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Articles 241 - 270 of 1724

Full-Text Articles in Courts

The Danger Of Nonrandom Case Assignment: How The Southern District Of New York's "Related Cases" Rule Shaped Stop-And-Frisk Rulings, Katherine A. Macfarlane Jan 2014

The Danger Of Nonrandom Case Assignment: How The Southern District Of New York's "Related Cases" Rule Shaped Stop-And-Frisk Rulings, Katherine A. Macfarlane

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The Southern District of New York’s local rules are clear: “[A]ll active judges . . . shall be assigned substantially an equal share of the categories of cases of the court over a period of time.” Yet for the past fourteen years, Southern District Judge Shira Scheindlin has been granted near-exclusive jurisdiction over one category of case: those involving wide-sweeping constitutional challenges to the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) stop-and-frisk policies. In 1999, Judge Scheindlin was randomly assigned Daniels v. City of New York, the first in a series of high-profile and high-impact stop-and-frisk cases. Since then, she has overseen …

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From Commonwealth To Constitutional Limitations: Thomas Cooley's Michigan, 1805-1886, Robert Allan Olender Jan 2014

From Commonwealth To Constitutional Limitations: Thomas Cooley's Michigan, 1805-1886, Robert Allan Olender

SJD Dissertations

In response to what he perceived as the challenges associated with republican governance in the later portions of the nineteenth century, Michigan’s Thomas McIntyre Cooley penned his treatise concerning constitutional limitations on legislative power. In it, Cooley offered a vision of government where courts would check government power and would raise constitutional barriers against the impact of improper influences on legislators. As a student of history, Cooley grounded his beliefs and doctrines in experience, not philosophical reflections. Believing that “the fruits of speculative genius in government are of little value,” Cooley submitted that governing structures and law “must be the …

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Technology, Ethics, And Access To Justice: Should An Alogrithm Be Deciding Your Case?, Anjanette H. Raymond, Scott J. Shackelford Jan 2014

Technology, Ethics, And Access To Justice: Should An Alogrithm Be Deciding Your Case?, Anjanette H. Raymond, Scott J. Shackelford

Michigan Journal of International Law

At a time of U.S. budget cuts, popularly known as the “sequester,” court systems across the nation are facing financial shortfalls. Small claims courts are no exception. Among the worst hit states is California, which is suffering staffing cutbacks that result in long delays prompting consideration of the old maxim, “justice delayed is justice denied.” Similar problems, albeit on a larger scale, are evident in other nations including India where the Law Commission has argued that the millions of pending cases combined with the lagging uptake of technological best practices has impeded judicial productivity, leading to “disappointment and dissatisfaction among …

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Sweet Caroline: The Backslide From Federal Rule Of Evidence 613(B) To The Rule In Queen Caroline's Case, Katharine T. Schaffzin Jan 2014

Sweet Caroline: The Backslide From Federal Rule Of Evidence 613(B) To The Rule In Queen Caroline's Case, Katharine T. Schaffzin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Since 1975, Rule 613(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence has governed the admission of extrinsic evidence of a prior inconsistent statement in federal court. Rule 613(b) requires the proponent of the prior inconsistent statement to provide the declarant an opportunity to explain or deny it. There is no requirement that the proponent provide that opportunity at any particular time or in any particular sequence. Rule 613 reflected a change from the common law that had fallen out of fashion in the federal courts. That common law rule, known as the Rule in Queen Caroline’s Case, required the proponent of …

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Fumbling The First Amendment: The Right Of Publicity Goes 2-0 Against Freedom Of Expression, Thomas E. Kadri Jan 2014

Fumbling The First Amendment: The Right Of Publicity Goes 2-0 Against Freedom Of Expression, Thomas E. Kadri

Michigan Law Review

Two circuits in one summer found in favor of college athletes in right-of-publicity suits filed against the makers of the NCAA Football videogame. Both panels split 2–1; both applied the transformative use test; both dissenters predicted chilling consequences. By insisting that the likeness of each player be “transformed,” the Third and Ninth Circuits employed a test that imperils the use of realistic depictions of public figures in expressive works. This standard could have frosty implications for artists in a range of media: docudramas, biographies, and works of historical fiction may be at risk. This Comment examines the tension between the …

