Courts Commons^™

Family Treatment Courts In Rural Settings, Alissa Hendricks, John Lepage

UMKC Law Review

Missouri courts deal in hundreds of thousands of cases each year that involve money, property, and crime, but no category of cases is more important than those dealing with the safety and welfare of children. The collaborative model of family treatment courts was created out of the passion for this responsibility to children and to the families of this state.

Family treatment courts evolved from the adult drug court model, where collaborative efforts found success within the criminal justice system. Family treatment courts are now one of the most expansive improvements conducted in the judicial, child welfare, substance use disorder …

The Perilous Focus Shift From The Rule Of Law To Appellate Efficiency, Elizabeth Lee Thompson

Connecticut Law Review

We should be wary of reforms that are attractive in terms of saving time but have unnoticed substantive effects. . . . The great end for which courts are created is not efficiency. It is justice.

Charles Alan Wright (1966)¹

Some of the most significant—and by some estimations the most controversial— transformations of the federal appellate system occurred in the late 1960s and 1970s. Many of the effects are still felt today, including the shift from oral argument for all appeals and the view that study and disposition of each appeal were exclusively judicial tasks, to the adoption of …

Combating Substance Abuse And Violence In Jackson County, Missouri: A Public Health Approach To The "War On Drugs", Danielle Bukacheski, Grant Baker, Stephen R. Bough

UMKC Law Review

In 1989, Jackson County, Missouri, made history - voters passed the first tax solely dedicated to funding substance abuse prevention and treatment. Today, the COMmunity Backed Anti-Crime Tax ("COMBAT") continues to annually generate between $25 to $30 million that supports Jackson County courts, the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office, local law enforcement agencies, and nonprofit organizations focusing on prevention and treatment. COMBAT has achieved success through its de-emphasis on punitive law enforcement practices and emphasis on public health. Instead of focusing on the prosecution of drug-related offenses, COMBAT is leading a more holistic "War on Drugs" by funding community-based resources to …

Engaging The Base: Using Veterans Treatment Courts In Missouri To Address Core Issues, Evan Rodriguez

UMKC Law Review

With a per capita veteran population surpassing the national average, Missouri presents its veterans with unique challenges in their day-to-day lives. For example, nearly one-third of Missouri veterans are disabled, compared to one-sixth of civilians. The State established the Missouri Veterans Commission, which supports veterans and their families with the veteran-specific obstacles they face. To that end, Missouri offers the second highest number of veteran benefits of any state in the country.

Like all groups of people, some veterans will unfortunately enter the criminal justice system due to varying factors. Veterans Treatment Courts ("VTCs") originated to address veteran-specific reasons for …

Housing Court: A Balancing Act, Todd Wilcher

UMKC Law Review

This article provides a general description of the Kansas City Municipal Court's Housing Court - its origin, jurisdiction, and process-and discusses the broader themes and competing interests at issue in its cases. Because detached single-family home cases take up most of the space on the dockets, the single-family home theme is a major thread in the fabric of this Article. At the same time, however-in the broader context of the municipal environment-every building, structure and open land is subject to building, zoning, and maintenance regulations. These regulations are pervasive in our modern society, and ensuring they are applied in a …

Filtered Dragnets And The Anti-Authoritarian Fourth Amendment, Jane R. Bambauer

UF Law Faculty Publications

Filtered dragnets are digital searches that identify a suspect based on the details of a crime. They can be designed to withhold information from law enforcement unless and until there is a very high probability that the individual has committed the offense. Examples today include DNA matching, facial recognition from photographs or video of a crime, automated child sexual abuse material detection, and reverse geolocation (geofence) searches. More are sure to come, and their wide-scale use will be irresistible to improve the low rates of criminal detection that currently afflict many communities.

However, filtered dragnets imperil society precisely because they …

Is The Statutory 60-Day Deadline For Filing A Petition For Review Of A Final Mspb Order Jurisdictional?, Anne Marie Lofaso

Law Faculty Scholarship

Case at a Glance: The Department of Defense (DOD) furloughed employee Stuart R. Harrow in 2013. Harrow timely challenged DOD’s decision before an administrative judge, who affirmed it. Harrow timely appealed the judge’s decision to the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB or “Board”), which could not act on the appeal for over five years because it lacked a quorum. On May 11, 2022, the MSPB issued a final order, affirming the judge’s decision. However, Harrow did not learn of the decision until August 30. Harrow promptly filed a petition to review the Board’s order with the Federal Circuit, which denied …

Problem-Solving Courts And The Outcome Oversight Gap, Erin R. Collins

UMKC Law Review

The creation of a specialized, “problem-solving” court is a ubiquitous response to the issues that plague our criminal legal system. The courts promise to address the factors believed to lead to repeated interactions with the system, such as addiction or mental illness, thereby reducing recidivism and saving money. And they do so effectively – at least according to their many proponents, who celebrate them as an example of a successful “evidence-based,” data-driven reform. But the actual data on their efficacy is underwhelming, inconclusive, or altogether lacking. So why do they persist?

