Judges Commons^™

Aggregation As Disempowerment: Red Flags In Class Action Settlements, Howard M. Erichson

Notre Dame Law Review

Class action critics and proponents cling to the conventional wisdom that class actions empower claimants. Critics complain that class actions over-empower claimants and put defendants at a disadvantage, while proponents defend class actions as essential to consumer protection and rights enforcement. This Article explores how class action settlements sometimes do the opposite. Aggregation empowers claimants’ lawyers by consolidating power in the lawyers’ hands. Consolidation of power allows defendants to strike deals that benefit themselves and claimants’ lawyers while disadvantaging claimants. This Article considers the phenomenon of aggregation as disempowerment by looking at specific settlement features that benefit plaintiffs’ counsel and …

Justice And Other Crimes Evidence: The Smorgasbord Ploy, Kenneth Graham

Fordham Law Review

The smorgasbord ploy probably plays only a minor role in the admission of other crimes evidence. But it offers us a nice window into the uses and abuses of Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence (“the Rules”) and its state clones. Rule 404(b)’s drafters may have supposed that trial judges would look among the illustrative uses in Rule 404(b) and select the one or two that seem most apropos to the case before them. However, the practitioners of smorgasbordism do not make any choices but instead list all (or most) of the illustrative uses to support the admission …

Rethinking Criminal Contempt In The Bankruptcy Courts, John A. E. Pottow, Jason S. Levin

Law & Economics Working Papers

A surprising number of courts believe that bankruptcy judges lack authority to impose criminal contempt sanctions. We attempt to rectify this misunderstanding with a march through the historical treatment of contempt-like powers in bankruptcy, the painful statutory history of the 1978 Bankruptcy Code (including the exciting history of likely repealed 28 U.S.C. § 1481), and the various apposite rules of procedure. (Fans of the All Writs Act will delight in its inclusion.) But the principal service we offer to the bankruptcy community is dismantling the ubiquitous and persistent belief that there is some form of constitutional infirmity with "mere" bankruptcy …

The Robert L. Levine Distinguished Lecture: A Conversation With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg And Professor Aaron Saiger, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Aaron Saiger

Fordham Law Review

PROFESSOR AARON SAIGER: It’s a signal honor for Fordham Law School and a personal honor for me and a pleasure to have Justice Ginsburg here tonight. We want to thank you for coming. I think I will not reiterate all of the thanks Dean Diller has offered, except to say that we are very grateful to the Levine family and deeply indebted to the students of the Law Review who have made tonight happen. The format of the evening is as follows: I will ask questions and the Justice will answer them.

The Impact Of Justice Scalia's Replacement On Gender Equality Issues, Wilson R. Huhn

ConLawNOW

The last forty-six years may be accurately described as the era of the modern Republican Supreme Court. As a result of presidential elections, Republican presidents have nominated all ten of the Justices appointed to the United States Supreme Court between 1969 and 1991. Republicans have thus controlled the Court since 1970. During this period the right to gender equality was recognized and the right to marriage equality was realized. However, also during this period many Republican Justices staunchly opposed gender equality, and far more remains to be accomplished.

Since Justice Scalia’s death, the Supreme Court has been deadlocked on a …

Judge Gorsuch On Empathy And Institutional Design, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

American College Of Trial Lawyers Report And Recommendation On Disruption Of The Judicial Process

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

The Jury As A Political Institution, Jon M. Van Dyke

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

The Partnership Of Bench And Bar, Edward D. Re

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Paul Vi To American Jurists

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

The Constitutionality Of Sec Administrative Proceedings: The Sec Should Cure Its Alj Appointment Scheme, Kaela Dahan

Cardozo Law Review

The note examines the constitutional challenges surrounding the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) use of administrative law judges (ALJs), particularly under Section 929P of the Dodd-Frank Act. It argues that the SEC's ALJ appointment process violates the Appointments Clause, as current ALJs have not been properly appointed by SEC Commissioners. The note also highlights due process and Seventh Amendment concerns, as defendants in SEC administrative proceedings lack rights such as trial by jury and immediate appellate review. To maintain the integrity of its administrative processes, the SEC must adopt measures to ensure its ALJ appointments comply with constitutional requirements.

