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2011

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Articles 241 - 270 of 273

Full-Text Articles in Courts

The French Jury At A Crossroads, Valerie P. Hans, Claire M. Germain Jan 2011

The French Jury At A Crossroads, Valerie P. Hans, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Beyond Principal-Agent Theories: Law And The Judicial Hierarchy, Pauline Kim Jan 2011

Beyond Principal-Agent Theories: Law And The Judicial Hierarchy, Pauline Kim

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Essay critically examines the commonplace use by judicial politics scholars of principal-agent models to describe the federal judicial hierarchy. It argues that agency models are useful in highlighting certain aspects of the interaction between upper and lower courts - specifically, the existence of value conflicts and informational asymmetries - but that in other ways traditional principal-agent models fit poorly the relationship between the lower federal courts and the Supreme Court. As a consequence, these models tend to obscure important normative questions about the relationship between lower and upper courts, as well as to distort the role that law plays …

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Congress, The Supreme Court, And Judicial Review: Testing A Constitutional Separation Of Powers Model, Stefanie A. Lindquist, Jeffrey A. Segal, Chad Westerland Jan 2011

Congress, The Supreme Court, And Judicial Review: Testing A Constitutional Separation Of Powers Model, Stefanie A. Lindquist, Jeffrey A. Segal, Chad Westerland

Scholarship@WashULaw

Recent scholarship suggests that the U.S. Supreme Court might be constrained by Congress in constitutional cases. We suggest two potential paths to Congressional influence on the Court's constitutional decisions: a rational-anticipation model, in which the Court moves away from its preferences in order to avoid being overruled, and an institutional-maintenance model, in which the Court protects itself against Congressional attacks to its institutional prerogatives by scaling back its striking of laws when the distance between the Court and Congress increases. We test these models by using Common Space scores and the original roll-call votes to estimate support in the current …

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Administrative Change, Randy J. Kozel, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski Jan 2011

Administrative Change, Randy J. Kozel, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Journal Articles

Determining the standard of review for administrative actions has commanded judicial and scholarly interest like few other topics. Notwithstanding the extensive debates, far less consideration has been given to the unique features of agencies’ deviations from their own precedents. In this article we examine this puzzle of administrative change. By change, we mean a reversal of the agency’s former views about the best way to implement and interpret its regulatory mandate. We trace the lineage of administrative change at the Supreme Court and analyze features that distinguish agency reversals from other administrative actions. In particular, we contend that because administrative …

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Reassessing The Avoidance Canon In Erie Cases, Bernadette Bollas Genetin Jan 2011

Reassessing The Avoidance Canon In Erie Cases, Bernadette Bollas Genetin

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This Article advocates that the Supreme Court recalibrate the avoidance canon used in Erie cases in which Federal Rules are in potential conflict with state law. The Article examines the Court’s historical use of avoidance in Erie cases, observing that contemporary jurists inappropriately conflate the purposes of pre- and post-Hanna avoidance when they conclude that avoidance in both periods protected state interests. Avoidance in the post-Hanna period has been premised on protecting important state interests and regulatory policies, but pre-Hanna avoidance attempted, with mixed success, to protect the Federal Rules. The Article also reveals that the Court’s post-Hanna federalism focus …

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Creating Bright-Line Rules For Tribal Court Jurisdiction Over Non-Indians: The Case Of Trespass To Real Property, Grant Christensen Jan 2011

Creating Bright-Line Rules For Tribal Court Jurisdiction Over Non-Indians: The Case Of Trespass To Real Property, Grant Christensen

American Indian Law Review

The 2010 passage of the Tribal Law and Order Act will invest significantly more resources in tribal courts. As tribal courts expand, conflicts between sovereignties - tribal, state, and federal - are likely to occur with much greater frequency. Tribal court civil jurisdiction over non-Indians will be among the issues most frequently appealed to federal courts. I offer this piece to propose a new and novel solution - that tribal courts, through a piecemeal process, be extended absolute civil jurisdiction over non-Indians for those civil offenses over which tribes have the greatest interest. This article takes one of the most …

