Law Commons^™

Justice John Paul Stevens : A11 Initial Assessment, Branch Y. Ball, Thomas M. Uhlma

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Disqalification Of Justices And The Constitutional Status Of The Judicial Budget: State Ex Rel. Bagley V. Blankenship, Kathleen Duffield

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Promise And The Performance Of The Missouri Plan: Judicial Selection In The Fifty States, Henry R. Glick

University of Miami Law Review

Attempts to improve the integrity of the judiciary have focused on the proper method of selecting judges. In this article, the author analyzes whether the Missouri Plan has achieved its expected goals: improving the selection process; emphasizing professional qualifications rather than political influence; and promoting superior decision-making by the bench.

The Eighteenth-Century Background Of John Marshall's Constitutional Jurisprudence, William E. Nelson

Michigan Law Review

This analysis of Marshall's constitutional jurisprudence avoids the pitfalls of previous theories. It does not see the Federalist political program as the source of Marshall's constitutional doctrines and thus does not need to explain how Marshall qualified his political principles or how he convinced non-Federalist judges to accept them. Instead, this essay argues that legal, not political, principles underlay Marshall's jurisprudence, but it attempts to understand those principles in a manner consistent with the unavoidable twentieth-century assumption that law is a body of flexible rules responsive to social reality rather than a series of immutable, unambiguous doctrines derived from a …

Appellate Justice, Ruggero J. Aldisert

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Justice on Appeal is a pithy analysis of the problem facing appellate courts. Dragon hunters Carrington, Meador, and Rosenberg were not content to look at the problem from an armchair. Instead, they walked to the mouth of the cave; pulled the troublesome dragon into the light, counted its teeth, measured its girth and tail, and decided neither to kill it nor kiss it. They decided to try taming it. I agree with their analysis of the specimen, its size, its growth, and the urgent necessity to bring the beast under control. I have some modest disagreements with some of their …

Justice On Appeal—One Way Or Many?, Michael E. Smith

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

After two centuries of our nation's existence, discussions of federalism are certain to sound familiar. The ground of argument has been worked so thoroughly, there is hardly a patch left unturned. Conventional watchwords suggest the competing interests: adaptability to local circumstances contrasted with efficiencies of scale, circumscribed experimentation contrasted with prevention of forum-shopping, local self-government contrasted with the cosmopolitan perspective. The most that can be done now, absent exceptional insight, is to display these choices in a fresh context.

What follows is yet another variation on the theme. It concerns the propriety, perhaps the desirability, of diversity among the federal …

Judicial Administration And Invisible Justice, Mary Murphy Schroeder

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

My theme here is the conflict between the visibility of the appellate judge and recent procedural changes designed to cope with the quantum leaps in the numbers and complexity of cases. I will develop that theme, first, by suggesting the ways that three of the major controls on the system, namely the selection, evaluation, and discipline of judges, depend upon the exercise of recognizable and individual judicial responsibility; second, by illustrating how this "imperative" can be undermined if devices intended to cope with increased volume are adopted without vigilance; and finally by pointing up some approaches to permit courts to …

Book Reviews, Stephen L. Wasby, Herbert A. Johnson

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Courts and Social Policy Author: Donald L. Horowitz

Reviewed by Stephen L. Wasby

Donald Horowitz's The Courts and Social Policy is a serious effort to deal with the question of judicial capacity. Horowitz talks first of the expansion of judicial responsibility, which he thinks is a departure from the traditional exercise of the judicial function, and then explores the sources of this growth, particularly expansive statutory interpretation. He believes that courts do not do well at interpreting the mixes of statutes, regulations, and local arrangements with which they are faced more and more frequently. "Griggs v. Duke Power Co.," …

Judicial Administration In A System Of Independents : A Tribe With Only Chiefs, J. Clifford Wallace

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Crisis In The Courts: Proposals For Change, Griffin B. Bell

Vanderbilt Law Review

The popular conception of the crisis in the courts focuses upon the condition of the courts and particularly upon the increasing volume of disputes that are presented for resolution. For example,Judge Ruggero J. Aldisert of the Third Circuit, one of the busiest federal circuits, has observed: "The reality is that today there is a mad rush to the Federal courts." The available statistics reflect Judge Aldisert's observation. For instance, according to the most recent report of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, record numbers of cases have been filed in the circuit and district courts during the past …

Judge Robert R. Merhige, Jr. - Strict Constructionist Weathers The Storm, Paul K. Campsen, P. Christopher Guedri, Jennings G. Ritter Ii, Edward H. Starr Jr.

University of Richmond Law Review

On August 27, 1967, Robert R. Merhige, Jr., was commissioned as a United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, the embarkment upon what many members of the legal community have labeled a controversial judicial career. However, examination of Judge Merhige's numerous decisions reveals that his image as a disputatius public figure has been more than a function of his flare for vehemently enforcing pronouncements and policies of the Supreme Court. The man, who created fervor throughout this state and the South with his publicly chastised busing decisions of the early 1970s, has been a victim of …

Justice Harold H. Burton And The Work Of The Supreme Court, David N. Atkinson

Cleveland State Law Review

Harold H. Burton served for thirteen years on the United States Supreme Court during a turbulent period of innovative constitutional policymaking. Hard working and open-minded, he was inevitably involved in the cross currents of small group interaction within the Supreme Court. Consequently, the purpose of this essay -relying on law clerk questionnaires and interviews -is to describe and evaluate his intra-Court behavior.