh and expensive Ohio campaign. Part II compares the process for appointing federal judges, particularly Supreme Court justices, which has also become notably contentious over the past three decades. Part III discusses the trend away from strict limitations on campaign speech by judicial candidates, which combined with the expansive protections afforded to independent expenditures in election campaigns will facilitate sharp rhetoric by those inclined in that direction. Finally, Part IV assesses the prospects for elevating the level of …

Choosing The Judges Who Choose The President, John C. Nagle

Journal Articles

The stakes for the selection of judges have never been so high. Federal and state court judges have ruled on such divisive issues as education funding, exclusionary zoning, capital punishment, same-sex marriages, school prayer, affirmative action, partial birth abortion, and legislative redistricting.

The selection of those who possess such awesome powers is bound to be contested. But the mode of choosing judges is a secondary question. The debate concerning the selection of judges is fueled by a broader debate about the appropriate role of judges.

The procedures for choosing those judges are caught up in this larger substantive debate, and …

Judge Procter Hug, Jr. And Good Judgment, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Tribute to Judge Procter R. Hug, Jr. upon assuming Senior Status as a United Circuit Judge.

Judicial Mindfulness, Evan R. Seamone

Journal Articles

Like all human beings, judges are influenced by personal routines and behaviors that have become second nature to them or have somehow dropped below the radar of their conscious control. Professor Ellen Langer and others have labeled this general state "mindlessness." They have distinguished "mindful" thinking as a process that all people can employ to gain awareness of subconscious influences, and thus increase the validity of their decisions. In this Article, I establish a theory of "judicial mindfulness" that would guard against two types of "cold" bias when interpreting legal materials. The first harmful bias involves traumatic past events that …

Beyond Interpretation, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Taking Lessons From The Left?: Judicial Activism On The Right, Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

The topic I would like to address in this essay is the subject of conservative judicial activism. Dismayed at the boldness of the Rehnquist Court's conservative majority in areas such as affirmative action and race-based redistricting, federalism, takings law, and my own field of constitutional criminal procedure, critics have accused the Court of being "activist." These attacks have become almost ubiquitous now, to the point that it is increasingly difficult to find any area of the Rehnquist Court's jurisprudence that has not been condemned as activist. Perhaps this is not surprising; the term "activism" packs a powerful rhetorical punch, especially …

Constitutional Pluralism And Democratic Politics: Reflections On The Interpretive Approach Of Baker V. Carr, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

Baker v. Carr is one of the Supreme Court's most important opinions, not least because its advent signaled the constitutionalization of democracy. Unfortunately, as is typical of the Court's numerous forays into democratic politics, the decision is not accompanied by an apparent vision of the relationship among democratic practice, constitutional law, and democratic theory. In this Article, Professor Charles revisits Baker and provides several democratic principles that he argues justifies the Court's decision to engage the democratic process. He examines the decision from the perspective of one of its chief contemporary critics, Justice Frankfurter. He sketches an approach, described as …

A "Freshman" Takes Charge: Judge John J. Parker Of The United States Court Of Appeals, 1925-1930, Peter G. Fish

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.