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American Trial Judges, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of American Trial Judges by John Paul Ryan, Allan Ashman, Bruce D. Sales, and Sandra Shane-DuBow

The Court Years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography Of William O. Douglas, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Court Years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas by William O. Douglas

Individual And Community: An Appreciation Of Mr. Justice Powell, Christina B. Whitman

Articles

When the nomination of Lewis F. Powell, Jr., to the Supreme Court of the United States was submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee ten years ago, much was made of his extraordinary record of service to his city, his state, and his profession.1 Justice Powell's career has been a model of individual responsibility to society. His belief in the value of civic life, and in the desirability of making such a life available to everyone, has been a dominant influence in his work on the Supreme Court. In what follows, I shall attempt to define some of the assumptions with …

Eight Cases And Section 251, James J. White

Articles

[A] continuing sense of reliance and security that the promised performance will be forthcoming. . . is an important feature of the bargain-so states Comment 1 to section 2-609 of the Uniform Commercial Code. At common law, one party to a contract might suffer considerable and justifiable anxiety about the other party's willingness or ability to perform and yet have no legal basis for cancelling the contract or for procuring additional assurances from the other party. Section 251 of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts is designed to provide a remedy for one party's reasonable fears that the other party to …

Thoughts About Judging, Henry J. Friendly

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Judge by Patrick Devlin

Potter Stewart, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

In the spring of 958, Justice Harold Burton informed President Eisenhower of his decision to retire at the end of the Term, but, at the President's request, withheld public announcement until the latter was ready to name a successor. In September, Eisenhower appointed Potter Stewart, who became, at age forty-three, the second youngest person to serve on the Supreme Court since the Civil War.

Preserving The Progressive Spirit In A Conservative Time: The Joint Reform Efforts Of Justice Brandeis And Professor Frankfurter, 1916-1933, David W. Levy, Bruce Allen Murphy

Michigan Law Review

On January 28, 1916, President Wilson sent the name of Louis D. Brandeis to the Senate for confirmation as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Wilson's act surprised many Americans and sparked one of the bitterest confirmation struggles in the history of the Republic. The nomination and the confirmation that followed also created a painful and highly personal dilemma for the new Justice. This dilemma led Brandeis to a private arrangement that opened an unusual and revealing chapter in the story of the extra judicial activities of American justices. Even more important, the arrangement constitutes a noteworthy episode …

Sentencing, The Dilemma Of Discretion, Jerold H. Israel

Book Chapters

[The following excerpts are taken from Professor Jerold Israel's revision of the late Hazel B. Kerper's Introduction to the Criminal Justice System ( West Publishing Co. 1979), with permission of the author and publisher. Footnotes have been omitted.] As we have seen, judges usually have substantial discretion in sentencing. Most states give them considerable leeway in choosing between probation and imprisonment, in setting the term of imprisonment under either an indeterminate or determinate sentencing structure, in deciding whether a young offender will be given the special benefits of a youthful offender statute, and in determining whether to impose consecutive or …

In Memoriam: Talbot Smith, Donald P. Lay

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

My goal this evening is first to reflect upon Talbot Smith's life as an unusual and gifted person and second, to underscore his career not so much as the judicial giant he was, but as a tremendous witness and teacher to all mankind.

How Liberated Was Judge Jerome Frank?, Michael E. Smith

Michigan Law Review

A Review of A Man's Reach: The Philosophy of Judge Jerome Frank edited by Barbara Frank Kristein

The Eighteenth-Century Background Of John Marshall's Constitutional Jurisprudence, William E. Nelson

Michigan Law Review

This analysis of Marshall's constitutional jurisprudence avoids the pitfalls of previous theories. It does not see the Federalist political program as the source of Marshall's constitutional doctrines and thus does not need to explain how Marshall qualified his political principles or how he convinced non-Federalist judges to accept them. Instead, this essay argues that legal, not political, principles underlay Marshall's jurisprudence, but it attempts to understand those principles in a manner consistent with the unavoidable twentieth-century assumption that law is a body of flexible rules responsive to social reality rather than a series of immutable, unambiguous doctrines derived from a …

Appellate Justice, Ruggero J. Aldisert

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Justice on Appeal is a pithy analysis of the problem facing appellate courts. Dragon hunters Carrington, Meador, and Rosenberg were not content to look at the problem from an armchair. Instead, they walked to the mouth of the cave; pulled the troublesome dragon into the light, counted its teeth, measured its girth and tail, and decided neither to kill it nor kiss it. They decided to try taming it. I agree with their analysis of the specimen, its size, its growth, and the urgent necessity to bring the beast under control. I have some modest disagreements with some of their …