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This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land? Why The Cobell Settlement Will Not Resolve Indian Land Fractionation, Jered T. Davidson Jan 2011

This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land? Why The Cobell Settlement Will Not Resolve Indian Land Fractionation, Jered T. Davidson

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

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Defending The "Indefensible": Replacing Ethnocentrism With A Native American Cultural Defense, Megan H. Dearth Jan 2011

Defending The "Indefensible": Replacing Ethnocentrism With A Native American Cultural Defense, Megan H. Dearth

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

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Revitalizing Motive And Opportunity Pleading After Tellabs, Marvin Lowenthal Jan 2011

Revitalizing Motive And Opportunity Pleading After Tellabs, Marvin Lowenthal

Michigan Law Review

Congress passed the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 ("PSLRA") to prevent frivolous lawsuits that had been draining resources from businesses. This legislation included provisions for heightening the pleading requirements for the scienter, or state of mind, requirement for securities law violations. Many circuit courts debated whether the motive and opportunity test for scienter, applied initially by the Second and Third Circuits, survived the passage of the PSLRA. This Note argues that while the motive and opportunity test has been discounted by numerous circuits, it not only remains viable for pleading scienter under the PSLRA, but it accomplishes the …

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Respondent Superior As An Affirmative Defense: How Employers Immunize Themselves From Direct Negligence Claims, J. J. Burns Jan 2011

Respondent Superior As An Affirmative Defense: How Employers Immunize Themselves From Direct Negligence Claims, J. J. Burns

Michigan Law Review

Most courts hold that where a defendant employer admits that it is vicariously liable for its employee's negligence, a plaintiff's additional claims of negligent entrustment, hiring, retention, supervision, and training must be dismissed. Generally, courts apply this rule based on the logic that allowing a plaintiff's additional claims adds no potential liability beyond that which has already been admitted. Furthermore, since the additional claims merely allege a redundant theory of recovery once a respondeat superior admission has been made, the prejudicial evidence of an employee's prior bad acts which often accompanies direct negligence claims against employers can be excluded without …

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Super Deference, The Science Obsession, And Judicial Review As Translation Of Agency Science, Emily Hammond Meazell Jan 2011

Super Deference, The Science Obsession, And Judicial Review As Translation Of Agency Science, Emily Hammond Meazell

Michigan Law Review

This Article explores what happens to longstanding remedies for past racial discrimination as conditions change. It shows that Congress and the Supreme Court have responded quite differently to changed conditions when they evaluate such remedies. Congress has generally opted to stay the course, while the Court has been more inclined to view change as cause to terminate a remedy. The Article argues that these very different responses share a defining flaw, namely, they treat existing remedies as fixed until they are terminated. As a result, remedies are either scrapped prematurely or left stagnant despite dramatically changed conditions. The Article seeks …

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Falling Through The Crack: How Courts Have Struggled To Apply The Crack Amendment To Nominal Career And Plea Bargain Defendants, Maxwell Arlie Halpern Kosman Jan 2011

Falling Through The Crack: How Courts Have Struggled To Apply The Crack Amendment To Nominal Career And Plea Bargain Defendants, Maxwell Arlie Halpern Kosman

Michigan Law Review

Under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, a defendant is normally obligated to attend all of the proceedings against her. However Rule 43(b)(2) carves out an exception for organizational defendants, stating that they "need not be present" if represented by an attorney. But on its face, the language of 43(b)(2) is ambiguous: is it the defendant or the judge who has the discretion to decide whether the defendant appears? That is, may a judge compel the presence of an organizational defendant? This Note addresses the ambiguity in the context of the plea colloquy, considering the text of several of the …

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Stipulating The Law, Gary Lawson Jan 2011

