Courts Commons^™

Comparative Judicialism, Popular Sovereignty, And The Rule Of Law: The Us And Uk Supreme Courts, Lissa Griffin, Thomas Kidney

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

What does the future hold for the US and UK Supreme Courts? Both courts face an uncertain future in which their roles in their constitutional systems will come under intense scrutiny and pressure. The tension between the rule of law, often seen as the preserve of the judicial branches of government, and the sovereignty of the elected branches is palpable. In a time of the “strong man,” allegedly “populist leaders” who seemingly are pushing the limits of the rule of law, the breakdown of collaboration and debate, and the ever-present influence of social media, this tension will only become more …

Why Judicial Independence Fails, Aziz Z. Huq

Northwestern University Law Review

Judicial independence seems under siege. President Trump condemns federal courts for their political bias; his erstwhile presidential opponents mull various court-packing plans; and courts, in turn, are lambasted for abandoning a long-held constitutional convention against institutional manipulation. At the same time, across varied lines of jurisprudence, the Roberts Court evinces a deep worry about judicial independence. This preoccupation with threats to judicial independence infuses recent opinions on administrative deference, bankruptcy, patent adjudication, and jurisdiction-stripping. Yet the Court has not offered a single, overarching definition of what it means by the term “judicial independence.” Nor has it explained how its disjointed …

The Promise Of Senior Judges, Marin K. Levy

Northwestern University Law Review

Judges, lawmakers, and scholars have long debated whether the federal courts of appeals are understaffed and, if so, how Congress should go about redressing that fact. Even though there is currently a strong argument that some new judgeships should be created, such a path presents logistical complications. If a significant number of seats are added to the appellate bench, circuits may eventually become too large to function well. And if a significant number of circuits are ultimately split, the total number of federal appellate courts may become too large for the judiciary as a whole to function well. Furthermore, there …

Ethics In An Echo Chamber: Legal Ethics & The Peremptory Challenge, Kayley A. Viteo

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Abstract forthcoming.

When Mental Health Meets “The One-Armed Man” Defense: How Courts Should Deal With Mccoy Defendants, Farid Seyyedi

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

The Supreme Court’s opinion in McCoy v. Louisiana held that a defendant has a constitutional right to insist their attorney not concede guilt as to any element of an offense, even if doing so is the only reasonable trial strategy to give the defendant a chance at life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. Under McCoy’s holding, a defendant can insist on maintaining their innocence—even in the face of overwhelming evidence—and force their attorney to pursue a defense that will land them on death row. The Supreme Court’s holding makes clear that a strategic concession of guilt at trial—over …

Law School News: Professor Gonzalez Is 2020 Rhode Island Lawyer Of The Year 01/11/21, Barry Bridges, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

How Biden Began Building Back Better The Federal Bench, Carl Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

In October 2020, Democratic presidential nominee Joseph Biden famously expressed regret that the fifty-four accomplished, conservative, and young federal appellate court jurists and the 174 comparatively similar district court judges whom former– Republican President Donald Trump and the recent pair of analogous Grand Old Party Senate majorities in the 115th and 116th Congress appointed had left the courts of appeals and the district courts “out of whack.” Lamentable were the numerous detrimental ways in which President Trump and these Republican Senate majorities attempted to undercut the appeals courts and district courts, which actually constitute the tribunals of last resort in …

Weaving A Broader Tapestry, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

This essay was initially prepared at the request of FIU Law Review for its micro-symposium on The Legal Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone by Charles C. Jalloh (Cambridge, 2020).

Charles Jalloh delivers a comprehensive and authoritative survey of the legacy—in law—of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). Through compendious research and considerable personal experience, Jalloh tracks the SCSL’s jurisprudential contributions and legal footprints upon a number of doctrinal areas: child soldiering, forced marriage, immunities, personal jurisdiction, and amnesties. Jalloh also examines the SCSL’s interface with Sierra Leone’s truth commission. Indeed, the SCSL is among the few …

Recent Attacks On Judicial Independence: The Vulgar, The Systemic, And The Insidious, James E. Moliterno, Peter Čuroš

Scholarly Articles

This article offers an opening to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) situation and attacks against the judiciary in this region since 2010. The focus is not primarily on historical path dependence like the rest of this issue. Instead, the focus aims at the nature of attacks on the judiciary. Such attacks have appeared in CEE and the US in recent years. Its interest lies in explaining similar patterns visible in the judiciaries of CEE. Particularly, it looks at the current conditions in the Czech judiciary, political interventions in Poland since 2015 and in Hungary since 2010, and undermining of trust …

Against Court Packing, Or A Plea To Formally Amend The Constitution, Jill M. Fraley

Scholarly Articles

The original arguments against court packing carry less weight in the current social and constitutional era. Less weight, however, implies some validity to those concerns and within those arguments is an acknowledgement that court packing comes with some risk to governmental stability. Still, the original arguments against court packing cannot be categorized as strong in the current climate.

A better argument against court packing is simply that it is unlikely to be effective for any long-term informal constitutional change that is responsive to key social issues. Informal constitutional change is more clearly stable when it involves structural change rather than …

Contents

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Preserving The Fruits Of Labor: Impediments To University Inventor Mobility, Brenda M. Simon

Tennessee Law Review

Academic inventors must overcome numerous obstacles when they seek to leave their parent universities. The results of their work are often intertwined in what I call "innovation-essential components," which are important aspects of the. innovative process that create strong ties to the parent university, such as data, patents, trade secrets, grants, contracts, materials, and other agreements and restrictions. Innovation-essential components effectively bind university inventors to their parent institutions, making departure unworkable without the university's approval. Universities sometimes further complicate inventor mobility by entering into unlawful agreements with other academic institutions in their efforts to prevent inventor movement or by engaging …

Legal Research Just In Time: A New Approach To Integrating Legal Research Into The Law School Curriculum, Denitsa R. Mavrova Heinrich, Tammy Pettinato Oltz

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contents

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal Realism And Legal Reality, Matthew X. Etchemendy

Tennessee Law Review

This Article critically reexamines the relationship between Legal Orthodoxy and American Legal Realism. Legal Orthodoxy is a familiar jurisprudential perspective according to which judges do not make law, the law is complete or gapless, and the answers to legal questions are determinable through autonomous inquiry. Legal Orthodoxy featured prominently in the legal thought of Christopher Columbus Langdell and Joseph Henry Beale, and the Realist critique of the Langdellian conception of legal science and education is widely viewed as a decisive refutation of Legal Orthodoxy.

Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I argue that the Realist critique of Langdellianism only justifies a …

A Socially Beneficial False Claims Act?, Elissa Philip Gentry

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial Board

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Modest Impact Of The Modern Confrontation Clause, Jeffrey Bellin, Diana Bibb

Tennessee Law Review

The Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause grants criminal defendants the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against" them. A strict reading of this text would transform the criminal justice landscape by prohibiting the prosecution's use of hearsay at trial. But until recently, the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Clause was closer to the opposite. By tying the confrontation right to traditional hearsay exceptions, the Court's longstanding precedents granted prosecutors broad freedom to use out-of-court statements to convict criminal defendants.

The Supreme Court's 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington was supposed to change all that. By severing the link between the …

Contents

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Avoiding The Great Divide: Assuring Court Technology Lightens The Load Of Low-Income Litigants Post-Covid-19, Katherine L.W. Norton

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.