Courts Commons^™

Free From Decree, David Schoenbrod, Ross Sandler

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Democratizing The Courts: How An Amicus Brief Helped Organize The Asian American Community To Support Marriage Equality, Robert S. Chang, Karin Wang

Faculty Articles

In this essay, the authors offer an alternative rationale for amicus practice. This rationale emerges from thier experience working on a brief in support of marriage equality that sixty-three Asian American organizations endorsed. They found that an amicus brief can be an effective tool to engage and educate community-based organizations and their constituencies, thereby helping to advance social justice issues. Their story also illustrates how amicus practice can be used to organize communities around a legal issue and to democratize the courts. In this way, even if the effect of amicus briefs on litigation outcomes may be marginal, the process …

How Much Does It Matter Whether Courts Work Within The "Clearly Marked" Provisions Of The Bill Of Rights Or With The "Generalities" Of The Fourteenth Amendment?, Yale Kamisar

Articles

We know that it really mattered to Justice Hugo Black. As he made clear in his famous dissenting opinion in Adamson v. California] Black was convinced that the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to apply the complete protection of the Bill of Rights to the states.2 And, as he also made plain in his Adamson dissent, he was equally convinced that working with the "specific" or "explicit" guarantees of the first Eight Amendments would furnish Americans more protection than would applying the generalities of the Fourteenth Amendment.3

Judicial Oversight Over The Interstate Placement Of Foster Children: The Missing Element In Current Efforts To Reform The Interstate Compact On The Placement Of Children, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

This article argues that current efforts to reform the Compact are flawed because they lack an essential element: judicial oversight of agency decision-making. The first section explores the important role that juvenile court judges play in making placement decisions for foster children. Next, an examination of the current problems in the interstate placement process demonstrates the vital need for judicial oversight of the system. Finally, a specific proposal is put forth on how best to incorporate judicial oversight without interfering with the sovereignty of states.

From Bush V. Gore To Namudno: A Response To Professor Amar, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

In his Dunwody Lecture, Professor Akhil Amar invites us to revisit the Bush v. Gore controversy and consider what went wrong. This short essay responds to Professor Amar by taking up his invitation and looking at the decision through a seemingly improbable lens, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last June in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. One (NAMUDNO) v. Holder. Among its many surprises, NAMUDNO helps illuminate the Court’s fundamental error nine years ago. Professor Amar forcefully argues that the mistrust with which the Justices in the Bush v. Gore majority viewed the Florida Supreme Court was both unjustified …

Procedural Obstacles To Reviewing Ineffective Assistance Of Trial Counsel Claims In State And Federal Postconviction Proceedings., Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Ineffective assistance of trial counsel is one of the most frequently raised claims in state and federal postconviction petitions. This is hardly surprising given reports of trial attorneys who refuse to investigate their cases before trial, never meet with their clients before the day of trial, and fail to file any motions or object to inadmissible evidence offered at trial. Unfortunately, the current structure of indigent defense funding makes it impossible for many public defenders to provide effective representation to their clients.

Securities Law And The New Deal Justices, Adam C. Pritchard, Robert B. Thompson

Articles

In this Article, we explore the role of the New Deal Justices in enacting, defending, and interpreting the federal securities laws. Although we canvass most of the Court's securities law decisions from 1935 to 1955, we focus in particular on PUHCA, an act now lost to history for securities practitioners and scholars. At the time of the New Deal, PUHCA was the key point of engagement for defining the judicial view toward New Deal securities legislation. Taming the power of Wall Street required not just the concurrence of the legislative branch, but also the Supreme Court, a body that the …

Reforming Family Court: Getting It Right Between Rhetoric And Reality, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

What do we say about the reform work we do, and to what degree is what we say accurate? How does the way in which we talk about family court reform implicate our analysis of what we are achieving? How does our place or role within the system affect our perceptions of reform? What limits our willingness and ability to apply rigorous evaluative techniques to determine whether we are reaching our goals? And if we are failing, can we acknowledge failure and learn from it? Answering these questions may lead to a better understanding of why family court reform is …

The Federal Circuit's Licensing Law Jurisprudence: Its Nature And Influence, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

The Federal Circuit serves as the central appellate court for U.S. patent law appeals. Outside of patent law, scholars have noted the Federal Circuit’s distinct lack of influence on the law. Thus, unnoticed, the Federal Circuit has become one of the most influential actors in the creation of intellectual property licensing law. Its influence reaches across all areas of intellectual property, industries, and all federal circuits and state courts. But the Federal Circuit’s influence on licensing law is more than just a matter of academic interest: licensing is critical to innovation in the information economy. Licenses underlie the creation and …

