Courts Commons^™

Filling The New York Federal District Court Vacancies, Carl Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

President Donald Trump contends that federal appellate court appointments constitute his foremost success. The president and the United States Senate Grand Old Party (GOP) majority have compiled records by approving forty-eight conservative, young, accomplished, overwhelmingly Caucasian, and predominantly male, appeals court jurists. However, their appointments have exacted a toll, particularly on the ninety-four district courts around the country that must address eighty-seven open judicial positions in 677 posts.

One riveting example is New York’s multiple tribunals, which confront twelve vacancies among fifty-two court slots. The Administrative Office of the United States Courts considers nine of these openings “judicial emergencies,” because …

Impact Of The Fastar Program On Civil Cases In The Superior Court In Pima County, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

To address the shortcomings of compulsory arbitration, the Arizona Committee on Civil Justice Reform recommended implementation of a pilot program in which parties could opt for a "short trial" instead of compulsory arbitration. The Supreme Court of Arizona adopted the Committee's recommendation and approved experimental rules for the Fast Trial and Alternative Resolution (FASTAR) Program for a three-year period effective November 1, 2017. The pilot program was implemented in the Superior Court of Pima County. The National Center for State Courts collaborated with the Arizona Office of the Courts to assess the effectiveness of the program. The evaluation framework specifically …

Brief Of Public Law Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioners, Chris Dove, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tweeting With A Purpose: Interpreting "Corrupt Persuasion" In 18 U.S.C. § 1512(B), Jessica Ochoa

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Reforming Institutions: The Judicial Function In Bankruptcy And Public Law Litigation, Kathleen G. Noonan, Jonathan C. Lipson, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Public law litigation (PLL) is among the most important and controversial types of dispute that courts face. These civil class actions seek to reform public agencies such as police departments, prison systems, and child welfare agencies that have failed to meet basic statutory or constitutional obligations. They are controversial because critics assume that judicial intervention is categorically undemocratic or beyond judicial expertise.

This Article reveals flaws in these criticisms by comparing the judicial function in PLL to that in corporate bankruptcy, where the value and legitimacy of judicial intervention are better understood and more accepted. Our comparison shows that judicial …

Will Artificial Intelligence Eat The Law? The Rise Of Hybrid Social-Ordering Systems, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Software has partially or fully displaced many former human activities, such as catching speeders or flying airplanes, and proven itself able to surpass humans in certain contests, like Chess and Jeopardy. What are the prospects for the displacement of human courts as the centerpiece of legal decision-making? Based on the case study of hate speech control on major tech platforms, particularly on Twitter and Facebook, this Essay suggests displacement of human courts remains a distant prospect, but suggests that hybrid machine – human systems are the predictable future of legal adjudication, and that there lies some hope in that combination, …

Simplified Courts Can't Solve Inequality, Colleen F. Shanahan, Anna E. Carpenter

Faculty Scholarship

State civil courts struggle to handle the volume of cases before them. Litigants in these courts, most of whom are unrepresented, struggle to navigate the courts to solve their problems. This access-to-justice crisis has led to a range of reform efforts and solutions. One type of reform, court simplification, strives to reduce the complexity of procedures and information used by courts to help unrepresented litigants navigate the judicial system. These reforms mitigate but do not solve the symptoms of the larger underlying problem: state civil courts are struggling because they have been stuck with legal cases that arise from the …

Informal Judicial Hierarchies: Case Assignment And Chamber Composition At The European Court Of Justice, Jens Frankenreiter

Scholarship@WashULaw

Is there a rationale behind non-random case assignment at the European Court of Justice (ECJ)? I argue that the flexible system of case assignment acts as a surrogate for a full-fledged judicial hierarchy, ensuring that the decision-making of the Court reflects the preferences of the majority of judges absent many hierarchical elements commonly observed in other judicial systems. I empirically test this hypothesis using Monte Carlo simulations of the composition of chambers during the time period 2009-2012 under alternative case assignment regimes. To proxy for judicial ideology, I use information on the political preferences of appointing Member State governments vis-à-vis …

Symposium: This Case Is Moot, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Adam Samaha

Faculty Scholarship

Forget guns for a moment. Imagine that, once upon a time, Boca Raton had a rule that prohibited its residents from transporting their golf clubs to driving ranges outside the city. Boca’s finest golfers challenged the constitutionality of the rule in court. Now imagine that the city thought twice and repealed the rule and that Florida then passed a statute authorizing people to transport their clubs to the driving ranges of their choice. The golfers could live happily ever after.

Opposition To Abortion, Then And Now: How Amicus Briefs Use Policy Frames In Abortion Litigation, Laura Moyer, Alyson Hendricks-Benton, Megan Balcom

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Early in the debate over abortion, opposition to the procedure was primarily described in terms that reflected moral concerns about the protection of “the unborn.” Indeed, much of the media coverage and public discourse describing opposition to abortion since the time of Roe characterizes the movement as focused on securing rights for all human beings from the moment of conception (Huff 2014, 39). However, interviews with activists and movement leaders suggest that antiabortion groups have employed an array of public outreach strategies over time. As seen above, the former director of the antiabortion group National Right to Life …

Measuring Selection Bias In Publicly Available Judicial Opinions, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

To have an informed discussion about judicial performance and efficiency, we will sometimes want to explore what judges actually do on an everyday level. But in many ways, courts have not always been paragons of transparency. Often the parties are the only people who are aware of what action a court has taken in a case.

