Rule of Law Commons^™

State Supreme Court Opinions As Law Development, Victor Eugene Flango

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Stare Decisis As Judicial Doctrine, Randy J. Kozel

Journal Articles

Stare decisis has been called many things, among them a principle of policy, a series of prudential and pragmatic considerations, and simply the preferred course. Often overlooked is the fact that stare decisis is also a judicial doctrine, an analytical system used to guide the rules of decision for resolving concrete disputes that come before the courts.

This Article examines stare decisis as applied by the U.S. Supreme Court, our nation’s highest doctrinal authority. A review of the Court’s jurisprudence yields two principal lessons about the modern doctrine of stare decisis. First, the doctrine is comprised largely of malleable factors …

China's Judicial System And Judicial Reform, Nicholas C. Howson

Other Publications

The following is an extract from the statement delivered by Michigan Law School Professor Nicholas Howson at the inaugural “China-U.S. Rule of Law Dialogue” held at Beijing’s Tsinghua University July 29-30, 2010, and convened by Tsinghua Law Dean Wang Zhenmin and Harvard Law School Professor and East Asian Legal Studies Director William Alford, and with the support of the China-United States Exchange Foundation chaired by C.H. Tung, first chief executive and president of the Executive Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The dialogue was organized as a private meeting between senior PRC law professors and U.S.-based Chinese law …

Against Secret Regulation: Why And How We Should End The Practical Obscurity Of Injunctions And Consent Decrees (Symposium: Rising Stars: A New Generation Of Scholars Looks At Civil Justice), Margo Schlanger

Articles

Every year, federal and state courts put in place orders that regulate the prospective operations of certainly hundreds and probably thousands of large government and private enterprises. Injunctions and injunction-like settlement agreements-whether styled consent decrees, settlements, conditional dismissals, or some other more creative title-bind the activities of employers, polluters, competitors, lenders, creditors, property holders, schools, housing authorities, police departments, jails, prisons, nursing homes, and many others. The types of law underlying these cases multiply just as readily: consumer lending, environmental, employment, anti-discrimination, education, constitutional, and so on. Injunctive orders, whether reached by litigation or on consent, suffuse the regulatory environment, …

Clark Memorandum: Spring 2009, J. Reuben Clark Law Society, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law School

The Clark Memorandum

• Lawyers and the Rule of Law (James D. Gordon III)
• The Truth About Media Subpoenas (RonNell Anderson Jones)
• A Mother's Pace (Gwyn Goodson McNeal)
• Liberty, Civility, and Professionalism (Ming W. Chin)
• Leaders and Learning (Kim B. Clark)

Overturning The Last Stone: The Final Step In Returning Precedential Status To All Opinions, David R. Cleveland

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Review Of Trial Of Modernity: Judicial Reform In Early Twentieth Century China, 1901-37, By Xiaoqun Xu, Nicholas C. Howson

Reviews

Observing these significant legal-political debates in the Chinese press and academy in the first decade of the twenty-first century, we might think they concern battles started only in the last decade and a half of Reform-era China. Now Professor Xu Xiaoqun reminds us that these struggles have a much longer pedigree, stretching back to the end of the nineteenth century and China's first fraught encounter with "the West" and one idea of "modernity."

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.

Book Review Of The Nine: Inside The Secret World Of The Supreme Court, Eric J. Segall

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Craft And Power, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Oliver Wendell Holmes-a great judge-said that "the command of the public force is intrusted to the judges in certain cases, and the whole power of the state will be put forth, if necessary, to carry out their judgments and decrees." Appellate courts command that force in ways that principle and practicalities leave little fettered. Judges must fetter themselves, not least by honoring the judicial duty of craftsmanship. That duty obliges courts to respect procedural rules, for they keep courts within their bounds and promote fair and sound decisions. That duty obliges courts to analyze legal authority scrupulously, since judicial legitimacy …

The Next Generation Of Legal Citations: A Survey Of Internet Citations In The Opinions Of The Washington Supreme Court And Washington Appellate Courts, 1999-2005, Tina S. Ching

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Precedent In The Federal Courts Of Appeals: An Endangered Or Invasive Species?, John B. Oakley

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

No Court Is An Island, Robert A. Katzmann

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

The View From The Trenches: A Report On The Breakout Sessions At The 2005 National Conference On Appellate Justice, Arthur D. Hellman

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Judicial Balancing In Times Of Stress: Comparing The American, British, And Israeli Approaches To The War On Terror, Michel Rosenfeld

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court In Bondage: Constitutional Stare Decisis, Legal Formalism, And The Future Of Unenumerated Rights, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay advances a formalist conception of constitutional stare decisis. The author argues that instrumentalist accounts of precedent are inherently unsatisfying and that the Supreme Court should abandon adherence to the doctrine that it is free to overrule its own prior decisions. These moves are embedded in a larger theoretical framework--a revival of formalist ideas in legal theory that he calls "neoformalism" to distinguish his view from the so-called "formalism" caricatured by the legal realists (and from some other views that are called "formalist").

