Courts Commons^™

Product Liability Law In Japan: An Introduction To A Developing Area Of Law, Younghee Jin Ottley, Bruce L. Ottley

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Meet 'Tenth Justice': Solicitor General Verrilli, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Trending@Rwu Law: Professor Jared Goldstein's Post: A Fireside Chat With Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr., Jared Goldstein

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Certiorari And The Marriage Equality Cases, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Marriage equality has come to much of the nation. Over 2014, many district court rulings invalidated state proscriptions on same- sex marriage, while four appeals courts upheld these decisions. However, the Sixth Circuit reversed district judgments which struck down bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. Because that appellate opinion created a patchwork of differing legal regimes across the country, this Paper urges the Supreme Court to clarify marriage equality by reviewing that determination this Term.

Three Hundred Nos: An Empirical Analysis Of The First 300+ Denials Of Institution For Inter Partes And Covered Business Method Patent Reviews Prior To In Re Cuozzo Speed Technologies, Llc, 14 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 112 (2015), Jarrad Wood, Jonathan Stroud

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

Tasked in 2011 with creating powerful new patent review trial regimes, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office—through the efforts of their freshly empowered quasi-judicial body, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board—set to creating a fast-paced trial with limited discovery and concentrated efficiency. For two years, the proceedings have proved potent, holding unpatentable many of the claims that reached decisions on the merits. Yet a small subsection of petitions never make it past the starting gate, resulting in wasted time and effort on the parts of petitioners—and likely sighs of relief from the rights-holders. The AIA exempted institution decisions from appellate …

All Together Now: Using Principles Of Group Dynamics To Train Better Jurors, Sara Gordon

Scholarly Works

We ask juries to make important decisions that have a profound impact on people’s lives. We leave these decisions in the hands of groups of laypeople because we hope that the diverse range of experiences and knowledge in the group will lead to more thoughtful and informed decisionmaking. Studies suggest that diverse groups of jurors have different perspectives on evidence, engage in more thorough debate, and more closely evaluate facts. At the same time, there are a variety of problems associated with group decisionmaking, from the loss of individual motivation in group settings, to the vulnerability of groups to various …

Disappearing Claims And The Erosion Of Substantive Law, J. Maria Glover

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court’s arbitration jurisprudence from the last five years represents the culmination of a three-decade-long expansion of the use of private arbitration as an alternative to court adjudication in the resolution of disputes of virtually every type of justiciable claim. Because privatizing disputes that would otherwise be public may well erode public confidence in public institutions and the judicial process, many observers have linked this decades-long privatization of dispute resolution to an erosion of the public realm. Here, I argue that the Court’s recent arbitration jurisprudence undermines the substantive law itself.

While this shift from dispute resolution in courts—the …

From Commitment To Compliance: Enforceability Of Remedial Orders Of African Human Rights Bodies, Roger-Claude Liwanga

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Over the last seven decades, there has been a global proliferation of international and regional human rights tribunals. But with no coercive power to enforce their judgments, these international tribunals rely either on the good faith of the State parties or on the political process for the implementation of their remedial orders. This nonjudicial approach to enforcement has showed its limits, as most State parties are noncompliant with international judgments to the detriment of human rights victims. This article recommends a new approach involving the judicialization of the post-adjudicative stage of international proceedings as an avenue to increase the enforceability …

Fixing Hollingsworth: Standing In Initiative Cases, Karl Manheim, John S. Caragozian, Donald Warner

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal filed by the “Official Proponents” of California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion held that initiative sponsors lack Article III standing to defend their ballot measures even when state officials refuse to defend against constitutional challenges. As a result, Hollingsworth provides state officers with the ability to overrule laws that were intended to bypass the government establishment—in effect, an “executive veto” of popularly-enacted initiatives.

The Article examines this new “executive veto” in depth. It places Hollingsworth in context, discussing the initiative process …

Frenemies Of The Court: The Many Faces Of Amicus Curiae, Helen A. Anderson

Articles

Ask any lawyer what an "amicus curiae" is, and you will be told that the term means "friend of the court." The term has positive, even warm, connotations. Amicus briefs provide additional information or perspectives to assist courts in deciding issues of public importance. Interest groups, law professors, and politically engaged lawyers are happy to participate in important cases through such briefs. Amicus curiae participation is defended as democratic input into what is otherwise not a democratic branch of government.

Yet, amici curiae—nonparties who are nevertheless advocates, who are not bound by rules of standing and justiciability, or even rules …

Marriage Equality Comes To America, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Marriage equality is sweeping the nation. Four appeals courts recently affirmed district judges’ opinions which invalidated numerous state laws proscribing same-sex marriage. Yet, the Sixth Circuit reversed a number of district jurists, prompting a circuit split that provoked Supreme Court resolution. Because marriage equality’s status is unclear, this piece assesses disposition of the litigation and recommends how to clarify marriage equality.