This Article seeks to answer that question by scrutinizing …

Legislating Courts, Michael Pollack

UMKC Law Review

Judges are ordinarily thought of as deciders of a specific sort: people who apply the rule of law to resolve disagreements between the parties appearing before them. But in every state, judges do far more. They are charged by state statutory or constitutional law with a range of quasi-administrative, quasi-legislative, and quasi-executive law enforcement functions. These roles raise a number of theoretical and practical concerns. In many states, though, legislatures have gone even further. They have either wholly delegated significant policymaking power to state court judges or have sat idle while those judges have assumed the mantle of functions that …

Building A Successful Team In A Problem-Solving Court: The Western District Of Missouri Model, Carie Allen, Stephen R. Bough, Lajuana Counts, Arthur Diaz, Jeffrey Mccarther, Katie Meister, James Parker

UMKC Law Review

Problem-solving courts work. We know that reentry programs and intensive supervision programs like drug courts are effective alternatives to incarceration that reduce recidivism. For example, the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri's Reentry Court has an 85.7% success rate for graduates, meaning they complete their term of supervised release without any new charges. A reduction of recidivism means hefty savings of tax-payer dollars. More importantly, successful problem-solving courts mean people engage in their communities, raise families, work productive jobs, and pay taxes.

Courts and legislators and executive branches around the country are increasingly turning to problem …

Kansas City Municipal Court's Domestic Violence Court Programming, Courtney A. Wachal, Gerald Sorensen, Jenna Phelps, Nephateri Hill

UMKC Law Review

The Kansas City Municipal Domestic Violence Court identifies cases as domestic violence if they involve intimate partner violence, violations of protective order, interfamily violence, or cases where there is a child witness. This court manages a large caseload of domestic violence violations that vary widely in the severity of the charges and the levels of violence.

The Kansas City Municipal Domestic Violence Court has prioritized their probation resources by focusing services on those cases that are most in need of supervision and on those cases most likely to be receptive to services. This article will discuss The Compliance Docket and …

Iiaas And The Montreal Protocol: The Legal Minefield Inside The Most Successful Environmental Treaty In History, Jackson Elder

UMKC Law Review

The most successful environmental treaty in history might break international law's core principle, and it all depends on who you ask. International law consists of rules and principles relating to states, international organizations, and individuals. The source of all international law is the consent of nations, and each nation is governed by the treaties they consent to. Provisions that force states to behave according to its text and do not satisfy international law's traditional consent standard are consequential. As no term exists for these provisions currently, these clauses have been termed as international imposed axiomatic alterations ("IIAA"s). IIAAs, for this …

Access To Justice In The Nova Scotia Small Claims Court 1980-2022, William H. Charles

Dalhousie Law Journal

*This contribution has not been peer-reviewed.

In his latest research paper the author explores the extent or degree to which the Nova Scotia Small Claims Court achieves its declared purpose of providing the citizens of the province with what can accurately be described as a “People’s Court,” that is, a legal agency that would allow ordinary citizens to pursue their legal claims expeditiously and at a reasonable cost with a process that involved lawyers/adjudicators rather than judges. After a review and analysis of several thousand decisions by Nova Scotia Adjudicators/lawyers, the author concluded that the creators of the court had …

Peripheral Detention, Transfer, And Access To The Courts, Jessica Rofé

Michigan Law Review

In the last forty years, immigration detention in the U.S. has grown exponentially, largely concentrated in the southern states and outside of the country’s metropoles. In turn, federal immigration officials routinely transfer immigrants from their communities to remote jails and prisons hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away, often in jurisdictions where the law is more favorable to the government. These transfers are conducted without notice or process and frequently occur on weekends or in the predawn hours, when offices are closed and interested parties are lucky to access voicemail.

Federal immigration officials’ use of peripheral detention and transfer significantly …

Barring Judicial Review, Laura E. Dolbow

Vanderbilt Law Review

Whether judicial review is available is one of the most hotly contested issues in administrative law. Recently, laws that prohibit judicial review have sparked debate in the Medicare, immigration, and patent contexts. These debates are continuing in challenges to the recently created Medicare price negotiation program. Yet despite debates about the removal of judicial review, little is known about how often, and in what contexts, Congress has expressly precluded review. This Article provides new insights about express preclusion by conducting an empirical study of the U.S. Code. It creates an original dataset of laws that expressly preclude judicial review of …

New Hurdles To Redistricting Reform: State Evasion, Moore, And Partisan Gerrymandering, Manoj Mate

Journal Articles

Proponents of fair districting reforms continue to face challenges in seeking to address the problem of partisan gerrymandering. Even in states that have successfully enacted redistricting reforms, state actors have been able to evade compliance, and state courts have been unable to guarantee fair districts. In addition, the Supreme Court’s decision in Moore v. Harper could also limit state court efforts to guarantee fair districts. This Article argues that state evasion and Moore threaten to undermine the efficacy of fair districting norms recognized by state courts or enacted through either state political processes. Moore could create a one-way ratchet by …

In Celebration Of Black History Month, The New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department Presents: A Fireside Chat, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

2023–2024 Flyers

No abstract provided.

Jarkesy V. Sec: Are Federal Courts Pushing The U.S. Toward The Next Financial Crisis?, Jennifer Hill

Pepperdine Law Review

In the wake of both the Great Depression and the Financial Crisis of 2008, Congress established and expanded the powers of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As part of this expansion, the SEC in-house administrative proceedings, designed to adjudicate SEC violations before the SEC’s administrative law judges (ALJs), were born. These in-house proceedings have faced multiple constitutional attacks in the past decade. In the most recent iteration of such challenges, Jarkesy v. SEC, the Fifth Circuit held that the SEC’s in-house proceedings were unconstitutional on three grounds: (1) the in-house proceedings deprived petitioners of their constitutional right to jury …

No Need To Reinvent The Wheel: The Positive Relationship Between Green Technology And Patent Enforcement, Addison S. Fowler

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

How Can You Tell If There Is A Crisis? Data And Measurement Challenges In Assessing Jury Representation, Mary R. Rose, Marc A. Musick

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.