Courts Commons^™

Small Claims Reform: A Means Of Expanding Access To The American Civil Justice System, James C. Turner, Joyce A. Mcgee

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

Every American should enjoy full access to the protections offered by the U.S. civil justice system. Unfortunately, this basic right is often denied to millions by civil court procedures and practices that are costly, Byzantine and hostile to ordinary citizens who need legal help. In fact, according to the American Bar Association, tens of millions of American households that need legal help are denied access to the civil justice system every year.' One key method of improving citizen access to the civil justice system is through small claims courts. These courts - which use simplified procedures, require plain English, provide …

Focus On Business And Complex Litigation Courts, Paula Hannaford-Agor, David Rottman, Roxana Gonzalez

Popular Media

On November 16, 1999, the National Center for State Courts convened a Justice Roundtable at which representatives from the Delaware, New York, and California business and complex litigation courts described their respective procedures to an audience of judicial, corporate and bar leaders. The Justice Roundtable is an annual joint meeting of the National Center's Board of Directors and Lawyers and Corporate Counsel Committees dedicated to a current issue in the administration of justice. The purpose of this Roundtable was to discuss innovative methods and successful approaches for managing business and complex litigation, and to identify the principle issues and problems. …

What's Half A Lung Worth? Civil Jurors' Accounts Of Their Award Decision Making, Nicole L. Mott, Valerie P. Hans, Lindsay Simpson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Jury awards are often criticized as being arbitrary and excessive. This paper speaks to that controversy, reporting data from interviews with civil jurors' accounts of the strategies that juries use and the factors that they consider in arriving at a collective award. Jurors reported difficulty in deciding on awards, describing it as "the hardest part" of jury service and were surprised the court did not provide more guidance to them. Relatively few jurors entered the jury deliberation room with a specified award figure in mind. Once in the deliberation room, however, they reported discussing a variety of relevant factors such …

Electronic Filing In North Carolina: Using The Internet Instead Of The Interstate, Deborah Leonard Parker

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

Traditionally, an attorney working down to the wire on an appellate brief has to be done by the courier service’s deadline. If the deadline is missed, the attorney must then race, for possibly hours, down the interstate to reach the courthouse in time. North Carolina has adopted a system that eliminates this pressure.

Justice Delayed?: An Empirical Analysis Of Civil Case Disposition Time, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article addresses the need to understand better our civil justice system by exploring possible determinants of disposition time for civil cases that reach a jury trial. This study uses one year of civil jury case outcomes from 45 of the nation's 75 most populous counties and identifies locale as one important variable, along with certain case types, results, and characteristics. An empirically moored understanding of the causes of case disposition time will assist public policy and reform efforts that seek to make civil justice speedier and, as a consequence, more inexpensive and just. Findings from this study call into …

Recent Efforts To Change Discovery Rules: Advice For Draftsmen Of Rules For State Courts, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reconciling The Juridical Links Doctrine With The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure And Article Iii, William D. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Over the past three decades, the juridical link and concerted action exceptions have evolved from dicta in the Ninth Circuit's decision in La Mar to an amorphous and undertheorized body of case law that has dangerously merged procedural and jurisdictional issues. Drawing on the principles of class action jurisprudence set forth by the Supreme Court in Amchem and Ortiz, lower courts should consider the issues of class certification and Rule 20(a) joinder before turning to the issue of standing under Article III. Under this approach, courts would not be able to reconcile much of the juridical links case law with …

A Tale Of Two Counties: Divergent Responses In Los Angeles And Orange County Superior Courts To The Ban On Electronic Recording In California Court Reporters Ass'n V. Judicial Council, Glenn S. Koppel

San Diego Law Review

This Article explores the authority of superior courts to use electronic recording technology to make a verbatim record of superior court proceedings-without express statutory authorization-in the aftermath of the CCRA decisions. Rather than just arguing that the CCRA decisions were wrongly decided, this Article explores ways to narrowly construe the CCRA opinions to permit superior courts and their litigants to use rapidly evolving electronic recording technologies as an alternative to traditional stenographic court reporting.

