Courts Commons^™

Protecting State Constitutional Rights From Unconstitutional Conditions, Kay L. Levine, Jonathan R. Nash, Robert A. Schapiro

Faculty Articles

The unconstitutional conditions doctrine limits the ability of governments to force individuals to choose between retaining a right and enjoying a government benefit. The doctrine has primarily remained a creature of federal law, with neither courts nor commentators focusing on the potentially important role of state doctrines of unconstitutional conditions. This omission has become especially significant during the COVID-19 pandemic, as actions by state and local governments have presented unconstitutional conditions questions in a range of novel contexts. The overruling of Roe v. Wade and the resulting focus on state constitutional rights to abortion will offer additional new settings for …

The Corrosive Effect Of Inevitable Discovery On The Fourth Amendment, Tonja Jacobi, Elliot Louthen

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court has only once, almost four decades ago, addressed the doctrine of inevitable discovery, when it established the exception in Nix v. Williams. Inevitable discovery encapsulates the notion of no harm, no foul—if law enforcement would have discovered unlawfully obtained evidence regardless of a constitutional violation, then the resulting evidence need not be excluded. Nix laid out two simple dictates: the eponymous requirement of inevitability and a corresponding evidentiary burden requiring the prosecution to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that law enforcement inevitably would have discovered the evidence without the violation. Such analysis requires counterfactual …

Mapping The Civil Justice Gap In Federal Court, Roger Michalski, Andrew Hammond

Faculty Articles

Unrepresented litigants make up a sizable and normatively important chunk of civil litigation in the federal courts. Despite their importance, we still know little about who these pro se litigants are. Debates about pro se litigation take place without sufficient empirical information. To help fill some of the gaps in our understanding of pro se litigants, this Article takes a new approach by mapping where pro se litigants live. Using a massive data set of 2.5 million federal dockets from a ten-year period, we obtained addresses of non-prisoner pro se litigants. We then geolocated these addresses and cross-referenced that information …

Shadow Dockets Lite, Hayley Stillwell

Faculty Articles

Inherent to the role of judges is the obligation to explain themselves and to create precedent—which is why the U.S. Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” has recently garnered ample criticism. Unfortunately, other courts share these deficiencies. Oklahoma Supreme Court justices often decline to vote without explanation. They also note their disagreement with some or all of an opinion, but fail to explain why. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals judges decide whether an opinion is unpublished—and thus nonprecedential—without explanation. These practices are “shadow dockets lite” because they are more consistent with the role of judges than the Supreme Court’s shadow docket, but …

The Field Of State Civil Courts, Anna Carpenter, Alyx Mark, Colleen Shanahan, Jessica Steinberg

Faculty Articles

This symposium Issue of the Columbia Law Review marks a moment of convergence and opportunity for an emerging field of legal scholarship focused on America’s state civil trial courts. Historically, legal scholarship has treated state civil courts as, at best, a mere footnote in conversations about civil law and procedure, federalism, and judicial behavior. But the status quo is shifting. As this Issue demonstrates, legal scholars are examining our most common civil courts as sites for understanding law, legal institutions, and how people experience civil justice. This engagement is essential for inquiries into how courts shape and respond to social …

The Democratic (Il)Legitimacy Of Assembly-Line Litigation, Jessica Steinberg, Colleen Shanahan, Anna Carpenter, Alyx Mark

Faculty Articles

In response to Daniel Wilf-Townsend’s Assembly-Line Plaintiffs we take a panoramic picture of state civil courts, and debt cases in particular, and name specific features of the courts that must be taken into account in crafting reform prescriptions. In doing so, we question both the democratic legitimacy of debt collection courts and the adequacy of incremental reform that targets the structure of litigation. Part I contributes two critical components to Wilf-Townsend’s rich description of consumer debt cases: pervasive intersectional inequality among pro se defendants and a record of fraud among top filers. We add a sharper focus on the racial, …

Judges In Lawyerless Courts, Anna Carpenter, Colleen Shanahan, Jessica Steinberg, Alyx Mark

Faculty Articles

The typical American civil trial court is lawyerless. In response, access to justice reformers have embraced a key intervention: changing the judge’s traditional role. The prevailing vision for judicial role reform calls on trial judges to offer accommodation, information, and process simplification to people without legal representation. Until now, scholars have known little about judicial behavior in lawyerless courts, including whether and how judges are implementing role reform recommendations. Our lack of knowledge stands in stark contrast to the responsibility civil trial judges bear—and the discretionary power they wield—in dispensing justice for millions of unrepresented people each year. While today’s …

