Law Commons^™

Let The Right Ones In: The Supreme Court's Changing Approach To Justiciability, Richard L. Heppner

Law Faculty Publications

The power of federal courts to act is circumscribed not only by the limits of subject matter jurisdiction, but also by various justiciability doctrines. Article III of the Constitution vests the judicial power of the United States in the Supreme Court and such inferior courts as Congress creates. That power is limited to deciding cases and controversies. It does not permit federal courts to provide advisory opinions when there is not a real dispute between the parties. Based on that constitutional limit, and related prudential concerns, the Court has developed a variety of justiciability requirements limiting which cases can be …

How Biden Can Continue Making The Federal Courts Better, Carl Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

From 2017 until 2020, former President Donald Trump and the Republican Senate majority nominated and confirmed record-breaking numbers of appellate court judges. This emphasis undermined ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, and experiential diversity as well as ideological balance on these courts and neglected to address persistent district court and emergency vacancies. Moreover, to achieve these historic confirmation levels, the GOP Senate majority eviscerated or altered certain rules and customs of regular order, which included the creation of a circuit-level exception to the blue slip process. President Joe Biden, in turn, has pledged to rectify the damage to the courts and the …

Keep The Federal Courts Great, Carl Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Ever since Donald Trump began running for President, he has incessantly vowed to “make the federal judiciary great again” by deliberately seating conservative, young, and capable judicial nominees, a project which Republican senators and their leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), have decidedly embraced and now vigorously implement. The chief executive and McConnell now constantly remind the American people of their monumental success in nominating and confirming aspirants to the federal courts. The Senate has expeditiously and aggressively confirmed two very conservative, young, and competent Supreme Court Justices and fifty-three analogous circuit jurists, all of whom Trump nominated and vigorously supported throughout …

The Federal Law Clerk Hiring Pilot And The Coronavirus Pandemic, Carl Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Just when law students attained a comfort level with the arcane intricacies of the federal law clerk employment process, as increasingly exacerbated by the second year of an experimental hiring pilot plan, the coronavirus attacked the country and has been ravaging it ever since. To date, the virus has inflicted the most profound harm on the jurisdictions that comprise all of the “coastal elite circuits” that span the District of Columbia north to Maine, as well as the United States Courts of Appeals for the Seventh and Ninth Circuits, which apply the pilot. This piece examines impacts that the coronavirus’ …

A Demographic History Of Federal Judicial Appointments By Gender And Race: 1789-2016, Jonathan K. Stubbs

Law Faculty Publications

This article briefly surveys the constitutional and statutory foundation for the creation of the federal judiciary. It also furnishes data, by sex and race, of the appointment of federal judges to courts of general jurisdiction during each presidential administration from September 24, 1789, through April 11, 2016. Thus, Part I describes the pace of diversification of the federal judiciary. While data regarding other attributes of judges (such as their socioeconomic status) exist, extensive analysis of such characteristics falls outside the parameters of this preliminary analysis. Nonetheless, the Article notes in passing that, since 1989, during each presidential administration, the majority …

Post-Crisis Reconsideration Of Federal Court Reform, David R. Cleveland

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Commentary, Considering Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, And Bisexual Nominees For The Federal Courts, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Professor Tobias details the ultimately unsuccessful nomination of Edward DuMont to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 2010-11 to illustrate the obstacles encountered by LGBT individuals in the federal judicial selection process.

