Litigation Commons^™

Ubi Jus, Ibi Remedium, Steven M. Schneebaum

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Justice Across Borders: The Struggle for Human Rights in U.S. Courts. By Jeffrey Davis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 320 pp.

Remedies For Wrongfully-Issued Preliminary Injunctions: The Case For Disgorgement Of Profits, Ofer Grosskopf, Barak Medina

Seattle University Law Review

This Article demonstrates that the underlying aim of remedies for wrongfully issued preliminary injuntion leads to two central conclusions. First, it is desirable to award the remedy of restitution, which requires the moving party to disgorge all the benefits obtained at the expense of the defendant as a result of the wrongfully-issued preliminary injunction. Second, it may be unjustified to compel the plaintiff to compensate the defendant for all harms inflicted by the wrongfully-issued preliminary injunction. Part I of this Article summarizes the law of remedies for wrongfully-issued preliminary injunctions. Part I.A surveys the doctrinal reasons for imposing on the …

Wanting The Truth: Comparing Prosecutions Of Investigative And Institutional Deception, Lisa Kern Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

Defensive dishonesty in criminal investigations has increasingly been prosecuted without standards for identifying harmful deception or other meaningful checks on prosecutorial discretion. Although they are often grouped together statistically and evaluated as comparable crimes, there is a clear distinction between investigative lies and in-court perjury. The differences between the offenses—including the standards for prosecution, the perceived victim, and the purposes of bringing charges—suggest reasons to reconsider the current approach to investigative lies such as false statements. More truth is produced, and arguably more cooperation results, when the government focuses on the quality of the information flow. The structural protections in …

Free To Litigate Or Free From Litigation: Balancing Plaintiff's Rights With Court Considerations And Defendants' Interests In Hudson V. City Of Chicago, Anne Leigh Drushal

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Learning From Litigation: What Can Lawsuits Teach Us About The Role Of Human Gene Patents In Research And Innovation, Christopher M. Holman

Faculty Works

In 2007, I published an article entitled "The Impact of Human Gene Patents on Innovation and Access: A Survey of Human Gene Patent Litigation," in which I reported the results of a project to identify and characterize all instances in which a human gene patent was asserted in a lawsuit. For the purposes of this study, I essentially treated any US patent claiming a product or process involving one or more specific human genes as a "human gene patent."

In the present article I explore in greater depth some of the implications of the 2007 study, and discuss some general …

Scientific Evidence And Prosecutorial Misconduct In The Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

The need for pretrial discovery in criminal cases is critical. A defendant's right to confrontation, effective assistance of counsel, and due process often turns on pretrial disclosure. This essay discusses a case that demonstrates this point.

The Nrc Report And Its Implications For Criminal Litigation, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

The National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, issued a landmark report on forensic science in February 2009. In the long run, the report’s recommendations, if adopted, would benefit law enforcement and prosecutors. The recommendations would allow forensic science to develop a strong scientific basis and limit evidentiary challenges regarding the reliability of forensic evidence. In keeping with its congressional charge, however, the NRC Committee did not directly address admissibility issues. Nevertheless, given its content, the report will inevitably be cited in criminal cases. Indeed, within months, the United States Supreme Court cited the report, noting …

10 Tips For Getting Jurors To Talk, Maureen A. Howard

Articles

“Jury selection” is a misnomer because lawyers don’t actually get to “select” ideal jurors; they get a limited opportunity to “deselect” the worst prospective jurors. The goal of voir dire is to identify these jurors by uncovering their attitudes, beliefs, opinions, preconceptions, biases, and prejudices. To accomplish this, a lawyer has a difficult task: she must foster an honest, intimate conversation among strangers in a very public, formal environment.