Bound By Injustice: Challenging The Use Of Shackles On Incarcerated Pregnant Women, Dana Sussman

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The use of shackles to restrain a pregnant woman during the birthing process is a barbaric practice that needlessly inflicts excruciating pain and humiliation. It is widely condemned by members of the international community, including leading medical and public health associations. Although human rights advocates have effected significant policy change in the past ten years to eliminate the use of shackles on women in labor, it remains routine practice in many American prisons and jails. Reproductive rights advocates should consider this a reproductive justice issue and build on the gains of the human rights community to bring legal claims challenging …

Filling Federal Appellate Vacancies, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Judicial selection for the United States Courts of Appeals has rarely been so controversial. Delay in nominating and analyzing candidates as well as fractious accusations, recriminations, and "paybacks" between Democrats and Republicans have vexed circuit appointments over two decades. Many judgeships remain empty for long periods, while one position has been vacant since 1994. Certain appellate tribunals have confronted acute difficulties. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently operated absent half its judicial complement across eight months, and numerous courts labored without one in three members at various junctures.

The Senate, which furnishes advice and consent, has …

Resolving Amicus Curiae Motions In The Third Circuit And Beyond, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Amicus curiae briefs are deeply woven into the fabric of modern federal appellate practice. Indeed, amici curiae submit briefs in approximately ninety percent of the cases that the United States Supreme Court entertains, and the Justices deny a minuscule number of amicus requests to participate. Amicus practice is less ubiquitous in the United States Courts of Appeals. Amici seek to file comparatively few briefs, nearly all of which the appellate courts permit, while many tribunals have not developed a comprehensive jurisprudence for resolving amicus motions. Nonetheless, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has articulated rather stringent …

Setting The Size Of The Supreme Court, F. Andrew Hessick, Samuel P. Jordan

All Faculty Scholarship

As with any institutional feature, the size of the Supreme Court should be informed by a definition of functional goals. This article describes how the current size of the Supreme Court is largely untethered from any such definition, and it begins the process of understanding how size and Court performance might interact. To do so, it identifies a list of institutional goals for the Supreme Court and explores how changing the size of the Court promotes or obstructs the attainment of those goals. Given that the Court's institutional goals are numerous and occasionally in tension, there is no definitive answer …

Why Law Students Should Take The Federal Courts Course, Roger L. Goldman

All Faculty Scholarship

The most unique feature of the American judiciary is its dual system of trial courts, one state and one federal. This article explores the reasons traditionally given for the need for lower federal courts and whether, in practice, the federal courts are actually serving those needs. For example, it has been assumed that state courts are less hospitable to federal civil rights and consumer claims than federal courts, yet in many jurisdictions, plaintiffs’ lawyers prefer filing claims in state courts under state anti-discrimination or consumer laws rather than federal laws to prevent removal of the case to federal court. The …

A Review Of “How Judges Think” By Richard A Posner, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a short review of How Judges Think by Richard Posner.

Labor Injunctions In Bankruptcy: The Norris-Laguardia Firewall, Michael C. Duff

All Faculty Scholarship

This article considers whether federal courts, including bankruptcy courts, are authorized to issue injunctions in connection with various kinds of labor disputes arising after the filing of a petition in bankruptcy. The question takes on renewed importance in light of the record number of Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings in 2008, including filings by two of the three major American automakers, which are unionized. Given the increasing complexity of some of these notorious reorganizations, the likelihood of post-petition labor disputes appears to have correspondingly increased. In agreement with the few federal circuits that have considered the question, the article concludes that, …

Conceptualizing Aggression, Noah Weisbord

Faculty Publications

The special working group tasked by the International Criminal Court’s Assembly of States Parties to define the supreme international crime, the crime of aggression, has produced a breakthrough draft definition.

This paper analyzes the key concepts that make up the emerging definition of the crime of aggression by developing and applying a future-oriented methodology that brings together scenario planning and grounded theory. It proposes modifications and interpretations of the constituent concepts of the crime of aggression intended to make the definition sociologically relevant today and in the foreseeable future.

