Courts Commons^™

Settled Law, G. Alexander Nunn, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

“Settled law” appears frequently in judicial opinions—sometimes to refer to binding precedent, sometimes to denote precedent that has acquired a more mystical permanence, and sometimes as a substantive part of legal doctrine. During judicial confirmation hearings, the term is bandied about as Senators, advocacy groups, and nominees discuss judicial philosophy and deeper ideological commitments. But its varying and often contradictory uses have given rise to a concern that settled law is simply a repository for hopelessly disparate ideas. Without definitional precision, it risks becoming nothing more than empty jargon.

We contend that settled law is actually a meaningful concept, even …

Comparing Dadd V. Anoka County With Corbitt V. Vickers: Why Defendants Should Bear The Burden Of Establishing Qualified Immunity In A Motion To Dismiss, Aisha Green

American University Law Review

In the wake of last summer’s George Floyd protests, qualified immunity is once again at the forefront of the debate. Officials, such as police officers, can raise qualified immunity as an affirmative defense in response to allegations that they have violated an individual’s constitutional rights. The different interpretations of qualified immunity’s meaning, use, and scope among the circuit courts have contributed to the development of strong opinions on both sides of the defense.

Particularly, circuit courts are split over who bears the burden of establishing qualified immunity when defendants use it as a basis for a motion to dismiss under …

A Right For Retirement Unconscionable Contracts, The Right (Not) To Associate, And Citizens United, Paul S. Miller

American University Law Review

The doctrine of unconscionable contracts is an equity doctrine. As such, it does not ask whether an agreement is or is not an enforceable contract; legality has no bearing. Rather, the doctrine asks whether it would be it be fit and proper . . . would it be fair . . . for a court to enforce such a contract. Using the doctrine, courts examine whether the price paid for a good or service far outstrips any benefit gained.

What if that price is the surrender of a basic right, the Right (Not) to Associate? The Supreme Court says that …

Big Pharma, Big Problems: Covid-19 Heightens Patent-Antitrust Tension Caused By Reverse Payments, Hannah M. Lasting

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of COVID-19, pharmaceutical companies rushed to produce vaccinations and continue to work on developing treatments, while the tension caused by reverse payments intensifies between patent and antitrust law. Lawmakers must address this tension, and the current pandemic should serve as a catalyst to prompt reform at the legislative level. By amending the Hatch-Waxman Act, lawmakers can ease the increasing strain between patent and antitrust policy concerns. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court attempted to resolve this tension in its landmark decision, F.T.C. v. Actavis, but the tension remains as lower courts struggle to produce a uniform standard …

Foreword, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Foreword.

The Deans' Roundtable, Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean Danielle Conway, Dean Tamara Lawson, Dean Mario Barnes, Dean L. Song Richardson

Seattle University Law Review

The Deans' Roundtable.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents.

An Invisible Border Wall And The Dangers Of Internal Agency Control, Jill E. Family

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Administrative law has long struggled to determine the appropriate balance between internal and external control over federal agencies. Some scholars posit that internal agency controls (those from within the executive branch) are optimal checks on agency behavior. In fact, some argue that external control (from Congress or the courts) is detrimental to agency governance. This Article presents a cautionary tale for those who discount the role of external control; it depicts a case study that poses a major challenge to those who theorize that internal agency controls are a sufficient check on agency behavior.

This case study analyzes the Trump …

Mess Rea, Connor B. Mcdermott

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The disarray of the law on criminal mental state is in need of clarification and reform. Mens rea requires that culpability attach to each element of an offense before a defendant can be punished. This requirement has deep common law roots stretching back to medieval times. However, judicial and prosecutorial subjectivity has tainted the doctrine with a quagmire of unclarity. The Model Penal Code attempted to organize this messy doctrine, but it was never adopted by the federal government. In frustration with the labyrinth of federal mens rea law, which can contain conflicting definitions or none at all, the Supreme …

The Structure Of Intermediate Review, R. Randall Kelso

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Today, there are two well-established versions of intermediate review: stand- ard intermediate review, used for cases like gender discrimination or content-neutral regulations of speech in a public forum, and a heightened intermediate review standard used for content-based, subject-matter regulations of commercial speech under Central Hudson. Yet, in actual use, four other kinds of intermediate review tests have been formulated by the Court in some cases. These four should be viewed as “mutations” of the two kinds of intermediate review proper to apply. This Article discusses both the well-established versions of intermediate review, and the four variations on intermediate review applied …

The Aoc In The Age Of Covid - Pandemic Preparedness Planning In The Federal Courts, Zoe Niesel

Faculty Articles

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic created a crisis for American society—and the federal courts were not exempt. Court facilities came to a grinding halt, cases were postponed, and judiciary employees adopted work-from-home practices. Having court operations impacted by a pandemic was not a new phenomenon, but the size, scope, and technological lift of the COVID-19 pandemic was certainly unique.

