Courts Commons^™

Assessing And Achieving Jury Pool Representativeness, William Caprathe, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Stephanie Mccoy Loquvam, Shari Seidman Diamond

Faculty Publications

Lack of representativeness is evident in the courtroom, but solutions must be pursued much earlier. The Jury Management Committee of the ABA’s National Conference of State Trial Judges, with Paula Hannaford-Agor of the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), identified a series of steps judges and administrators can take to determine if the procedures used to assemble jurors result in representative jury panels and improve the representativeness of jury panels. The steps focus on (1) establishing reliable methods of measuring the demographic composition of the jury pool, (2) ensuring the inclusiveness and representativeness of the jury pool, and (3) assessing …

Meeting The Challenges Of High-Volume Civil Dockets, Hannah E. M. Lieberman, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

Consumer-debt-collection, landlord/tenant, small-claims, and contract cases involving relatively small amounts comprise almost 80 percent of civil caseloads. This essay examines the challenges associated with high-volume civil dockets and summarizes recommendations to address these challenges and strengthen the integrity of the civil justice system.

Extralegal Supreme Court Policy-Making, Joëlle Anne Moreno

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The Colbert Report aired its final episode on December 18, 2014.1 Nine years earlier, on the first episode, Stephen Colbert coined the word “truthiness.” Truthiness satirized contemporary disinterest in empirical information in a country increasingly “divided between those who think with their head and those who know with their heart.” Truthiness was not just the Merriam-Webster word of the year. Over the past decade, it has been the unspoken mantra of reporters who give equal time to climate science denialists, faith healers, and vaccine refusers. When Justices of the Supreme Court decide questions of scientific or empirical fact—such as whether …

Communicating The Canons: How Lower Courts React When The Supreme Court Changes The Rules Of Statutory Interpretation, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Fraudulent Evidence Before Public International Tribunals: The Dirty Stories Of International Law, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Magic Words, Kiel Brennan-Marquez

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Broadly speaking, this Article has two goals. The first is to demonstrate the prominence of functionalism in the interpretive practices of the Supreme Court. Reading a case like NFIB, it would be easy to conclude that the tension between labels and function reflects a deep rift in our legal order. On reflection, though, the rift turns out to be something of a mirage. While judicial opinions do occasionally employ the rhetoric of label-formalism, we are all functionalists at heart.

The Article’s second goal is to explore two exceptions to this norm. One is a faux exception—an exception to functionalism that …

Implicit Bias And The American Juror, Jennifer K. Elek, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

On March 4, 2015, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report of findings in its investigation of the Ferguson, Missouri, criminal-justice system. The report con­tributed to the still-growing body of literature acknowledging contemporary racial inequality and recognizing that these dis­parities may not be explained on the basis of people's explicit, intentional biases alone. Although the possible effects of implicit bias on justice-sys­tem outcomes should be considered at each decision point in case processing, we focus in this article on the potential effects of implicit bias in the decision making of everyday American citizens who are randomly selected …

Rationalizing Cost Allocation In Civil Discovery, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

A movement is afoot to revise the longstanding presumption that in civil litigation the producing party bears the cost of production in response to discovery requests. An amendment to Rule 26( c )-which took effect in December 2015-makes explicit courts' authority to issue protective orders that shift discovery costs away from producing parties. But this authority is not new; what is new is what may be coming next-an undoing of the producer-pays presumption itself. Thus far, the sentiment to move in this direction has been slightly below the radar, advocated by probusiness interest groups and advocates before the Advisory Committee …

Civil Justice Initiative: The Landscape Of Civil Litigation In State Courts, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Scott Graves, Shelley Spacek Miller

Faculty Publications

This study was undertaken to inform the deliberations of the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) Civil Justice Improvements Committee as it developed recommendations based on evidence-based practices to improve civil case processing in state courts. Much of the debate concerning the American justice system focuses on procedural issues that add complexity to civil litigation, resulting in additional cost and delay and undermining access to justice. Many commentators are alarmed by the increasing privatization of the civil justice system and particularly by the dramatic decline in the rates of civil bench and jury trials. In addition, substantially reduced budgetary resources since …