The Institutional Mismatch Of State Civil Courts, Colleen Shanahan, Jessica Steinberg, Alyx Mark, Anna Carpenter

Faculty Articles

State civil courts are central institutions in American democracy. Though designed for dispute resolution, these courts function as emergency rooms for social needs in the face of the failure of the legislative and executive branches to disrupt or mitigate inequality. We reconsider national case data to analyze the presence of social needs in state civil cases. We then use original data from courtroom observation and interviews to theorize how state civil courts grapple with the mismatch between the social needs people bring to these courts and their institutional design. This institutional mismatch leads to two roles of state civil courts …

The Million-Dollar Diversity Docket, Steven Gensler, Roger Michalski

Faculty Articles

What would happen if Congress raised the jurisdictional amount in the diversity jurisdiction statute? Given that it has been almost 25 years since the last increase, we are probably overdue for another one. But to what amount? And with what effect? What would happen if Congress raised the jurisdictional amount from the current $75,000 to $250,000 or, say, $1 million? Using a novel hand-coded data set of pleadings in 2900 cases, we show that the jurisdictional amount is not a neutral throttle. Instead, different areas of law, different parts of the country, and different litigants are more affected by changes …

Evolution Of Legal Topics, Rights And Obligations In The United States, Roberto Rosas

Faculty Articles

What new constitutional rights does the American Legal system have to offer? The United States Constitution is a document that continues to be interpreted every year. The Supreme Court hears recent cases with the purpose of interpreting the meaning of the Constitution. Since the creation of the Supreme Court, the Constitution has been analyzed in different ways – some interpretations lasting decades and some amendments going through changes depending on the different ideologies of the Justices on the Court.

This article discusses some of the rights established by the Supreme Court from 2016 to 2019 and provides the background as …

The Aoc In The Age Of Covid - Pandemic Preparedness Planning In The Federal Courts, Zoe Niesel

Faculty Articles

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic created a crisis for American society—and the federal courts were not exempt. Court facilities came to a grinding halt, cases were postponed, and judiciary employees adopted work-from-home practices. Having court operations impacted by a pandemic was not a new phenomenon, but the size, scope, and technological lift of the COVID-19 pandemic was certainly unique.

Against this background, this Article examines the history and future of pandemic preparedness planning in the federal court system and seeks to capture some of the lessons learned from initial federal court transitions to pandemic operations in 2020. The Article begins by …

Abolishing The Communications Decency Act Might Sanitize "Political Biased," "Digitally Polluted," And "Dangerously Toxic" Social Media? - Judicial And Statistical Guidance From Federal-Preemption, Safe-Harbor And Rights-Preservation Decisions, Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

Sitting and former U.S. Presidents, as well as members of the general public, financial, political and educational institutions, use social media. Yet, an overwhelming majority of users, content creators, parents, "conservatives," "progressives," Democrats, and Republicans distrust social media owners. Some critics allege that owners "digitally pollute" platforms by encouraging users to post "corrosive, dangerous, toxic, and illegal content." Other critics assert that service providers' purportedly objective content moderation algorithms are biased-discriminating irrationally on the basis of users' political association, ideology, socioeconomic status, gender, and ethnicity. Republicans and Democrats have crafted roughly twenty bills on this matter. In theory, the enacted …

“Rule Of Inclusion" Confusion, Dora Klein

Faculty Articles

Some rules of evidence are complex. The federal rules governing the admissibility of hearsay statements,' for example, include at least forty different provisions. Numerous judges and scholars have commented on the complexity of the hearsay rules. Not all rules of evidence are complex, however. For example, the federal rules governing the admissibility of character evidence are relatively straightforward: evidence that is offered for the purpose of proving character is inadmissible, subject to a few well-defined exceptions. Despite this relative straightforwardness, many of the federal circuit courts of appeals have overlaid the rules regarding character evidence particularly Rule 404(b)--with unnecessary interpretive …

The Beginning Of The End: Abolishing Capital Punishment In Virginia, Alexandra L. Klein

Faculty Articles

When thinking about the history of capital punishment in the United States, I suspect that the average person is likely to identify Texas as the state that has played the most significant role in the death penalty. The state of Texas has killed more than five hundred people in executions since the Supreme Court approved of states' modified capital punishment schemes in 1976. By contrast, Virginia has executed 113 people since 1976.

