Courts Commons^™

A Decision-Theoretic Rule Of Reason For Minimum Resale Price Maintenance, Thom Lambert

Faculty Publications

This article evaluates these approaches from the perspective of decision theory and, finding each lacking, proposes an alternative approach to structuring the rule of reason governing RPM. Part II sets forth the decision-theoretic perspective, which seeks to maximize the net benefits of liability rules by minimizing the sum of decision and error costs. Part III then evaluates, from the standpoint of decision theory, the proposed approaches to evaluating instances of RPM. Part IV proposes an alternative evaluative approach that is more consistent with decision theory’s insights.

How Should We Study District Judge Decision-Making?, Pauline Kim, Margo Schlanger, Christina L. Boyd, Andrew D. Martin

Scholarship@WashULaw

Understanding judicial decision-making requires attention to the specific institutional settings in which judges operate. Yet much of the existing empirical work on federal district courts has failed to take account of the setting in which those judges operate. Too often, empirical studies of the district courts rely on an implicit assumption that judging at the trial court level is fundamentally the same as judging at the appellate level. We argue that this approach is misguided, because the nature of district judges’ work is substantially different from that of appellate judges. For example, unlike in the typical appellate case, a district …

National Juries For National Cases: Preserving Citizen Participation In Large-Scale Litigation, Laura Dooley

Scholarly Works

Procedural evolution in complex litigation seems to have left the civil jury behind. Reliance on aggregating devices, such as multidistrict litigation and class actions, as well as settlement pressure created by “bellwether” cases, has resulted in cases of national scope being tried by local juries. Local juries thus have the potential to impose their values on the rest of the country. This trend motivates parties to forum-shop, and some commentators suggest eliminating jury trials in complex cases altogether. Yet the jury is at the heart of our uniquely American understanding of civil justice, and the Seventh Amendment mandates its use …

The Giuliani Years: Corporation Counsel 1994–1997, Paul A. Crotty

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Health Courts?, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

This article undertakes the first detailed critique of the proposal from Common Good and the Harvard School of Public Health to replace medical malpractice jury trials with adjudication before specialized health courts. Professor Peters concludes that the modest benefits likely to be produced by the current health court proposal are matched by the risks of bias and overreaching that these courts would also present. Missing from the plan is the doctrinal change mostly likely to improve patient safety - hospital enterprise liability. Without enterprise liability, the health court proposal is unlikely to achieve its patient safety goals and, as a …

A Closer Look At Veil Piercing In Federal District Courts, Christina L. Boyd, David A. Hoffman

Scholarship@WashULaw

In this project, we utilize six years of original federal district court data to identify the first representative sample of corporate veil piercing litigation. This study will provide a more nuanced understanding of the process of litigation of piercing claims than previous studies, which have been modeled on Robert Thompson's (1991) groundbreaking work on this topic. Our method first identifies veil piercing litigation through Westlaw's trial pleadings database, and proceeds to code each case through detailed examination of PACER records.

We identify and model the differing types of success plaintiffs achieve when they seek to pierce the veil, including those …

State Courts Unbound, Frederic M. Bloom

Publications

We may not think that state courts disobey binding Supreme Court precedent, but occasionally state courts do. In a number of important cases, state courts have actively defied apposite Supreme Court doctrine, and often it is the Court itself that has invited them to.

This Article shows state courts doing the unthinkable: flouting Supreme Court precedent, sometimes at the Court's own behest. The idea of state court defiance may surprise us. It is not in every case, after all, that state courts affirmatively disobey. But rare events still have their lessons, and we should ask how and why they emerge. …

The Role Of Case Studies In Natural Resources Law [Summary], John Copeland Nagle

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

4 pages.