Judicial Administration And Invisible Justice, Mary Murphy Schroeder

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

My theme here is the conflict between the visibility of the appellate judge and recent procedural changes designed to cope with the quantum leaps in the numbers and complexity of cases. I will develop that theme, first, by suggesting the ways that three of the major controls on the system, namely the selection, evaluation, and discipline of judges, depend upon the exercise of recognizable and individual judicial responsibility; second, by illustrating how this "imperative" can be undermined if devices intended to cope with increased volume are adopted without vigilance; and finally by pointing up some approaches to permit courts to …

Justice On Appeal—One Way Or Many?, Michael E. Smith

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

After two centuries of our nation's existence, discussions of federalism are certain to sound familiar. The ground of argument has been worked so thoroughly, there is hardly a patch left unturned. Conventional watchwords suggest the competing interests: adaptability to local circumstances contrasted with efficiencies of scale, circumscribed experimentation contrasted with prevention of forum-shopping, local self-government contrasted with the cosmopolitan perspective. The most that can be done now, absent exceptional insight, is to display these choices in a fresh context.

What follows is yet another variation on the theme. It concerns the propriety, perhaps the desirability, of diversity among the federal …

The Bankruptcy Reform Process: Maximizing Judicial Control In Wage Earners' Plans, Marjorie Girth

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article examines the effort to maximize judicial control over the bankruptcy process and its impact on H.R. 8200's procedural requirements for the nonbusiness bankruptcy option known currently as the wage earners' plan. As background, it describes the present nonbusiness bankruptcy options and the statutory procedures for monitoring confirmed wage earners' plans. Then, using illustrative samples from three years of cases in the Buffalo region of the Western District of New York, it assesses whether present plans are being administered in accordance with the statutory formalities. The economic incentives which affect creditors' behavior in taking advantage of their opportunities to …

Judicial Protection Of Minorities, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

In United States v. Carolene Products Co., Justice Stone suggested by indirection that there "may be narrower scope for operation of the presumption of constitutionality" when courts are called upon to determine the validity "of statutes directed at particular religious . . . or national . . . or racial minorities."' In such cases, he explained, "prejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry."' Forty years later, …

Legal Theory And The Obligation Of A Judge: The Hart/Dworkin Dispute, E. Philip Soper

Michigan Law Review

This article offers a review of the Hart-Dworkin dispute and a qualified defense of the positivist's model against Dworkin's attack. The defense is cast primarily in the form of the second possible response to a descriptive theory: Dworkin's attack fails, I suggest, because it involves descriptive claims that can be accommodated to the positivist's conceptual theory regardless of one's view about the plausibility of those claims.

Compensation Of The Federal Judiciary: A Reexamination, Elliot A. Spoon

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The compensation of the federal judiciary has been a persistent issue since the enactment of the Judiciary Act of 1789. The problem has been traditionally perceived in the context of particular proposals for salary increases, but the underlying issues are much more fundamental than the concerns of the day. The institutional arrangements by which judicial compensation is determined and the factors which shape that determination have a profound impact on the fiscal and human resources of the judiciary, on the power relationships among the three branches of the national government, and, thereby, on the independence and quality of the judicial …

Racial Preferences In Higher Education: Political Responsibility And The Judicial Role, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

Controversy continues unabated over the question left unresolved by DeFunis v. Odegaard: whether in its admissions process a state law school may accord preferential treatment to certain racial and ethnic minorities. In the pages of two journals published by the University of Chicago, Professors John Hart Ely and Richard Posner have established diametrically opposed positions in the debate. Their contributions are of special interest because each undertakes to answer the question within the framework of a theory concerning the proper distribution of authority between the judiciary and the other institutions of government. Neither position, in my judgment, adequately confronts the …

Disqualifications For Interest Of Lower Federal Court Judges: 28 U.S.C. § 455, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Disqualification of a judge occurs when he is ineligible by law to sit in a particular case. At the Supreme Court level, disqualification is a personal decision of the individual justice, who seldom records the reasons for his decision. Thus, there is little material on the Court's disqualification practices that can be subjected to legal analysis. However, substantial case law on disqualification has developed in the lower federal courts, where the decision of a trial judge to sit or step down in a case may appear in the trial record and is subject to review by a court of appeals. …

