Constitutional Law Commons^™

Judicial Confirmation Wars: Ideology And The Battle For The Federal Courts, Sheldon Goldman

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Observations On The Status And Impact Of The Judicial Confirmation Process, Edith H. Jones

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Balancing A Burning Cross: The Court And Virginia V. Black, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1205 (2005), Jason A. Abel

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

American Courts Are Drowning In The "Gene Pool": Excavating The Slippery Slope Mechanisms Behind Judicial Endorsement Of Dna Databases, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 115 (2005), Meghan Riley

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

The Supreme Court Report 2004-05: The End Of The Rehnquist Era, Julie M. Cheslik

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Should Ideology Matter In Selecting Federal Judges? Ground Rules For The Debate, Dawn E. Johnsen

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A recurring constitutional controversy of great practical and political importance concerns the criteria Presidents and Senators should use in selecting federal judges. Particularly contentious is the relevance of what sometimes is described as a prospective judge's ideology, or alternatively, judicial philosophy and views on substantive questions of law. This essay seeks to promote principled and productive discussion by proposing five ground rules to govern debate by all participants regarding appropriate judicial selection criteria. Because the continued controversy does not simply reflect principled disagreement on the merits, progress may be encouraged by focusing on deficiencies in current public discourse, including discouraging …

Does A Diverse Judiciary Attain A Rule Of Law That Is Inclusive? What Grutter V. Bollinger Has To Say About Diversity On The Bench, Sylvia R. Lazos

Scholarly Works

Race matters, but judges and courts have failed to fashion a rule of law that is inclusive of all racial perspectives and realities in the United States. The reason for this dismal performance lies in how predominantly White judges, and therefore courts, conceptualize race. This article illustrates this proposition by analyzing the Rehnquist Court's race relations jurisprudence in three Supreme Court decisions handed down in 2003: Grutter v. Bollinger,Gratz v. Bollinger,and Georgia v. Ashcroft.Even as the United States Supreme Court entered increasingly complex areas of race relations, the Court continued to apply a simplistic concept of how race functions. The …

Judicial Selection: Ideology Versus Character, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Part I of Judicial Selection: Ideology versus Character sets the stage for an argument that character and not political ideology should be the primary factor in the selection of judges. Political ideology has played an important role in judicial selection, from John Adams's entrenchment of federalists as judges after the election of 1800 to the Roosevelt's selection of progressives, liberals, and New Dealers, the contemporary era, from the failed nominations of Fortas, Haynsworth, Carswell to the defeat of Robert Bork, the narrow confirmation of Clarence Thomas. But until recently, political ideology has played its role behind the scenes--mostly off the …

Judicial Modesty And The Jury, Suja A. Thomas

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Robert Kaczorowski argues for an expansive originalist interpretation of Congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the Civil War Congress actually exercised, and the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld plenary Congressional power to enforce the constitutional rights of slaveholders. After the Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment copied the antebellum statutes and exercised plenary power to enforce the constitutional rights of all American citizens when they enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then incorporated the Act into the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment thereby exercised the plenary power the Rehnquist Court claims the …

Congressional Threats Of Removal Against Federal Judges, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

The federal judicial branch has lately become the object of increasing scrutiny and distrust by its legislative counterpart. Congressional suspicion is often directed toward judicial discretion in criminal sentencing and, more generally, the degree to which judges are perceived to be beholden to a particular ideological point of view or personal bias. This distrust has bred a potent strain of political opportunism that Congress has manifested in several recent bills. One of these, the Feeney Amendment to the PROTECT Act, all but eliminated judicial discretion in sentencing and tacitly threatens judges' continued employment. Though the Supreme Court's recent decision in …

A Commander's Power, A Civilian's Reason: Justice Jackson's Korematsu Dissent, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

Robert Houghwout Jackson was a justice of the United States Supreme Court during the years of World War II. This article considers his great but potentially perplexing December 1944 dissent in Korematsu v. United States, in which he refused to join the Court majority that proclaimed the constitutionality of military orders excluding Japanese Americans from the West Coast of the United States during the War years. This article considers Justice Jackson's Korematsu dissent in full. It was and is, contrary to some of the criticisms it has received over the past 60 years, a coherent position. Jackson's dissent is also …

Bork Was The Beginning: Constitutional Moralism And The Politics Of Judicial Selection, Gary L. Mcdowell

Law Faculty Publications

On October 23, 1987, the United States Senate committed what many considered then-and what many still consider today-to be an unforgivable political and constitutional sin. Wielding its power to advise and consent on nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States, the upper house voted 58-42 not to confirm Judge Robert H. Bork. The vote, which was the largest margin of defeat in history for a nominee to the Supreme Court, concluded one of the most tumultuous political battles in the history of the republic, a battle that would transform the process of judicial selection for years to come.

