Judges Commons^™

Review Essay: Radicals In Robes , Dru Stevenson

ExpressO

This essay reviews and critiques Cass Sunstein’s new book entitled Radicals in Robes. After a discussion of Sunstein’s (somewhat misleading) rhetorical nomenclature, this essay argues that Sunstein’s proposed “minimalist” methodology in constitutional jurisprudence is beneficial, but not for the reasons Sunstein suggests. Sunstein alternatively justifies judicial restraint or incrementalism on epistemological self-doubt (cautiousness being an outgrowth of uncertainty) and his fear that accomplishments by Progressives in the last century will be undone by conservative judges in the present. Constitutional incrementalism is more convincingly justified on classical economic grounds. While affirming Sunstein’s overall thesis, this essay offers an alternative rationale for …

When Hope Lies With The Courage Of A Cowardly Lion: Social Science, Race, And Judicial Political Affiliation In Contemporary Race Conscious Admissions Cases, Crystal R. Gafford Muhammad

ExpressO

This paper employs the critical race theoretical frame of the price of racial remedies, using statistical analysis to document the influence of judicial political affiliation in the outcomes of contemporary race conscious admissions cases. The analyses employed support the conclusion that the outcomes of these cases rest on the political affiliations of the judges, confirming the terse Critical Legal Studies (CLS) critique that “its all political”. Going beyond the CLS critique and centering my work in critical race theory, I ground my findings in Derrick Bell’s price of racial remedies framework. What is most interesting here is that in the …

Just Say "No Fishing": The Lure Of Metaphor, Beth Thornburg

ExpressO

The phrase “fishing expedition” is widely used in popular culture and in the law. In the case of metaphorical “fishing” in the law, reliance on the metaphor can act as a substitute for rigorous analysis, disguising the factors that influence a result. When used by the court, it is uninformative. Worse, the fishing metaphor may itself shape the way the court thinks about the kind of issue or claim involved. Accusations of “fishing” also affect the language and position of the litigants. Parties arguing against pleadings or discovery use the metaphor as a rhetorical weapon, stigmatizing their opponents, instead of …

Exploring The Judicial Philosophy And Intellectual Independence Of John Marshall Harlan I: A Temporal Examination Across Three Chief Justices, George S. Yacoubian

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Limiting The Presidency To Natural Born Citizens Violates Due Process, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1343 (2006), Paul A. Clark

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Twenty-First Century Equal Protection: Making Law In An Interregnum, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

During her remarkable career on the Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor articulated principles, in both concurrence and dissent, which moved to the doctrinal core of multiple areas of jurisprudence. Perhaps, just perhaps, Justice O'Connor has done it again. In Lawrence v. Texas, although the Court's majority decided the case on substantive due process grounds, O'Connor concurred relying solely on the Equal Protection Clause. Because future litigation on sexuality and gender issues is more likely to turn on issues of equality (or expression) than on issues of privacy, her concurrence may ultimately achieve the influence of many of her past …

From Laredo To Fort Worth: Race, Politics And The Texas Redistricting Case, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

LULAC v. Perry held that Texas violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act when it displaced nearly 100,000 Latino residents from a congressional district in Laredo to protect the Republican incumbent they refused to support. At the same time, the Justices let stand the dismantling of a so-called “coalition” district in Fort Worth where African-American voters comprising a minority of the district’s population allegedly enjoyed effective control in deciding the district’s representative. Only Justice Kennedy supported the outcome in both Laredo and Fort Worth. His opinion marks the first time that he, or indeed a majority of the Justices, …

Brown And Lawrence (And Goodridge), Michael J. Klarman

Michigan Law Review

One year shy of the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the Justices issued another equality ruling that is likely to become a historical landmark. In Lawrence v. Texas, the Court invalidated a state law that criminalized same-sex sodomy. This article contrasts these historic rulings along several dimensions, with the aim of shedding light on how Supreme Court Justices decide cases and how Court decisions influence social reform movements. Part I juxtaposes Brown and Lawrence to illustrate how judicial decisionmaking often involves an uneasy reconciliation of traditional legal sources with broader social and political mores and …

The Recognition Of Same-Sex Relationships: Comparative Institutional Analysis, Contested Social Goals, And Strategic Institutional Choice, Nancy J. Knauer

ExpressO

The emerging field of comparative institutional analysis (CIA) has much to offer public policy analysts. However, the failure of CIA to address the dynamic process through which social goals are articulated limits the scope of its application to the largely prescriptive pronouncements of legal scholars. By examining the movement for equal recognition of same-sex relationships, this Essay builds on the basic observations of CIA and introduces a new dimension, namely the dynamic process through which social goals are articulated and social change is pursued. The acknowledgment that the production of social goals involves institutional behavior, as well as multiple sites …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Counter-Majoritarian Power And Judges' Political Speech, Michael R. Dimino

ExpressO

Canons of ethics restrict judicial campaigning and prohibit sitting judges from engaging in political activity. Only recently, in Republican Party v. White, 536 U.S. 765 (2002), has the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of these restrictions, concluding that judicial candidates must be allowed some opportunity to discuss legal and political issues in their campaigns. But White left many questions unanswered about the permissible scope of restrictions on judges’ political activity.

