Courts Commons^™

Basic Trial Advocacy, Michael W. Mullane

Maine Law Review

Mary Crates taught me to “begin as you mean to go on.” Peter Murray's book is a good place to begin for those embarking on a life of trial advocacy. For those of us whose beginnings are distant and often painful memories, it is an excellent reminder of where we meant to go. Trial advocacy is an infinitely complex task. This simple fact is both its joy and curse. Teaching trial advocacy is equally difficult. There is no “never” and no “always.” There is a host of commonly accepted maxims, many of which are contradictory on their face and all …

A Measure Of Our Justice System: A Look At Maine's Indigent Criminal Defense Delivery System, Ronald W. Schneider Jr.

Maine Law Review

This Comment will examine briefly the history of the right to counsel and the accompanying right to the effective assistance of counsel in this country. At the time the Sixth Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights, the United States rejected the English practice of denying the right to counsel to those accused of felonies while granting the right to those charged with misdemeanors. People in the United States have enjoyed the right to counsel in all criminal cases, felonies and misdemeanors, since 1791. Yet in a very real and dangerous sense, the courts have reversed the course of …

Native American Tribal Appellate Courts: Underestimated And Overlooked, Gregory D. Smith

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Wither Oral Argument? The American Academy Of Appellate Lawyers Says Let’S Resurrect It!, James C. Martin, Susan M. Freeman

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Slumping: The Eighth Circuit’S Supreme Court Batting Average In Federal-Sentencing Cases, Mark W. Bennett

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Trust In The Jury System As A Predictor Of Juror/Jury Decisions, Kimberly S. Dellapaolera, Bailey A. Barnes, Brian H. Bornstein

UCARE: Research Products

To determine whether jurors’ attitudes are correlated with their verdicts and judgments at trial, the present experiments examined the relationship between individuals’ trust in the jury system, other legal attitudes, and their verdict judgments, at both the individual (juror) and group (jury) level. We used a binary logistic regression model to examine the factors—jury instructions and individual difference measures—that contribute to a juror’s verdict. The results indicate that jurors with higher PJAQ and JUST scores had a higher likelihood of voting guilty on a homicide trial involving a mercy killing. It was also found that the majority of juries in …

Procedural Retrenchment And The States, Zachary D. Clopton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Although not always headline grabbing, the Roberts Court has been highly interested in civil procedure. According to critics, the Court has undercut access to justice and private enforcement through its decisions on pleading, class actions, summary judgment, arbitration, standing, personal jurisdiction, and international law.

While I have much sympathy for the Court's critics, the current discourse too often ignores the states. Rather than bemoaning the Roberts Court's decisions to limit court access-and despairing further developments in the age of Trump-we instead might productively focus on the options open to state courts and public enforcement. Many of the aforementioned decisions are …

Integrating The Access To Justice Movement, Lauren Sudeall

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Last fall, advocates of social change came together at the A2J Summit at Fordham University School of Law and discussed how to galvanize a national access to justice movement - who would it include, and what would or should it attempt to achieve? One important preliminary question we tackled was how such a movement would define "justice," and whether it would apply only to the civil justice system. Although the phrase "access to justice" is not exclusively civil in nature, more often than not it is taken to have that connotation. Lost in the interpretation is an opportunity to engage …

Can A Court Change The Law By Saying Nothing?, Paul Gugliuzza, Mark A. Lemley

Faculty Scholarship

Can an appellate court alter substantive law without writing an opinion? We attempt to answer that question by conducting a novel empirical investigation into how the Federal Circuit has implemented the Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank, the most recent in a series of Supreme Court decisions strengthening patent law’s patentable subject matter requirement. Our dataset includes each one of the Federal Circuit’s more than 100 decisions on patentable subject matter in the three years since Alice, including affirmances issued without an opinion under Federal Circuit Rule 36.

Including those no-opinion affirmances, the Federal Circuit has found …

The Pragmatism Of Interpretation: A Review Of Richard A. Posner, The Federal Judiciary, Amul R. Thapar, Benjamin Beaton

Michigan Law Review

A review of Richard A. Posner, The Federal Judiciary.