"John Nagle, Univ. of Notre Dame Law School" -- Agenda

Slides: Meaningful Engagement: The Public's Role In Resource Decisions, Mark Squillace

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

Presenter: Mark Squillace, Director, Natural Resources Law Center, University of Colorado Law School

22 slides

Lawyer Professional Responsibility In Litigation, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

A perennially-vexing litigation issue concerns the limits of permissible attorney argument. More than a few lawyers have been tripped up by the occasional fuzziness of the line between aggressive advocacy and improper appeals to passion or prejudice. See Craig Lee Montz, Why Lawyers Continue to Cross the Line in Closing Argument: An Examination of Federal and State Cases, 28 Ohio N.U. L. Rev. 67 (2001-2002)(problem of violations results from lack of uniformity and clarity of ground rules as well as errors of counsel). In Cohen v. Lioce, 149 P.3d 916 (Nev. 2006) the Nevada Supreme Court both provided significant guidance …

Enforcing Foreign Summary/Default Judgments: The Damoclean Sword Hanging Over Pro Se Canadian Corporate Defendants? Case Comment On U.S.A. V. Shield Development, Antonin I. Pribetic

ExpressO

Following the 2003 Supreme Court of Canada decision in Beals v. Saldanha, where the “real and substantial connection” test is otherwise met (i.e. consent-based jurisdiction, presence-based jurisdiction or assumed jurisdiction) the only available defences to a domestic defendant seeking to have a Canadian court refuse enforcement of a foreign judgment are fraud, public policy and natural justice. The 2005 Ontario decision in United States of America v. Shield Development Co., presents an opportunity to critically analyze the defence of natural justice through a juxtaposition of American and Canadian procedural law. The thesis is that procedural justice mandates that “form follow …

Introduction To Vanishing Trial Symposium, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

This symposium shows that "vanishing trial" phenomena touch an extremely broad range of issues including transformations of society, courts, dispute resolution procedures, and even the nature of knowledge. These phenomena relate to decisions by litigants in particular cases, court systems, national policy, and international relations. This subject is too large and complex for any symposium to analyze fully, especially at this early stage of analysis. This symposium makes an important contribution to this study, with theories and evidence about the existence, nature, and extent of reductions in trials and similar proceedings. It elaborates a range of theories about possible causes …

Convicting The Innocent: Aberration Or Systemic Problem?, Rodney J. Uphoff

Faculty Publications

In practice, the right to adequate defense counsel in the United States is disturbingly unequal. Only some American criminal defendants actually receive the effective assistance of counsel. Although some indigent defendants are afforded zealous, effective representation, many indigent defendants and almost all of the working poor are not. The quality of representation a defendant receives generally is a product of fortuity, of economic status, and of the jurisdiction in which he or she is charged. For many defendants, the assistance of counsel means little more than counsel's help in facilitating a guilty plea. With luck, money, and location primarily determining …

The Equality Paradise: Paradoxes Of The Law's Power To Advance Equality, Marcia L. Mccormick

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper, written for Texas Wesleyan Law School's Gloucester Conference, ¿Too Pure an Air: Law and the Quest for Freedom, Justice, and Equality,¿ is a brief exploration of a broader project. Every civil rights movement must struggle with how to allocate scarce resources to accomplish the broadest change possible. This paper compares the legal and political strategies of the Black rights movement and the women's rights movement in the United States, comparing both the strategy choices and the results. These two movement followed essentially the same strategies. Where they have attained success and where each has failed demonstrates the limits …

Solicitors General Panel On The Legacy Of The Rehnquist Court, Seth P. Waxman, Walter E. Dellinger Iii, Maureen Mahoney, Theodore Olson, Drew S. Days Iii

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

All of us who are speaking probably share the same giddy feeling in front of a microphone with no red light. For years, my daughter told people that the greatest threat to Western civilization was her father at a podium without a red light. Before becoming Solicitor General, I spent my career as a trial lawyer, arguing only a few appeals. I found this red light tradition a little peculiar. More often than not, timers and lights in courts of appeals are viewed as advisory at best. I've had arguments where ten minutes were allocated per side, and yet argument …

Access To Justice And The Evolution Of Class Action Litigation In Australia, Camille Cameron, Bernard Murphy