Justifying Diversity In The Federal Judiciary, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

This Essay thus scrutinizes Obama’s judicial selection effort, which confirms many ideas that Scherer espouses while showing how political deficiencies in the modern selection process erode diversity and legitimacy, and perhaps Scherer’s provocative solution. This response ultimately discusses some promising measures beyond Scherer’s recommendation that could enhance diversity and legitimacy in light of the threat that politicization poses

A Demographic Snapshot Of America's Federal Judiciary: A Prima Facie Case For Change, Jonathan K. Stubbs

Law Faculty Publications

Nearly a decade ago, then judge Sonia Sotomayer gave a speech at the U.C. Berkeley Law School and asked a simple question: “What it all will mean to have more women and people of color on the bench?” This article places Justice Sotomayer’s perceptive question in historical context by providing a demographic profile of the gender and race of federal judges confirmed to the bench from September 24, 1789 through January 13, 2011. The paper focuses principally upon federal courts of general jurisdiction, specifically, the Supreme Court, the various Courts of Appeal and the federal district courts. After presenting historical …

A Realist Defense Of The Alien Tort Statute, Robert Knowles

Law Faculty Publications

This Article offers a new justification for modern litigation under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a provision from the 1789 Judiciary Act that permits victims of human rights violations anywhere in the world to sue tortfeasors in U.S. courts. The ATS, moribund for nearly 200 years, has recently emerged as an important but controversial tool for the enforcement of human rights norms. “Realist” critics contend that ATS litigation exasperates U.S. allies and rivals, weakens efforts to combat terrorism, and threatens U.S. sovereignty by importing into our jurisprudence undemocratic international law norms. Defenders of the statute, largely because they do not …

Discovering Discovery: Non-Party Access To Pretrial Information In The Federal Courts 1938-2006, Seymour Moskowitz

Law Faculty Publications

In the modern era, the pretrial process is critical to the disposition of almost all litigation. The vast majority of cases never go to trial. Those which are contested at trial and upon appeal are often decided upon the results of the information gather before trial. This is true in both private litigation and in public interest cases where "private attorneys general" may only function effectively with court-enforced discovery. Despite the significance of the Article III courts to our society, transparency in their processes for resolving civil disputes has been severely compromised. Threats to openness emanate from multiple sources. This …

Reassessing The Purposes Of Federal Question Jurisdiction, John F. Preis

Law Faculty Publications

For ages, judges and legal academics have claimed that federal question jurisdiction has three purposes: to provide litigants with a judge experienced in federal law, to protect litigants from state court hostility toward federal claims, and to preserve uniformity in federal law. Because federal claims, for the most part, have always been cognizable in state courts, these purposes imply that state courts are less experienced, more hostile, and more likely to adjudicate federal law in ways that decrease the uniformity of federal law. Despite the ongoing allegiance to this conception of federal question jurisdictionand by implication, state court adjudication of …

Cumulative Supplement To Jurisdiction In Civil Action, Wendy Collins Perdue

Law Faculty Publications

Cumulative supplement to Jurisdiction in Civil Action Third Edition.

Fourth Circuit Publication Practices, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Certain publication practices, especially dependence on issuing unpublished opinions, are one major response of federal courts to the increasing number of appeals. Few observers have assessed how specific tribunals employ these practices, although a recent study elucidates them. The Commission on Structural Alternatives for the Federal Courts of Appeals (Commission) gathered much useful data, which have remained strikingly constant, on each court. Because Fourth Circuit's publication practices and reliance on unpublished decisions allow the court to manage a large docket and suggest that it may not enunciate the common law, this Article scrutinizes those practices.

The Article first describes the …

Erie Railroad V. Tompkins, Wendy Collins Perdue

Law Faculty Publications

Erie Railroad v. Tompkins 304 U.S. 64 (1938), limited the power of federal courts to create judge-made law that would displace state law. Jurists view the Supreme Court's decision both a modern cornerstone of American judicial federalism and an example of legal realism's influence.

Filling The Federal Courts In An Election Year, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

President Bill Clinton appointed unprecedented numbers and percentages of highly qualified female and minority lawyers to the federal bench during his initial half-term in office, substantially surpassing the records of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Jimmy Carter. The Clinton administration invoked an efficacious, uncontroversial selection process and filled a significant percentage of the 113 judicial openings that existed when it assumed office.

Some federal court observers questioned whether the Chief Executive could maintain this commendable record during his presidency's third year. More specifically, they wondered if Republican Party control of the United States Senate, which must approve nominees, and …