But Virginia has played a significant role in the history of capital punishment. After all, the first recorded execution in Colonial America took place in 1608 at Jamestown, …

The Citation Of Unpublished Cases In The Wake Of Covid-19, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

California's Rules of Court prohibit the citation of unpublished state court opinions. Courts and litigants, however, may still cite unpublished federal opinions and rulings and unpublished opinions from other states' courts. This may result in problems, such as limiting courts' and parties' authorities to a skewed sample set, and the covert importation of inapplicable, stricter federal court pleading standards in state court cases. COVID-19 was a stress-test that brought the problems with California's citation rules into focus. The pandemic led to a flood of claims for pandemic-related business interruptions by insured business owners against their insurance companies. While state courts …

Judges And The Deregulation Of The Lawyer's Monopoly, Jessica Steinberg, Anna Carpenter, Colleen Shanahan, Alyx Mark

Faculty Articles

In a revolutionary moment for the legal profession, the deregulation of legal services is taking hold in many parts of the country. Utah and Arizona, for instance, are experimenting with new regulations that permit nonlawyer advocates to play an active role in assisting citizens who may not otherwise have access to legal services. In addition, amendments to the Rules of Professional Conduct in both states, as well as those being contemplated in California, now allow nonlawyers to have a partnership stake in law firms, which may dramatically change the way capital for the delivery of legal services is raised as …

Seeing Those We’Ve Rendered Invisible – A Clarion Call For Criminal Justice, Stephen E. Henderson, Jordan Thomas

Faculty Articles

Jonathan Rapping, Gideon’s Promise: A Public Defender Movement to Transform Criminal Justice (Beacon Press 2020) In this brief review, we situate Rapping’s work among those demanding criminal justice reform, praise an unrelated bonus, and propose a friendly amendment to nudge his vision over the finish line of justice. It will not be enough to provide newly enabled and supported public defenders to those our systems consider indigent. We ought to provide them to us all.

The Political Reality Of Diversity Jurisdiction, Richard D. Freer

Faculty Articles

Diversity jurisdiction survived concerted frontal assaults made from the mid- to late-twentieth century. It weathered criticism of academics and of some high-profile federal judges. Today, diversity jurisdiction represents a burgeoning percentage of the federal civil docket, and it is supported by an efficiency rationale that did not exist at the founding. Today, academics and judges seem relatively ambivalent toward, and some even accepting of, diversity jurisdiction. Today, we see efforts not to abolish diversity jurisdiction, but to rationalize the various threads of its doctrine.

These efforts should be informed by the lessons that should have been learned by those who …

Religious Alternative Dispute Resolution In Israel And Other Nations With State-Sponsored Religious Courts: Crafting A More Efficient And Better Relationship Between Rabbinical Courts And Arbitration Law In Israel, Michael J. Broyde, Ezra Ives

Faculty Articles

This paper proposes the expansion of both private and public options regarding religious arbitration in Israel, broadening both the choice of law and the choice of forum available to Israeli citizens in cases of either commercial law or issues of status (such as divorce, marriage, and conversion). The current law in Israel prohibits citizens from adjudicating their monetary disputes in state religious courts and treats private religious courts as no different from any other arbitration tribunal, precluding these private religious courts from marriage, divorce and conversion matters. We propose that both of these restrictions be lifted, while the role of …

Is There A New Extraterritoriality In Intellectual Property?, Timothy R. Holbrook

Faculty Articles

This Article proceeds as follows. Part I discusses the state of the law of extraterritoriality in copyright, trademark, and patent, as it stood before the Supreme Court’s recent intervention. This review demonstrates that all three disciplines were treating extraterritoriality very differently, and none were paying much attention to the presumption against extraterritoriality. Part II reviews a tetralogy of recent Supreme Court cases, describing the Court’s attempt to formalize its approach to extraterritoriality across all fields of law. Part III analyzes the state of IP law in the aftermath of this tetralogy of extraterritoriality cases. It concludes that there has been …

International Commercial Courts In The United States And Australia: Possible, Probable, Preferable?, S. I. Strong

Faculty Articles

As worldwide interest in international commercial courts grows, questions arise as to whether individual nations can or should seek to compete in the “litigation market” by developing their own cross-border business courts. This essay compares the prospects of the United States and Australia in this regard, focusing on whether it is possible (Section II), probable (Section III), and preferable (Section IV) for one or both of these two federalized, common law nations to develop an international commercial court as part of their national judicial systems. The inquiry is particularly intriguing given that one country (the United States) has had a …

"Will The Real Mens Rea Please Stand Up: Assessing The Fifth Circuit's Kickback Jurisprudence After United States V. Nora, John J. Locurto

