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Liberalism Triumphant? Ideology And The En Banc Process In The Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals, Arthur D. Hellman

Articles

There are two things that everyone knows about the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: it is very large, and it is very liberal. But common knowledge is sometimes wrong. Is that the case here?

About the first point – the Ninth Circuit’s size – there can be no dispute. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has 29 authorized judgeships, almost twice as many as the second-largest court. But what about the second point – the liberalism? Knowledgeable commentators, including Professor (now Dean) Erwin Chemerinsky, have disputed the characterization, calling it a “myth.”

Until now, no one has empirically tested whether …

Reconsidering Judicial Independence: Forty-Five Years In The Trenches And In The Tower, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

Trusting in the integrity of our institutions when they are not under stress, we focus attention on them both when they are under stress or when we need them to protect us against other institutions. In the case of the federal judiciary, the two conditions often coincide. In this essay, I use personal experience to provide practical context for some of the important lessons about judicial independence to be learned from the periods of stress for the federal judiciary I have observed as a lawyer and concerned citizen, and to provide theoretical context for lessons I have deemed significant as …

The Meme Of Voter Fraud, Atiba R. Ellis

Catholic University Law Review

The meme of voter fraud is the idea that unworthy voters are attacking the electoral system by voting fraudulently through impersonation or other bad acts. Although scholars of election law aptly demonstrate that the meme is a myth, the meme nonetheless endures as a rationale for the continued passage of heightened voter regulations like voter identification laws. Scholarship critiquing the voter fraud meme relies on partisanship as the prime explanation for voter fraud arguments. This explanation is incomplete in light of the fact that proponents of the myth continue to believe it on an ideological level even when the lack …

Ideological Voting Applied To The School Desegregation Cases In The Federal Courts Of Appeals From The 1960’S And 70’S, Joe Custer

Joe Custer

This paper considers a research suggestion from Cass Sunstein to analyze segregation cases from the 1960's and 1970's and whether three hypothesis he projected in the article "Ideological Voting on Federal Courts of Appeals: A Preliminary Investigation," 90 Va. L. Rev. 301 (2004), involving various models of judicial ideology, would pertain. My paper considers Sunstein’s three hypotheses in addition to other judicial ideologies to try to empirically determine what was influencing Federal Court of Appeals Judges in regard to Civil Rights issues, specifically school desegregation, in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

A Critical Legal Rhetoric Approach To In Re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

In this paper I apply critical legal rhetoric to the judicial opinion rendered in response to the Defendants' Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs' Second Amended and Consolidated Complaint in 'In Re African American Slave Descendants', a case concerning the efforts of a group of modern-day descendants of enslaved African-Americans to obtain redress for the harms of slavery. The chief methodological framework for performing critical legal rhetorical analysis comes from the work of Marouf Hasian, Jr. particularly his schema for analysis which he calls substantive units in critical legal rhetoric. Critical legal rhetoric is a potent tool for exposing the …

All Rise! Standing In Judge Betty Fletcher’S Court, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, based on a talk given at the Washington Law Review’s March 2009 symposium in honor of Senior Ninth Circuit Judge Betty Binns Fletcher and her three decades of service on that court, I selectively survey her opinions on justiciability issues: standing, ripeness, mootness, and political questions. A significant starting point for this survey is Professor Richard Pierce’s 1999 law review article, Is Standing Law or Politics?, arguing that many Supreme Court votes in standing cases generally, and appellate judges’ votes in environmental-standing cases specifically, can be explained better on the basis of politics than by reference to …

The Ideology Of Legal Interpretation, Jason J. Czarnezki

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article questions whether consistency in legal interpretation is truly a manifestation of the influence of law or instead a means to a preferred policy end. Part I of this Article discusses the legal interpretive tools of originalism and legislative history and how they might influence outcomes in cases. Part II discusses judicial decision-making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals and justifies their use in the analysis. Parts III and IV offer information on our data and methodology, as well as a discussion of the results. Finally, in Part V, we find that the use of legal interpretive strategies are …

July 24, 2008: Christians Captured By Capitalism, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Christians Captured by Capitalism “ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

