Courts Commons^™

Resurrecting Trial By Statistics, Jay Tidmarsh

Journal Articles

“Trial by statistics” was a means by which a court could resolve a large number of aggregated claims: a court could try a random sample of claim, and extrapolate the average result to the remainder. In Wal-Mart, Inc. v. Dukes, the Supreme Court seemingly ended the practice at the federal level, thus removing from judges a tool that made mass aggregation more feasible. After examining the benefits and drawbacks of trial by statistics, this Article suggests an alternative that harnesses many of the positive features of the technique while avoiding its major difficulties. The technique is the “presumptive judgment”: a …

Foreign And Religious Family Law: Comity, Contract, And The Constitution, Ann Laquer Estin

Pepperdine Law Review

The article focuses on role of the U.S. courts in confronting religious laws in dispute resolution of various cases of domestic relations, contracts, and torts. Topics discussed include role of secular courts in maintaining constitutional balance between the free exercise and establishment clauses, constitutional challenges faced by religious adherents, and importance of legal pluralism in the U.S.

Rethinking The “Religious-Question” Doctrine, Christopher C. Lund

Pepperdine Law Review

The “religious question” doctrine is a well-known and commonly accepted notion about the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses. The general idea is that, in our system of separated church and state, courts do not decide religious questions. And from this premise, many things flow — including the idea that courts must dismiss otherwise justiciable controversies when they would require courts to resolve religious questions. Yet a vexing thought arises. The religious-question doctrine traditionally comes out of a notion that secular courts cannot resolve metaphysical or theological issues. But when one looks at the cases that courts have been dismissing pursuant to …

Introduction: Religious Law In The 21st Century, Michael A. Helfand

Pepperdine Law Review

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various articles present in symposium including role of the U.S. courts in interpreting religious laws, practice of religious laws in secular states, and political, and legal structures of Jewish and Islamic identities.

Supremes, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Military Tribunals And Due Process In Post-Revolutionary Egypt, Bianca C. Isaias

The International Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Specialized Standards Of Review, Jonas Anderson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The applicable standard of review on appeal is governed by a simple rule: appellate courts review questions of law de novo, questions of fact for “clear error,” and questions of discretion for “abuse of discretion.” Despite the apparent simplicity of the rule, its application has been uneven, to state it mildly. Scholars have written extensively about the application of the rule, but have yet to consider whether the traditional rule of “deference” should be altered when the appellate court is a specialized court.

Despite the dearth of legal scholarship on specialized deference, the Supreme Court is keenly interested in the …

(Re-)Grasping The Opportunity Interest: Lehr V. Robertson And The Terminated Parent, Lashanda Taylor Adams

Journal Articles

In 1997, an Ohio court terminated Peggy Fugate’s parental rights to her sixyear-old daughter, Selina. At the time, Ms. Fugate, an incarcerated drug abuser, did not fight the order, believing her daughter would be adopted into a clean, stable home.1 However, Selina was never adopted. For the next seven years, Selina had trouble with the police and ran away from her foster home numerous times. While Selina’s life was going downhill in many respects, her mother was rehabilitating. She entered recovery, married, obtained full-time employment and was living in stable housing with enough room for her daughter. Recognizing the strides …

Court Competition For Patent Cases, Jonas Anderson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The traditional academic explanation for forum shopping is simple: litigants prefer to file cases in courts that offer some substantial advantage — either legal or procedural — over all other courts. But the traditional explanation fails to account for competition for litigants among courts. This Article suggests that forum shopping in patent law is driven in part by the creation of procedural and administrative distinctions among courts that are designed to attract, or in some cases to repel, patent litigants.

This Article makes two primary contributions to the literature, one theoretical and one normative. First, it theorizes that judicial competition …

Choosing A Court To Review The Executive, Joseph Mead, Nicholas Fromherz

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

For more than one hundred years, Congress has experimented with review of agency action by single-judge district courts, multiple-judge district courts, and direct review by circuit courts. This tinkering has not given way to a stable design. Rather than settling on a uniform scheme—or at least a scheme with a discernible organizing principle— Congress has left litigants with a jurisdictional maze that varies unpredictably across and within statutes and agencies.

In this Article, we offer a fresh look at the theoretical and empirical factors that ought to inform the allocation of the judicial power between district and circuit courts in …

Filling The Federal Appellate Court Vacancies, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Multiple observers have criticized President Barack Obama’s discharge of his Article II constitutional responsibility to nominate and confirm federal judges. Senators have blamed the administration for slowly making nominations, liberals have contended that the executive appointed myriad candidates who are not sufficiently centrist, and conservatives have alleged that President Obama proffered many nominees who could become liberal judicial activists. Despite the sharp criticisms, the President has actually realized much success when nominating and confirming well qualified moderate jurists. President Obama has named more judges than Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton had at this juncture in their tenure, while …

