Courts Commons^™

Understanding Pleading Doctrine, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

Where does pleading doctrine, at the federal level, stand today? The Supreme Court's revision of general pleading standards in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly has not left courts and litigants with a clear or precise understanding of what it takes to state a claim that can survive a motion to dismiss. Claimants are required to show "plausible entitlement to relief" by offering enough facts "to raise a right to relief above the speculative level." Translating those admonitions into predictable and consistent guidelines has proven illusory. This Article proposes a descriptive theory that explains the fundaments of contemporary pleading doctrine in …

The Legality And Practicality Of Remote Witness Testimony, Fredric Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Standing Still In The Roberts Court, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

In 2007, The New York Times reported "limiting the ability of plaintiffs to bring or appeal lawsuits" had emerged as an early "theme" of the Roberts Court. The Wall Street Journal concurred, reporting "the biggest change under Chief Justice Roberts might not involve who wins on the merits" but "who gets through the courthouse door in the first place." An early consensus is emerging... that one effect of the Roberts Court is to make it more difficult for prospective plaintiffs to have their day in federal court.

Because standing decisions are more insulated from legislative revision than other sorts of …

The Supreme Court’S Controversial Gvrs – And An Alternative, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

This Article addresses a relatively neglected portion of the Supreme Court's docket: the "GVR"-that is, the Court's procedure for summarily granting certiorari, vacating the decision below without finding error, and remanding the case for further consideration by the lower court. The purpose of the GVR device is to give the lower court the initial opportunity to consider the possible impact of a new development (such as a recently issued Supreme Court decision) and, if necessary, to revise its ruling in light of the changed circumstances. The Court may issue scores or even hundreds of these orders every year

This Article …

The Saucier Qualified Immunity Experiment: An Empirical Analysis, Nancy Leong

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Saving Money For Everyone: The Current Economic Crisis Is An Opportunity To Get Serious About Improving Juror Utilization, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

The current economic crisis provides an opportunity for courts to improve juror utilization, potentially saving tens of thousands of dollars per year in unnecessary expenses incurred for unused jurors and hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income and lost productivity incurred by jurors, their employers, and their communities.

Why The United States Supreme Court Got Some [But Not A Lot] Of The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel Analysis Right, Paul Marcus

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Circumventing Congress: How The Federal Courts Opened The Door To Impeaching Criminal Defendants With Prior Convictions, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

This Article spotlights the flawed analytical framework at the heart of the federal courts’ approach to one of the most controversial trial practices in American criminal jurisprudence — the admission of prior convictions to impeach the credibility of defendants who testify. As the Article explains, the flawed approach is a byproduct of the courts’ reliance on a five-factor analytical framework to implement the governing legal standard enacted by Congress in Federal Rule of Evidence 609. Tracing the evolution of the fivefactor framework from its roots in pre-Rule 609 case law, the Article demonstrates that the courts’ reinterpretation of the framework …

Pleading Civil Rights Claims In The Post-Conley Era, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

Much has been made of the Supreme Court's recent pronouncements on federal civil pleading standards during the latter half of the 2006-2007 Term. Specifically, what will be the fallout from the Court's decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, a case that abrogated Conley v. Gibson's famous "no set of facts" formulation and supplanted it with a new plausibility pleading standard? This Article attempts to examine and distill the impact of Twombly on the pleading standards that lower federal courts are applying when scrutinizing civil rights claims. Two main approaches emerge: that of courts choosing to continue to apply a …

Enhancing Courtroom Presentation Through Technology, Fredric I. Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Courtroom Technology, Fredric I. Lederer, Tom O'Connor, Timothy A. Piganelli

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Plausibility Pleading, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

Last Term, in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically reinterpreted Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a) (2), which requires a "short and plain" statement of a plaintiffs claim. The Court was unabashed about this change of course: it explicitly abrogated a core element of its 1957 decision in Conley v. Gibson, which until recently was the bedrock case undergirding the idea that ours is a system of notice pleading in which detailed facts need not be pleaded. Departing from this principle, the Court in Twombly required the pleading of facts that demonstrate the plausibility of the …

National Jury Improvement Efforts, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Nicole L. Waters