Forum Non Conveniens In Federal Statutory Cases, Keith A. Rowley, Lonny Sheinkopf Hoffman

Scholarly Works

This article, previously published in Volume 49 of the Emory Law Journal, examines the federal doctrine of forum non conveniens in cases in which the plaintiff asserts a right to relief under federal law. The arguments we advance - particularly our claim that the federal doctrine of forum non conveniens can be better understood not as turning on matters of convenience, as the formal doctrine suggests, but on an assessment of the relative sovereign interests in adjudicating the dispute - remain relevant to an understanding of the federal doctrine. The paper, thus, may be of interest to practitioners, academics and …

Bifurcation Unbound, Steven S. Gensler

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Prejudice, Confusion, And The Bifurcated Civil Jury Trial: Lessons From Tennessee, Steven S. Gensler

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Judicial Lobbying At The Wto: The Debate Over The Use Of Amicus Curiae Briefs And The U.S. Experience, Padideh Ala'i

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The continuing debate over the use of amicus curiae briefs at the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) raises interesting questions about the influence of the U.S. legal system on the WTO dispute settlement process. Specifically, it brings to the surface differences between legal cultures and the fact that the U.S. legal culture with its emphasis on procedure is not readily transferable to the WTO. Comparing the controversy regarding the use of amicus curiae briefs before WTO Panels and the Appellate Body with the history and evolution of the institution of amicus curiae before the U.S. Supreme Court may help explain the …

Civil Justice Delay And Empirical Data: A Response To Professor Heise, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

One decade ago, Congress undertook an ambitious, controversial effort to reduce expense and delay in the federal civil justice system. The Civil Justice Reform Act ("CJRA") of 1990 instituted unprecedented nationwide experimentation by requiring that all ninety-four federal district courts scrutinize their civil and criminal dockets and then promulgate and apply numerous procedures which district judges believed would save cost and time in civil litigation. Congress also prescribed rigorous assessment of the six principles, guidelines, and techniques of litigation management and expense and delay reduction that federal districts in fact adopted and enforced. Lawmakers provided for an expert, independent evaluator …

Confidentiality, Privilege And Rule 408: The Protection Of Mediation Proceedings In Federal Court, Charles W. Ehrhardt

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

City Of Chicago V. International College Of Surgeons: The Interplay Between Supplemental Jurisdiction And Cross-System Appeals, And The Impact On Federalism, Jacob Edward Daly

Mercer Law Review

In City of Chicago v. International College of Surgeons, the United States Supreme Court reversed a well-established rule in holding that federal district courts may exercise supplemental jurisdiction over state law claims for deferential review of local administrative agency decisions.

The New Rules Of Federal Appellate Procedure: Changes In Style And Substance, Warren W. Harris

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

This article discusses the substantive changes to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23.

Juries, Hindsight, And Punitive Damage Awards: Failures Of A Social Science Case For Change, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

In their recent Arizona Law Review article entitled What Juries Can't Do Well: The Jury's Performance As a Risk Manager,' Professors Reid Hastie and W. Kip Viscusi purport to show that juries are likely to do a poor job in setting punitive damages, largely because jurors cannot avoid the influence of what is called "hindsight bias," or the tendency to see the likelihood of an event higher in retrospect than it would have appeared before it happened. In particular, they argue that hindsight bias and other cognitive biases undermine the utility of jury-set punitive damage awards as risk management devices. …

Attorney-Client Privilege When The Client Is A Public Official: Litigating The Opening Act Of The Impeachment Drama, Timothy K. Armstrong

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The divided panel decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in /n re Lindsey, 158 F.3d 1263 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 119 S. Ct. 466 (1998), represented a dramatic shift in that court's thinking on the question whether the attorney-client privilege protects what a government official says to his agency's counsel in confidence. Although the court of appeals in at least four previous decisions had held that a government agency client holds the same privilege any other client would under like circumstances to communicate with counsel in private, the Lindsey court took a quite different view.

The Arizona Jury Reform Permitting Civil Jury Trial Discussions: The View Of Trial Participants, Judges, And Jurors, Valerie P. Hans, Paula Hannaford-Agor, G. Thomas Munsterman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In 1995, the Arizona Supreme Court reformed the jury trial process by allowing civil jurors to discuss the evidence presented during trial prior to their formal deliberations. This Article examines the theoretical, legal, and policy issues raised by this reform and presents the early results of a field experiment that tested the impact of trial discussions. Jurors, judges, attorneys, and litigants in civil jury trials in Arizona were questioned regarding their observations, experiences, and reactions during trial as well as what they perceived to be the benefits and drawback of juror discussions. The data revealed that the majority of judges …

Local Procedural Review In The Eighth Circuit, Carl Tobias

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

This article addresses a little known role of the United States Courts of Appeals to review district court procedures. The discussion begins with this role assigned by the Judicial Improvements and Access to Justice Act of 1988 and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 83. The article then analyzes how the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit discharges this role.

