Courts Commons^™

Further Reflections On Not Being “Not An Originalist”, H. Jefferson Powell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dispute Regarding Navigational And Related Rights (Costa Rica V. Nicaragua), Coalter G. Lathrop

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

All Rise! Standing In Judge Betty Fletcher’S Court, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, based on a talk given at the Washington Law Review’s March 2009 symposium in honor of Senior Ninth Circuit Judge Betty Binns Fletcher and her three decades of service on that court, I selectively survey her opinions on justiciability issues: standing, ripeness, mootness, and political questions. A significant starting point for this survey is Professor Richard Pierce’s 1999 law review article, Is Standing Law or Politics?, arguing that many Supreme Court votes in standing cases generally, and appellate judges’ votes in environmental-standing cases specifically, can be explained better on the basis of politics than by reference to …

The Frequency, Predictability, And Proportionality Of Jury Awards Of Punitive Damages In State Courts In 2005: A New Audit, Neil Vidmar, Mirya Holman

Faculty Scholarship

The state of punitive damages in the United States has been a controversial topic for more than three decades, resulting in litigation reaching the U.S. Supreme Court and state supreme courts. Various business advocacy groups have sought to drastically curb or eliminate punitive damages while plaintiffs’ lawyers and consumer groups vigorously defend the use of punitive damages. State legislatures have responded with many substantive and procedural reforms over the years. Yet, in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, the United States Supreme Court, while approvingly citing empirical evidence indicating that there are “not mass-produced runaway awards” and that “by most accounts …

Talking Judges, Mitu Gulati, Jack Knight

Faculty Scholarship

What kinds of empirical questions about themselves and their colleagues on the bench are judges interested in asking? This was the topic of a recent conference at the Duke Law School. Our Essay reflects on the ways in which the judges at this conference and at a prior one talked about the empirical study of their community. To put it mildly, most of the judges were not fans of the empirical research. Our interest in this Essay is not, however, in responding to the judicial criticisms. Rather it is in drawing insights about how judges view themselves and their profession …

The Consequences Of Congress’S Choice Of Delegate: Judicial And Agency Interpretations Of Title Vii, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

Although Congress delegates lawmaking authority to both courts and agencies, we know remarkably little about the determinants-and even less about the consequences-of the choice between judicial and administrative process. The few scholars who have sought to understand the choice of delegate have used formal modeling to illuminate various aspects of the decision from the perspective of the enacting Congress. That approach yields useful insight into the likely preferences of rational legislators, but tells us nothing about how (or whether) those preferences play out in the behavior of courts and agencies. Without such knowledge, we have no way of testing the …

Evaluating Judges And Judicial Institutions: Reorienting The Perspective, Mitu Gulati, David E. Klein, David F. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

Empirical scholarship on judges, judging, and judicial institutions, a staple in political science, is becoming increasingly popular in law schools. We propose that this scholarship can be improved and enhanced by greater collaboration between empirical scholars, legal theorists, and the primary subjects of the research, the judges. We recently hosted a workshop that attempted to move away from the conventional mode of involving judges and theorists in empirical research, where they serve as commentators on empirical studies that they often see as reductionist and mis-focused. Instead, we had the judges and theorists set the discussion agenda for the empiricists by …

Justice On Appeal In Criminal Cases: A Twentieth-Century Perspective, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

Criminal appeals was a hot topic in the 1970s, reflecting the politics of the Great Society and the development of the constitutional requirements of due process. There was then widespread agreement that the function of the criminal appeal was to assure that the appropriate judges were giving visible attention to all convictions to assure that they were justified. This paper will pose the question: what has become of that vision of a former generation?

Foreign Officials And Sovereign Immunity In U.S. Courts, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Competition In The Courtroom: When Does Expert Testimony Improve Jurors’ Decisions?, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

Many scholars lament the increasing complexity of jury trials and question whether the testimony of competing experts helps unsophisticated jurors to make informed decisions. In this article, we analyze experimentally the effects that the testimony of competing experts has on (1) sophisticated versus unsophisticated subjects' decisions and (2) subjects' deci- sions on difficult versus easy problems. Our results demonstrate that competing expert testimony, by itself, does not help unsophisticated subjects to behave as though they are sophisticated, nor does it help subjects make comparable decisions on difficult and easy problems. When we impose additional institutions (such as penalties for lying …

Judicial Independence In Excess: Reviving The Judicial Duty Of The Supreme Court, Paul D. Carrington, Roger C. Cramton

Faculty Scholarship

Independence from extrinsic influence is, we know, indispensable to public trust in the integrity of professional judges who share the duty to decide cases according to preexisting law. But such independence is less appropriate for those expected to make new law to govern future events. Indeed, in a democratic government those who make new law are expected to be accountable to their constituents, not independent of their interests and unresponsive to their desires. The Supreme Court of the United States has in the last century largely forsaken responsibility for the homely task of deciding cases in accord with preexisting law …