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Judicial Takings: Musings On Stop The Beach, James E. Krier Jan 2014

Judicial Takings: Musings On Stop The Beach, James E. Krier

Articles

Judicial takings weren’t much talked about until a few years ago, when the Stop the Beach case made them suddenly salient. The case arose from a Florida statute, enacted in 1961, that authorizes public restoration of eroded beaches by adding sand to widen them seaward. Under the statute, the state has title to any new dry land resulting from restored beaches, meaning that waterfront owners whose land had previously extended to the mean high-tide line end up with public beaches between their land and the water. This, the owners claimed, resulted in a taking of their property, more particularly their …

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Hobby Lobby And The Pathology Of Citizens United, Ellen D. Katz Jan 2014

Hobby Lobby And The Pathology Of Citizens United, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Four years ago, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission held that for-profit corporations possess a First Amendment right to make independent campaign expenditures. In so doing, the United States Supreme Court invited speculation that such corporations might possess other First Amendment rights as well. The petitioners in Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius are now arguing that for-profit corporations are among the intended beneficiaries of the Free Exercise Clause and, along with the respondents in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, that they also qualify as “persons” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Neither suggestion follows inexorably from Citizens United, …

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Formalism And Employer Liability Under Title Vii, Samuel R. Bagenstos Jan 2014

Formalism And Employer Liability Under Title Vii, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

Most lawyers, law professors, and judges are familiar with two standard critiques of formalism in legal reasoning. One is the unacknowledged-policymaking critique. This critique argues that formalist reasoning purports to be above judicial policymaking but instead simply hides the policy decisions offstage. The other is the false-determinacy critique. This critique observes that formalist reasoning purports to reduce decision costs in the run of cases by sorting cases into defined categories, but argues that instead of going away the difficult questions of application migrate to the choice of the category in which to place a particular case.

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Rate Of False Conviction Of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced To Death, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien, Chen Hu, Edward H. Kennedy Jan 2014

Rate Of False Conviction Of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced To Death, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien, Chen Hu, Edward H. Kennedy

Articles

The rate of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as not merely unknown but unknowable. There is no systematic method to determine the accuracy of a criminal conviction; if there were, these errors would not occur in the first place. As a result, very few false convictions are ever discovered, and those that are discovered are not representative of the group as a whole. In the United States, however, a high proportion of false convictions that do come to light and produce exonerations are concentrated among the tiny minority of cases in which defendants are sentenced to …

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Election Law's Lochnerian Turn, Ellen D. Katz Jan 2014

Election Law's Lochnerian Turn, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

This panel has been asked to consider whether "the Constitution [is] responsible for electoral dysfunction."' My answer is no. The electoral process undeniably falls well short of our aspirations, but it strikes me that we should look to the Supreme Court for an accounting before blaming the Constitution for the deeply unsatisfactory condition in which we find ourselves.

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Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, July 2014, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson Jan 2014

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, July 2014, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

United States Negotiates Prisoner Exchange to Secure Release of U.S. Soldier Held in Afghanistan • United States Refuses to Grant Visa to Iranian UN Envoy • Multilateral Naval Code of Conduct Aims to Prevent Unintended Conflict in Contested Areas of East and South China Seas • Senate Approves Treaties to Regulate Fishing • United States Indicts Chinese Military Officials for Economic Espionage • U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Terminate Long-Running Efforts to Force Argentina to Pay Defaulted Sovereign Debt • United States Condemns Uganda’s Antigay Law as Violating Human Rights • President Barack Obama Certifies That U.S. Peacekeepers in Mali …

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission And Structural Reform Of The American Workplace, Margo Schlanger, Pauline T. Kim Jan 2014

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission And Structural Reform Of The American Workplace, Margo Schlanger, Pauline T. Kim

Articles

In one of its most-watched recent cases, the United States Supreme Court struck down a class action alleging that Wal-Mart stores discriminated against female employees in pay and promotion decisions. The plaintiffs alleged that Wal-Mart’s corporate culture and highly discretionary decision-making practices led to sex discrimination on a company-wide basis, and they sought injunctive relief as well as backpay for individual employees. Reversing the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the Supreme Court held in Wal-Mart v. Dukes that the proposed class failed to meet the requirements for class action certification under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of …