Even honest jurors may give misleading answers during voir dire due to nervousness, inattention, faulty memory, or misunderstanding. The formal courtroom atmosphere can have a chilling effect at odds with the …

Navigating E-Discovery In The Massachusetts State Trial Courts, Barry C. Klickstein, Katherine Fergus Young

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Judicial Participation In Plea Negotiations: The Elephant In Chambers, Isaac Borenstein, Erin J. Anderson

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law - Inconclusive Dna Test Results Admitted As Relevant Evidence Despite Absence Of Random Match Probability Analysis - Commonwealth V. Mattei, 892 N.E.2d 826 (Mass. App. Ct. 2008), Ryan Patrick O'Malley

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

'Race Salience' In Juror Decision-Making: Misconceptions, Clarifications, And Unanswered Questions, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

In two frequently cited articles, Sommers and Ellsworth (2000, 2001) concluded that the influence of a defendant’s race on White mock jurors is more pronounced in interracial trials in which race remains a silent background issue than in trials involving racially charged incidents. Referring to this variable more generally as "race salience," we predicted that any aspect of a trial that leads White mock jurors to be concerned about racial bias should render the race of a defendant less influential. Though subsequent researchers have further explored this idea of "race salience," they have manipulated it in the same way as …

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

Articles

Understanding judicial decision-making requires attention to the specific institutional settings in which judges operate. The choices available to judges are determined not only by the law and facts of the case but also by procedural context. The incentives and constraints shaping judges’ decision-making will vary depending on, for example, whether they have a life-appointment or are elected; whether they hear cases alone or with colleagues; and whether and under what circumstances their decisions might be altered, overturned, or undone by the actions of others. The basic insight that the institutional context matters has led to increasingly sophisticated studies of how …

She...Refuses To Deliver Up Herself As The Slave Of Your Petitioner': Émigrés, Enslavement, And The 1808 Louisiana Digest Of The Civil Laws (Symposium On The Bicentennial Of The Digest Of 1808--Collected Papers), Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

Philosophically and juridically, the construct of a slave-a "person with a price"--contains multiple ambiguities. Placing the category of slave among the distinctions of persons "established by law," the 1808 Digest of the Civil Laws Now in Force in the Termtoiy of Orleans recognized that "slave" is not a natural category, inhering in human beings. It is an agreement among other human beings to treat one of their fellows as property. But the Digest did not specify how such a property right came into existence in a given instance. The definition of a slave was simply ostensive, pointing toward rather than …

Developments In Connecticut Criminal Law: 2008, Timothy Everett

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Personal Jurisdiction On Internet Activities: Oldfield V. Pueblo De Bahia Lora, S.A.—The Eleventh Circuit Finally Discusses Zippo But Leaves Lower Courts Needing More Guidance, Judy Ann Clausen

UF Law Faculty Publications

More than a decade ago, the most widely embraced test for determining whether a nonresident defendant's Internet presence satisfied the minimum contacts requirement of due process emerged in Zippo Manufacturing Co. v. Zippo Dot Com, Inc. After Zippo, the nation's courts have largely used the Zippo sliding scale to determine whether a nonresident defendant's Internet conduct subjects the defendant to personal jurisdiction in the forum where a plaintiff encounters the Internet activities. Until Oldfield v. Pueblo De Bahia Lora, S.A. in 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit had not directly addressed Internet presence …

Leveraging Maximum Reform While Enforcing Minimum Standards, Alphonse Gerhardstein

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article focuses on criminal justice reform in the context of litigation. Specifically, it offers solutions for how to promote effective policies to reduce recidivism and ultimately keep the public safe from crime. It takes the position that litigation that merely focuses on constitutional violations of prison confinement is not complete without a focus on programming and supervision options upon return to society. Part I of the Article reviews some of the problems facing efforts to improve recidivism rates, specifically litigation that solely focuses on prison conditions. Part II deals with programs that should be undertaken to reduce recidivism in …

Signaling And Plea Bargaining's Innocence Problem, Russell D. Covey

Faculty Publications By Year

The dominant theoretical model of plea bargaining predicts that, under conditions of full information and rational choice, criminal cases should uniformly be settled through plea bargaining. That prediction holds for innocent and guilty defendants alike. Because it is perfectly rational for innocent defendants to plead guilty, plea bargaining might be said to have an "innocence problem." Plea bargaining's innocence problem is, at bottom, the result of a signaling defect. Innocent defendants lacking verifiable innocence claims are pooled together with guilty defendants who falsely proclaim innocence. As a result, both groups of defendants are treated similarly at trial and in plea …