Jury Reform At The End Of The Century: Real Agreement, Real Changes, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

Complaints about the jury system and calls for its reform are nothing new-they have probably existed as long as the jury system itself. Warren Burger called for the reform of the civil jury in 1971'; in 1905 William Howard Taft decried the contemporary tendency "to exalt the jury's power beyond anything which is wise or prudent .... ,2 Judges complain to judges, lawyers complain to lawyers, legal academics write articles about the jury for other legal academics, social scientists report their research on juries to other social scientists, and the jurors themselves go home and express their exasperation to their …

Creating The 'Portable' Guardianship: Legal And Practical Implications Of Probate Court Cooperation In Interstate Guardianship Cases, Charlene D. Daniel, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

In this article, we discuss the legal and practical issues associ­ated with interstate guardianships--that is, those guardianships in which the ward has ties to more than one state. Part I addresses these issues in the context of jurisdictional questions, securing nec­essary information, judicial monitoring and enforcement of guardi­anship orders, and property management. Part II proposes some modest solutions to these problems, many borrowed from other ar­eas of law (e.g., child support enforcement, child custody determinations, enforcement of civil protection orders, involuntary civil commitment).

This abstract has been taken from the authors' introduction.

The Arizona Jury Reform Permitting Civil Jury Trial Discussions: The Views Of Trial Participants, Judges, And Jurors, Valerie P. Hans, Paula Hannaford-Agor, G. Thomas Munsterman

Faculty Publications

In 1995, the Arizona Supreme Court reformed the jury trial process by allowing civil jurors to discuss the evidence presented during trial prior to their formal deliberations. This Article examines and evaluates the theoretical, legal, and policy issues raised by this reform and presents the early results of a field experiment that tested the impact of trial discussions. Jurors, judges, attorneys, and litigants in civil jury trials in Arizona were questioned regarding their observations, experi­ences, and reactions during trial as well as what they perceived to be the benefits and drawbacks of juror discussions. The data revealed that the majority …

Foxes Guarding The Chicken Coop: Intervention As Of Right And The Defense Of Civil Rights Remedies, Alan Jenkins

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This article focuses on the recent spate of cases in which educational institutions on the grounds that their race-conscious admissions policies are unconstitutional. The author analyzes the role of minority students and organizations who are the beneficiaries of those polices at the defendant institutions and their recent attempts to intervene in the lawsuits pursuant to Rule 24 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. First, the author argues that under the traditional interpretation of Rule 24(a); intervention of right should be granted to minority students and organizations in the great majority of instances. Second, the author looks at the reasons …

Allowing Improper Argument Of Counsel To Be Raised For The First Time On Appeal As Fundamental Error: Are Florida Courts Throwing Out The Baby With The Bath Water?, Larry A. Klein

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Abstracting The Record, Terry Crabtree

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Did The Civil Justice Reform Act Of 1990 Actually Expire?, Carl Tobias

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990 (CJRA) was intended to reduce the expense and delay associated with federal district court litigation by requiring courts to study and adopt new procedures. The CJRA's gains, however, may be erased by the uncertainty surrounding its sunset provision. Professor Tobias argues that Congress or the Judicial Conference should resolve the uncertainty by proclaiming that the CJRA has expired, thus forcing districts to abrogate procedures inconsistent with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

The Execution Under Oath Of U.S. Litigation Documents: Must Signatures Be Authenticated, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 927 (1998), Thomas W. Tobin

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Nearing The End Of Federal Civil Justice Reform In Montana, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

In continuing the series of essays which evaluate and document the phenomenon of federal civil justice reform, this essay initially affords an update on recent developments in civil justice reform at the national level and in the United States District Court for the District of Montana (Montana District). The essay emphasizes the conclusion of two major studies that analyze the national reform effort and the submission to Congress of reports and a recommendation, which were premised substantially on these studies, by the Judicial Conference of the United States. The essay also stresses the completion by the Ninth Circuit District Local …

Contracting Access To The Courts: Myth Or Reality? Bane Or Boon?, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Many scholars of the dispute resolution system perceive a sea change in attitudes toward adjudication that took place in the mid-1970s. Among the events of the time included the Pound Conference, which put the Chief Justice of the United States and the national judicial establishment on record in favor of at least some refinement, if not restriction, on access to courts. In addition, Chief Justice Burger, the driving force behind the Pound Conference, also used his bully pulpit as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to promote ADR, particularly court-annexed arbitration. The availability of judicial adjuncts such as court-annexed arbitration …