Deselecting Biased Juries, Scott W. Howe

Utah Law Review

Critics of peremptory-challenge systems commonly contend that they inevitably inflict “inequality harm” on many excused persons and should be abolished. Ironically, the Supreme Court fueled this argument with its decision in Batson v. Kentucky by raising and endorsing the inequality claim sua sponte and then purporting to solve it with an approach that preserved peremptories. This Article shows, however, that the central problem is something other than inequality harm to excused persons. The central problem is the harm to disadvantaged litigants when their opponents use peremptories to secure a one-sided jury. This problem can arise often—whenever a venire is slanted …

Court Of Appeals Of New York, Watson V. State Commission On Judicial Conduct, Denise Shanley

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lawrence V. Texas: The Decision And Its Implications For The Future, Martin A. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Qualified Immunity: The Constitutional Analysis And Its Application, Karen Blum

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

European Economic Community - The Use Of Article 173(2) Of The Eec Treaty To Contest Actions Of The European Parliament, Partie Ecologiste 'Les Verts' (The Greens) V. European Parliament, [1987] 2 Comm. Mkt. L.R. 343 (1986)., Scott N. Carlson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Federal Civil Rights Litigation Pursuant To 42 U.S.C. §1983 As A Correlate Of Police Misconduct, Philip M. Stinson, Steven L. Brewer Jr, Theresa M. Lanese, Mallorie A. Wilson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Police officers acting in their official capacity are subject to being sued in federal court pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §1983 for violating constitutional rights under the color of law. Using data obtained in a larger study on police crime in the United States, names of more than 5,500 nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers who were arrested during the years 2005-2011 were checked against the civil case party master name index of the federal courts’ Public Access to Courts Electronic Records (PACER) system. Findings indicate that more than 20% of the police officers who were arrested for committing one or more …

Speedy Trial As A Viable Challenge To Chronic Underfunding In Indigent-Defense Systems, Emily Rose

Michigan Law Review

Across the country, underresourced indigent-defense systems create delays in taking cases to trial at both the state and federal levels. Attempts to increase funding for indigent defense by bringing ineffective assistance of counsel claims have been thwarted by high procedural and substantive hurdles, and consequently these attempts have failed to bring significant change. This Note argues that, because ineffective assistance of counsel litigation is most likely a dead end for system-wide reform, indigent defenders should challenge the constitutionality of underfunding based on the Sixth Amendment guarantee of speedy trial. Existing speedy trial jurisprudence suggests that the overworking and furloughing of …

Brief Of Scholars Of The Constitutional Rights Of Children Susannah W. Pollvogt, Catherine E. Smith, And Tanya Washington As Amici Curiae In Support Of Plaintiffs-Appellants And Reversal: Robicheaux V. Caldwell, Catherine E. Smith, Tanya Washington, Susannah W. Pollvogt

Scholarly Articles

Amici are scholars and professors of family law and the law of equal protection. Amici submit this brief to respond directly to arguments advanced by the State of Louisiana that its laws prohibiting same-sex marriage2 are justified because they advance child welfare. Specifically, the State asserts that its laws advance child welfare by promoting Louisiana’s interest in: (1) linking children with their biological parents to prevent the social stigma associated with being “illegitimate” and (2) establishing the child as a member of an intact family resulting from the marriage of the mother and alleged father. These purported justifications express and …

E-Books, Collusion, And Antitrust Policy: Protecting A Dominant Firm At The Cost Of Innovation, Nicholas Timchalk

Seattle University Law Review

Amazon’s main rival, Apple, went to great lengths and took major risks to enter the e-book market. Why did Apple simply choose not to compete on the merits of its product and brand equity (the iPad and iBookstore) as it does with its other products? Why did Apple decide not to continue to rely on its earlier success of situating its products differently in the market than other electronics and working hard to be different and cutting-edge with its e-book delivery? This Note argues that the combination of Amazon’s 90% market share, network externalities, and an innovative technology market creates …

Trial And Settlement: A Study Of High-Low Agreements, J. J. Prescott, Kathryn E. Spier, Albert Yoon

Articles

This article presents the first systematic theoretical and empirical study of highlow agreements in civil litigation. A high-low agreement is a private contract that, if signed by litigants before trial, constrains any plaintiff’s recovery to a specified range. In our theoretical model, trial is both costly and risky. When litigants have divergent subjective beliefs and are mutually optimistic about their trial prospects, cases may fail to settle. In these cases, high-low agreements can be in litigants’ mutual interest because they limit the risk of outlier awards while still allowing mutually beneficial speculation. Using claims data from a national insurance company, …

Judgment Day For Fraud-On-The-Market: Reflections On Amgen And The Second Coming Of Halliburton, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court has reaffirmed the "fraud on the market" presumption of reliance, facilitating large scale class actions for this kind of securities fraud. This essay traces the road from its decision last year in Amgen to this year's reaffirmation in Halliburton II, and considers some of the issues that will emerge as lower courts struggle with Halliburton II's secondary holding--that the issue of "price impact" is crucial to class certification, even if the burden of proof is on the defendants.