From Judging Culture To Taxing 'Indians': Tracing The Legal Discourse Of The 'Indian Mode Of Life', Constance Macintosh

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this article I consider how judicial decision making characterizes Indigenous peoples’ culture outside the context of determinations under section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982. I am concerned with how contemporary jurisprudence sometimes subjects Indigenous people to stereotyped tests of Aboriginality when they seek to exercise legislated rights. These common law tests of Aboriginality tend to turn on troubling oppositional logics, such as whether or not the Indigenous person engages in waged labour or commercial activities. These tests arose in historic legislation and policy that were premised on social evolutionary theory and were directed at determining whether an Indigenous …

Public Interest Litigation: Insights From Theory And Practice, Scott L. Cummings, Deborah L. Rhode

Fordham Urban Law Journal

If public interest litigation has not always delivered all that we desire, it has surely provided no lack of experience. Our challenge now is to integrate these lessons from practice with insights from allied disciplines. Taken together, they remind us of the need to coordinate litigation with broader mobilizing efforts, to think strategically about effectiveness, and to create adequate systems of evaluation and accountability.

Proving Preemption By Proving Exemption: The Quandary Of The National Securities Market Improvement Act, Jeffrey D. Chadwick

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

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

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Federal Criminal Appeals: A Brief Empirical Perspective, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Although few dispute the appellate process's centrality to justice systems, especially in the criminal context, debates over rationales supporting the appellate process's vaunted status in adjudication systems persist. Clearly, it is difficult to overestimate error correction as a justification for an appellate system. Of course, other rationales, such as a desire for lawmaking and legitimacy, also support the inclusion of a mechanism for appellate review in an adjudication system.

Though comparative latecomers, appellate courts are now ubiquitous in the American legal landscape—appellate review exists in state and federal systems for criminal convictions. Despite general agreement and widespread understanding that access …

Courting Trouble: Litigation, High-Stakes Testing, And Education Policy, Michael R. Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

High-stakes testing policies did not emerge in an education policy vacuum. Part I of this Article includes a brief description of the major high-stakes tests and their policy rationales. Part II surveys recent litigation challenging one distinct genre of high-stakes testing-high school exit exams. Two cases illustrate courts' current posture toward legal challenges of exit exams. Part III reviews evidence of courts' increased sensitivity to the policy consequences attributable to court decisions that interfere with the implementation of exit exams. Part IV concludes and notes the important normative questions raised by judges' concerns with policy consequences flowing from their decisions.

Techno-Jury: Techniques In Verbal And Visual Persuasion, Gregory J. Morse

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Screening Effect Of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi, Karen K. Nelson

Articles

Prior research shows that the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) increased the significance of merit-related factors in determining the incidence and outcomes of securities fraud class actions (Johnson et al. 2007). We examine two possible explanations for this finding: the PSLRA may have reduced the incidence of nonmeritorious litigation, or it may have changed the definition of merit, effectively precluding claims that would have survived and produced a settlement pre-PSLRA. We find no evidence that pre-PSLRA claims that settled for nuisance value would be less likely to be filed under the PSLRA regime. There is evidence, however, that pre-PSLRA …

Congressional Restrictions On Legal Aid Attorneys: Burdensome Or Necessary?, Valerie Uribe

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Money For Nothing And Music For Free? Why The Riaa Should Continue To Sue Illegal File-Sharers, William Henslee

Journal Publications

The Recording Industry Association of America ("RIAA") has sued over 35,000 people for illegal file-sharing music, or uploading and downloading music. The RIAA has sued anyone under its "making available" theory, or anyone who offers to distribute copyrighted music without the owner's consent. However, the United States Circuit Courts of Appeals are split on whether copyright infringement occurs when a file is "made available" or when there is actual dissemination of a file. Due to this split, the RIAA has negotiated deals with internet service providers to penalize individuals who illegally share files. This article analyzes a recent decision, Capitol …

Front Matter, Jtaa Editors

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Masthead, Jtaa Editors

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.