Stipulating The Law, Gary Lawson

Michigan Law Review

In Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the Supreme Court decided important questions of structural constitutionalism on the assumption, shared by all of the parties, that members of the Securities and Exchange Commission are not removable at will by the president. Four Justices strongly challenged the majority's willingness to accept what amounts to a stipulation by the parties to a controlling issue of law. As a general matter the American legal system does not allow parties to stipulate to legal conclusions, though it welcomes and encourages stipulations to matters of fact. I argue that one ought to …

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Williams V. Lee And The Debate Over Indian Equality, Bethany R. Berger Jan 2011

Williams V. Lee And The Debate Over Indian Equality, Bethany R. Berger

Michigan Law Review

Williams v. Lee (1959) created a bridge between century-old affirmations of the immunity of Indian territories from state jurisdiction and the tribal self-determination policy of the twentieth century. It has been called the first case in the modern era of federal Indian law. Although no one has written a history of the case, it is generally assumed to be the product of a timeless and unquestioning struggle of Indian peoples for sovereignty. This Article, based on interviews with the still-living participants in the case and on examination of the congressional records, Navajo council minutes, and Supreme Court transcripts, records, and …

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Constitutional Precedents In Japan: A Comment On The Role Of Precedent, Shigenori Matsui Jan 2011

Constitutional Precedents In Japan: A Comment On The Role Of Precedent, Shigenori Matsui

All Faculty Publications

Japan is a civil law country, and the precedent of the Supreme Court is not binding on either the Supreme Court itself or lower courts. Judges are supposed to return to the text of the statute for each legal dispute and apply the rules to specific cases. Judicial decisions are not law to be applied by the courts. However, since judges have followed the precedent of the Supreme Court most of the time, these precedents have a de facto binding power even though they are not legally binding. In this Comment, the author focuses on constitutional law precedents to illustrate …

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Sentencing Circles, Clashing Worldviews, And The Case Of Christopher Pauchay, Toby S. Goldbach Jan 2011

Sentencing Circles, Clashing Worldviews, And The Case Of Christopher Pauchay, Toby S. Goldbach

All Faculty Publications

The case of Christopher Pauchay demonstrates some of the differences between predominant Euro-Canadian and First Nations approaches to dispute resolution. The principles of sentencing circles sometimes overlap with the principles of restorative justice and suggest their potential incorporation into the criminal justice system. The use of alternative processes that share some common values is not enough to overcome to chasm between Euro-Western and Aboriginal justice. Where underlying worldviews diff er, those who can choose between competing values amidst limited possibilities will likely choose the values that refl ect the conventional system. A comparison of Euro-Western and Aboriginal approaches to crime …

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Clear Rules - Not Necessarily Simple Or Accessible Ones, Lumen N. Mulligan Jan 2011

Clear Rules - Not Necessarily Simple Or Accessible Ones, Lumen N. Mulligan

Faculty Works

In The Complexity of Jurisdictional Clarity, 97 VA. L. REV. 1 (2011), Professor Dodson argues that the traditional call for clear and simple rules über alles in subject matter jurisdiction is misplaced. In this response essay, I begin by arguing that Dodson, while offering many valuable insights, does not adequately distinguish between the separate notions of simplicity, clarity, and accessibility. Second, I note that crafting a clarity enhancing rule, even if complex and inaccessible, may be a more promising endeavor than the search for a regime that is at once clear, simple and accessible. In the third section, I contend …

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Defining Civil Disputes: Lessons From Two Jurisdictions, Camille Cameron, Elizabeth Thornburg Jan 2011

Defining Civil Disputes: Lessons From Two Jurisdictions, Camille Cameron, Elizabeth Thornburg

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Court systems have adopted a variety of mechanisms to narrow the issues in dispute and expedite litigation. This article analyses the largely unsuccessful attempts in two jurisdictions - the United States and Australia - to achieve early and efficient issue identification in civil disputes. Procedures that rely on pleadings to provide focus have failed for centuries, from the common (English) origins of these two systems to their divergent modern paths. Case management practices that are developing in the United States and Australia offer greater promise in the continuing quest for early, efficient dispute definition. Based on a historical and contemporary …

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The American "Rule": Assuring The Lion His Share, James Maxeiner Jan 2011

