Courts Commons^™

Juvenile Sentencing In The Wake Of Graham V. Florida: A Look Into Uncharted Territory, Leanne Palmer

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supporting The Florida Legal Community's Response To Graham V. Florida, Ilona P. Vila

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lightened Scrutiny, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

The current anxiety over judicial vacancies is not new. For decades, judges and scholars have debated the difficulties of having too few judges for too many cases in the federal courts. At risk, it is said, are cherished and important process values. Often left unsaid is a further possibility: that not only process, but also the outcomes of cases, might be at stake. This Article advances the conversation by illustrating how judicial overload might entail sacrifices of first-order importance.

I present here empirical evidence suggesting a causal link between judicial burdens and the outcomes of appeals. Starting in 2002, a …

Elections And Government Formation In Iraq: An Analysis Of The Judiciary's Role, Charles P. Trumbull Iv, Julie B. Martin

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In 2005, the people of Iraq ratified a permanent Constitution, a significant milestone in the journey from Saddam Hussein's authoritarian rule to democratic governance. Among the Constitution's fundamental guarantees are the separation and balance of powers, the selection of Parliament through regular and periodic popular election, and an independent judiciary empowered as the authority on constitutional interpretation. Iraq's commitment to democracy and the Constitution was put to the test five years later with the first parliamentary election under the new Constitution. The run-up to the elections was marred by political disputes, violence, and legal challenges, as Iraqis argued over controversial …

The Dog That Caught The Car: Observations On The Past, Present, And Future Approaches Of The Office Of The Legal Adviser To Official Acts Immnunities, John B. Bellinger Iii

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Supreme Court's decision in Samantar v. Yousuf vindicated the position of the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser, which had long argued that the immunities of current and former foreign government officials in U.S. courts are defined by common law and customary international law as articulated by the Executive Branch, rather than by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. But the decision will place a burden on the Office of the Legal Adviser, which will now be asked to submit its views on the potential immunity of every foreign government official sued in the United States. The …

Rulemaking, Litigation Culture And Reform In Federal Courts, Edward D. Cavanagh

Faculty Publications

Culturally based litigation practices are central to the policies of federal courts. Unlike the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, cultural based practices are neither uniform nor explicitly defined among the federal courts. These practices are specifically tailored to ensure judicial efficiency, and in turn, they heavily influence practice and procedure in federal courts. This Article examines the significance of cultural litigation practices and their influence on amending or establishing new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The author proposes that rulemaking must compliment cultural practices in order to be successful and concludes that when conflict exists between these practices and rulemaking, …

Passive-Voice References In Statutory Interpretation, Anita S. Krishnakumar

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court regularly references grammar rules when interpreting statutory language. And yet grammar references play a peculiar role in the Court's statutory cases—often lurking in the background and performing corroborative work to support a construction arrived at primarily through other interpretive tools. The inevitable legisprudential question triggered by such references is, why does the Court bother? If grammar rules provide merely a second, third, or fourth justification for an interpretation reached through other interpretive canons, then what does the Court gain—or think it gains—by including such rules in its statutory analysis?

This essay examines these questions through the lens …

Franz Kafka, Lawrence Joseph, And The Possibilities Of Jurisprudential Literature, Patrick J. Glen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it offers a complementary reading of Franz Kafka’s writings on the law and Lawrence Joseph’s novel Lawyerland. This reading focuses on the distinct perspectives offered by these authors. Whereas Kafka approaches the law from the perspective of the litigant or accused, Joseph’s perspective, through the eyes of his lawyers and judges, is that of the consummate insider. The importance of perspective rests with the fact that although law might constitute an objective system, its experience is inevitably subjective. The absurd malevolence of law in Kafka can thus be rationalized by the system …

Checks, Balances And Judicial Wizardry: Constitutional Delegation And Congressional Legislation, Robert I. Reis

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Preface, Stanley W. Hammer

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Demise Of Class Actions Will Not Be Televised, Benjamin Sachs-Michaels

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

As evidenced by two recent Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution articles, class action waivers in arbitration clauses are currently a hot topic in the field of conflict resolution. With increasing frequency, arbitrators and courts are presented with class action waivers in compulsory arbitration agreements prohibiting the aggregation of claims. This Note argues that some courts have reversed course in their treatment of class action waivers contained in arbitration clauses. There is a new movement to find class waivers, and the arbitration clauses that harbor them, unenforceable. This Note further argues that while plaintiffs uniformly oppose class action waivers, defendants widely …