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The Jurisprudence Of Union, Gil Seinfeld Jan 2014

The Jurisprudence Of Union, Gil Seinfeld

Articles

The primary goal of this Article is to demonstrate that the interest in national unity does important, independent work in the law of vertical federalism. We have long been accustomed to treating union as a constitutionally operative value in cases involving the duties states owe one another (i.e. horizontal federalism cases), but in cases involving the relationship between the federal government and the states, the interest in union is routinely ignored. This Article shows that, across a wide range of cases relating to the allocation of power between the federal government and the states, the states are constrained by a …

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Interactive Methods And Collaborative Performance: A New Future For Indirect Infringement, Josh Rychlinski Dec 2013

Interactive Methods And Collaborative Performance: A New Future For Indirect Infringement, Josh Rychlinski

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

An individual is liable for patent infringement if he infringes one or more patented claims either directly under 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) or indirectly under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b) or § 271(c). In 2012, the Federal Circuit clarified its interpretation of § 271(b) and § 271(c) in the case of Akamai v. Limelight. However, the court failed to address issues of “divided” direct infringement, where two or more entities combine and together complete each and every step of a method claim, but no single entity does all of the steps. This Note walks through the history of the judicial interpretation …

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An Insurmountable Obstacle: Denying Deference To The Bia’S Social Visibility Requirement, Kathleen Kersh Dec 2013

An Insurmountable Obstacle: Denying Deference To The Bia’S Social Visibility Requirement, Kathleen Kersh

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In the last fifteen years, the Board of Immigration Appeals has imposed a requirement that persons seeking asylum based on membership in a particular social group must establish that the social group is “socially visible” throughout society. This Comment argues that the social visibility requirement should be denied administrative deference on several grounds. The requirement should be denied Chevron deference because Congress’s intent behind the Refugee Act of 1980 is clear and unambiguous and, alternatively, the requirement is an impermissible interpretation of the statute. The requirement is also arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedures Act. This Comment argues that …

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Friendship Treaties ≠ Judgment Treaties, John F. Coyle Dec 2013

Friendship Treaties ≠ Judgment Treaties, John F. Coyle

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

It is hornbook law that the United States is not currently a party to any treaty governing the enforcement of foreign judgments. At least, it was hornbook law until 1993. In that year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit adopted a novel interpretation of a provision in a bilateral treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation ("FCN treaty") between the United States and Greece that transformed the treaty into a de facto judgments treaty. Two years later, in 1995, the Third Circuit adopted the same interpretation of an identical clause in the United States-Korea FCN treaty. Each of …

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Getting Down To (Tattoo) Business: Copyright Norms And Speech Protections For Tattooing, Alexa L. Nickow Dec 2013

Getting Down To (Tattoo) Business: Copyright Norms And Speech Protections For Tattooing, Alexa L. Nickow

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

What level of First Amendment protection should we afford tattooing? General public consensus formerly condemned tattoos as barbaric, but the increasingly diverse clientele of tattoo shops suggests that tattoos have become more mainstream. However, the law has struggled to adjust. The recent proliferation of municipal near-bans on tattooing has brought tattooing to the forefront of First Amendment debates, with cases such as Anderson and Coleman leading the way toward recognizing tattooing as pure speech. Tensions between formal and informal copyright norms in the tattoo industry further highlight the collaborative and expressive nature of the artist-customer relationship and its resulting products, …

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The Court Loses Its Way With The Global Positioning System: United States V. Jones Retreats To The “Classic Trespassory Search”, George M. Dery Iii, Ryan Evaro Dec 2013

The Court Loses Its Way With The Global Positioning System: United States V. Jones Retreats To The “Classic Trespassory Search”, George M. Dery Iii, Ryan Evaro

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article analyzes United States v. Jones, in which the Supreme Court considered whether government placement of a global positioning system (GPS) device on a vehicle to follow a person’s movements constituted a Fourth Amendment “search.” The Jones Court ruled that two distinct definitions existed for a Fourth Amendment “search.” In addition to Katz v. United States’s reasonable-expectation-of-privacy standard, which the Court had used exclusively for over four decades, the Court recognized a second kind of search that it called a “classic trespassory search.” The second kind of search occurs when officials physically trespass or intrude upon a constitutionally protected …

