Law Commons^™

State Responses To Task Force Reports On Race And Ethnic Bias In The Courts, Suellyn Scarnecchia

Articles

While several states have embarked on studies of race and ethnic bias in their courts, Minnesota is only the sixth to publish its report to date. As Minnesota joins the ranks of states with published reports, it is worthwhile to assess the impact of the five earlier published reports from other states. Final reports have been published in Michigan (1989), Washington (1990), New York (1991), Florida (1991) and New Jersey (1992). The published reports make findings and provide several specific recommendations for change. This article will review the published findings and recommendations of the task forces and will discuss the …

Criminal Justice In The Lower Courts: A Study In Continuity, Gerald Caplan

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Philadelphia, 1800-1880 by Allen Steinberg

"I Vote This Way Because I'M Wrong": The Supreme Court Justice As Epimenides, John M. Rogers

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Possibly the most unsettling phenomenon in the Supreme Court's 1988 term was Justice White's decision to vote contrary to his own exhaustively stated reasoning in Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co. His unexplained decision to vote against the result of his own analysis lends support to those who argue that law, or at least constitutional law, is fundamentally indeterminate. Proponents of the indeterminacy argument sometimes base their position on the allegedly inescapable inconsistency of decisions made by a multi-member court. There is an answer to the inconsistency argument, but it founders if justices sometimes vote, without explanation, on the basis of …

Gideon V. Wainwright A Quarter-Century Later, Yale Kamisar

Articles

In a brief working paper sent to all conference participants, Professor Burt Neuborne suggested that we might consider several themes, among them "Gideon Celebrated," "Gideon Fulfilled," and "Gideon Betrayed." I think these are useful headings.

Arizona V. Youngblood: Does The Criminal Defendant Lose His Right To Due Process When The State Loses Exculpatory Evidence?, Willis C. Moore

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Distorted Mirror: The Supreme Court's Shimmering View Of Summary Judgment, Directed Verdict, And The Value Of Adjudication, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

As almost anyone alive during the past decade knows, this is the era of the ‘litigation explosion,’ or there is at least the perception that a litigation explosion exists. Although all agree that the absolute number of lawsuits has increased in virtually every corner of the state and federal court systems, there exists vigorous debate about whether the increase is unusual in relative or historical terms and even more vigorous debate about whether the absolute increase in cases symbolizes the American concern for fairness and justice or represents a surge in frivolous or trivial disputes needlessly clogging the courts. As …

Procedural And Substantive Problems In Complex Litigation Arising From Disasters, Jack B. Weinstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Measuring The Costs Of Civil Justice, Edward Brunet

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Costs of the Civil Justice System: Court Expenditures for Various Types of Civil Cases by J.S. Kakalik and R.L. Ross

Exploring The Roots Of Our Criminal Justice Systems, Samuel Walker

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Roots of Justice by Lawrence M. Friedman and Robert V. Percival, and Conscience and Convenience by David Rothman

A Judge's View On Justice, Bureaucracy, And Legal Method, Harry T. Edwards

Michigan Law Review

At the recent Inaugural Lecture of the University of Windsor's Distinguished Scholars Program on Access to Justice, my former law teaching colleague, Professor Joseph Vining, delivered a speech entitled Justice, Bureaucracy, and Legal Method. Because, in my view, Professor Vining's address raised some disturbing questions, and some seriously misguided suggestions, about the growth of bureaucracy in the courts and the delivery of justice, I believe that a response is appropriate.

Justice, Bureaucracy, And Legal Method, Jospeh Vining

Articles

In the real world justice denied is not justice. Talking from the beginning about access to justice, rather than simply justice, emphasizes in a salutary way this commonplace of citizen and client. Justice that is inaccessible, delayed, refused does not just sit there glowing like a grail, which those separated from it may contemplate and yearn for. It is only in imagining that justice is available to someone, and in imagining what it would be like to be that someone, that one can see the thing as justice at all. To put it in economic terms, justice is not a …

Time Standards For Justice, Shimon Shetreet

Dalhousie Law Journal

The machinery of justice is under great pressures both popular and professional to expedite justice. While the attainment of expeditious justice is a generally accepted goal, the meaning of expeditious justice is unsettled and ambiguous. The struggle for expediting justice may have a limited significance if the goal is expressed in ambiguous and general terms. Hence it is important to go beyond the words, to establish standards for expeditious justice and as far as practicable, to express them in numerical terms. The purpose of this paper is to examine the possible reference points for measuring court delay and to discuss …