Faculty Articles

When an appellate court goes out of its way to note, not once but twice, that a defendant convicted of fraud and conspiracy was just twenty-two years old and had only a high school degree when he joined a criminal venture, it is probably a safe bet that a reversal is coming. That is exactly what happened in United States v. Nora. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned young Jonathon Nora's conviction for his part in a multi-million-dollar scheme to defraud Medicare. The case is, sadly enough, nondescript as health care frauds go, except for …

Terrible Touhy: Navigating Judicial Review Of An Agency's Response To Third-Party Subpoenas, Zoe Niesel

Faculty Articles

The question of judicial review of a federal agency's response to a third-party subpoena is highly litigated and yet barely addressed in academic literature. For seventy years, this issue has been governed by the Supreme Court's holding in United States ex rel. Touhy v. Ragen, a case that spawned its own vocabulary, its own legal doctrine, and its own circuit split. The confusion has left four circuit courts entrenched, the remainder waffling, and the district courts largely on their own to sort out a workable standard.

This Article establishes that the circuit courts' approaches to judicial review of an agency's …

The Supreme Court And The 117th Congress, Andrew K. Jennings, Athul K. Acharya

Faculty Articles

If the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor is confirmed before the 2020 presidential election or in the post-election lame-duck period, and if Democrats come to have unified control of government on January 20, 2021, how can they respond legislatively to the Court’s new 6-3 conservative ideological balance? This Essay frames a hypothetical 117th Congress’s options, discusses its four simplest legislative responses—expand the Court, limit its certiorari discretion, restrict its jurisdiction, or reroute its jurisdiction—and offers model statutory language for enacting those responses.

Covid, Crisis, And Courts, Colleen Shanahan, Alyx Mark, Jessica Steinberg, Anna Carpenter

Faculty Articles

Our country is in crisis. The inequality and oppression that lies deep in the roots and is woven in the branches of our lives has been laid bare by a virus. Relentless state violence against Black people has pushed protestors to the streets. We hope that the legislative and executive branches will respond with policy change for those who struggle the most among us: rental assistance, affordable housing, quality public education, comprehensive health and mental health care. We fear that the crisis will fade, and we will return to more of the same. Whatever lies on the other side of …

Rules To Impeach By - What It Takes To Remove A President, David Dittfurth

Faculty Articles

Professor David Dittfurth explains the steps that must be taken by Congress to impeach a president or other official.

Simplified Courts Can't Solve Inequality, Colleen Shanahan, Anna Carpenter

Faculty Articles

State civil courts struggle to handle the volume of cases before them. Litigants in these courts, most of whom are unrepresented, struggle to navigate the courts to solve their problems. This access-to-justice crisis has led to a range of reform efforts and solutions. One type of reform, court simplification, strives to reduce the complexity of procedures and information used by courts to help unrepresented litigants navigate the judicial system. These reforms mitigate but do not solve the symptoms of the larger underlying problem: state civil courts are struggling because they have been stuck with legal cases that arise from the …

Judicial Choice Among Cases For Certiorari, Tonja Jacobi, Álvaro Bustos

Faculty Articles

How does the Supreme Court choose among cases to grant cert? In a model with a strategic Supreme Court, a continuum of rule-following lower courts, a set of potential cases for revision, and a distribution of future lower court cases, we show that the Court takes the case that will most significantly shape future lower court case outcomes in the direction that the Court prefers. That is, the Court grants cert to the case with maximum salience. If the Court is rather liberal (or conservative), then the most salient case is that which moves the discretionary range of the legal …

State Standing For Nationwide Injunctions Against The Federal Government, Jonathan R. Nash

Faculty Articles

Recent years have seen a substantial increase of cases in which states seek, and indeed obtain, nationwide injunctions against the federal government. These cases implicate two complicated questions: first, when a state has standing to sue the federal government, and second, when a nationwide injunction is a proper form of relief. For their part, scholars have mostly addressed these questions separately. In this Essay, I analyze the two questions together. Along the way, I identify drawbacks and benefits of nationwide injunctions, as well as settings where nationwide injunctions may be desirable and undesirable. I present arguments that, although I do …

Studying The "New" Civil Judges, Anna Carpenter, Jessica Steinberg, Colleen Shanahan, Alyx Mark

Faculty Articles

We know very little about the people and institutions that make up the bulk of the United States civil justice system: state judges and state courts. Our understanding of civil justice is based primarily on federal litigation and the decisions of appellate judges. Staggeringly little legal scholarship focuses on state courts and judges. We simply do not know what most judges are doing in their day-to-day courtroom roles or in their roles as institutional actors and managers of civil justice infrastructure. We know little about the factors that shape and influence judicial practices, let alone the consequences of those practices …