Courts Commons^™

Same-Sex Marriage, Federalism, And Judicial Supremacy, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

Justice Kennedy's opinion in United States v. Windsor is characterized by a number of strained and wavering constitutional claims. Prominent among these is the argument that the principle of federalism calls into question the congressional decision to adopt the traditional definition of marriage, which the state of New York rejected. An examination of earlier federalism cases demonstrates that Kennedy's appreciation for federalism is in fact severely limited and suggests and that his lax use of legal authority is directly if perversely related to this limited appreciation.

Federalism cases prior to Windsor show that Justice Kennedy supports state authority only when …

U.S. Judicial Independence: Victim In The “War On Terror” , Wayne Mccormack

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Citizens United, States Divided: An Empirical Analysis Of Independent Political Spending, Douglas M. Spencer, Abby Wood

Indiana Law Journal

What effect has Citizens United v. FEC had on independent spending in American politics? Previous attempts to answer this question have focused solely on federal elections, where there is no baseline for comparing changes in spending behavior. We overcome this limitation by examining the effects of Citizens United as a natural experiment on the states. Before Citizens United, about half of the states banned corporate independent expenditures and thus were “treated” by the Supreme Court’s decision, which invalidated these state laws. We rely on recently released state-level data to compare spending in “treated” states to spending in the “control” states, …

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 …

The Judiciary In Virginia: Changes And Challenges In Virginia: One Trial Judge's Perspective, Thoma D. Horne Retired Judge

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

With the convening of the 2014 Virginia General Assembly, members of the Senate and House received the anticipated 2013 Judicial Workload Assessment Report-a weighted case load study produced by the National Center for State Courts and commissioned by the legislature during its 2012 session. The purpose of the study was to help guide both the future selection of judges and the allocation of the political boundaries to be served by those judges. The results of the weighted caseload study as contained in the 2013 Report would validate many of those concerns expressed earlier by the 2011 Judicial Boundary Realignment Committee …

Identifying Congressional Overrides Should Not Be This Hard, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This paper is an invited response to Professor William N. Eskridge, Jr., and Mr. Matthew R. Christiansen’s recently-published study (92 Texas L. Rev. 1317 (2014)) identifying and analyzing Congressional overrides of Supreme Court statutory interpretation decisions since 1967. Christiansen and Eskridge provide a new taxonomy for overrides that distinguishes between "restorative" overrides, which denounce a judicial interpretation as misrepresenting prior Congressional intent, and overrides that simply update or clarify policy. Although political science and legal scholarship has focused on the interbranch struggle implicit in restorative overrides, Christiansen and Eskridge classify only about 20% of the overrides in their total dataset …

Informed Consent In Mediation: Promoting Pro Se Parties' Informed Settlement Choice While Honoring The Mediator's Ethical Duties, Michael T. Colatrella Jr.

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

In explaining the proper role of informed consent in mediation, this Article will proceed as follows: Part II will examine mediation's core ethical values of self-determination, impartiality and promoting a quality process. Part III will explore the meaning and origins of the informed consent doctrine; and, in Part IV, analyze the application of informed consent policies and principles to mediation in the light of mediation's core ethical values. Part V will explore ways that mediators can promote informed outcome consent within the existing ethical framework and recommend legislative reform that will help clarify the mediator's proper role of promoting fair …

The Clerks Of The Four Horsemen (Part I), Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

The names of Holmes clerks such as Tommy Corcoran and Francis Biddle, of Brandeis clerks such as Dean Acheson and Henry Friendly, and of Stone clerks such as Harold Leventhal and Herbert Wechsler ring down the pages of history. But how much do we really know about Carlyle Baer, Tench Marye, or Milton Musser? This article follows the interesting and often surprising lives and careers of the men who clerked for the Four Horsemen - Justices Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Butler. These biographical sketches confound easy stereotypes, and prove the adage that law, like politics, can make for strange …

The Many Lanes Out Of Court: Against Privatization Of Employment Discrimination Disputes, Theresa M. Beiner

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Problem-Solving Courts And Pragmatism, Richard C. Boldt

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Really A Rubber Stamp? Ex Parte Proceedings And The Fisc Win Rate, Conor Clarke

Scholarship@WashULaw

One of the most common criticisms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is that the court has approved more than 99% of the government’s 33,000 ex parte surveillance requests, a fact cited as extraordinary evidence that the court is nothing more than a rubber stamp. This Essay disputes that popular criticism in two ways. First, I argue that there are good reasons to expect ex parte processes to produce lopsided results, since the government selects applications based in part on the level of oversight the court applies – just as, in most other legal contexts, ‘the decision to litigate’ depends …

Revisiting The Influence Of Law Clerks On The U.S. Supreme Court's Agenda-Setting Process, Christina L. Boyd, Ryan C. Black, Amanda C. Bryan

Scholarship@WashULaw

Do law clerks influence U.S. Supreme Court Justices’ decisions in the Court’s agenda-setting stage? For those Justices responding to their own law clerks’ cert recommendations, we expect a high degree of agreement between Justice and clerk. For non-employing Justices, however, we anticipate that the likelihood of agreement between clerk and Justice will vary greatly based on the interplay among the ideological compatibility between a Justice and the clerk, the underlying certworthiness of the petition for review, and the clerk’s final recommendation. Relying on a newly collected dataset of petitions making the Court’s discuss list over the 1986 through 1993 Terms, …

Prosecutor V. Taylor, Charles Chernor Jalloh, David P. Stewart

Articles

No abstract provided.