The Solicitor General As Mediator Between Court And Agency, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Andean Tribunal Of Justice And Its Interlocutors: Understanding Preliminary Reference Patterns In The Andean Community, Laurence R. Helfer, Karen J. Alter

Faculty Scholarship

In the European Union, national courts have been key intermediaries in helping to bolster and expand the authority of the European Court of Justice through its preliminary reference mechanism. This article analyzes the role of national judges in the Andean Community, a regional legal system whose judicial institution - the Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ) - was modeled directly on its European predecessor. Our analysis is based on an original coding of every publically available national court referral to the ATJ from 1987 to 2007 and interviews with over forty participants in the Andean legal system. We find that the …

Maritime Delimitation In The Black Sea (Romania V. Ukraine), Coalter G. Lathrop

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Treaties As "Part Of Our Law", Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Preemption And Federal Common Law, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Which States Have The Best (And Worst) High Courts?, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Eric A. Posner

Faculty Scholarship

This paper ranks the high courts of the fifty states, based on their performance during the years 1998-2000, along three dimensions: opinion quality (or influence as measured by out-of-state citations), independence (or non-partisanship), and productivity (opinions written). We also discuss ways of aggregating these measures. California and Delaware had the most influential courts; Georgia and Mississippi had the most productive courts; and Rhode Island and New York had the most independent courts. If equal weight is given to each measure, then the top five states were: California, Arkansas, North Dakota, Montana, and Ohio. We compare our approach and results with …

Taking Liberties: The Personal Jurisdiction Of Military Commissions, Madeline Morris

Faculty Scholarship

On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda operatives attacked civilian and military targets on US territory, causing thousands of deaths and billions of dollars of economic loss. The next day, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1368 characterizing the attack by Al Qaeda as a "threat to international peace and security" and recognizing the right of states to use armed force in self defense.

Nothing But The Truth? Experiments On Adversarial Competition, Expert Testimony, And Decision Making, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

Many scholars debate whether a competition between experts in legal, political, or economic contexts elicits truthful information and, in turn, enables people to make informed decisions. Thus, we analyze experimentally the conditions under which competition between experts induces the experts to make truthful statements and enables jurors listening to these statements to improve their decisions. Our results demonstrate that, contrary to game theoretic predictions and contrary to critics of our adversarial legal system, competition induces enough truth telling to allow jurors to improve their decisions. Then, when we impose additional institutions (such as penalties for lying or the threat of …

The Virtue Of Judicial Statesmanship, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

Some of America’s most important judges have emphasized or embodied the practice of judicial statesmanship. Yet from the examples they set, it is not particularly clear what judicial statesmanship is or why it matters. In this Article, I conceptualize the elusive phenomenon of judicial statesmanship, and I defend statesmanship as a core, if underappreciated, dimension of judicial role. I argue that judicial statesmanship defines a virtue in the role of a judge. Statesmanship charges judges with approaching cases so as to facilitate the capacity of the legal system to legitimate itself—over the long run and with respect to the nation …

Voices Of American Law: Us Supreme Court Cases Meet The 21st Century, Lauren M. Collins

Faculty Scholarship

reviewing Voices of American Law documentary series(Thomas B. Metzloff & Sarah Wood producers)

The Verdict On Juries, Neil Vidmar, Valerie P. Hans

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Administrative Law Agonistes, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger Noll, Barry R. Weingast, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Other Delegate: Judicially Administered Statutes And The Nondelegation Doctrine, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

The nondelegation doctrine is the subject of a vast and everexpanding body of scholarship. But nondelegation literature, like nondelegation law, focuses almost exclusively on delegations of power to administrative agencies. It ignores Congress's other delegate-the federal judiciary.

This Article brings courts into the delegation picture. It demonstrates that, just as agencies exercise a lawmaking function when they fill in the gaps left by broad statutory delegations of power, so too do courts. The nondelegation doctrine purports to limit the amount of lawmaking authority Congress can cede to another institution without violating the separation of powers. Although typically considered only with …

Dole’S Future: A Strategic Analysis, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

As the U.S. Supreme Court imposes federalism-based limits on congressional power under the Commerce Clause and Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress may be tempted to turn to the conditional spending power in order to achieve goals that it cannot realize directly. In this article I address whether a danger exists, as some suggest, that such use of the Spending Clause would render the Court more likely to cut back on its scope, narrowing or overruling South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987). Using doctrinal analysis and game theory, I conclude that Congress should proceed with some but …

The Federal Judicial Power And The International Legal Order, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Appellate Courts, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Statutes Mean: Interpretive Lessons From Positive Theories Of Communication And Legislation, Cheryl Boudreau, Arthur Lupia, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Critical Assessment Of The Cultural And Institutional Roles Of Appellate Courts (Review Essay), Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

Reviewing, Daniel Meador et al., Appellate Courts: Structures, Functions, Processes, and Personnel (2d ed. 2006)

An Overview Of The October 2005 Supreme Court Term, Erwin Chemerinsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.