Courts Commons^™

Social Science And The Courts: The Role Of Amicus Curiae Briefs, Ronald G. Roesch, Stephen L. Golding, Valerie P. Hans, N. Dickon Reppucci

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Social scientists have increasingly become involved in the submission of amicus curiae or "friend of the court" briefs in legal cases being decided by state and federal courts. This increase has triggered considerable debate about the use of briefs to communicate relevant social science research. This article evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of various methods of summarizing social science research for the courts. It also reviews the procedures for submitting briefs developed by the American Psychology-Law Society which, in collaboration with the American Psychological Association, has submitted its first brief in Maryland v. Craig, a case recently decided by …

Citizenship And Scholarship (Review Essay), George Kannar

Book Reviews

Review of Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (1990); Ethan Bronner, Battle for Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America (1989); Michael Pertschuk & Wendy Schaetzel, The People Rising: The Campaign Against the Bork Nomination (1989); Patrick B. mcGuigan & Dawn M. Weyrich, Ninth Justice: The Battle for Bork (1990).

Law And The Media: An Overview And Introduction, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Although occasional articles on law and the media have been published in Law and Human Behavior, this special issue is the first collection of articles on the topic to appear in the journal. By publishing some of the most recent work on issues in law and the media, we hope to draw the attention of psycholegal scholars to questions in this fertile research area that deserve theoretical and empirical study.

Law and the media have become inescapably intertwined. Because a relatively small proportion of the public has direct experience with the justice system, public knowledge and views of law …

Litigation Across Space And Time: Courts, Conflict, And Social Change, David M. Engel

Journal Articles

One of the problems facing researchers who have studied courts across time and space has been the cultural variability of seemingly uniform analytic categories, including conceptions of time and space themselves. This article proposes that we take such variations in meaning as a starting point for comparative studies of courts and social change rather than viewing them as were "noise" in the system. Litigation in Chiangmai, Thailand, is presented as an example. Changing conceptions of "space" in Thailand from the nineteenth century to the present illustrate the transformation of legal and political authority as well as the proliferation of normative …

Trial Courts And Social Change: The Evolution Of A Field Of Study, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Show Trials In China: The Aftermath Of Tiananmen Square, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

After the military massacre in Tiananmen Square on 4 June it came as no surprise that the nominated 'rioters and counter revolutionaries' would soon be paraded before the courts. Even in the People's Republic of China, where a formal criminal court structure is a comparatively recent addition to the social control framework, the trial process is being employed as an immediate state response to community disjuncture and political challenge.

Killing Daddy: Developing A Self-Defense Strategy For The Abused Child, Joelle A. Moreno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Are Twelve Heads Better Than One?, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

Few advocates of the jury system would argue that the average juror is as competent a tribunal as the averagejudge. Whatever competence the jury has is a function of two of its attributes: its number and its interaction. The fact that a jury must be composed of at least six people,' with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, provides some protection against decisions based on an idiosyncratic view of the facts. Not only must the jury include at least six people, but they must be chosen in a manner that conforms to the ideal of the jury as representative of community …

Civil Rights In Transition: Sections 1981 And 1982 Cover Discrimination On The Basis Of Ancestry And Ethnicity, Eileen Kaufman, Martin A. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law, Litigation And Social Change: A Critical Evaluation Of An Empirical Research Tradition, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

This article examines the theory and empirical methods of recent studies of law and litigation. It argues that the recent interest in longitudinal studies of trial court dockets proceeds from a deeply rooted functionalist theoretical tradition in empirical work on courts. Functionalist theory, through its sophisticated application in the work of James Willard Hurst, is described as the direct or indirect source of theory for longitudinal litigation studies. Though there are many reasons for suspecting that fuctionalist theory is inadequate, it has seldom been rejected through proper empirical testing of its hypotheses. The theory, often poorly conceptualized, is discussed here …

Surrogate Parenting After Baby M: The Ball Moves To The Legislature’S Court, John R. Dunne, Gregory V. Serio

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Enforcement Provisions Of The Civil Rights Act Of 1866: A Legislative History In Light Of Runyon V. Mccrary, The Review Essay And Comments: Reconstructing Reconstruction, Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this Comment is to examine the history of the enactment and early enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 from the perspective of the remedies Congress sought to provide to meet the problems that necessitated the legislation. Its main foci are the statute's enforcement provisions and their early implementation, an aspect of the history of the statute that has not been fully considered in relation to section one, the provision that has received the most scholarly attention. The occasion of this study is the Supreme Court's reconsideration of Runyon v. McCrary' in Patterson v. McLean Credit …

Out-Of-State Attorney Fee Forfeiture, Lawrence A. Cunningham

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Juries On Trial: Faces Of American Justice, Nancy J. King

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Juries on Trial: Faces of American Justice by Paula DiPerna

Toward A Unified Approach To Privileges And Relevancy, Thomas F. Guernsey

Law Faculty Publications

No topic in evidence has received more attention from commentators than evidentiary privileges. In the writings on privilege, however, there has been little discussion that the auxiliary public policies excluding otherwise logically relevant evidence under relevance analysis are essentially the same as the public policies that underlie the creation of privileges. In fact, as a general matter, if no topic has received more attention than privileges, few topics have received less attention than relevancy, and there has been virtually no discussion of the connection between privilege analysis and relevancy analysis. ...