Cyborgs In The Courtroom: The Use Of Google Glass Recordings In Litigation, Kristin Bergman

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

The future is now. Wearable computers such as Google Glass (Glass) have begun entering society—we see people wearing these devices on the streets, in classrooms, at parties, and elsewhere. Though most of these devices are not yet available to the public at large, there has been much hype over the impact Glass will have on our interactions, privacy, safety, and more. Although this Article will briefly address such controversial aspects, it will focus more narrowly on the potential utility of Glass in litigation.

The War On Drugs Is Over (If You Want It): State Drug Courts As An Alternative To Criminal Courts For Low-Level Nonviolent Drug Offenders, Blake Courlang

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Part I of this Note describes the social, political, and legal reasons behind the rise of mandatory minimum sentencing in the 1980s and their path towards becoming advisory in the 2000s, as held by the Supreme Court in United States v. Booker. Part II provides a description of drug courts and argues for the use of drug courts as an alternative to the criminal sanctions for all nonviolent, low-level drug offenders. As part of this discussion, this Note examines the use of mandatory minimum sentencing post-Booker and the procedural method of divesting federal jurisdiction of nonviolent, low-level drug offenses …

The Return Of Constitutional Federalism, Logan E. Sawyer Iii

Scholarly Works

This article comments on National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833 (1976) and the role played by Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. It argues that the decision did not constitute any “return” to “constitutional federalism” and that, despite claims to the contrary, its inspiration came from the political goals of the Court’s conservative Justices. More specifically it argues that Justice Powell’s role was not influenced simply by contemporary critiques that undermined the “political safeguards of federalism” theory but, rather, that Justice Powell’s political views likely shaped both his understanding of the “political safeguards” thesis and his rejection of …

Neuroscientists In Court, Owen D. Jones, Anthony D. Wagner, David L. Faigman, Marcus E. Raichle

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Neuroscientific evidence is increasingly being offered in court cases. Consequently, the legal system needs neuroscientists to act as expert witnesses who can explain the limitations and interpretations of neuroscientific findings so that judges and jurors can make informed and appropriate inferences. The growing role of neuroscientists in court means that neuroscientists should be aware of important differences between the scientific and legal fields, and, especially, how scientific facts can be easily misunderstood by non-scientists,including judges and jurors.

This article describes similarities, as well as key differences, of legal and scientific cultures. And it explains six key principles about neuroscience that …

Development And Initial Findings Of An Implementation Process Measure For Child Welfare System Change, Mary I. Armstrong, Julie S. Mccrae, Michelle Graef, Tammy Richards, David Lambert, Charlotte Lyn Bright, Cathy Sowell

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

This article describes a new measure designed to examine the process of implementation of child welfare systems change. The measure was developed to document the status of the interventions and strategies that are being implemented and the drivers that are being installed to achieve sustainable changes in systems. The measure was used in a Children’s Bureau-supported national effort to assess the ongoing implementation of 24 systems-change projects in child welfare jurisdictions across the country. The article describes the process for measure development, method of administration and data collection, and quantitative and qualitative findings.

Trans-Substantivity Beyond Procedure, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Administrative State's Passive Virtues, Sharon B. Jacobs

Publications

Fifty years ago, Alexander Bickel famousy suggested that courts use tools like standing, ripeness, and the political question doctrine to avoid reaching the merits of difficult cases. Yet despite the increasingly central role of administrative agencies in government, there have been no efforts to date to apply Bickel's insights to the bureaucracy. This Article remedies that deficit. The Article provides a three-part taxonomy of administrative restraint and offers case studies from federal agencies such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. It argues that agencies sometimes use restraint strategically for reasons …

Saving The Federal Circuit, Paul Gugliuzza

Faculty Scholarship

In a recent, attention-grabbing speech, the Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit, Diane Wood, argued that Congress should abolish the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases. Exclusive jurisdiction, she said, provides too much legal uniformity, which harms the patent system. In this response to Judge Wood’s thoughtful speech, I seek to highlight two important premises underlying her argument, neither of which is indisputably true.