Choosing A Court To Review The Executive, Joseph Mead, Nicholas Fromherz

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

For more than one hundred years, Congress has experimented with review of agency action by single-judge district courts, multiple-judge district courts, and direct review by circuit courts. This tinkering has not given way to a stable design. Rather than settling on a uniform scheme—or at least a scheme with a discernible organizing principle—Congress has left litigants with a jurisdictional maze that varies unpredictably across and within statutes and agencies.In this Article, we offer a fresh look at the theoretical and empirical factors that ought to inform the allocation of the judicial power between district and circuit courts in suits challenging …

Inferiority Complex: Should State Courts Follow Lower Federal Court Precedent On The Meaning Of Federal Law?, Amanda Frost

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The conventional wisdom is that state courts need not follow lower federal court precedent when interpreting federal law. Upon closer inspection, however, the question of how state courts should treat lower federal court precedent is not so clear. Although most state courts now take the conventional approach, a few contend that they are obligated to follow the lower federal courts, and two federal courts of appeals have declared that their decisions are binding on state courts. The Constitution’s text and structure send mixed messages about the relationship between state and lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court has never squarely …

Using The Dna Testing Of Arrestees To Reevaluate Fourth Amendment Doctrine, Steven P. Grossman

All Faculty Scholarship

With the advent of DNA testing, numerous issues have arisen with regard to obtaining and using evidence developed from such testing. As courts have come to regard DNA testing as a reliable method for linking some people to crimes and for exonerating others, these issues are especially significant. The federal government and most states have enacted statutes that permit or direct the testing of those convicted of at least certain crimes. Courts have almost universally approved such testing, rejecting arguments that obtaining and using such evidence violates the Fourth Amendment.

More recently governments have enacted laws permitting or directing the …

Applications Of Neuroscience In Criminal Law: Legal And Methodological Issues, John B. Meixner Jr.

Scholarly Works

The use of neuroscience in criminal law applications is an increasingly discussed topic among legal and psychological scholars. Over the past 5 years, several prominent federal criminal cases have referenced neuroscience studies and made admissibility determinations regarding neuroscience evidence. Despite this growth, the field is exceptionally young, and no one knows for sure how significant of a contribution neuroscience will make to criminal law. This article focuses on three major subfields: (1) neuroscience-based credibility assessment, which seeks to detect lies or knowledge associated with a crime; (2) application of neuroscience to aid in assessments of brain capacity for culpability, especially …

Race And Punishment: Demographic Disparities And Patterns In The Blue Earth County Court System, Aaron Guerdet, Alyssa Haugly, Kelsey Mischke

Public Sociology Publications and Projects

This study examines potential race and gender disparities in sentencing decisions in Blue Earth County, MN courts. Using qualitative field observations and a grounded theory approach, authors observed and analyzed court proceedings. In total, three researchers conducted seven weeks of observations; the final sample consisted of 95 observed court sessions, 50 of them being closed court cases. Results show little discrepancy in gender and charges and sentencing rates. Though there are racial discrepancies in charges that suggest discriminatory policing decisions, the data shows that minority members are being sentenced at a similar rate compared to white defendants. In all cases …

The Role Of The Courts In Time Of War, William C. Banks

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The role of the courts in judging the actions of government in wartime has ranged from extreme deference to careful probing of alleged government excesses over more than two centuries. The courts’ record has reflected the nature of the armed conflicts the United States has engaged in and the legal bases for the actions at issue. In the aggregate, the courts have served as a necessary counterweight to government overreaching in times of national security crisis. It is easy to underestimate the institutional problems confronting judges who are asked to make momentous decisions in times of national crisis—difficulties of fact-finding …

A Spectrum Of International Criminal Procedure: Shifting Patterns Of Power Distribution In International Criminal Courts And Tribunals, Jessica Peake

Pace International Law Review

Using the pure adversarial model expounded in part I (a) as the baseline for analysis, Parts II, III and IV of this article will explore the procedural evolution that has taken place at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (II), the International Criminal Court (III) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (IV). Part V will then plot the structural and procedural shifts that have taken place at those courts onto the spectrum of procedure identified in part I (c), before concluding, in Part VI, with what these shifts teach us about the convergence of adversarial …

A Failure To Supervise: How The Bureaucracy And The Courts Abandoned Their Intended Roles Under Erisa, Lauren R. Roth

Pace Law Review

This Article addresses how courts failed to adequately supervise employers administering pension plans before ERISA. Relying on a number of different legal theories—from an initial theory that pensions were gratuities offered by employers to the recognition that pension promises could create contractual rights—the courts repeatedly found ways to allow employers to promise much and provide little to workers expecting retirement security. In Section III, this Article addresses how Congress failed to create an effective structure for strong bureaucratic enforcement and the bureaucratic agencies with enforcement responsibilities failed to fulfill those functions. Finally, in Section IV, this Article discusses how the …

Trial By Google: Judicial Notice In The Information Age, Jeffrey Bellin, Andrew G. Ferguson