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Retroactivity And Crack Sentencing Reform, Harold J. Krent Sep 2013

Retroactivity And Crack Sentencing Reform, Harold J. Krent

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article argues that the strong presumption against retroactive application of reduced punishments articulated in the Supreme Court’s recent decision, Dorsey v. United States, is neither historically grounded nor constitutionally compelled. Although not dispositive in Dorsey, the presumption may mislead legislatures in future contexts, whether addressing marijuana decriminalization or lessened punishment for file sharing, and in no way should signal to Congress that future changes should apply prospectively only. Although the Court reached the right result in applying the reduction in punishment for crack offenses to offenders whose sentences had not been finalized, the Court relied excessively on the general …

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Reflections On The End Of The Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan, Aaron L. Nielson Aug 2013

Reflections On The End Of The Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan, Aaron L. Nielson

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

As applicants, federal judges, and law school career counselors everywhere frantically come to terms with the new clerkship landscape, one truth is inescapable: the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan ("the Plan") is dead. On January 29, 2013, the D.C. Circuit-the Plan's last and best defender-announced that it would no longer follow the Plan. The consequences of that announcement have been swift. For the last several months, months earlier than almost anyone expected, untold numbers of federal judges across the country have been rushing to hire law clerks. For these judges, the unregulated clerkship market of the pre-Plan era is back. …

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Plea Bargaining And The Right To Counsel At Bail Hearings, Charlie Gerstein Jun 2013

Plea Bargaining And The Right To Counsel At Bail Hearings, Charlie Gerstein

Michigan Law Review

A couple million indigent defendants in this country face bail hearings each year and most of them do so without court-appointed lawyers. In two recent companion cases, Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the Supreme Court held that the loss of a favorable plea bargain can satisfy the prejudice prong of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. If the Constitution requires effective assistance of counsel to protect plea bargains, it requires the presence of counsel at proceedings that have the capacity to prejudice those bargains. Pretrial detention has the capacity to prejudice a plea bargain because a defendant held …

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Walking The Class Action Maze: Toward A More Functional Rule 23, Robert G. Bone Jun 2013

Walking The Class Action Maze: Toward A More Functional Rule 23, Robert G. Bone

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Over roughly the past fifteen years, the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have limited access to class actions. Many of the more restrictive decisions-such as Amchem Products, Inc. v. Windsor, Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp., and Wal- Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes-are based on interpretations of Rule 23 and thus fall within the power of the Advisory Committee and rulemaking process to modify. This Article proposes revisions to Rule 23 designed to deal with some of these decisions and to make the class action a more pragmatic and functional device. It focuses on two areas: (1) the constraints imposed by …

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The Future Of Classwide Punitive Damages, Catherine M. Sharkey Jun 2013

The Future Of Classwide Punitive Damages, Catherine M. Sharkey

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Conventional wisdom holds that the punitive damages class action is susceptiblenot only to doctrinal restraints imposed on class actions but also to constitutionaldue process limitations placed on punitive damages. Thus, it would seem that theprospects for punitive damages classes are even grimmer than for class actionsgenerally.This conventional picture misunderstands the role of punitive damages and, inparticular, the relationship between class actions and punitive damages. It eitherignores or underestimates the distinctly societal element of punitive damages, whichmakes them especially conducive to aggregate treatment. Furthermore, punitivedamages classes offer a solution to the constitutional due process problem of juriesawarding "classwide" damages in a …

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To Skin A Cat: Qui Tam Actions As A State Legislative Response To Concepcion, Janet Cooper Alexander Jun 2013

To Skin A Cat: Qui Tam Actions As A State Legislative Response To Concepcion, Janet Cooper Alexander

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Supreme Court's decision in Concepcion is widely regarded as heralding the demise of small-claims class actions whenever contracts of adhesion are involved in the transaction-which means for virtually all consumer and employment claims. Amending the Federal Arbitration Act to overturn Concepcion would be a relatively simple exercise in legislative drafting, but in the current political climate such efforts are unlikely to succeed. Thus far, proposed federal corrective legislation has failed to pass, and federal agency regulation of class waivers has been lacking. State legislatures might have the political ability to pass corrective legislation, but virtually all state limitations on …