The first premise is that the Federal Circuit actually provides legal uniformity. Judge Wood suggests that, due to the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction, patent doctrine is insufficiently “percolated,” meaning that it lacks mechanisms through which …

Filling The District Of Arizona Vacancies, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

The judicial vacancy crisis must end. The federal bench has experienced nearly a ten percent vacancy rate over an unprecedented four and a half-year period. The substantial number and protracted character of those openings have imposed numerous detrimental effects. These phenomena have delayed the scheduling of jury trials in many civil cases and even propelled termination of some litigation because the Speedy Trial Act requires that criminal matters have precedence. Indeed, the emergency designation has meant that some criminal proceedings were delayed in the Arizona District. The vacancy crisis places additional pressure on sitting judges, particularly the eight senior judges …

Bridging The Justice Gap: Exploring Approaches For Improving Indigent Access To Civil Counsel, Kelsey Atkinson

Pomona Senior Theses

The United States is among one of the only democratic industrialized nations in the world that does not provide guaranteed access to civil representation in cases involving basic human need. This leaves indigent litigants who are at risk of losing their homes or their children left to seek counsel through insufficient pro-bono programs or limited scope legal self-help centers. This thesis provides a history of the struggle for the right to civil counsel, known as Civil Gideon, and explores a variety of proposed solutions to bridge the justice gap for indigent litigants. Despite considerable support for Civil Gideon among scholars …

Impeachment By Unreliable Conviction, Anna Roberts

Faculty Articles

This article offers a new critique of Federal Rule of Evidence 609, which permits impeachment of criminal defendants by means of their prior criminal convictions. The article draws on three aspects of the contemporary criminal justice system to show that in admitting convictions for impeachment courts are wrongly assuming that they are necessarily reliable indicators of relative culpability. First, courts assume that convictions are the product of a fair fight, despite the adversarial collapse revealed by the nature of plea-bargaining, the crisis in public defense, and the data on wrongful convictions; second, courts assume that convictions demonstrate relative culpability, despite …

The Siren Is Calling: Economic And Ideological Trends Toward Privatization Of Public Police Forces, Karena Rahall

Faculty Articles

The landmark Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United has opened the floodgates to allow unlimited corporate campaign donations, and Supreme Court doctrine is shifting back to the Lochner-era's focus on economic rights. At the same time, there are efforts underway across the United States to privatize public services in order to alleviate what proponents claim is a shortfall in revenue due to the recession. Within those privatization efforts, public policing has become a new front, with outsourcing and wholesale privatization of the police underway. This article adds to the existing scholarship a political analysis of privatization efforts, including how lobbying …

Fictions Of Omniscience, Karen Petroski

Kentucky Law Journal

Recent studies of the legislative process have questioned the rationales for many principles of statutory interpretation. One of those traditional rationales is the so-called fiction of legislative omniscience, thought to underlie many judicial approaches to statutory decisions. This Article presents the first comprehensive analysis of judicial assertions about legislative awareness and proposes a different way of understanding them. The proposed perspective compares fictions of legislative omniscience with similar but more widely accepted imputations of knowledge in other areas of law; it also draws on recent findings from other disciplines on the use and comprehension of statements about fictional situations. The …

To The Victor Goes The Toil -- Remedies For Regulated Parties In Separation-Of-Powers Litigation, Kent H. Barnett

Scholarly Works

The U.S. Constitution imposes three key limits on the design of federal agencies. It constrains how agency officers are appointed, the extent of their independence from the President, and the range of issues that they can decide. Scholars have trumpeted the importance of these safeguards with soaring rhetoric. And the Supreme Court has permitted regulated parties to vindicate these safeguards through implied private rights of action under the Constitution. Regulated parties, for their part, have been successfully challenging agency structure with increased frequency. At the same time, regulated parties, courts, and scholars have largely ignored the practical question of “structural …

Disparity In Judicial Misconduct Cases: Color-Blind Diversity?, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

This article presents and analyzes preliminary data on racial and gender disparities in state judicial disciplinary actions. Studies of demographic disparities in the context of judicial discipline do not exist. This paper presents a first past and preliminary look at the data collected on the issue and assembled into a database. The article is also motivated by the resistance encountered to inquiries into the demographic profile of the state bench and its judges. As such, it also tells the story of the journey undertaken to secure this information and critiques what the author terms a practice of colorblind diversity. Initially …

The Story Of Prudential Standing, S. Todd Brown

Journal Articles

Prudential standing, it seems, is the latest target in the Roberts Court’s effort to “bring some discipline” to jurisdictional and pseudo-jurisdictional concepts. During the Court’s last two terms, it issued a unanimous opinion that excised the zone of interests test from prudential standing doctrine (Lexmark), two unanimous opinions that questioned federal courts’ prudential discretion to decline jurisdiction (Lexmark and Driehaus), and a bitterly divided opinion in which the classification of a standing principle as prudential or constitutional was decisive (Windsor). Moreover, in Lexmark, the Court suggested that the third party standing principle may not be properly classified as prudential standing …

Religious Law (Especially Islamic Law) In American Courts, Eugene Volokh

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.