April 18, 2008: Modern Arbitrariness, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Modern Arbitrariness

Populism, Democracy And Social Citizenship: Discourses On ‘Illegal Migration’ Or Beyond The ‘Fortress’ Versus ‘Cosmopolitanism’ Debate, Nicos Trimikliniotis

Nicos Trimikliniotis

This paper aims to connect articulations of ‘racism’ and ‘populism’ within discursive uses of ‘illegal immigration’ in the context of European-wide processes, which frame migrants as the ‘other’: such view have in fact become hegemonic over the recent years. The aim is to connect discourses of ‘illegal’ immigration to social phenomena, such as racist populism in democratic process and debates regarding social citizenship. The examination of the construction processes of exclusionary citizenship, both at European and at national level, via the discourses of undocumented migrant labour is a process that tends to racialise liberal democracy across Europe. Moreover, this process …

Signatures Of Ideology: The Case Of The Supreme Court's Criminal Docket, Ward Farnsworth

Michigan Law Review

Everyone suspects that Supreme Court justices' own views of policy play a part in their decisions, but the size and nature of the part is a matter of vague impression and frequent dispute. Do their preferences exert some pressure at the margin or are they better viewed as the mainsprings of decision? The latter claim, identified with legal realism, has been lent some support by political scientists who point out that some justices regularly vote for or against certain kinds of claims (for example, under the Fourth Amendment), or that votes in some areas are broadly predictable according to a …

Decline Of Title Vii Disparate Impact: The Role Of The 1991 Civil Rights Act And The Ideologies Of Federal Judges, Michael J. Songer

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This study employs various statistical techniques to test the efficacy of the 1991 Civil Rights Act in moderating the highly restrictive disparate impact regime imposed by Wards Cove, and to evaluate the hypothesis that political ideology should be a more powerful predictor of case outcomes following the 1991 Act. Part I of the paper describes the evolution of disparate impact doctrine from 1971 to the present. Part II analyzes data from randomly selected disparate impact cases brought by African American plaintiffs and finds that the current disparate impact doctrine emanating from the 1991 Civil Rights Act dramatically decreases the likelihood …

Disarming The Confirmation Process, Michael M. Gallagher

Cleveland State Law Review

To improve the current process and eliminate the bitter nature of confirmation hearings, Senators should not consider a nominee's ideology in determining whether to vote for that nominee. Ideological scrutiny lacks historical and constitutional support; it has led to repeated, prolonged battles that threaten to draw the confirmation process into a dangerous stalemate. Removing ideology from judicial nominations would return the confirmation process to its original understanding, one in which the President enjoys the dominant role. Those who argue that allowing the President, not the Senate, to consider a nominee's ideology would harm the federal judiciary and ignore the nature …

Choosing Justices: A Political Appointments Process And The Wages Of Judicial Supremacy, John C. Yoo

Michigan Law Review

William H. Rehnquist is not going to be Chief Justice forever - much to the chagrin of Republicans, no doubt. In the last century, Supreme Court Justices have retired, on average, at the age of seventy-one after approximately fourteen years on the bench. By the end of the term of the President we elect this November, Chief Justice Rehnquist will have served on the Supreme Court for thirty-two years and reached the age of eighty. The law of averages suggests that Chief Justice Rehnquist is likely to retire in the next presidential term. In addition to replacing Chief Justice Rehnquist, …

The First Amendment As Ideology, Frederick Shauer

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ultra-Wrong About The "Ultra-Right", Terry Eastland

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Packing the Courts: The Conservative Campaign to Rewrite the Constitution by Herman Schwartz

One Civil Libertarian Among Many: The Case Of Mr. Justice Goldberg, Ira H. Carmen

Michigan Law Review

It is common knowledge that in recent times the constitutional issues of greatest magnitude and of greatest public interest lie in the area of civil liberties. These cases almost always call for the delicate balancing of the rights of the individual, allegedly protected by a specific clause in the Constitution, and the duties that state or federal authority can exact from citizens in order that society may maintain a minimum standard of peace and security. It follows, therefore, that it is these often dramatic decisions which will largely color the images we have of participating Justices. Assume a free speech …