Screening Out Innovation: The Merits Of Meritless Litigation, Alexander A. Reinert

Indiana Law Journal

Courts and legislatures often conflate meritless and frivolous cases when balancing the desire to keep courthouse doors open to novel or unlikely claims against the concern that entertaining ultimately unsuccessful litigation will prove too costly for courts and defendants. Recently, significant procedural and substantive barriers to civil litigation have been informed by judicial and legislative assumptions about the costs of entertaining meritless and frivolous litigation. The prevailing wisdom is that eliminating meritless and frivolous claims as early in a case’s trajectory as possible will focus scarce resources on the truly meritorious cases, thereby ensuring that available remedies are properly distributed …

The Federal Rules At 75: Dispute Resolution, Private Enforcement Or Decisions According To Law?, James R. Maxeiner

Georgia State University Law Review

This essay is a critical response to the 2013 commemorations of the75th anniversary of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were introduced in 1938 to provide procedure to decide cases on their merits. The Rules were designed to replace decisions under the “sporting theory of justice”with decisions according to law.

By 1976, at midlife, it was clear that they were not achieving their goal. America’s proceduralists split into two sides about what to do. One side promotes rules that control and conclude litigation: e.g.,plausibility pleading, case management, limited discovery, cost indemnity for discovery, and summary …

The Conversational Consent Search: How “Quick Look” And Other Similar Searches Have Eroded Our Constitutional Rights, Alexander A. Mikhalevsky

Georgia State University Law Review

One area in which law enforcement agencies have stretched constitutional limits concerns the scope of a suspect’s consent to search his or her vehicle. Police forces across the country have tested the limits of consent by asking vague, conversational questions to suspects with the goal of obtaining a suspect’s consent to search, even though that individual may not want to allow the search or may not know that he or she has the right to deny consent.

Conversational phrases like “Can I take a quick look?” or “Can I take a quick look around?” have “emerg[ed] as . . . …

Division Of Labor: The Modernization Of The Supreme Court Of Georgia And Concomitant Workload Reduction Measures In The Court Of Appeals, Kyle G.A. Wallace, Andrew J. Tuck, Max Marks

Georgia State University Law Review

This article addresses two distinct yet interrelated topics: the arcane and unnecessarily complex jurisdictional division between the Georgia Supreme Court and Georgia Court of Appeals, and the excessive caseload at the Georgia Court of Appeals.

In Part I.A., this article discusses Georgia’s appellate system—its history, the jurisdictional division that arose, the confusion the current jurisdictional framework creates, and the limitations and burdens it places on Georgia’s highest court. In Part I.B., the article discusses the current caseload at the Court of Appeals and the burden any jurisdictional reforms would have on the Court of Appeals. In Part II, the article …

Historical Antecedents Of Challenges Facing The Georgia Appellate Courts, Michael B. Terry

Georgia State University Law Review

The Georgia appellate courts face challenges common to many courts in these days of reduced governmental resources. At the same time, the Georgia appellate courts face unusual challenges that can be traced to their historical antecedents and one unique constitutional provision: the “Two-Term Rule.” Just as “[t]he law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries,” the current rules and practices of both the Supreme Court of Georgia and the Court of Appeals of Georgia embody the story of the development of those courts since their founding.

Several aspects of the history of the courts directly impact the …

Fulton County Business Court: A Specialized Solution For The Modern Business Community, Megan K. Johnson

Georgia State University Law Review

Business courts or complex commercial divisions are growing in popularity as an effective tool to channel the most complex civil cases into one place before experienced judges with the background and training necessary to resolve the sophisticated issues often presented in those cases. According to North Carolina Business Court Judge Ben F. Tennille, one of the first judicial advocates of the business court model, the evolution of specialty business courts is a necessary response to “‘the rapidly increasing complexity, rate of change and globalization of business.’”

In 2005, Fulton County Superior Court launched a Business Case Division (“Fulton Business Court”) …

Complex Litigation In The New Era Of The Ijury, Andrew J. Wilhelm

Pepperdine Law Review

This Comment argues for a comprehensive approach to legitimizing the lay jury—an approach involving education, attorney adaptation, courtroom renovations, and judicial knowledge—and a better understanding of how legal professionals can fairly and most effectively transmit knowledge to the average American. The lay jury can remain a vital, unique part of the American judicial system if the bench and bar take seriously their responsibilities and adapt to today’s new reality. Part II examines the background of three basic components of a successful contemporary trial: technology, litigation, and the jury. Part III explores how these three components have evolved in the modern …

The Heck Conundrum: Why Federal Courts Should Not Overextend The Heck V. Humphrey Preclusion Doctrine, Lyndon Bradshaw

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.