This paper explores that dynamic, in the context of decisions made by federal trial courts at one particular procedural stage--decisions made on motions to dismiss for failure to state a claim--Rule 12(b)(6) motions. There is growing interest in the work of federal trial courts, …

The Most Revealing Word In The United States Reports, Richard Primus

Articles

The most prominent issue in NFIB v. Sebelius was whether Congress’s regulatory power under the Commerce Clause stops at a point marked by a distinction between “activity” and “inactivity.” According to the law’s challengers, prior decisions about the scope of the commerce power already reflected the importance of the distinction between action and inaction. In all of the previous cases in which exercises of the commerce power had been sustained, the challengers argued, that power had been used to regulate activity. Never had Congress tried to regulate mere inactivity. In NFIB, four Justices rejected that contention, writing that such …

Targeting Poverty In The Courts: Improving The Measurement Of Ability To Pay Fines, Meghan M. O'Neil, J.J. Prescott

Articles

Ability-to-pay determinations are essential when governments use money-based alternative sanctions, like fines, to enforce laws. One longstanding difficulty in the U.S. has been the extreme lack of guidance on how courts are to determine a litigant’s ability to pay. The result has been a seat-of-the-pants approach that is inefficient and inaccurate, and, as a consequence, very socially costly. Fortunately, online platform technology presents a promising avenue for reform. In particular, platform technology offers the potential to increase litigant access, reduce costs, and ensure consistent and fair treatment—all of which should lead to more accurate sanctions. We use interviews, surveys, and …

Judicial Impartiality In An Empirical Era, Tigran W. Eldred

Faculty Scholarship

The psychological dimensions of judicial impartiality is a topic of considerable interest, with a growing body of scholarship focused on the reasons judges often are unable to perceive their own biases.¹ The attention is not on why judges intentionally downplay factors that can undermine their own objectivity, but rather on the empirical reasons that everyone, judges included, tend to be unaware of the impact of their own biases. This “bias blind spot,”² a product of a series of unconscious cognitive and motivational factors, is at the center of the discussion, with even the Supreme Court making passing reference …

Strengthening The Procedural Status Of Persons Contributing To The Administration Of Justice In The New Civil Procedure Code, M Dustqoriev

ProAcademy

This article highlights the issues and opinions concerning the definition of the group and the procedural status of the persons contributing to the administration of Justice as one of the participants of the civil process in the new edition of the Civil Procedure Code, as well as national and foreign expertise in this sphere.

Courts As Information Intermediaries: A Case Study Of Sovereign Debt Disputes, Sadie Blanchard

BYU Law Review

When foreign sovereigns default on their debt, creditors sometimes sue them. These creditors are sophisticated actors, and they know that if they sue, courts can do little to force a sovereign to satisfy a judgment. Why do they sue? This Article argues that these creditors sue because they use litigation to produce information about the debtor state or its government that induces third parties to sanction or refuse to deal with the state or the government. The ability to produce such information strengthens the litigating creditors’ bargaining position in settlement negotiations. Courts thus serve as information intermediaries that strengthen reputational …

Martin V. United States, Mitch L. Werbell V

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Martin v. United States, the Federal Circuit Court dismissed a Fifth Amendment regulatory takings and exaction claim for want of ripeness when the claimant failed to apply for a permit, which would have allowed for an assessment of the cost of compliance with governmentally imposed requirements. By finding the claim unripe, the court stood firm on the historical view that federal courts may only adjudicate land-use regulatory takings and inverse condemnation claims on the merits after a regulating entity has made a final decision. However, jurisprudential evolution of the ripeness doctrine and judicial review of takings claims may …

Law School News: Three Rwu Law Graduates Nominated For State Judgeships 12-10-2018, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

"I Wanted Them To Be Punished Or At Least Ask Us For Forgiveness”: Justice Interests Of Female Victim-Survivors Of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence And Their Experiences With Gacaca, Judith Rafferty

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Survivors of human rights abuses need to experience a sense of justice to support their individual recovery. Women who have experienced conflict-related sexual violence have specific justice interests that are distinct from those of survivors of other abuses. This article focuses on justice interests of Rwandan women who experienced sexual violence during the genocide in Rwanda and who had their cases tried in gacaca community courts between 2008 and 2012. The article discusses two justice interests that emerged during interviews with 23 Rwandan women about their gacaca experience. These interests include the punishment of perpetrators and perpetrators taking responsibility for …

A Conversation With The Honorable Rosalie Silberman Abella And Dean Matthew Diller, Rosalie Silberman Abella, Matthew Diller

Fordham Law Review

DEAN MATTHEW DILLER: This year we are leading up to our celebration of 100 Years of Women at Fordham Law School. In September 1918, the Fordham Law faculty voted to admit women, and we are planning to celebrate that in style. But tonight perhaps is a bit of a teaser for that. Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella is a woman of firsts. She is the first Jewish woman to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court of Canada, and before the Supreme Court, when she was appointed to the Ontario Family Court in 1976, she became the first Jewish woman …