The Trouble With Amicus Facts, Allison Orr Larsen

Faculty Publications

The number of amicus curiae briefs filed at the Supreme Court is at an all-time high. Most observers, and even some of the Justices, believe that the best of these briefs are filed to supplement the Court’s understanding of facts. Supreme Court decisions quite often turn on generalized facts about the way the world works (Do violent video games harm children? Is a partial birth abortion ever medically necessary?). To answer these questions, the Justices are hungry for more information than the parties and the record can provide. The consensus is that amicus briefs helpfully add factual expertise to the …

How To Make Sense Of Supreme Court Standing Cases— – A Plea For The Right Kind Of Realism, Richard H. Fallon Jr.

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Standing And The Role Of Federal Courts: Triple Error Decisions In Clapper V. Amnesty International Usa And City Of Los Angeles V. Lyons, Vicki C. Jackson

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Does The Supreme Court Ignore Standing Problems To Reach The Merits? Evidence (Or Lack Thereof) From The Roberts Court, Heather Elliott

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Governmental Sovereignty Actions, Ann Woolhandler

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Allison Orr Larsen On Intensely Empirical Amicus Briefs And Amicus Opportunism At The Supreme Court, Allison Orr Larsen

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Following Lower-Court Precedent, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the role of lower-court precedent in the US Supreme Court’s decisions. The Supreme Court is rarely the first court to consider a legal question, and therefore the Court has the opportunity to be informed by and perhaps even persuaded by the views of the various lower courts that have previously addressed the issue. This Article considers whether the Court should give weight to lower-court precedent as a matter of normative theory and whether the Court in fact does so as a matter of practice. To answer the normative question, this Article analyzes a variety of potential reasons …

Against Methodological Stare Decisis, Evan J. Criddle, Glen Staszewski

Faculty Publications

Should federal courts give stare decisis effect to statutory interpretation methodology? Although a growing number of legal scholars have answered this question in the affirmative, this Essay makes the case against methodological stare decisis. Drawing on recent empirical studies of Congress’s expectations regarding statutory interpretation, we show that existing knowledge of Congress’s expectations is insufficient to settle on one consistent approach to statutory interpretation. Moreover, Congress has almost certainly changed its expectations over time, and this raises serious problems for methodological stare decisis from the perspective of faithful-agency theories. We argue further that many theories and doctrines of statutory interpretation …

Utah: Impact Of The Revisions To Rule 26 On Discovery Practice In The Utah District Courts, Final Report, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Cynthia G. Lee

Faculty Publications

On November 1, 2011, the Utah Supreme Court implemented a set of revisions to Rule 26 and Rule 26.1 of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure designed to address concerns regarding the scope and cost of discovery in civil cases. Funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) conducted an empirical evaluation of the short-term and long-term impacts of the Rule 26 revisions. The evaluation consists of five components: an analysis of trends in aggregate filings; a comparison of case-level characteristics for cases filed before …

Measuring Circuit Splits: A Cautionary Note, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

A number of researchers have recently published new measures of the Supreme Court’s behavior in resolving conflicts in the lower courts. These new measures represent an improvement over prior, cruder approaches, but it turns out that measuring the Court’s resolutions of conflicts is surprisingly difficult. The aim of this methodological comment is to describe those difficulties and to establish several conclusions that follow from them. First, the new measures of the Court’s behavior are certainly imprecise and may reflect biased samples. Second, using the Supreme Court Database, which some studies rely on to assemble a dataset of cases resolving conflicts, …

Factual Precedents, Allison Orr Larsen

Faculty Publications

Lawyers and judges speak to each other in a language of precedents—decisions from cases that have come before. The most persuasive precedent to cite, of course, is an on-point decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. But Supreme Court opinions are changing. They contain more factual claims about the world than ever before, and those claims are now rich with empirical data. This Supreme Court factfinding is also highly accessible; fast digital research leads directly to factual language in old cases that is perfect for arguments in new ones. An unacknowledged consequence of all this is the rise of what I …

Oasis Or Mirage: The Supreme Court's Thirst For Dictionaries In The Rehnquist And Roberts Eras, James J. Brudney, Lawrence Baum