Should Ideology Matter In Selecting Federal Judges?: Ground Rules For The Debate, Dawn E. Johnsen

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supermajority Rules And The Judicial Confirmation Process, John O. Mcginnis, Michael B. Rappaport

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judicial Selection: Ideology Versus Character, Lawrence B. Solum

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law As Political Spoils, William P. Marshall

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judicial Selection And Democratic Theory: Demand, Supply, And Life Tenure, Judith Resnik

Cardozo Law Review

How ought a democracy select its judges? Critics in Canada, England, and Wales invoke the democratic values of accountability and transparency to call for a diminution in prime ministerial control over judicial appointments. In the United States, Article III of the Constitution's text directs that the President nominate - with the advice and consent of the Senate - life-tenured federal judges. Bitter conflicts about particular nominees have produced many proposals for changes of that system. And in those states that rely on various forms of judicial election, concerns focus on funding and campaigning. In short, both globally and locally, democracies …

Originalism, Stare Decisis And The Promotion Of Judicial Restraint, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

If we consider constitutional law as a practice, it is clear that both originalism and precedent play an important role. Neither one is going to vanquish the other, at least not any time soon. We can engage in academic debate about originalism versus stare decisis, as if they were rival modes of interpretation that could operate to the exclusion of the other. But the question of practical importance is one of degree and emphasis: in cases where these two sources of authority arguably point in different directions, which one should have a greater claim to our allegiance?

Originalism – interpreting …

Supermajority Rules And The Judicial Confirmation Process, Michael B. Rappaport, John O. Mcginnis

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

In this paper we assess the effect of possible supermajority rules on the now contentious Senate confirmation process for judges. We deploy a formula for evaluating supermajority rules that we have developed in other papers. First, we consider a sixty-vote rule in the Senate for the confirmation of federal judges–an explicit version of the supermajority norm that may be emerging from the filibuster. While we briefly discuss how such a rule would affect the project of maximizing the number of originalist judges, for the most part we evaluate the rule on the realist assumption that judges will pursue their own …

Judges As Rulemakers, Larry A. Alexander, Emily Sherwin

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

This essay analyzes and compares different approaches to the problem of legal precedent. If judges reasoned flawlessly, the ideal approach to precedent would give prior judicial opinions only the weight they naturally carry in moral reasoning. Given that judges are not perfect reasoners, the best approach to precedent is one that treats rules established in prior decisions as authoritative for later judges. In comparison to the natural model of precedent, a rule-based model minimizes error. A rule-based model is also superior to several popular attempts at compromise, which call on judges to reason from the results of prior cases or …

Strategic Judicial Lawmaking: An Empirical Investigation Of Ideology And Publication On The U.S. Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit, David S. Law

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

Previous studies have demonstrated that, in a number of contexts, federal appeals court judges divide along ideological lines when deciding cases upon the merits. To date, however, researchers have failed to find evidence that circuit judges take advantage of selective publication rules to further their ideological preferences - for example, by voting more ideologically in published cases that have precedential effect than in unpublished cases that lack binding effect upon future panels. This article evaluates the possibility that judges engage in strategic judicial lawmaking by voting more ideologically in published cases than in unpublished cases. To test this hypothesis, all …

'You'd Better Be Good': Congressional Threats Of Removal Against Federal Judges, Marc O. Degirolami

ExpressO

In the attached article, I argue that congressional threats of removal against federal judges are increasing in prevalence and forcefulness and that as a result the strained relationship between the judiciary and Congress – a topic of recent attention and debate – will continue to deteriorate in the coming years. I examine two bills, the Feeney Amendment to the PROTECT Act and House of Representatives Resolution 568 (in which Congress would disavow citation in judicial decisions to foreign law), to demonstrate this thesis.

I next ask what explains the phenomenon of congressional threats of removal, deploying first Thomas Hobbes’ state-of-nature …

Constitutional Law—Separation Of Powers—Restoring The Constitutional Formula To The Federal Judicial Appointment Process: Taking The Vice Out Of "Advice And Consent", Jason Eric Sharp

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contaminating The Verdict: The Problem Of Juror Misconduct, Bennett L. Gershman

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

What's A Judge To Do? Remedying The Remedy In Institutional Reform Litigation, Susan Poser

Michigan Law Review

Democracy by Decree is the latest contribution to a scholarly literature, now nearly thirty-years old, which questions whether judges have the legitimacy and the capacity to oversee the remedial phase of institutional reform litigation. Previous contributors to this literature have come out on one side or the other of the legitimacy and capacity debate. Abram Chayes, Owen Fiss, and more recently, Malcolm Feeley and Edward Rubin, have all argued that the proper role of judges is to remedy rights violations and that judges possess the legitimate institutional authority to order structural injunctions. Lon Fuller, Donald Horowitz, William Fletcher, and Gerald …

Appropriate Role Of Foreign Judgments In The Interpretation Of American Law: Hearing Before The H. Comm. On The Judiciary, 108th Cong., Mar. 25, 2004 (Statement Of Vicki C. Jackson, Prof. Of Law, Geo. U. L. Center), Vicki C. Jackson

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Purposivism In The Delegation Of Rulemaking Authority To The Courts, Michael Rosensaft

ExpressO

The courts are often used by Congress as a “political lightning rod,” when Congress cannot decide how to resolve an issue. Congress relies on administrative agencies for their expertise, and it also makes sense for Congress to delegate some rulemaking authority to the courts, relying on a court’s expertise in developing caselaw in an incremental basis. However, this authority should not be lightly implied. A court can tell that Congress has delegated rulemaking authority to it when the purpose of the statute is clear and the text is broadly worded. It thus makes sense in these cases that purposivism should …

The Three Independences, H. Jefferson Powell

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.