Mr. Justice Powell And The Emerging Nixon Majority, A.E. Dick Howard

Michigan Law Review

In recent years, we have come to expect the debate over Supreme Court nominations to reflect ideological passions in the Government and the country at large; the Fortas, Haynsworth, and Carswell cases remain fresh in memory. In the hearings on the nominations of Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and William H. Rehnquist to the Court, Senate Democratic liberals made clear their intention to probe not only the nominees' integrity and legal qualifications, but also their judicial philosophies. It was ironic, therefore, to watch as liberal members of the Judiciary Committee, through their questions and comments at the confirmation hearings, made Powell, …

Invoking Summary Criminal Contempt Procedures--Use Of Abuse? United States V. Dellinger --The "Chicago Seven" Contempts, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

In late August of 1968, while delegates to the Democratic National Convention were arriving in Chicago, a group of several thousand demonstrators gathered in the city's Lincoln Park to protest the Convention, the Vietnam War, and the city's refusal to grant the group a permit to hold rallies and marches during the Convention. The week that followed was marred by violent confrontations between the demonstrators and the city's police.1 This violence in Chicago provided the impetus for an indictment by a federal grand jury of the defendants in United States v. Dellinger.

Friedman And Israel: The Justices Of The United States Supreme Court, 1789-1969: Their Lives And Major Opinions, Philip B. Kurland

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789-1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions edited by Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel

Right1, Right2, Right3, Right4 And How About Right?, Layman E. Allen

Book Chapters

Careful communication is frequently of central importance in law. The language used to communicate even with oneself in private thought profoundly influences the quality of that effort; but when one attempts to transmit an idea to another, language assumes even greater significance because of the possibilities for enormously distorting the idea. Word-skill is to be prized. Few have expressed this more aptly or succinctly than Wesley N. Hohfeld: ...[I]n any closely reasoned problem, whether legal or nonlegal, chameleon-hued words are a peril both to clear thought and to lucid expression.

Aftermath Of Apprehension: Juvenile Court Judge's Response, John P. Steketee

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

It would appear that juveniles find apprehension to be a reinforcement of their delinquent behavior. Being apprehended and questioned by the police, referred to juvenile court, meeting a probation officer, and going before a judge, not to mention the status one gains in one's group from police and/or court contact, can be a very significant chain of events for many adolescents who have never known the excitement of personal recognition by parents, school officials or even friends. For the first time, they are recognized and listened to, albeit for the wrong reasons. The attention need not be positive; shouting, scolding, …

On Earl Warren's Retirement: A Reply To Professor Kurland, Francis X. Beytagh Jr.

Michigan Law Review

On that Monday in June of this year when Earl Warren removed his robe for the last time, a significant era in the history of the country, not just that of the Supreme Court, came to an end. It was in recognition of this (and somewhat in anticipation, as events turned out) that the Michigan Law Review published a symposium on the so-called "Warren Court" in its December 1968 issue. Those articles were ·written by distinguished scholars and practitioners and are of consistently high quality. All but one of them dealt with important substantive matters considered and decided by the …

The Broad Role, Robert P. Griffin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article will expand on two major points: first, the nature of the higher responsibility which the Senate owes to considerations of judicial nominations; and second, the factors generally influencing non-consent in the Fortas case. The purpose is not to reopen a discussion of the particularities of Justice Abe Fortas' quality for appointment as Chief Justice of the United States. Rather we will be concerned only with the types of factors influencing a Senate determination.

The Fortas Controversy: The Senate's Role Of Advice And Consent To Judicial Nominations, Prospectus: A Journal Of Law Reform

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Introduction to the Articles, The Broad Role by Robert P. Griffin, and The Discriminating Role by Philip A. Hart

The Discriminating Role, Philip A. Hart

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The controversy which arose in the summer of 1968 over the nomination of Mr. Justice Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice of the United States has raised serious questions about the proper role of the Senate in advising and consenting to such nominations. That Sen. Hart’s remarks may be read in perspective, it should be mentioned that he supported strongly the nomination of Mr. Fortas. Hart believes that were it not for the unique circumstances of the summer of 1968- the erosion of the power of the President with the approach of a political campaign, the nearness of the end …

Howard: Mr. Justice Murphy, A Political Biography, Eugene Gressman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Mr. Justice Murphy, A Political Biography by J. Woodford Howard