The Vanishing Common Law Judge, Neal Devins, David Klein

Faculty Publications

The common law style of judging appears to be on its way out. Trial courts rarely shape legal policymaking by asserting decisional autonomy through distinguishing, limiting, or criticizing higher court precedent. In an earlier study, we demonstrated the reluctance of lower court judges to assert decisional autonomy by invoking the holding–dicta dichotomy. In this Article, we make use of original empirical research to study the level of deference U.S. district court judges exhibit toward higher courts and whether the level of deference has changed over time. Our analysis of citation behavior over an eighty-year period reveals a dramatic shift in …

Jobs For Justice(S): Corruption In The Supreme Court Of India, Madhav S. Aney, Shubhankar Dam, Giovanni Ko

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate whether judicial decisions are affected by career concerns of judges byanalysing two questions: Do judges respond to pandering incentives by ruling in favourof the government in the hope of receiving jobs after retiring from the Court? Does thegovernment actually reward judges who ruled in its favour with prestigious jobs? To answerthese questions we construct a dataset of all Supreme Court of India cases involving thegovernment from 1999 till 2014, with an indicator for whether the decision was in its favouror not. We find that pandering incentives have a causal effect on judicial decision-making.The exposure of a judge to …

Shifting The Landscape On Access To Justice, Jonathan Lippman

Cardozo Law Review

The essay emphasizes the critical need to address the justice gap faced by the poor and vulnerable, advocating for proactive measures by the judiciary, legal profession, and academia. It highlights initiatives in New York, such as increased public funding, expanded pro bono efforts, and innovative programs, to ensure equal access to justice, potentially leading to a right to counsel in civil cases.

Federalist Court: How The Federalist Society Became The De Facto Selector Of Republican Supreme Court Justices, Lawrence Baum, Neal Devins

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Emerging Constitutional Conflicts And The Role Of Courts, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "When a court exercises judicial review, it tells Congress, the executive branch or a state to refrain from action that is under way or to take some action that is not being taken. Either way, a democratically accountable institution is told that it cannot do what the people (presumably) want it to do, or that it must do what the people (presumably) do not want it to do."

The Jacksonian Conservatism Of Rufus P. Ranney The Politics And Jurisprudence Of A Northern Democrat From The Age Of Jackson To The Gilded Age, David M. Gold

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Ohio’s Rufus P. Ranney embodied many of the most intriguing social and political tensions of his time. He was an anticorporate campaigner who became John D. Rockefeller’s favorite lawyer. A student and law partner of abolitionist Benjamin F. Wade, Ranney acquired an antislavery reputation and recruited troops for the Union army; but as a Democratic candidate for governor he denied the power of Congress to restrict slavery in the territories, and during the Civil War and Reconstruction he condemned Republican policies.

Ranney was a key delegate at Ohio’s second constitutional convention and a two-time justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. …

Newroom: Yelnosky: Future Of Public Sector Union 'Dues' 01-14-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Yelnosky On 'Persuader Rule' 01-03-2017, Pat Murphy, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Of The United States, October Term 2017 Preview, Georgetown University Law Center, Supreme Court Institute

Supreme Court Overviews

No abstract provided.

Judges As Politicians: The Enduring Tension Of Judicial Elections In The Twenty-First Century, Richard Lorren Jolly

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Elections transform the basis of judicial legitimacy. Whereas a permanently appointed judiciary finds support in its supposed neutrality, the democratic judiciary demands responsiveness. Yet while this is obvious to scholars, the electorate, and most judges—and is in fact confirmed by much statistical data—the Supreme Court and others continue to insist that judicial campaigns can be sculpted to ensure robust democratic debate without compromising the bench’s impartiality. This Essay rejects the notion that the court can be both democratic and disinterested. It reviews the volatile history of judicial elections as well as the modern web of distinctions between protected and proscribable …

Invisible Error, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

When trial becomes a luxury, retrial can start to look downright decadent. Scholars have documented the “vanishing trial” in recent decades, exploring the various causes and effects of declining trial rates. Retrial, if mentioned at all, is portrayed as a relatively inefficient vehicle for error correction at best. At worst, it is seen as a threat to the sanctity of the ever-rarer jury verdict.

