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Plaintiphobia In The Appellate Courts: Civil Rights Really Do Differ From Negotiable Instruments, Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg
Plaintiphobia In The Appellate Courts: Civil Rights Really Do Differ From Negotiable Instruments, Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Professors Clermont and Eisenberg conducted a systematic analysis of appellate court behavior and report that defendants have a substantial advantage over plaintiffs on appeal. Their analysis attempted to control for different variables that may affect the decision to appeal or the appellate outcome, including case complexity, case type, amount in controversy, and whether there had been a judge or a jury trial. Once they accounted for these variables and explored and discarded various alternate explanations, they came to the conclusion that a defendants' advantage exists probably because of appellate judges' misperceptions that trial level adjudicators are pro-plaintiff.
Judge Harry Edwards: A Case In Point!, Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg
Judge Harry Edwards: A Case In Point!, Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Judge Harry Edwards dislikes empirical work that is not flattering to federal appellate judges. A few years ago Dean Richard Revesz published an empirical study of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit providing further support for the rather tame proposition that judges’ political orientation has some effect on outcome in some politically charged cases. A year later Judge Edwards published a criticism phrased in extreme terms. Dean Revesz then wrote a devastating reply by which he demonstrated that Judge Edwards “is simply wrong with respect to each of the numerous criticisms that he levels.” We believe …
Statutes With Multiple Personality Disorders: The Value Of Ambiguity In Statutory Design And Interpretation, Joseph A. Grundfest, Adam C. Pritchard
Statutes With Multiple Personality Disorders: The Value Of Ambiguity In Statutory Design And Interpretation, Joseph A. Grundfest, Adam C. Pritchard
Articles
Ambiguity serves a legislative purpose. When legislators perceive a need to compromise they can, among other strategies, "obscur[e] the particular meaning of a statute, allowing different legislators to read the obscured provisions the way they wish." Legislative ambiguity reaches its peak when a statute is so elegantly crafted that it credibly supports multiple inconsistent interpretations by legislators and judges. Legislators with opposing views can then claim that they have prevailed in the legislative arena, and, as long as courts continue to issue conflicting interpretations, these competing claims of legislative victory remain credible. Formal legal doctrine, in contrast, frames legislative ambiguity …