This Article suggests that those questions will be answered not by applying principles of free speech, but by analyzing the opportunities the restrictions provide for independent judicial policy-making. Restrictions on …

Book Review: Forensic Linguistics, Dru Stevenson

ExpressO

Review of John Gibbons' text "Forensic Linguistics"

A Brief Look At Broward County Lawyers’ And Judges’ Attitudes Toward Plea Bargaining As A Tool Of Courtroom Efficiency, Mohammad A. Faruqui

ExpressO

Even the most rigidly ideological prosecutors acknowledge that they need to plea out most of the less serious criminal charges to ensure justice without incurring an unmanageable backlog of cases. But what do most criminal lawyers and judges think about the plea arrangment system? Is it fair to defendants? Do lawyers use plea bargains to better serve their clients by finding the best deal, or do they use plea bargains to cut their case load for what some call "garbage cases?" This paper surveys a small sample to see how 21st century Broward County criminal lawyers feel about the plea …

Balancing A Burning Cross: The Court And Virginia V. Black, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1205 (2005), Jason A. Abel

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Robert Kaczorowski argues for an expansive originalist interpretation of Congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the Civil War Congress actually exercised, and the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld plenary Congressional power to enforce the constitutional rights of slaveholders. After the Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment copied the antebellum statutes and exercised plenary power to enforce the constitutional rights of all American citizens when they enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then incorporated the Act into the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment thereby exercised the plenary power the Rehnquist Court claims the …

A Commander's Power, A Civilian's Reason: Justice Jackson's Korematsu Dissent, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

Robert Houghwout Jackson was a justice of the United States Supreme Court during the years of World War II. This article considers his great but potentially perplexing December 1944 dissent in Korematsu v. United States, in which he refused to join the Court majority that proclaimed the constitutionality of military orders excluding Japanese Americans from the West Coast of the United States during the War years. This article considers Justice Jackson's Korematsu dissent in full. It was and is, contrary to some of the criticisms it has received over the past 60 years, a coherent position. Jackson's dissent is also …

Identifying The Linguistic Boundaries Of Sex: Court Language Choice In Decisions Regarding The Availability Of Sex And Procreation, Amy Zimmerman Hodges

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Narratives On Equality And Gender Discrimination In Employment: 1971-2002, Vicki Lens

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article examines the Supreme Court's evolving approach to gender discrimination in the workplace, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s, as it grappled with the intersection of formal and substantive equality. The Court's decisions reflected the influence of the feminist movement and broader societal shifts, addressing issues such as pregnancy-related discrimination, sexual harassment, and workplace stereotypes. While the Court often invalidated discriminatory practices, its rulings also revealed tensions in balancing equal treatment with competing interests, such as military preparedness or employer liability. The analysis highlights how the Court's narrative on gender equality was shaped by legal doctrines, cultural values, and …

Civil Disobedience And The Law: The Role Of Legal Professionals, James Macpherson

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Discusses the role of judges when cases of civil disobedience are brought before the court.

Clarence Thomas: The First Ten Years Looking For Consistency, Mark Niles

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Dissecting Axes Of Subordination: The Need For A Structural Analysis, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

Proceedings of a criminal trial in Dallas, Texas, demonstrate the vulnerability of LGBT individuals to judicial bias. Although the jury convicted the defendant of murdering two gay males, the judge explained his light sentence: "I put prostitutes and gays at about the same level, and I'd be hard put to give somebody life for killing a prostitute . . . had [the victims] not been out there trying to spread AIDS, they'd still be alive today . . . These two guys that got killed wouldn't have been killed if they hadn't been cruising the streets picking up teen-age boys …

A Paradigm For Equality: The Honorable Damon J. Keith, Blanche Bong Cook

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The Ideology Of Judging And The First Amendment In Judicial Election Campaigns, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Piercing The Veil: William J. Brennan's Account Of Regents Of The University Of California V. Bakke, Lee Epstein, Jack Knight

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.: Who Will Carry The Baton?, F. Michael Higginbotham, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

It was a rainy November day during Thanksgiving weekend of 1997. The scene was the Washington, D.C., childhood home of Dr. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.'s beloved wife. Our assignment was to assist in the removal, packing, and transport of a few prized family heirlooms that were to be taken to their home in Newton, Massachusetts.

On the early morning drive into Washington, D.C., our conversation was mostly idle chit-chat. Little did we know that the circumstances of the day would lead to an amazing set of discussions, the importance of which we could never have imagined at …

Redressing The Imbalances: Rethinking The Judicial Role After R. V. R.D.S., Richard Devlin Frsc, Dianne Pothier

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. R.D.S. dealt with whether a trial judge's comments, about the interactions between police officers and "non-white groups", gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias in the circumstances. They strongly criticize the contrary ruling of the dissent as inappropriately drawing a false dichotomy between decisions based on evidence and decisions based on evidence and decision based on generalizations, and as improperly ignoring social context with an unwarranted confidence in the ideology of colour blindness. While more supportive of the majority's analysis, the authors also find cause for concern, with …

Racism In White Decision, Sean O'Brien

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Humenansky V. Regents Of The University Of Minnesota: Questioning Congressional Intent And Authority To Abrogate Eleventh Amendment Immunity With The Adea, Eric Hunter

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Will Diversity On The Bench Mean For Justice?, Theresa M. Beiner

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article is aimed at the general question: whether having a woman judge would make a difference in sexual harassment cases. This article is aimed at this general question, the response to which has been elusive: Does the race, gender, or other background characteristics of a judge make a difference in the outcome of cases? The effects of diversity on the bench are just becoming measurable. Many legal scholars have assumed diversity will make a difference. While this conclusion may seem commonsensical, it is important to be able to support such assertions with actual data. The supposition has been that …

Redressing The Imbalances: Rethinking The Judicial Role After R. V R.D.S., Dianne Pothier, Richard Devlin

Dianne Pothier Collection

The Decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. R.D.S. dealt with whether a trial judge's comments, about interactions between police officers and "non-white groups", gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias in the circumstances. They strongly criticize the contrary ruling of the dissent as inappropriately drawing a false dichotomy between decisions based on evidence and decisions based on generalizations, and as improperly ignoring social context with an unwarranted confidence in the ideology of colour blindness. While more supportive of the majority's analysis, the authors also find cause for concern, with somewhat different emphasis in the nature …