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A Model For Fixing Identification Evidence After Perry V. New Hampshire, Robert Couch Jun 2013

A Model For Fixing Identification Evidence After Perry V. New Hampshire, Robert Couch

Michigan Law Review

Mistaken eyewitness identifications are the leading cause of wrongful convictions. In 1977, a time when the problems with eyewitness identifications had been acknowledged but were not yet completely understood, the Supreme Court announced a test designed to exclude unreliable eyewitness evidence. This standard has proven inadequate to protect against mistaken identifications. Despite voluminous scientific studies on the failings of eyewitness identification evidence and the growing number of DNA exonerations, the Supreme Court's outdated reliability test remains in place today. In 2012, in Perry v. New Hampshire, the Supreme Court commented on its standard for evaluating eyewitness evidence for the first …

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Class Action Litigation After Dukes: In Search Of A Remedy For Gender Discrimination In Employment, Cindy A. Schipani, Terry Morehead Dworkin Jun 2013

Class Action Litigation After Dukes: In Search Of A Remedy For Gender Discrimination In Employment, Cindy A. Schipani, Terry Morehead Dworkin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article we argue for substantial reforms to our system of combating workplace gender discrimination in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes. To help counter discrimination victims' decreasing access to the courts, our proposals call for a narrow construction of the holding of Dukes. At the same time, agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) can better use their regulatory authority to address gender discrimination. Further, regulatory agencies, arbitrators, and courts can mandate mentoring programs to …

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Concepcion's Pro-Defendant Biasing Of The Arbitration Process: The Class Counsel Solution, David Korn, David Rosenberg Jun 2013

Concepcion's Pro-Defendant Biasing Of The Arbitration Process: The Class Counsel Solution, David Korn, David Rosenberg

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

By mandating that numerous plaintiffs litigate their common question claims separately in individual arbitrations rather than jointly in class action arbitrations, the Supreme Court in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion entrenched a potent structural and systemic bias in favor of defendants. The bias arises from the parties' divergent stakes in the outcome of the common question litigation in individual arbitrations: each plaintiff will only invest to maximize the value of his or her own claim, but the defendant has an incentive to protect its entire exposure and thus will have a classwide incentive to invest more in contesting common questions. …

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The Future Of Securities Class Actions Against Foreign Companies: China And Comity Concerns, Dana M. Muir, Junhai Liu, Haiyan Xu Jun 2013

The Future Of Securities Class Actions Against Foreign Companies: China And Comity Concerns, Dana M. Muir, Junhai Liu, Haiyan Xu

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd., the U.S. Supreme Court limited the application of U.S. securities fraud law in transnational situations. The Supreme Court noted that its decision was influenced by international comity considerations. In this Article, we evaluate the availability of class actions in China in cases involving alleged securities fraud. Because we find that the availability of those actions is too limited to fully protect U.S. shareholders, we argue that U.S. investors should be permitted to bring securities fraud class actions against non-U.S. companies whose securities are traded on a U.S. exchange regardless of where those investors …

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Defining Corruption And Constitutionalizing Democracy, Deborah Hellman Jun 2013

Defining Corruption And Constitutionalizing Democracy, Deborah Hellman

Michigan Law Review

The central front in the battle over campaign finance laws is the definition of corruption. The Supreme Court has allowed restrictions on the giving and spending of money in connection with elections only when they serve to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption. The constitutionality of such laws, therefore, depends on how the Court defines corruption. Over the years, campaign finance cases have conceived of corruption in both broad and narrow terms, with the most recent cases defining it especially narrowly. While supporters and critics of campaign finance laws have argued for and against these different formulations, both sides …

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Standing's Expected Value, Jonathan Remy Nash May 2013

Standing's Expected Value, Jonathan Remy Nash

Michigan Law Review

This Article argues in favor of standing based on expected value of harm. Standing doctrine has been constructed in a way that is oblivious to the idea of expected value. If people have suffered a loss with a positive expected value, they have suffered an "injury in fact." The incorporation of expected value into standing doctrine casts doubt on many of the Supreme Court's decisions in which it denies standing because the relevant injury is too "speculative" or is not "likely" to be redressed by a decree in the plaintiff's favor. This Article addresses this shortcoming in standing jurisprudence by …

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