But the jury trial is only endangered, not yet extinct. And continuing to protect the constitutional right to a jury requires appreciating the role of retrial within the due-process framework. When the jury’s verdict contradicts the …

The Shadow Of Free Enterprise: The Unconstitutionality Of The Securities & Exchange Commission's Administrative Law Judges, Linda D. Jellum, Moses M. Tincher

Articles

Six years ago, Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act), for the first time giving the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the power to seek monetary penalties through its in-house adjudication. The SEC already had the power to seek such penalties in federal court. With the Dodd-Frank Act, the SEC’s enforcement division could now choose between an adjudication before an SEC Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) or a civil action before an Article III judge. With this new choice, litigants contended that the SEC realized a significant home-court advantage. For example, the Wall Street Journal …

I Dissent: The Federal Circuit's "Great Dissenter," Her Influence On The Patent Dialogue, And Why It Matters, Daryl Lim

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Article is the first study to comprehensively explore the centrality of the patent dialogue at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the nation's principal patent court from empirical, doctrinal, and policy perspectives. It offers several insights into how the Federal Circuit reaches consensus and when it does not, serving as a window into its inner workings, a reference to academics, judges, and attorneys alike. More broadly, this Article provides a template to study the "legal dialogue" of other judges at the Federal Circuit, those in other Circuits, as well as those in other areas of the law. …

“Who Is Really Deciding Your Case?” A Path To Restore Judicial Independence And Impartiality After Citizens United, 51 J. Marshall L. Rev. 167 (2017), Anthony Morelli

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Perfect Match: Civil Law Judges And Open-Ended Fair Use Provisions, Martin Senftleben

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

University Of Baltimore School Of Law Center On Applied Feminism's 9th Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference On Applied Feminism Today: Keynote Speaker Judge Nancy Gertner, Former United States Federal Judge For The United States District Court For The District Of Massachusetts, Nancy Gertner

University of Baltimore Law Review

Below is a transcription of the keynote speech from the University of Baltimore School of Law Center on Applied Feminism’s 9th Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference: Applied Feminism Today. Judge Nancy Gertner, former United States Federal Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, gave the keynote speech on March 4, 2016.

I was on the bench for seventeen years, and I intend to write about that experience. The problem is that while my memoir was funny, this book—on judging—is not. In my memoir, I describe the fact that the only way I could face the …

Costs Of Pretrial Detention, Shima Baughman

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Spending on U.S. incarceration has increased dramatically over the last several decades. Much of this cost is on incarcerating pretrial detainees—inmates not convicted of a crime—which constitute the majority of individuals in our nation’s jails. Current statutory schemes give judges almost complete discretion to order pretrial detention based on unexplained or unidentified factors. With this discretion, judges tend to make inconsistent decisions in every jurisdiction, some releasing almost all defendants—including the most dangerous—and others detaining most defendants—even those who are safe to release. There are constitutional and moral reasons to evaluate our current detention scheme, but even the fiscal impact …

Clarence Thomas The Questioner, Ronnell Anderson Jones

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

One of Justice Clarence Thomas’s most remarked upon characteristics is his reluctance to ask questions during oral argument. Many have criticized him for his silence. Others defend his silence, noting, for instance, that historically oral argument played a much less significant role and that the Justice’s written opinions speak for themselves. What has been overlooked in this debate, however, is the fact that Justice Thomas is talented at asking questions. Indeed, in many ways, he is a model questioner. Drawing on the most comprehensive collection of Thomas’s oral argument questions ever compiled, we urge the Justice to ask more questions …

I Dissent: The Federal Circuit’S “Great Dissenter,” Her Influence On The Patent Dialogue, And Why It Matters, 19 Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. 873 (2017), Daryl Lim

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

This Article is the first study to comprehensively explore the centrality of the patent dialogue at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the nation’s principal patent court from empirical, doctrinal, and policy perspectives. It offers several insights into how the Federal Circuit reaches consensus and when it does not, serving as a window into its inner workings, a reference to academics, judges, and attorneys alike. More broadly, this Article provides a template to study the “legal dialogue” of other judges at the Federal Circuit, those in other Circuits, as well as those in other areas of the law. …