National Association Of Manufacturers V. Department Of Defense, Summer L. Carmack

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In an attempt to provide consistency to the interpretation and application of the statutory phrase “waters of the United States,” as used in the Clean Water Act, the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers together passed the WOTUS Rule. Unfortunately, the Rule has created more confusion than clarity, resulting in a number of lawsuits challenging substantive portions of the Rule’s language. National Association of Manufacturers v. Department of Defense did not address those substantive challenges, but instead determined whether those claims challenging the Rule must be filed in federal district courts or federal courts of appeals. In its decision, the …

Nuccio V. Nuccio: The Doctrine Of Equitable Estoppel Will Not Bar The Statute Of Limitations Defense In A Child Sexual Abuse Case Involving Repressed Memory, Christina J. D'Appolonia

Maine Law Review

Kathleen Nuccio alleged that she was sexually abused by her father when she was three years old. He continued to sexually abuse her for ten long years. He threatened her life when he held a chisel to her throat and vowed to kill her if she ever told anyone of the abuse. Luke Nuccio not only sexually defiled his daughter but also verbally abused her and physically beat her until she was seventeen years old. One such beating caused damage so severe to Kathleen's ear that she was forced to have surgery. Kathleen never spoke of the abuse during the …

Report Of The Maine Commission On Gender, Justice, And The Courts, Maine Commission On Gender, Justice, And The Courts

Maine Law Review

The Commission on Gender, Justice, and the Courts was established by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in January 1993, pursuant to a resolution adopted by the Conference of Chief Justices in 1988 urging the creation of task forces to study gender bias and minority concerns within court systems. In recent years, forty-one states, the District of Columbia, and two federal circuits have established task forces on gender bias in the courts as part of a continuing effort to achieve equality for women and men in American society. These jurisdictions recognized that access to a neutral and unbiased court is essential …

A Matter Of Interpretation: Federal Courts And The Law, Charles R. Priest

Maine Law Review

Justice Scalia's engaging essay, “Common-Law Courts in a Civil-Law System: The Role of United States Federal Courts in Interpreting the Constitution and Laws,” and the four comments it provokes, should provide lawyers, judges, and other lawmakers with an interesting evening. Instead of presenting a theoretical view of the role of the federal courts in interpretation, Justice Scalia sketches out a case for “textualism.” “Textualism” is one of several currently contending methods of interpreting statutes and the United States Constitution, and is currently popular among federal judges who see their role as restricting government's powers to those expressly stated in the …

Persuasive Authority And The Nebraska Supreme Court: Are Certain Jurisdictions Or Secondary Resources More Persuasive Than Others?, Stefanie S. Pearlman

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

In this article, the author analyzes whether the Nebraska Supreme Court—as currently composed—favors particular jurisdictions or certain types of secondary resources as authority when there is a lack of precedent on a given legal issue. For this study, the author reviewed the advance opinions in Volume 295 of the Nebraska Reports to address two hypotheses: (1) When there is an absence of binding authority, it is typically better to cite to a state similar to your state—one that borders your state or that shares the same circuit; and (2) When using secondary resources, it is better to use resources authored …

Sadomasochism: Descent Into Darkness, Annotated Accounts Of Cases, 1996-2014, Robert Peters

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

A collection of accounts of sadomasochistic sexual abuse from news reports and scholarly and professional sources about the dark underbelly of sadomasochism and the pornography that contributes to it. It focuses on crimes and other harmful sexual behavior related to the pursuit of sadistic sexual pleasure in North America and the U.K. It is intended to be a resource to educate people about how sadomasochism can lead to harmful and even deadly sadistic sexual behavior.

Delegation Enforcement By State Attorneys General, Jonathan David Shaub

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Court As Classroom 03-01-2018, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

States Suing The Federal Government: Protecting Liberty Or Playing Politics?, Elbert Lin

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Non-Originalist Separation Of Powers, Eric J. Segall

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.