Ricci Glitch? The Unexpected Appearance Of Transferred Intent In Title Vii, Kerri Lynn Stone

Faculty Publications

In the case of Ricci v. DeStefano, the Supreme Court officially opened the door to what this Article identifies as a theory of “transferred intent” jurisprudence under Title VII. The principle of transferred intent, borrowed from tort and criminal law, has never before been seen as factoring into Title VII antidiscrimination jurisprudence. In Ricci, the Supreme Court assumed that a city’s refusal to promote firefighters qualifying for promotion based on exams that appeared to disproportionately screen out members of minority groups amounted to deliberate discrimination, irrespective of their individual races or whether their individual races were actually taken into account. …

Judicial Independence, Harry Tepker

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Facial And As-Applied Challenges Under The Roberts Court, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

One recurring theme of the Roberts Court's jurisprudence to date is its resistance to facial constitutional challenges and preference for as-applied litigation. On a number of occasions the Court has rejected facial constitutional challenges while reserving the possibility that narrower as-applied claims might succeed. According to the Court, such as-applied claims are "the basic building blocks of constitutional adjudication." This preference for as-applied over facial challenges has surfaced with some frequency, across terms and in contexts involving different constitutional rights, at times garnering support from all the Justices. Moreover, the Roberts Court has advocated the as-applied approach in contexts in …

The Andean Tribunal Of Justice And Its Interlocutors: Understanding Preliminary Reference Patterns In The Andean Community, Laurence R. Helfer, Karen J. Alter

Faculty Scholarship

In the European Union, national courts have been key intermediaries in helping to bolster and expand the authority of the European Court of Justice through its preliminary reference mechanism. This article analyzes the role of national judges in the Andean Community, a regional legal system whose judicial institution - the Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ) - was modeled directly on its European predecessor. Our analysis is based on an original coding of every publically available national court referral to the ATJ from 1987 to 2007 and interviews with over forty participants in the Andean legal system. We find that the …

Maritime Delimitation In The Black Sea (Romania V. Ukraine), Coalter G. Lathrop

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Appealing Outcomes: A Study For The Overturn Rate Of Canada's Appellate Courts, Michael H. Lubetsky, Joshua A. Krane

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This commentary discusses the rate at which Canada's appellate courts are overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada. By deconstructing the overturn rate, the authors identify and compare various factors that affect the rate at which appeals are pursued, considered, and allowed. The data reveal that decisions from the British Columbia, Quebec, and Newfoundland & Labrador courts of appeal are overturned more often than those from their counterparts. Conversely, the Ontario and Saskatchewan courts of appeal exhibit overturn rates below the national average. The analysis suggests that the underlying drivers giving rise to the unusually high or low overturn rates, …

Deliberation And Strategy On The United States Courts Of Appeals: An Empirical Exploration Of Panel Effects, Pauline Kim

Scholarship@WashULaw

Recent studies have established that decision-making by federal court of appeals judges is influenced not only by the preferences of the judge, but also the preferences of her panel colleagues. Although the existence of these panel effects is well documented, the reasons they occur are less well understood. Scholars have proposed a number of competing theories to explain panel effects, but none has been established empirically. In this Article, I report an empirical test of two competing explanations of panel effects - one emphasizing deliberation internal to a circuit panel, the other hypothesizing strategic behavior on the part of circuit …

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 …

An Examination Of Strategic Anticipation Of Appellate Court Preferences By Federal District Court Judges, Christina L. Boyd, James F. Spriggs

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Essay tackles the complicated relationships within the federal judicial hierarchy with a focus on the relatively understudied connection between the Supreme Court and district courts.

Judging The Judges, Stefanie A. Lindquist, Frank B. Cross

Scholarship@WashULaw

The evaluation of judges, especially circuit court judges, has commanded increased attention, with the quantitative analyses of Stephen Choi and Mitu Gulati. However, the proper dimensions for the evaluation of judges remains much disputed. Critics have challenged Choi & Gulati’s scales for measuring judicial quality but have offered little that is positive that would improve measurement. The critics make philosophical challenges to whether the measures truly capture the qualities of judging we should desire, but they offer no measurement tools to improve on Choi and Gulati.

We hope to advance the theoretical and empirical evaluation by incorporating different scales for …

The Solicitor General As Mediator Between Court And Agency, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Treaties As "Part Of Our Law", Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Independence In Excess: Reviving The Judicial Duty Of The Supreme Court, Paul D. Carrington, Roger C. Cramton

Faculty Scholarship

Independence from extrinsic influence is, we know, indispensable to public trust in the integrity of professional judges who share the duty to decide cases according to preexisting law. But such independence is less appropriate for those expected to make new law to govern future events. Indeed, in a democratic government those who make new law are expected to be accountable to their constituents, not independent of their interests and unresponsive to their desires. The Supreme Court of the United States has in the last century largely forsaken responsibility for the homely task of deciding cases in accord with preexisting law …