Against this background, this Article examines the history and future of pandemic preparedness planning in the federal court system and seeks to capture some of the lessons learned from initial federal court transitions to pandemic operations in 2020. The Article begins by …

Abolishing The Communications Decency Act Might Sanitize "Political Biased," "Digitally Polluted," And "Dangerously Toxic" Social Media? - Judicial And Statistical Guidance From Federal-Preemption, Safe-Harbor And Rights-Preservation Decisions, Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

Sitting and former U.S. Presidents, as well as members of the general public, financial, political and educational institutions, use social media. Yet, an overwhelming majority of users, content creators, parents, "conservatives," "progressives," Democrats, and Republicans distrust social media owners. Some critics allege that owners "digitally pollute" platforms by encouraging users to post "corrosive, dangerous, toxic, and illegal content." Other critics assert that service providers' purportedly objective content moderation algorithms are biased-discriminating irrationally on the basis of users' political association, ideology, socioeconomic status, gender, and ethnicity. Republicans and Democrats have crafted roughly twenty bills on this matter. In theory, the enacted …

“Rule Of Inclusion" Confusion, Dora Klein

Faculty Articles

Some rules of evidence are complex. The federal rules governing the admissibility of hearsay statements,' for example, include at least forty different provisions. Numerous judges and scholars have commented on the complexity of the hearsay rules. Not all rules of evidence are complex, however. For example, the federal rules governing the admissibility of character evidence are relatively straightforward: evidence that is offered for the purpose of proving character is inadmissible, subject to a few well-defined exceptions. Despite this relative straightforwardness, many of the federal circuit courts of appeals have overlaid the rules regarding character evidence particularly Rule 404(b)--with unnecessary interpretive …

The Beginning Of The End: Abolishing Capital Punishment In Virginia, Alexandra L. Klein

Faculty Articles

When thinking about the history of capital punishment in the United States, I suspect that the average person is likely to identify Texas as the state that has played the most significant role in the death penalty. The state of Texas has killed more than five hundred people in executions since the Supreme Court approved of states' modified capital punishment schemes in 1976. By contrast, Virginia has executed 113 people since 1976.

But Virginia has played a significant role in the history of capital punishment. After all, the first recorded execution in Colonial America took place in 1608 at Jamestown, …

The Citation Of Unpublished Cases In The Wake Of Covid-19, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

California's Rules of Court prohibit the citation of unpublished state court opinions. Courts and litigants, however, may still cite unpublished federal opinions and rulings and unpublished opinions from other states' courts. This may result in problems, such as limiting courts' and parties' authorities to a skewed sample set, and the covert importation of inapplicable, stricter federal court pleading standards in state court cases. COVID-19 was a stress-test that brought the problems with California's citation rules into focus. The pandemic led to a flood of claims for pandemic-related business interruptions by insured business owners against their insurance companies. While state courts …

Seeking Economic Justice In The Face Of Enduring Racism, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Teaching With Feminist Judgments, Bridget J. Crawford, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This chapter, part of Integrating Doctrine and Diversity: Inclusion and Equity in the Law School Classroom (Carolina Academic Press 2021), provides an overview of the U.S. Feminist Judgments Project, a collaboration of feminist scholars and lawyers who rewrite significant judicial opinions using feminist methods and reasoning. One of the primary goals of the series of Feminist Judgments books is to demonstrate that the law has a vast, but often unrealized, potential for social justice. The feminist judgment methodology requires the authors of rewritten opinions to act as judges in following the rules of precedent and custom—and to be bound by …

The Ball Is In Whose Court? Rhode Island’S Need For An Integrated Domestic Violence Court, Brendan Horan

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reforming The High-States Gamble Of Covert Government Seizures, Jonathan Witmer-Rich

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In a covert government seizure, police secretly enter a home when no one is present and seize contraband, often staging the scene to look like a burglary. These covert seizures are authorized by delayed notice search warrants. This Article identifies two serious problems with this practice and proposes reforms.

The first problem is that a successful covert seizure will likely provoke violent retaliation against innocent third parties. If the target of the covert seizure--say a drug dealer--believes someone has stolen a valuable drug stash, the dealer will seek to kill or harm whomever they believe conducted the burglary. The statute …

Missing Decisions, Merritt E. Mcalister

UF Law Faculty Publications

Significant numbers of federal appellate merits terminations—those decisions resolving appeals and other proceedings on the merits—are missing from Westlaw and Lexis, the leading commercial legal databases. Bloomberg Law has similar, and similarly incomplete, coverage. Across most of the circuits huge percentages—at least 25% or more—of the courts’ self-reported merits terminations, which predominately include unpublished adjudications, never make their way to navigable databases.

Although scholars have long considered how publication practices shapes access to court decisions—especially at the district court level—this is the first work to analyze commercial database access to unpublished federal appellate decisions. Since at least 2007, when a …