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article presents a theory of judicial notice for the information age. It argues that the ease of accessing factual data on the Internet allows judges and litigants to expand the use of judicial notice in ways that raise significant concerns about admissibility, reliability, and fair process. State and federal courts are already applying the surprisingly pliant judicial notice rules to bring websites ranging from Google Maps to Wikipedia into the courtroom, and these decisions will only increase in frequency in coming years. This rapidly emerging judicial phenomenon is notable for its ad hoc and conclusory nature-attributes that have the …

Fulton County Business Court: A Specialized Solution For The Modern Business Community, Megan K. Johnson

Georgia State University Law Review

Business courts or complex commercial divisions are growing in popularity as an effective tool to channel the most complex civil cases into one place before experienced judges with the background and training necessary to resolve the sophisticated issues often presented in those cases. According to North Carolina Business Court Judge Ben F. Tennille, one of the first judicial advocates of the business court model, the evolution of specialty business courts is a necessary response to “‘the rapidly increasing complexity, rate of change and globalization of business.’”

In 2005, Fulton County Superior Court launched a Business Case Division (“Fulton Business Court”) …

Attitudes Toward The Way Courts Deal With Criminals, Chelsea Van Aken

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

The way courts treat criminals depends on a variety of factors. This paper examines how age, sex, and race affect an offender’s treatment during sentencing. These variables were collected using the 2010 General Social Survey and were tested using the SPSS 20.0 Student Version Statistical Software. The independent variables include age, race, and sex, while the dependent variable is the way courts deal with criminals. The hypotheses that were tested stated that older individuals, nonwhite persons, and men would believe that courts deal too harshly with criminals. The conclusion found that none of the variables showed a significant correlation; therefore, …

Beyond The Verdict: Why The Courts Must Protect Jurors From The Public Before, During, And After High-Profile Cases, Scott Ritter

Indiana Law Journal

In a time when more and more criminal trials are saturated in news coverage, media outlets race to get as much information as possible to the public. That access to the criminal justice system is a right protected by the First Amendment. But where does the access stop? This Note explores those limits, and the intersection between the First and Fourth Amendments.

The Unreviewable Irredeemable Child: Why The District Of Columbia Needs Reverse Waiver, Jamie Stevens

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

In 2005 the U.S. Department of Justice estimated that adult criminal courts prosecuted 23,000 cases involving defendants under the age of eighteen nationwide. 2 This means that those defendants faced conviction and sentencing in adult courts. Transfer of those under eighteen into adult criminal court has become the states' first line of defense in the fight against youth crime. However, recent Supreme Court decisions have cast doubt on the wisdom, and even the constitutionality of that approach. Roper v. Simmons held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the death penalty for anyone under eighteen years of age. 3 Graham v. Florida …

Removal And Remand - Beyond The Supplements, Joan E. Steinman

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a compilation of case descriptions and citations to law review articles that complements the contents of the 2014 Pocket Parts to volumes 14B and C of the Wright & Miller treatise on Federal Practice and Procedure. It was put together by the author of those Pocket Parts. The cases described here either are not included at all in the 2014 volume 14B and C Pocket Parts or are cited there for different propositions than are reflected in this electronic publication. The cases that are included in this electronic compilation came to my attention between mid-October, 2012, and mid-October, …

Rethinking Notice, Jack M. Beermann

Shorter Faculty Works

APA § 553 (b)(3) requires agencies engaged in informal rulemaking to provide notice of "either the terms or substance of the proposed rule or a description of the subjects and issues involved." In most cases, agencies publish the complete text of their proposed rules, together with a preamble describing the need for the rule and the major considerations of policy and law that are raised by the proposal. Comments often convince agencies to make changes to their proposed rules. This, of course, is the whole point of the process. Difficulties arise, however, when, in reaction to comments, agencies promulgate rules …

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 …

Constitutional Conflict And Congressional Oversight, Andrew Mccanse Wright

Marquette Law Review

In matters of oversight, Congress and the President have fundamentally incompatible views of their institutional roles within the constitutional structure. This Article offers an explanation of divergent branch behavior and legal doctrine. Congress, much like a party to litigation, views itself as having fixed substantive rights to obtain desired information from the Executive and private parties. In contrast, the Executive views itself like a party to a business transaction, in which congressional oversight requests are the opening salvo in an iterative negotiation process to resolve competing interests between co-equal branches. In general, legislators want to litigate and executive officers want …

A Winner’S Curse?: Promotions From The Lower Federal Courts, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, Eric A. Posner

Faculty Scholarship

The standard model of judicial behavior suggests that judges primarily care about deciding cases in ways that further their political ideologies. But judicial behavior seems much more complex. Politicians who nominate people for judgeships do not typically tout their ideology (except sometimes using vague code words), but they always claim that the nominees will be competent judges. Moreover, it stands to reason that voters would support politicians who appoint competent as well as ideologically compatible judges. We test this hypothesis using a dataset consisting of promotions to the federal circuit courts. We find, using a set of objective measures of …

Judging Justice On Appeal, Marin K. Levy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.