Judges Commons^™

Judicial Activism In State Supreme Courts: Institutional Design And Judicial Behavior, Stefanie A. Lindquist

Scholarship@WashULaw

How governments and the electorate choose to structure judicial institutions has implications for the rule of law. In the state context, for example, judicial elections were instituted precisely because reformers expected elected judges to counter legislative action more vigorously through the power of judicial review. But when judges invalidate statutes more frequently, they reduce law’s predictability and stability. The same can be said for decisions overruling precedent: frequent overrulings undermine the norm of stare decisis and destabilize the legal status quo. These behaviors may also be viewed by some observers as more “activist” than those that defer to legislative judgments …

Judging The Judiciary By The Numbers: Empirical Research On Judges, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Do judges make decisions that are truly impartial? A wide range of experimental and field studies reveal that several extra-legal factors influence judicial decision making. Demographic characteristics of judges and litigants affect judges’ decisions. Judges also rely heavily on intuitive reasoning in deciding cases, making them vulnerable to the use of mental shortcuts that can lead to mistakes. Furthermore, judges sometimes rely on facts outside the record and rule more favorably towards litigants who are more sympathetic or with whom they share demographic characteristics. On the whole, judges are excellent decision makers, and sometimes resist common errors of judgment that …

Justice Scalia And Fourth Estate Skepticism, Ronnell Anderson Jones

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The about-face in characterization of the press during Justice Scalia's three decades on the Court is worthy of a discussion about its underlying causes and also a discussion about its potential effects. As I have noted elsewhere, both the explanations for the shift and the possible ramifications of it are complex and multifaceted. Scalia's push for a new, less positive depiction of the press came at a time when the institutional press experienced significant change and its reputation among the American public plummeted-suggesting that Justice Scalia (and, ultimately, his colleagues on the Court) were merely being perceptive observers of the …

Filling The Texas Federal Court Vacancies, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Texas confronts many federal appellate and district court openings, but the situation has reached crisis proportions. The state addresses two protracted U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacancies, which have lacked nominees for multiple years, and eleven open trial court seats, all but one classified as "judicial emergencies." This conundrum persists, although the Senate confirmed three jurists for Texas district vacancies in both 2014 and 2015 and President Barack Obama submitted well qualified, mainstream nominees on five empty posts in March 2016. Texas Republican Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz also failed to expeditiously provide those designees' "blue …

Recalibrating Judicial Renominations In The Trump Administration, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Now that President Donald Trump has commenced the fifth month of his administration, federal courts experience 121 circuit and district court vacancies. These statistics indicate that Mr. Trump has a valuable opportunity to approve more judges than any new President. The protracted open judgeships detrimentally affect people and businesses engaged in federal court litigation, because they restrict the expeditious, inexpensive and equitable disposition of cases. Nevertheless, the White House has been treating crucial issues that mandate careful attention-specifically establishing a government, confirming a Supreme Court Justice, and keeping numerous campaign promises. How, accordingly, can President Trump fulfill these critical duties …

Filling The Seventh Circuit Vacancies, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

In January 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Donald Schott and Myra Selby for empty judicial positions on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Schott is a very talented practitioner, who has efficaciously served as a well-respected partner of a major law firm for greater than thirty years. For instance, Schott has professionally worked on numerous complicated federal suits and a plethora of complex actions, many of which efforts concluded with alternative dispute resolution. Selby is concomitantly an exceptional lawyer, who has compiled a distinguished record in the public and private sectors. For example, the compelling prospect …

Nominate Judge Koh To The Ninth Circuit Again, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

During February 2016, President Barack Obama nominated United States District Judge Lucy Haeran Koh to a “judicial emergency” vacancy on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She has capably served over multiple years in the Northern District of California competently deciding numerous high-profile lawsuits, specifically regarding intellectual property. Accordingly, the President’s efforts to confirm her were unsurprising. However, 2016 was a presidential election year when judicial nominations traditionally slow and ultimately halt. This difficulty was exacerbated when Republicans consistently refused to implement any confirmation process for United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia …

Challenging Nonbank Sifi Designations: Ge, Metlife, And The Need For Reform, Drita Dokic

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act created, among other things, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), an entity within the U.S. Department of the Treasury tasked with assessing and mitigating financial risk. Financial institutions with over $50 billion in assets are automatically deemed “systemically important.” However, under the Dodd-Frank Act, FSOC has the authority to designate non-bank companies engaged in financial activity as systemically important as well. Once designated as a systemically important financial institution (SIFI), these companies are subject to enhanced regulation and supervision by the Federal Reserve. Because the costs associated with such enhanced regulation …

Judicial Selection And Ideology, Brian T. Fitzpatrick

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

My topic is how best to select judges. As we all know, the method we use to select federal judges--including U.S. Supreme Court justices--has not changed since 1789: The President nominates, the Senate confirms, and the judges serve for life. But the states have experimented with a variety of different methods over the years. Some states have used something like the federal method.' Some states have elected their judges by popular vote. Some of those states have done so with party affiliation on the ballot, and some states have done so without it. Some states have selected judges through a …

Law And The Modern Mind: Consciousness And Responsibility In American Legal Culture (Book Review), Edward A. Purcell Jr.