William & Mary Law Review

The Supreme Court’s use of dictionaries, virtually non-existent before 1987, has dramatically increased during the Rehnquist and Roberts Court eras to the point where as many as one-third of statutory decisions invoke dictionary definitions. The increase is linked to the rise of textualism and its intense focus on ordinary meaning. This Article explores the Court’s new dictionary culture in depth from empirical and doctrinal perspectives. We find that while textualist justices are heavy dictionary users, purposivist justices invoke dictionary definitions with comparable frequency. Further, dictionary use overall is strikingly ad hoc and subjective. We demonstrate how the Court’s patterns of …

In Defense Of Implied Injunction Relief In Constitutional Cases, John F. Preis

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

If Congress has neither authorized nor prohibited a suit to enforce the Constitution, may the federal courts create one nonetheless? At present, the answer mostly turns on the form of relief sought: if the plaintiff seeks damages, the Supreme Court will normally refuse relief unless Congress has specifically authorized it; in contrast, if the plaintiff seeks an injunction, the Court will refuse relief only if Congress has specifically barred it. These contradictory approaches naturally invite arguments for reform. Two common arguments—one based on the historical relationship between law and equity and the other based on separation of powers principles—could quite …

Pleading And Access To Civil Justice: A Response To Twiqbal Apologists, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

Professor Stephen Yeazell once wrote, ''A society based on the rule of law fails in one of its central premises if substantial parts of the population lack access to law enforcement institutions."" One apparent threat to access to justice in recent years has been the erosion of notice pleading in the federal courts in favor of a plausibility-pleading system that screens out potentially meritorious claims that fail to offer sufficient specificity and support at the pleading stage. But some have questioned whether this purported threat is more perceived than real. Indeed, this doctrinal shift has been defended in several ways …

New Hampshire: Impact Of The Proportional Discovery/Automatic Disclosure (Pad) Pilot Rules, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Nicole L. Waters, Cynthia G. Lee, Susan Keilitz

Faculty Publications

Across the nation, a growing chorus of judges, lawyers, business leaders, and consumer advocates is calling for reforms to the American civil justice system. Civil litigation, they argue, has become too time-consuming, too expensive, and too unpredictable. To address these concerns, many state and federal courts have begun to develop and implement civil justice reform efforts intended to streamline the litigation process, to minimize the potential for discovery disputes, and to expedite the fair resolution of civil cases. New Hampshire was one of the first jurisdictions to revise its rules of civil procedure with these objectives in mind. The project …

Dicta, Schmicta: Theory Versus Practice In Lower Court Decision Making, David Klein, Neal Devins

William & Mary Law Review

The distinction between dictum and holding is at once central to the American legal system and largely irrelevant. In the first systematic empirical study of lower court invocations of the distinction, we show that lower courts hardly ever refuse to follow a statement from a higher court because it is dictum. Specifically, federal courts of appeals meaningfully invoke the distinction in about 1 in 4000 cases; federal district courts in about 1 in 2000 cases; and state courts in about 1 in 4000 cases. In this Essay, we report these findings, describe our coding system, and offer a preliminary assessment …

Reverse Advisory Opinions, Neal Devins, Saikrishna B. Prakash

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

When Is Finality Final? Second Chances At The Supreme Court, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

First, Do No Harm: On Addressing The Problem Of Implicit Bias In Juror Decision Making, Jennifer K. Elek, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

Courts have extremely limited opportunities to educate jurors about the pernicious effects of complex psychological phenom­ena like implicit bias and how these implicit forms of bias may distort jurors' interpretation of trial evidence. This article focuses on several of these interventions and the factors that may increase or undermine their effectiveness. Most Americans are aware of the existence of explicit bias and its effects on decision making generally, but implicit bias is still a relatively new concept about which many people in the justice system are unaware. The first section of this article discusses the difference between explicit bias and …

Confronting Supreme Court Fact Finding, Allison Orr Larsen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Legal Scholarship Highlight: Confronting Supreme Court Fact Finding, Allison Orr Larsen

Popular Media

No abstract provided.