In Part II, The Critique of Unenumerated Constitutional Rights, the author sets the stage by …

Judging Terror In The "Zone Of Twilight" Exigency, Institutional Equity, And Procedure After September 11, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The United States Supreme Court Rulings On Detention Of "Enemy Combatants" - Partial Vindication Of The Rule Of Law, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

In three rulings on prolonged military detention of so-called "unlawful enemy combatants" in the "war" against terrorism, the United States Supreme Court in June 2004 shielded the rule of law from some of the more extreme excesses of the Bush Administration. However, the Court also yielded some ground and left open a number of troublesome questions.

Different Roads To The Rule Of Law: Their Importance For Law Reform In Taiwan, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

Talk of law reform is in the air throughout East Asia. Whether in Beijing or Tokyo or here, law reform is spoken of in terms of strengthening the Rule of Law. But what is the Rule of Law? Different legal systems have different roads to reach the Rule of Law. These different roads are noticeable mainly in the different emphases different systems place on two critical elements in the realization of the Rule of Law State, namely rules and the machinery for implementing the rules, i.e., courts and administrative agencies. The Rule of Law makes demands on both the legal …

No-Citation Rules Under Siege: A Battlefield Report And Analysis, Stephen R. Barnett

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Comparative Constitutionalism In A New Key, Paul W. Kahn

Michigan Law Review

Law is a symbolic system that structures the political imagination. The "rule of law" is a shorthand expression for a cultural practice that constructs a particular understanding of time and space, of subjects and groups, as well as of authority and legitimacy. It is a way of projecting, maintaining, and discovering meaning in the world of historical events and political possibilities. The rule of law - as opposed to the techniques of lawyering - is not the possession of lawyers. It is a characterization of the polity, which operates both descriptively and normatively in public perception. Ours, we believe, is …

The Role Of Workplace Culture Evidence In Hostile Workplace Environment Sexual Harassment Litigation: Does Title Vii Mean New Management Or Just Business As Usual?, Christopher Massaro

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Appellate Review Of Multi-Claim General Verdicts: The Life And Premature Death Of The Baldwin Principle, Ryan Patrick Phair

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

The Post-Conflict Transitional Administration Of Kosovo And The Lessons-Learned In Efforts To Establish A Judiciary And Rule Of Law, Wendy S. Betts, Scott N. Carlson, Gregory Grisvold

Michigan Journal of International Law

The study of post-conflict Kosovo presents an important opportunity to distill lessons that can provide guidance for future post-conflict, transitional administrations. The lessons-learned from an analysis of any post-conflict setting are many and varied. The goal of this short paper is limited to the identification of key lessons-learned in the effort to reestablish the judiciary and rule of law in post-conflict Kosovo. Even within this limited setting, this paper is not intended to provide exhaustive coverage of the issue. Rather, it is intended to provide the reader with basic information and central themes that are essential to a discussion of …

The Role Of The Presiding Judge In Garnering Respect For Decisions Of International Courts, Jean Allain

Michigan Journal of International Law

The following study considers the role that should be assumed by a presiding judge to ensure full respect for the rule of law internationally. The foundation for this study lies in an examination of the dispute settlement provisions of the Law of the Sea Convention as well as its mechanism for the settlement of disputes-the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. The Tribunal was called upon to deliver judgment in the MIV Saiga case. The judgment, along with the primary dissenting opinion, are considered, compared, and analyzed in order to demonstrate the extent to which the judgment is, …

Schmittian Positions On Law And Politics?: Cls And Derrida, John P. Mccormick

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Badinter Commission: The Use And Misuse Of The International Court Of Justice's Jurisprudence, Michla Pomerance

Michigan Journal of International Law

It has long been the dream of those anxious to increase the role of adjudication in international relations that the International Court of Justice ("ICJ," "International Court," or "the Court") would act in the international arena as a superior court-a forum whose pronouncements would nourish, sustain, and help unify the jurisprudence of other international tribunals, whether of an ad hoc or standing nature, and of national courts handling international law issues. In the context of self-determination, the Arbitration Commission of the European Community's Conference for Peace in Yugoslavia ("the Badinter Commission," "the Commission," or "the Arbitration Commission") would appear, at …

Justices At Work: An Introduction, Michel Rosenfeld

Cardozo Law Review

"Justices at Work," a day long conference which took place on September 19, 1995 at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, brought together Justices and constitutional scholars from seven different countries to consider a hypothetical constitutional case dealing with fundamental rights. This issue of the Law Review includes the facts of the hypothetical case, the applicable hypothetical statute, the briefs submitted to the International Moot Courtall of which were the product of a collaborative effort among the seven scholars involved-as well as a transcript of the proceedings and of the deliberations of the seven Justices: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg …

Ex Post Facto Laws: Supreme Court New York County People V. Griffin (Decided December 5, 1996

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Is Eleventh Amendment Immunity?, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court's Eleventh Amendment decisions give conflicting signals about what the Amendment does. On one view, the Amendment functions as a forum-allocation principle--immunizing states from liability in suits filed in federal court, but leaving open the possibility that states may be compelled to entertain suits against themselves in their own courts. A separate line of cases, however, implies that state courts enjoy an immunity from suit in their own courts and that nothing in the Constitution withdraws such immunity; on this view, the Eleventh Amendment, by protecting the states from suit in the federal courts, effectively immunizes the states …