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The federal and Victorian class action regimes are intended to facilitate aggregation of multiple claims. Aggregation can improve efficiency by combining similar claims and can enhance access to justice by providing a mechanism to litigate small claims. This article considers whether these efficiency and access aims are being achieved. The authors argue that whilst some developments in class action jurisprudence have been consistent with these legislative aims, other have not. Several features of Australian class action jurisprudence and practice have hampered the healthy development of the legislative regimes, including adverse costs orders, unclear threshold requirements, evasive posturing and unresolved class …

Shifting The Focus From The Myth Of "The Vanishing Trial" To Complex Conflict Management Systems, Or I Learned Almost Everything I Need To Know About Conflict Resolution From Marc Galanter, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

To say that The Vanishing Trial is a myth is not to suggest that the facts or analysis in Professor Marc Galanter's seminal report on the vanishing trial are fictional or inaccurate. Indeed, he marshals a massive amount of data to show that the number of trials and the trial rates have been declining for the past four decades, particularly in the federal courts. The report documents an apparent paradox: the proportion of cases going to trial has dropped sharply during the past forty years despite substantial increases in many other legal indicators including the number of lawyers, the number …

Unconstitutional Courses, Frederic M. Bloom

Publications

By now, we almost expect Congress to fail. Nearly every time the federal courts announce a controversial decision, Congress issues a call to rein in "runaway" federal judges. And nearly every time Congress makes a "jurisdiction-stripping" threat, it comes to nothing.

But if Congress's threats possess little fire, we have still been distracted by their smoke. This Article argues that Congress's noisy calls have obscured another potent threat to the "judicial Power": the Supreme Court itself. On occasion, this Article asserts, the Court reshapes and abuses the "judicial Power"--not through bold pronouncements or obvious doctrinal revisions, but through something more …

School Funding Litigation: Who's Winning The War?, John Dayton, Anne Dupre

Vanderbilt Law Review

Much is being made this year in education law circles and elsewhere about the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.' The Brown decision has certainly left an indelible mark on schools and other institutions in the United States. But last year the thirtieth anniversary of another major Supreme Court opinion passed largely without comment, despite the fact that it may be the most significant decision regarding public schools since Brown. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, concluded that education was not a fundamental right and that disparities in school funding …

Tender Offers By Controlling Shareholders: The Specter Of Coercion And Fair Price, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

Taking your company private has never been so appealing. The collapse of the tech bubble has left many companies whose stock prices bordered on the stratospheric now trading at small fractions of their historical highs. The spate of accounting scandals that followed the bursting of the bubble has taken some of the shine off the aura of being a public company-the glare of the spotlight from stock analysts and the business press looks much less inviting, notwithstanding the monitoring benefits that the spotlight purports to confer. Moreover, the regulatory backlash against those accounting scandals has made the costs of being …

The Constitutionality Of An Executive Spending Plan, Paul E. Salamanca

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Operation of government in the absence of appropriations has become relatively common in the United States, particularly when projected expenses exceed projected revenue, making adoption of a budget a difficult task for the legislature. This Article focuses on the budget crisis in the Commonwealth of Kentucky from 2002 through 2003. In Part I, this Article recapitulates the history of the spending plan, including the action filed in Franklin Circuit Court to affirm its constitutionality. In Part II, this Article discusses certain theoretical, historical, and legal principles that inform analysis of the plan. In Part III, it considers certain deviations and …

The Role Of Jury In Modern Malpractice Law, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

This article explores the policy issues raised by the choice between a custom-based standard of care and a jury-determined reasonability standard. The author examines not only traditional legal arguments but also the recent findings of cognitive psychology, jury performance studies, and health industry research. Not surprisingly, this analysis reveals that both options are imperfect. However, the author cautiously recommends the reasonable physician standard. The revolutionary transformation of the health care industry in last quarter of a century has transferred considerable power from physicians to the health insurance industry, an industry that has not yet earned the privilege of self-regulation. Unlike …