Money And Justice: Who Owns The Courts?, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Money and Justice: Who Owns the Courts? by Lois G. Forer

Understanding The Jury With The Help Of Social Science, Stephen Saltzburg

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Inside the Jury by Reid Hastie, Steven Penrod and Nancy Pennington

Book Review Of Passion: An Essay On Personality , Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Passion is a cogently structured, compel Jingly argued and seductively enthralling masterpiece which, in years to come, will undoubtedly stand out as an inspirational source for many who seek social transformation. Unger's style, in this essay at least, is lucid and inviting. Substantively, Passion demonstrates not only the depth of his penetrating intellect but also his command of an array of' disciplines. Unger's polymathy is all the more impressive when we remember that ours is an era in which idiosyncratic specialization is the norm.

Beyond Psychiatric Expertise (By Ben Bursten, M.D.), Bruce N. Morton

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Determination Of Occupational Health And Safety Standards In Ontario 1860-1982: From Markets To Politics To...?, Eric Tucker

Articles & Book Chapters

The author reviews the historical development of the decision-making frameworks within which courts and the Legislature have made choices regarding the allocation of risks to health and safety in the workplace. Arguing that this development has been conditioned by the necessity of satisfying in a capitalist democracy conflicting demands to facilitate capital accumulation and to justify to the electorate the manner in which choices regarding the structure of the processes of production have been made, the author contends that recent pressure to adopt cost-benefit analysis to satisfy the demands of legitimation and accumulation, and challenges its adequacy as a normative …

Cameras In The Courts: Can We Trust The Research?, Dan Slater, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In several recent court cases, television viewers throughout the nation were able to see excerpts of actual trial testimony on network newscasts. These opportunities for camera coverage have come about as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1981 decision in Chandler v. Florida. In that case the Court ruled that each state was free to determine whether to permit "extended media coverage," including camera coverage, in its courts, and to set appropriate guidelines for such coverage. Before adopting permanent rules for camera coverage, most states have conducted one year tests — which they have called "experiments" — during …

How Consumer Remedies Fail, Bryant G. Garth

Michigan Law Review

A Review of No Access to Law: Alternatives to the American Judicial System edited by Laura Nader

Methodological Issues In The Evaluation Of "Experiments" With Cameras In The Courts, Dan Slater, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Evaluations of "experiments" of extended media coverage of the courts, i.e., cameras in the courts, have relied upon survey research. The authors argue that such evaluations have been inadequate and future evaluations need to compare conventional media coverage vs. extended media coverage using field experimental research designs.

Social Enquiry Reports And Sentencing, Jenny M. Roberts, Colin Roberts

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Nineteenth Century Interpretations Of The Federal Contract Clause: The Transformation From Vested To Substantive Rights Against The State , James L. Kainen

Faculty Scholarship

During the early nineteenth century, the contract clause served as the fundamental source of federally protected rights against the state. Yet the Supreme Court gradually eased many of the restrictions on state power enforced in the contract clause cases while developing the doctrine of substantive due process after the Civil War. By the end of the nineteenth century, the due process clause had usurped the place of the contract clause as the centerpiece in litigation about individual rights. Most analyses of the history of federally protected rights against the state have emphasized the rise of substantive due process to the …

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.

Civil Juries And Complex Cases: Let's Not Rush To Judgment, Richard O. Lempert

Michigan Law Review

When a fundamental constitutional right is at issue, it is admittedly difficult for the Court to treat the lower courts as laboratories. But if the constitutional right turns on empirical questions, it is better to wait for knowledge than to rush toward a judgment that may later be shown to have vitiated an important right across all circuits. If the Court feels compelled to resolve the conflict, the better decision - if empirical issues are seen as central - is to sustain the right to jury trial regardless of complexity. Sustaining that right will allow courts and researchers to collect …

Litigation And Mediation In Thailand, Sally Falk Moore

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Code and Custom in a Thai Provincial Court by David M. Engel

From Rhetoric To Reality: The Juvenile Court And The Decline Of The Rehabilitative Ideal, Samuel M. Davis

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Best-Laid Plans: America's Juvenile Court Experiment by Ellen Ryerson

Justice On The Tennessee Frontier: The Williamson County Circuit Court 1810-1820, Cornelia A. Clark

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note examines the history of one early nineteenth-century circuit court and the caliber of its bench and bar. To analyze the workings of that court, this Note applies the analytical framework adopted by Friedman, Blume, and other historians to the raw data provided by a study of the Williamson County Circuit Court records. In each of several substantive areas for which the court's records provide information, the Note first considers Friedman's generalizations about nineteenth-century law and then interprets the Williamson County data in the light of those generalizations and the results of other case studies. This Note proceeds on …