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Personal Reflections On The Honorable Robert R. Merhige, Jr.: A Judge, Mentor, And Friend, Mary Kelly Tate

Law Faculty Publications

Twenty-six years – half my lifetime – have passed since I joined Judge Merhige's court family as his law clerk. I attempt here to sketch my personal impressions, distilling what to me was most remarkable about Robert R. Merhige, Jr. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this dynamic man turned legendary judge – a man I revered from the moment I met him – is more vivid to me now than he was to my younger self.

Mercurial, energetic, and benevolently despotic, Judge Merhige was a man of extraordinary decency who cherished his vocation and the law. He was a World War II veteran …

Judges As Diplomats In Advancing The Rule Of Law: A Conversation With President Koen Lenaerts And Justice Stephen Breyer, Koen Lenaerts, Stephen Breyer

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Memoriam: Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

I must confess that I don’t read law reviews. Of course, I read law review articles, in the course of judicial research and keeping in touch with academic literature in areas of my scholarly interest, but like most judges and lawyers, I don’t have time or interest to just pick up the latest issue of a law review and read it through. I do, however, regularly read the quarterly Ballet Review, a quasi-scholarly journal of reviews and articles about dance. Only once, in some twenty years of reading that publication, has it overlapped my legal interests. The Fall …

Dizzying Gillespie: The Exaggerated Death Of The Balancing Approach And The Inescapable Allure Of Flexibility In Appellate Jurisdiction, Bryan Lammon

University of Richmond Law Review

In Part I, I provide necessary background on the current re- gime of federal appellate jurisdiction before turning to the rise and fall of Gillespie and the balancing approach. Part I concludes by explaining how inconsistent Gillespie and the balancing approach are with the Supreme Court's current approach to appellate jurisdiction. Part II turns to five areas in which the balancing approach persists in the courts of appeals and demonstrates the influence of the balancing approach, and the often case-by-case nature of decision-making, in each of these areas. And in Part III, I explore the implications of the balancing approach's …

Originalist Law Reform, Judicial Departmentalism, And Justice Scalia, Kevin C. Walsh

Scholarly Articles

Drawing on examples from Justice Antonin Scalia's jurisprudence, this Essay uses the perspective of judicial departmentalism to examine the nature and limits of two partially successful originalist law reforms in recent years. It then shifts to an examination of how a faulty conception of judicial supremacy drove a few nonoriginalist changes in the law that Scalia properly dissented from. Despite the mistaken judicial supremacy motivating these decisions, a closer look reveals them to be backhanded tributes to judicial departmentalism because of the way that the Court had to change jurisdictional and remedial doctrines to accomplish its substantive-law alterations. The Essay …

Editors' Introduction, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Judicial Legacy Of Louis Brandeis And The Nature Of American Constitutionalism, Edward A. Purcell Jr.

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Trial And Error: Lawyers And Nonlawyer Advocates, Anna Carpenter, Alyx Mark, Colleen Shanahan

Faculty Articles

Nonlawyer advocates are one proposed solution to the access to justice crisis and are currently permitted to practice in some civil justice settings. Theory and research suggest nonlawyers might be effective in some civil justice settings, yet we know very little, empirically, about nonlawyer practice in the United States. Using data from more than 5,000 unemployment insurance appeal hearings and interviews with lawyers and nonlawyers, this article explores how both types of representatives learn to do their work and what this means for their effectiveness. Building on recent research regarding the importance of procedural knowledge and relational expertise as elements …

Active Judging And Access To Justice, Anna Carpenter

Faculty Articles

"Being a good judge in this environment means unlearning what you learned in law school about what a judge is supposed to do. Fairness is doing things a federal judge would never do.” Active judging, where judges step away from the traditional, passive role to assist those without counsel, is a central feature of recent proposals aimed at solving the pro se crisis in America’s state civil courts. Despite growing support for active judging as an access to justice intervention, we know little, empirically, about how judges interact with pro se parties as a general matter, and even less about …

Judicial Power, The Judicial Power Project And The Uk, Paul Craig

Articles by Maurer Faculty

It is axiomatic that all power requires justification, and that is equally true for judicial power as for other species thereof. This article is primarily concerned with judicial power in the UK. The subject will be approached through consideration of the Judicial Power Project, which has been critical of the courts, much of this being sharp-edged, and fierce. There is repeated talk of judicial overreach and consequent legitimacy crisis, as the courts are said to encroach on terrain that is properly the preserve of the political branch of government.

It is by the same token important that the critics are …