What's So Bad About Bush V. Gore? An Essay On Our Unsettled Election, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is a chance that Bush v. Gore may begin a process of laying a more attractive and realistic foundation for constitutionalism than the Official Story provides. The very fact that the Court is not politically independent and that it could not settle the matter in a disinterested, apolitical fashion might set us down a path toward a more mature version of constitutional law. The politically tendentious character of the Coon's reasoning demonstrates that our core constitutional commitments are subject to political manipulation. Ironically, public understanding of this malleability makes our politics more, rather than less, inclusive. It does so …

The Marbury Mystery: Why Did William Marbury Sue In The Supreme Court?, Susan Low Bloch

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 1801, when William Marbury petitioned the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus ordering Secretary of State James Madison to deliver his commission as justice of the peace, he initiated one of the most important cases in the Court's history. But why did Marbury choose the Supreme Court? Was there a lower federal court that could have granted the writ at the time? The short answer is "yes." Rather than making an unsuccessful attempt to invoke the original jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court, I have learned that he could have brought his suit in the then …

Agenda: Strategies In Western Water Law And Policy: Courts, Coercion And Collaboration, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center, University Of Colorado Boulder. Center Of The American West

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

1 v. (various pagings) : ill., maps, charts ; 29 cm

Conference organizers, session moderators and/or speakers included University of Colorado School of Law professors Gary C. Bryner, James N. Corbridge, Jr., David H. Getches, Douglas S. Kenney, Lawrence J. MacDonnell, Kathryn M. Mutz and Charles F. Wilkinson

Includes bibliographical references

The event will examine the principal problem-solving strategies in western water law and policy: courts, coercion and collaboration. In addressing this broad range of strategies, the program will focus on national, west-wide and Colorado-specific issues.

Conference activities will commence with a free public program cosponsored by the Center of …

The Platte River Cooperative Agreement: A Historical Perspective, Ann Salomon Bleed

Strategies in Western Water Law and Policy: Courts, Coercion and Collaboration (Summer Conference, June 8-11)

No abstract provided.

A More Complete Look At Complexity, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The ability of courts to successfully resolve complex cases has been a matter of contentious debate, not only for the last quarter-century, but for most of the twentieth century. This debate has been part of the legal landscape at least since Judge Jerome Frank's polemic book from which this Symposium derives its title, and probably since Roscoe Pound's famous address to the American Bar Association. During the 1980s and 1990s in particular, the battlelines of the pro-and anti-court debate have been brightly drawn. Some commentators, most reliably successful plaintiffs' counsel and politically liberal academics, defend the judicial track record in …

Gasperini In Line With Erie: New York Law Determines Excessiveness Of Verdict In Diversity Cases, Edie C. Grinblat

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

On Parol: The Construction And Interpretation Of Written Agreements And The Role Of Extrinsic Evidence In Contract Litigation, Keith A. Rowley

Scholarly Works

As a general rule, extrinsic evidence, whether written or oral, is not admissible to prove either the intent of the parties to a contract or the meaning of contractual terms when the parties have executed an unambiguous, fully-integrated (i.e., final and all-inclusive) written agreement. The trial court may consider various types of extrinsic evidence, however, in determining whether a particular agreement is fully integrated or ambiguous, and even in choosing among rival interpretations of an agreement where ambiguity is not present. If the trial court determines that an agreement is not fully integrated, then the trier of fact may consider …

Form Contracts Under Revised Article 2 (Symposium: Consumer Protection And The Uniform Commercial Code), James J. White

Articles

The current draft of section 2-206 in Revised Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code ("UCC") entitled "Consumer Contract: Standard Form"1 presents a unique and threatening challenge to the drafters of consumer form contracts. In earlier drafts, one part of the section applied to both to commercial contracts and consumer contracts. It required that "one manifest assent" to any form contract, commercial or consumer, in order for it to be binding.2 Bowing to commercial opposition in the most recent version, the drafters have omitted all reference to commercial contracts. As the section stands, it applies only to consumer contracts.