Faculty Publications

Until recently, the impact of specific jury improvement efforts was based on anecdotal reports from courts scattered across the country. In April 2007, the NCSC Center for Jury Studies released its findings from the State-of-the-States Survey of Jury Improvement Efforts, which provides a comprehensive snapshot of jury procedures, operations, and practices in state and local courts. For the first time, courts have base-line information about their peers against which they can assess their own performance on a number of key operational measures. This issue of Caseload Highlights describes these measures and the approaches that state courts have implemented to improve …

Jury Trial Innovations Across America: What We Are Teaching And Learning From Each Other, Gregory E. Mize, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

Between 2004 and 2006 the National Center for State Courts conducted three related studies of jury practices in state and federal courts throughout the United States. Combined, the studies make up the State-of-the-States Sur­vey of Jury Improvement Efforts, a first-ever effort to survey the entire field of jury issues and practices from state and local jury reform and improvement efforts to in-court use of tools aimed at improving juror comprehension and participation-including note-taking, juror questions and providing jurors with written instructions. The resulting data sets are available in full online, allowing users to review their own states' practices in comparison …

When All Eyes Are Watching: Trial Characteristics And Practices In Notorious Trials, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

In part because of their relative scarcity and the uniqueness of each new notorious trial, it is difficult to generalize the effects of trial notori­ety. However, a recent study by the National Center for State Courts Center for Jury Studies reveals infor­mation about the prevalence of notorious trials and their impact on trial procedures and practices. The State-of-the-States Survey of Jury Improvement Efforts collected trial reports from nearly 12,000 jury trials conducted in state and federal courts in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The vast majority of trials took place between 2002 and 2006.

In the survey, …

The Challenge Of Comparative Civil Procedure, Scott Dodson

Faculty Publications

This Essay reviews Civil Litigation in Comparative Context (West 2007), by Oscar G. Chase, Helen Hershkoff, Linda Silberman, Yasuhei Taniguchi, Vincenzo Varano, and Adrian Zuckerman. It also identifies some areas of exceptionalist American civil procedure that recently have been converging towards global norms and argues that those convergences, if they continue, could render comparative studies particularly meaningful.

Book Review Of Establishing Justice In Middle America: A History Of The United States Court Of Appeals For The Eighth Circuit, Scott Dodson

Faculty Publications

This book review of Jeffrey Morris’s Establishing Justice in Middle America argues that although Morris makes an important contribution to the understudied Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, he fails to engage the reader in the personalities that populated the court, eschews the development of coherent themes running through the court’s membership changes and temporal scope, and omits important cases that helped define the court as an independent judicial body.

Judicial Nullification? Judicial Compliance And Non-Compliance With Jury Improvement Efforts, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

The present article explores the formal and informal factors that contribute to variation in state and local jury trial practices, and especially judicial compliance with mandatory practices and prohibitions. Part II describes the State-of­ the-States Survey of Jury Improvement Efforts, its methodology, and its basic findings concerning the variation in use of different trial practices. Part III discusses how various formal and informal factors affect the judicial use of those practices. Because the practice of permitting jurors to submit written questions to witnesses has received greater attention, and generated greater debate and dissension in both case law and state and …

Ideological Cohesion And Precedent (Or Why The Court Only Cares About Precedent When Most Justices Agree With Each Other), Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the profound role that ideological cohesion plays in explaining the Supreme Court's willingness to advance a coherent vision of the law - either by overruling precedents inconsistent with that vision or by establishing rule-like precedents intended to bind the Supreme Court and lower courts in subsequent cases. Through case studies of the New Deal, Warren, and Rehnquist Courts, this Article calls attention to key differences between Courts in which five or more Justices pursue the same substantive objectives and Courts which lack a dominant voting block. In particular, when five or more Justices pursue the same substantive …

Perpetual Dissents, Allison Orr Larsen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Assessment Of Juror Utilization In The Massachusetts Trial Courts, Paula Hannaford-Agor, G. Thomas Munsterman

Faculty Publications

For more than 30 years, Massachusetts has demonstrated a commitment to innovation in jury management. More recently, its trial courts have exhibited leadership and vision by embracing the use of performance measures to assess trial court performance across all areas of court operations. This commitment to excellence in court management serves as the backdrop to this assessment of juror utilization, which the Supreme Judicial Court requested from the NCSC Center for Jury Studies in April 2007.