Judicial Administration And Invisible Justice, Mary Murphy Schroeder

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

My theme here is the conflict between the visibility of the appellate judge and recent procedural changes designed to cope with the quantum leaps in the numbers and complexity of cases. I will develop that theme, first, by suggesting the ways that three of the major controls on the system, namely the selection, evaluation, and discipline of judges, depend upon the exercise of recognizable and individual judicial responsibility; second, by illustrating how this "imperative" can be undermined if devices intended to cope with increased volume are adopted without vigilance; and finally by pointing up some approaches to permit courts to …

Devising Procedures That Are Civil To Promote Justice That Is Civilized, Maurice Rosenberg

Michigan Law Review

In a democracy, process is king to a very large extent, and this is especially so in the judicial branch. Even though substantive laws command attention, procedural rules ensure respect. Why is this true? One powerful reason is that when people end up in court, their case typically is not a matter of right against wrong, but of right against right. Decent process makes the painful task of deciding which party will prevail bearable and helps make the decision itself acceptable.

To put my position plainly, I believe that the road to court-made justice is paved with good procedures. Later …

Due Process Of Law In Procedure, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

There are two classes of cases which may arise under the "due process" provisions of the 5th and 14th Amendments of the United States Constitution, so far as rules of procedure are concerned. One embraces cases of new remedial processes which may be criticized as too radical. The other consists of cases of old processes which may be criticized as obsolete and out of harmony with prevailing conceptions of justice. Due process may thus be said to fill the wide space between those innovations which carry us so far away from established methods as to remove the safeguards which are …

The Courts As Authorized Legal Advisors Of The People, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

It is doubtful whether American legal institutions have witnessed a more far-reaching procedural reform since New York adopted its Code of Civil Procedure in 1848, than the movement toward the authorization of judicial declarations of rights which has received its chief impetus from legislation enacted in three American States during the past year. A somewhat timid step in this direction was taken by the New Jersey Chancery Practice Act of 1915, but it disclosed a want of confidence in the broad effectiveness of the remedy. Now for the first time American legislation has definitely committed itself to the principle that …

New Trials For Technical Errors, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

A witness called to testify is presumed to be of good character. Hence no proof of it is necessary. But out of abundant caution this presumption is fortified by evidence. The witness is thus shown to be in fact exactly what the law presumes him to be. Result-the case is reversed for the commission of this grave and prejudicial error.-Lockett v. State (Ark. 1918), 207 S. W. 55. No one but an American lawyer could treat the above statement seriously. Only an American court could announce so extraordinary a decision. In no other English speaking country would the people tolerate …

Some Aspects Of Fifteenth Century Chancery, Willard T. Barbour

Articles

IT is now more than thirty years since Justice Holmes in a brilliant and daring essay set on foot an inquiry which has revealed the remote beginnings of English equity. Equity and common law originated in one and the same procedure and existed for a long time, not only side by side, but quite undifferentiated from each other. Their origin is to be found in the system of royal justice which the genius of Henry II converted into the common law; but this royal justice was in the beginning as much outside of, or even antagonistic to, the ordinary judicial …

Cost Of Public Justice, John R. Rood

Articles

The common citizen who becomes victim of a wrong and seeks redress in the courts of America soon finds by bitter experience that it is better to bear those ills we have than go to law. The expense is more than the thing is worth. The result depends on who has the longest purse, the most endurance, and the shrewdest lawyer, and little on the merits of the case. When he gets to court he finds his remaining money is being spent, not in the trial of his case, but in deciding whether an absque hoc is a sine que …

A Modern Evolution In Remedial Rights - The Declaratory Judgment, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

In early times the basis of jurisdiction is the existence and the constant assertion of physical power over the parties to the action, but as civilization advances the mere existence of such power tends to make its exercise less and less essential. If this is true, it must be because there is something in civilization itself which diminishes the necessity for a resort to actual force in sustaining the judgments of courts. And it is quite clear that civilization does supply an element which is theoretically capable of entirely supplanting the exercise of force in the assertion of jurisdiction. This …

Some Hints On Defects In The Jury System, James V. Campbell

Articles

The occasional freaks of juries have now and then led some members of the bar to speculate on the policy of doing without them entirely, and some persons no doubt think that they have strong convictions that the jury system has become useless. It is safe to say that these extreme views are altogether speculative, and not based on any careful comparison of results. Most persons who have looked into their own experience with courts and juries are ready to agree that where there is no dispute about main facts, so that the chief dispute is one of law, there …