Law Commons^™

How "Mead" Has Muddled Judicial Review Of Agency Action, Lisa S. Bressman

Vanderbilt Law Review

When the Supreme Court decided United States v. Mead Corp. four years ago, Justice Scalia predicted that judicial review of agency action would devolve into chaos. This Article puts that prediction to the test by examining the court of appeals decisions applying the decision. Justice Scalia actually understated the effect of Mead. This Article suggests a remedy for the mess.

In Mead, the Court held that an agency is entitled to deference under Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC only if Congress has delegated to that agency the authority to issue interpretations that carry the force of law, and the agency …

Damaged Goods: Why, In Light Of The Supreme Court's Recent Punitive Damages Jurisprudence, Congress Must Amend The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Michael S. Vitale

Vanderbilt Law Review

Since the 1980s, a wide range of courts and commentators have expressed concern over large punitive damages awards handed out by civil juries against a wide array of tortfeasors. A late 2001 study revealed that from 1985 to 2001, eight multi-billion dollar punitive damages awards were granted, with four of them being handed down in the years 1999 to 2001 alone.' Not surprisingly, all but one of these verdicts were handed down against large corporations. Among the current members of the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens in particular has regularly noted the especially dangerous tendency the current punitive …

Canons Of Construction And The Elusive Quest For Neutral Reasoning, James J. Brudney, Corey Ditslear

Vanderbilt Law Review

Federal statutes, like the lawmaking enterprise itself, are seldom models of efficiency. Whether through inevitable laxity or conscious choice, Congress when legislating leaves a fair number of gaps in the meaning of its complex regulatory schemes. In filling those gaps with case-specific interpretive responses, federal courts perform an important policymaking function.

Such policymaking has lately generated increased concerns about the politicization of the judiciary. Scholars using social science techniques have contributed to the image of courts as policymakers, by establishing that judges' political party affiliation and ideological orientation are at times significant predictors of voting behavior. Presidents and senators have …

Improving The Appellate Process Worldwide Through Maximizing Judicial Resources, Honorable J. Clifford Wallace

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

As the number of cases filed each year has surged, U.S. federal appellate courts have evolved in order to fulfill their core functions of deciding appeals and setting guiding precedent. Many of the challenges created by overwhelming caseloads are also being tackled in foreign judicial systems. In this Article, Judge Wallace offers the approach of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as a possible model of reform, although he also points out that each judiciary will need to tailor reform efforts to its particular circumstances. In Part II, Judge Wallace details several of the case management …

Empirical Measures Of Judicial Performance: An Introduction To The Symposium, Jim Rossi, Steven G. Gey

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Inspired by the burgeoning empirical literature on the judiciary, the editors of the Florida State University Law Review have solicited some papers from leading scholars and federal courts of appeals judges, asking them to address the topic of empirical measures of judicial performance. The papers in this "Symposium on Empirical Measures of Judicial Performance" address empirical measures of judicial performance from a variety of methodological perspectives, but as this Foreword suggests, they can roughly be organized around three basic themes. First, many of the papers critique the empirical enterprise itself and especially the tournament strategy for evaluating judges, although these …