The American "Rule": Assuring The Lion His Share, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

Court costs in American civil procedure are allocated to the loser (“loser pays”) as elsewhere in the world. When American civil procedure took shape in the 1840s, American lawyers thought that losing parties ought to indemnify winning parties against all expenses of lawsuits. Yet today, attorneys’ fees – the lion’s share of expenses in the words of the General Report – are not allocated this way. By practice – and not by legal rule – attorneys’ fees fall on the parties that incur them. Those fees are not set by statute or court decision, but by agreement between parties and …

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Customary International Law As U.S. Law: A Critique Of The Revisionist And Intermediate Positions And A Defense Of The Modern Position, Carlos Manuel Vázquez Jan 2011

Customary International Law As U.S. Law: A Critique Of The Revisionist And Intermediate Positions And A Defense Of The Modern Position, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In a recent referendum, the citizens of Oklahoma overwhelmingly approved a State constitutional amendment providing that the courts of the State "shall not consider international law or Sharia law" in rendering their decisions. The amendment's exclusion of Sharia law has garnered most of the media attention, but more consequential by far is the measure's directive to the State courts to disregard international law. Similar measures have been proposed in other States, some of them merely barring consideration of Sharia law or foreign law, but others barring consideration of international law as well. These measures are clearly unconstitutional insofar as they …

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The Illusory Right To Counsel, Eve Brensike Primus Jan 2011

The Illusory Right To Counsel, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Imagine a woman wrongly accused of murdering her fiance. She is arrested and charged with first-degree murder. If convicted, she faces a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Her family scrapes together enough money to hire two attorneys to represent her at trial. There is no physical evidence connecting her to the murder, but the prosecution builds its case on circumstantial inferences. Her trial attorneys admit that they were so cocky and confident that she would be acquitted that they did not bother to investigate her case or file a single pre-trial motion. Rather, they waived the …

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No Harm, No Foul? Why Harmless Error Analysis Should Not Be Used To Review Wrongful Denials Of Counsel To Parents In Child Welfare Cases, Vivek Sankaran Jan 2011

No Harm, No Foul? Why Harmless Error Analysis Should Not Be Used To Review Wrongful Denials Of Counsel To Parents In Child Welfare Cases, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

The application of a harmless error standard by appellate courts reviewing erroneous denials of counsel in child protective cases undermines a critical procedural right that safeguards the interests of parents and children. Case law reveals that trial courts, on numerous occasions, improperly reject valid requests for counsel, forcing parents to navigate the child welfare system without an advocate. Appellate courts excuse these violations by speculating that the denials caused no significant harm to the parents, which is a conclusion that a court can never reach with any certainty. The only appropriate remedy for this significant problem is a bright-line rule …

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Hanging On By A Thread: The Exclusionary Rule (Or What's Left Of It) Lives For Another Day, David A. Moran Jan 2011

Hanging On By A Thread: The Exclusionary Rule (Or What's Left Of It) Lives For Another Day, David A. Moran

Articles

Back when there was a Soviet Union, foreign intelligence officers would anxiously await the May Day parade in Moscow to see who would be standing next to the chairman of the Communist Party and who would be missing from the reviewing platform altogether. Since the Soviet government and the statecontrolled press published very little about what was really going on in the halls of state power, this was considered the most reliable way to determine who was in or out of favor and, by extension, how the domestic and foreign policies of the world's second most powerful country were likely …

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The Use Of The Intent Doctrine To Expand The Rights Of Intended Homosexual Male Parents In Surrogacy Custody Disputes, Perri Koll Jan 2011

The Use Of The Intent Doctrine To Expand The Rights Of Intended Homosexual Male Parents In Surrogacy Custody Disputes, Perri Koll

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note advocates for the expansion of parental rights for homosexual male couples through surrogacy by promoting the intent doctrine and amending existing laws. It highlights the inconsistency in legal approaches across states and suggests that recognizing intended parenthood, regardless of sexual orientation, is essential for equality. The proposed solutions include adopting the intent doctrine nationwide and revising the Uniform Parentage Act to include same-sex couples.