To conduct the assessment, Paula Hannaford-Agor (Director, Center for Jury Studies) and G . Thomas Munsterman (Director Emeritus, Center for Jury Studies) met with …

The State-Of-The-States Survey Of Jury Improvement Efforts: A Compendium Report, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Gregory E. Mize, Nicole L. Waters

Faculty Publications

The State-of-the-States Survey is the cornerstone of a much larger initiative by the NCSC Center for Jury Studies – the National Program to Increase Citizen Participation in Jury Service (National Jury Program). The National Jury Program provides information and technical assistance to state courts about best practices in jury system management and trial procedures. Its ultimate goals are to assist courts to summons and impanel more representative juries; to manage their jury systems in an effective, efficient, and informative manner; to facilitate informed decision-making by trial jurors; to increase public trust and confidence in the jury system and in courts; …

Anti-Federalist Procedure, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

"[T]he new federal government will ... be disinclined to invade the rights of the individual States, or the prerogatives of their governments."

"[T]he Constitution of the United States ... recognizes and preserves the autonomy and independence of the States-independence in their legislative and independence in their judicial departments. . . . Any interference with either, except as [constitutionally] permitted, is an invasion of the authority of the State and, to that extent, a denial of its independence."

The understanding expressed by these opening quotes-that the national government was designed to be one of limited powers that would refrain from encroaching …

The D'Oh! Of Popular Constiutitonalism, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Avoidance And The Roberts Court, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

York County Court Of Common Pleas, Jury Utilization And Representation Assessment, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

In May 2006, the York County Office of Court Administration requested that the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) assess its jury management and utilization practices and make recommendations for improvement. The impetus for this request came from concerns both within the Office of Court Administration and from the Administrative Office of the Pennsylvania Courts that existing jury management practices make inefficient use of jurors, imposing excessive and unnecessary costs on the court and on the citizens who report for jury service. The York County Office of Court Administration also expressed concern that its jury pool may not adequately reflect …

Assessment Of Pws System Effects On The Random Selection Of Jurors And The Demographic Characteristics Of The Jury Poll In The Superior Court Of Arizona, Maricopa County, Paula Hannaford-Agor, G. Thomas Munsterman

Faculty Publications

In July 2006, the Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County (Superior Court), contracted with the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) to review its jury management system. The Superior Court specifically requested that the NCSC Center for Jury Studies determine whether its Proximity Weighted Summoning (PWS) System randomly selects jurors from the master jury list for the county; whether the PWS System systematically excludes any identifiable group or population; and the effect of the PWS System on the demographic characteristics of jurors reporting at the various courthouse facilities in Maricopa County. The Superior Court also requested that the NCSC describe …

Jurisdiction To Adjudicate: A Revised Analysis, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

Personal jurisdiction doctrine as articulated by the Supreme Court is in disarray. As a constitutional doctrine whose contours remain imprecise, the law of personal jurisdiction has generated confusion, unpredictability, and extensive satellite litigation over what should be an uncomplicated preliminary issue. Many commentators have long lamented these defects, making suggestions for how the doctrine could be improved. Although many of these proposals have had much to offer, they generally have failed to articulate (or adequately justify or explain) a simple and sound approach to jurisdiction that the Supreme Court can embrace. This Article revises the law of personal jurisdiction by …

Jury Innovation In Practice: The Experience In New York And Elsewhere, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

The article analyzes data reported in the National Center for State Courts 2006 survey of civil and criminal jury trial practice. The focus is on New York's use of various techniques to improve jury participation compared to use by nearby states, Connecticut and New Jersey, and other state courts. Innovative techniques discussed include juror notebooks, note-taking, juror questions of witnesses, and jury instructions. The article concludes that New York's courts lag behind other state courts in adopting these practices, and that both success in practice and ABA recommendations should be persuasive to New York judges that improvements can be made …

Third Judicial Circuit Of Michigan Jury System Assessment, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

In November 2005, the State Court Administrator's Office (SCAO) contracted with the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) to assess the qualification and summoning procedures used by the Third Circuit Court (Wayne County) to identify procedural and operational factors that might contribute to the disparity in minority populations in its jury pool and to make recommendations to improve the representation of those minorities. To conduct this assessment, the NCSC collected data about every stage of the jury management process in 2004 and 2005.

In this report, the NCSC makes eight recommendations to the Third Circuit to address the procedural and …