Law Commons^™

Imagining Judges That Apply Law: How They Might Do It, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

"Judges should apply the law, not make it." That plea appears perennially in American politics. American legal scholars belittle it as a simple-minded demand that is silly and misleading. A glance beyond our shores dispels the notion that the American public is naive to expect judges to apply rather than to make law.

American obsession with judicial lawmaking has its price: indifference to judicial law applying. If truth be told, practically we have no method for judges, as a matter of routine, to apply law to facts. Our failure leads American legal scholars to question whether applying law to facts …

An Independent Judiciary: The Life And Writings Of Robert N.C. Nix, Jr., Phoebe Haddon

Phoebe A. Haddon

No abstract provided.

Reluctant Judicial Factfinding: When Minimalism And Judicial Modesty Go Too Far, Scott A. Moss

Seattle University Law Review

Whatever the merits of minimalism in constitutional adjudication, this Essay argues that in another aspect of federal adjudication--what this Essay terms “reluctant judicial factfinding”--we already have too much minimalism. In certain areas of law, courts are quite reluctant to engage in close scrutiny of critically important facts, instead falling back on policies that avoid such factfinding. Parts II, III, and IV discuss each of these three areas of reluctant judicial factfinding. Then, Part V offers some thoughts as to possible causes of this reluctance to undertake factual inquiries that statutes, rules, and Supreme Court precedent instruct district and appellate courts …

A Limited Defense Of (At Least Some Of) The Umpire Analogy, Michael P. Allen

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay provides at least a limited defense of some parts of the umpire analogy and ultimately suggests that this analogy may tell us something important about the more general role of courts in the United States. This Essay proceeds in four parts. Part II explores in more depth what those making the umpire analogy appear to mean. At its heart, the analogy principally has been used to address the substantive decision making of judges. This Part will explain that there is more to the analogy than such a narrow decisional focus suggests. Part III builds on Part II. It …

Opinion Writing And Opinion Readers, Meehan Rasch

Meehan Rasch

The authors - a federal appellate judge and his law clerks - bring unique perspectives to bear on the topic of opinion writing and opinion readers. The contents of this Article were inspired in large part by the work done by the authors in editing and preparing the second edition of Judge Aldisert's classic book Opinion Writing, which for many years was distributed to all federal trial and appellate judges, and to all state appellate judges, when they took the bench. A broader audience of professional opinion writers and students of the judicial process now has access to Opinion Writing, …