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Systematic Negligence In Jury Operations: Why The Definition Of Systematic Exclusion In Fair Cross Section Claims Must Be Expanded, Paula Hannaford-Agor Jan 2011

Systematic Negligence In Jury Operations: Why The Definition Of Systematic Exclusion In Fair Cross Section Claims Must Be Expanded, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

This Article argues that in the context of fair cross section jurisprudence, courts' ability to control, or at least greatly mitigate, the extent of minority underrepresentation due to nonsystematic factors is greatly underestimated. Over the past forty years, courts have implemented a number of effective practices to ensure an inclusive and representative master jury list and to minimize undeliverable, nonresponse and failure-to-appear, and excusal rates. All of these techniques demonstrably improve the demographic representation of the jury pool. The vast majority of courts employ these techniques on a routine basis. By perpetuating the misconception that courts have no responsibility to …

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Skilling: More Blind Monks Examining The Elephant, Julie R. O'Sullivan Jan 2011

Skilling: More Blind Monks Examining The Elephant, Julie R. O'Sullivan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Most academics and practitioners with whom the author has discussed the result in Skilling v. United States believe that it is a sensible decision. That is, the Supreme Court did the best it could to limit the reach of 18 U.S.C. § 1346, which all nine justices apparently believed—correctly—was, on its face, unconstitutionally vague. Congress responded quickly and with little consideration with the supremely under-defined § 1346. In the over twenty years since the statute's enactment, the Courts of Appeals have been unable to come up with any unified limiting principles to contain its reach. The Skilling Court, evidently reluctant …

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Epic Considerations: The Speech That The Supreme Court Would Not Hear In Snyder V. Phelps, Jeffrey Shulman Jan 2011

Epic Considerations: The Speech That The Supreme Court Would Not Hear In Snyder V. Phelps, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In declining to consider the “epic” posted by the Westboro Baptist Church on its web site, the Supreme Court took most (but not quite all) of the good constitutional stuff out of Snyder v. Phelps.  The Court may have sought to make this an easy case by considering only the contents of the church’s picketing placards.  For the Court, the placards highlighted such issues of public import as “the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, the fate of our nation, homosexuality in the military, and scandals involving the Catholic clergy.”  On grounds that we …

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H. L. A. Hart’S Moderate Indeterminacy Thesis Reconsidered: In Between Scylla And Charybdis?, Imer Flores Jan 2011

H. L. A. Hart’S Moderate Indeterminacy Thesis Reconsidered: In Between Scylla And Charybdis?, Imer Flores

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this article, in the context of the fiftieth anniversary of H. L. A. Hart’s The Concept of Law, The author reconsiders the moderate indeterminacy of law thesis, which derives from the open texture of language. For that purpose, the author intends: first, to analyze Hart’s moderate indeterminacy thesis, i.e. determinacy in “easy cases” and indeterminacy in “hard cases,” which resembles Aristotle’s “doctrine of the mean”; second, to criticize his thesis as failing to embody the virtues of a center in between the vices of the extremes, by insisting that the exercise of discretion required constitutes an “interstitial” legislation; …

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Class Actions At The Crossroads: An Answer To Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Suzette M. Malveaux Jan 2011

Class Actions At The Crossroads: An Answer To Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

The Supreme Court has recently decided to hear argument in the largest private-employer civil rights case in American history, Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. This historic case involves up to 1.5 million women suing Wal-Mart, one of the largest companies in the world, for alleged gender discrimination in pay and promotions, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like many employees who challenge companywide employment discrimination, the plaintiffs in Dukes brought their case as a class action pursuant to Rule 23(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and sought injunctive and declaratory relief, …

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Overcoming Babel’S Curse: Adapting The Doctrine Of Foreign Equivalents, Jonathan Skinner Jan 2011

Overcoming Babel’S Curse: Adapting The Doctrine Of Foreign Equivalents, Jonathan Skinner

Publications

No abstract provided.

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