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Full-Text Articles in Law
Congressional Control Of The Courts: A Theoretical And Empirical Analysis Of Expansion Of The Federal Judiciary, John M. De Figueiredo, Emerson H. Tiller
Congressional Control Of The Courts: A Theoretical And Empirical Analysis Of Expansion Of The Federal Judiciary, John M. De Figueiredo, Emerson H. Tiller
Faculty Scholarship
Congress has many available tools to influence the federal judiciary. In this article, we consider Congress' ability to balance, or stack, the courts through the creation of federal judgeships. While caseload pressure often produces the need for more judgeships, we demonstrate that political party alignment between Congress and the president often determines the timing of the judicial expansion. The net effect of expanding during political alignment is to speed up changes in the political balance of the judiciary in favor of the current Congress. We also examine the determinants of expansion size and show that both political alignment and caseload …
Federalizing Crime: Assessing The Impact On The Federal Courts, Sara Sun Beale
Federalizing Crime: Assessing The Impact On The Federal Courts, Sara Sun Beale
Faculty Scholarship
This article examines the history of federal criminal jurisdiction and criminal enforcement, and reviews federal caseload statistics. The federal criminal caseload grew dramatically between 1980 and the mid-1990s, but this increase tells only part of the story. The federal criminal caseload has fluctuated widely over the past two decades, and the number of criminal cases today is about the same as it was in the early 1970s. Although criminal cases now account for only one-fifth of the federal caseload, they take a large and disproportionate share of federal judicial resources. In more than one-third of federal judicial districts, criminal cases …