Alternative Dispute Resolution Expands Into Pre-Trial Practice: An Introduction To The Role Of E-Neutrals, Allison O. Skinner

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Alternative dispute resolution is a viable tool for case management. The use of a third party neutral for resolving discovery disputes and related pre-trial issues offers litigants an alternative for managing the pre-trial phase of a lawsuit in an efficient manner. Alternative dispute resolution is expanding into pre-trial practice in response to two forces: 1) Judicial budgetary constraints; and 2) E-discovery. Both factors require litigants to approach discovery in a manner that meets Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 1-"just, speedy and inexpensive determination of every action and proceeding"-and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37-"Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate …

Religious Freedom, Church-State Separation, And The Ministerial Exception, Thomas C. Berg, Kimberlee Wood Colby, Carl H. Esbeck, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

The Hosanna-Tabor case concerns the separation of church and state, an arrangement that is often misunderstood but is nevertheless a critical dimension of the freedom of religion protected by the First Amendment to our Constitution. For nearly a thousand years, the tradition of Western constitutionalism - the project of protecting political freedom by marking boundaries to the power of government - has been assisted by the principled commitment to religious liberty and to church-state separation, correctly understood. A community that respects - as ours does - both the importance of, and the distinction between, the spheres of political and religious …

Common Procedural And Jurisdictional Pitfalls To Avoid In Practicing Before The Arkansas Supreme Court, Megan Hargraves

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Unpublished Rules Of The Arkansas Court Of Appeals: The Internal Rules And Procedures Of The Arkansas Court Of Appeals, Josephine Linker Hart, Guilford M. Dudley

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Varying Declarations Of Interdependence: The Tenth Circuit's Inconsistent Analysis Of Criminal Conspiracy, Jeff Van Der Veer

University of Colorado Law Review

The Tenth Circuit distinguishes itself from its sister circuits by requiring the prosecution to prove a unique element in all federal criminal conspiracy cases: interdependence. Taken literally, interdependence exists when each conspirator relies on his fellow conspirators to achieve their collective criminal goal. While the Tenth Circuit may have enforced this literal definition in the past, it has since announced varying definitions that have relaxed the standard, thus creating an imprecise and confusing area of case law. This unfortunate evolution has transformed what was once a unique requirement into little more than a formality. The Tenth Circuit should return to …

Pretrial Incentives, Post-Conviction Review, And Sorting Criminal Prosecutions By Guilt Or Innocence, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

The fundamental problem with false convictions is that they are unobserved, and in general, unobservable. We don't spot them when they happen-if we did, they wouldn't happen-and in most cases we can't identify them after the fact. We have no general reliable test for innocence or guilt; if we did, we'd use it at trial. As result, we often say that we don't know for sure whether a convicted criminal defendant is innocent or guilty, or even that we can't know for sure. But this isn't exactly true-or rather, its truth depends on who we mean by "we."

Who Must Testify To The Results Of A Forensic Laboratory Test? Bullcoming V. New Mexico, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

Does the Confrontation Clause permit the prosecution to introduce a forensic laboratory report through the in-court testimony of a supervisor or other person who did not perform or observe the reported test?

Toward A Unified Theory Of Exclusionary Vertical Restraints, Daniel A. Crane, Graciela Miralles

Articles

The law of exclusionary vertical restraints-contractual or other business relationships between vertically related firms-is deeply confused and inconsistent in both the United States and the European Union. A variety of vertical practices, including predatory pricing, tying, exclusive dealing, price discrimination, and bundling, are treated very differently based on formalistic distinctions that bear no relationship to the practices' exclusionary potential. We propose a comprehensive, unified test for all exclusionary vertical restraints that centers on two factors: foreclosure and substantiality. We then assign economic content to these factors. A restraint forecloses if it denies equally efficient rivals a reasonable opportunity to make …

Foreign Official Immunity After Samantar, Chimene I. Keitner

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In Samantar v. Yousuf, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSLA) does not govern the immunity of foreign officials from legal proceedings in U.S. courts. Part I of this symposium contribution seeks to put in sharper focus exactly what is, and what is not, in dispute following Samantar. Part II presents three challenges to common assumptions about conduct-based immunity, which I consider under the headings of personal responsibility, penalties, and presence. Under the heading of personal responsibility, I emphasize that state responsibility and individual responsibility are not mutually exclusive. Under penalties, I argue that …