Judges Commons^™

The Return Of Coverture, Allison Anna Tait

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Once, the notion that husbands and wives were equal partners in marriage seemed outlandish and unnatural. Today, the marriage narrative has been reversed and the prevailing attitude is that marriage has become an increasingly equitable institution. This is the story that Justice Kennedy told in Obergefell v. Hodges, in which he described marriage as an evolving institution that has adapted in response to social change such that discriminatory marriage rules no longer apply. Coverture exemplifies this change: marriage used to be deeply shaped by coverture rules and now it is not. While celebrating the demise of coverture, however, the …

What If?: Human Experience And Supreme Court Decision Making On Criminal Justice, Christopher E. Smith

Marquette Law Review

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Who Wins In The Supreme Court? An Examination Of Attorney And Law Firm Influence, Adam Feldman

Marquette Law Review

Who are the most successful attorneys in the Supreme Court? A novel way to answer this question is by looking at attorneys’ relative influence on the course of the law. This article performs macro and micro-level analyses of the most successful Supreme Court litigators by examining the amount of language shared between nearly 9,500 Supreme Court merits briefs and their respective Supreme Court opinions from 1946 through 2013. The article also includes analyses of the most successful law firms according to the same metric.

The Second Amendment On Campus, Allen K. Rostron

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Lights Hidden Under Bushel's Case, Thomas A. Green

Book Chapters

Some forty years ago, Charlie Donahue created a course which he titled "Law, Morals and Society." Designed for undergraduates, and situated among the offerings of the University of Michigan's interdisciplinary Medieval and Renaissance Collegium, the course reflected the approach to doing history that, as this volume recognizes, Charlie has followed throughout his long and enormously influential career as scholar, teacher, lecturer, and inepressible master of well-timed interventions during conference-panel discussion periods. "LMS" was composed of four units. Charlie, who taught two of them, led off with the legal basis for the deposition of Richard II; I followed with the law …

Bargaining In The Shadow Of Children's Voices In Divorce Custody Disputes: Comparative Analysis Of Japan And The U.S., Hiroharu Saito

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This paper discusses the social impact of hearing children's wishes in judicial procedures for divorce custody disputes by comparing the different legal systems in Japan and the U.S. In particular, through a plain law and economics approach with the analytical framework of "Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law" suggested by Mnookin and Kornhauser (1979), this paper discusses the backlash to parents' bargaining outside the court by empowering children to be heard in court.

There has been a child advocacy movement in Japan to empower children's participation right in the judicial procedures in accordance with the UN Convention on the …

"Ideology" Or "Situation Sense"? An Experimental Investigation Of Motivated Reasoning And Professional Judgment, Dan M. Kahan, David Hoffman, Danieli Evans, Neal Devins, Eugene Lucci, Katherine Cheng, Katherine Cheng, Katherine Cheng

Articles

This Article reports the results of a study on whether political predispositions influence judicial decisionmaking. The study was designed to overcome the two principal limitations on existing empirical studies that purport to find such an influence: the use of nonexperimental methods to assess the decisions of actual judges; and the failure to use actual judges in ideologically-biased-reasoning experiments. The study involved a sample of sitting judges (n = 253), who, like members of a general public sample (n = 800), were culturally polarized on climate change, marijuana legalization and other contested issues. When the study subjects were assigned to analyze …

Robots As Legal Metaphors, Ryan Calo

Articles

This Article looks at the specific role robots play in the judicial imagination. The law and technology literature is replete with examples of how the metaphors and analogies that courts select for emerging technology can be outcome determinative. Privacy law scholar Professor Daniel Solove argues convincingly, for instance, that George Orwell's Big Brother metaphor has come to dominate, and in ways limit, privacy law and policy in the United States. Even at a more specific, practical level, whether a judge sees email as more like a letter or a postcard will dictate the level of Fourth Amendment protection she is …

On Legal Scholarship: Questions For Judge Harry T. Edwards, Ronald K.L. Collins

Articles

The life of Judge Harry T. Edwards is one very much steeped in writing. His passion dates back at least to his years at Uniondale High School when he was the editor of the school newspaper. In the legal realm, that passion traces back to 1964 and his days on the Michigan Law Review when he published two student Notes. In the half-century since then, Judge Edwards has authored six books and more than 90 scholarly articles or essays. As a lawyer, educator, administrator, arbitrator, and now jurist, Harry Edwards has put his ideas into print concerning an array of …

Judge Shopping In The Eastern District Of Texas, Jonas Anderson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Judge Rodney Gilstrap has a lot of patent cases on his docket. In fact, in 2015 there were 1,686 patent cases that were filed and assigned to Judge Gilstrap, an astronomical number for a single judge. Judge Gilstrap — one of eight federal judges who sit on the Eastern District of Texas — is so popular with patent plaintiffs that over one-fourth of all patent cases in the country are heard by him. This Article addresses the problems with allowing this judge shopping to occur. It reviews the scholarship on the topic that is almost universally opposed to judge shopping …

First Principles And Practical Politics: Thoughts On Judge Pryor's Proposal To Revive Presumptive Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

In recent remarks to the American Law Institute, Judge William Pryor recommended abandonment of the post- Booker advisory version of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and adoption of a simplified presumptive federal guidelines system. There was a time when I shared Judge Pryor's optimism that a sensible system of simplified presumptive sentencing guidelines could be enacted and could achieve its beneficent ends for a useful period thereafter. I have not yet surrendered the dream, but I confess to increased skepticism. The remainder of this essay will explain my pessimistic turn.

Law, Politics, And Legacy Building At The Mclachlin Court In 2014, Jamie Cameron

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

This Article was written for Osgoode Hall Law School’s annual Constitutional Cases conference, and provides the keynote overview of the McLachlin Court’s 2014 constitutional jurisprudence. The Court’s 2014 constitutional decisions (Appointment and Senate References; Tsilqot’in Nation; Trial Lawyers) and restrictions on Mr. Big operations (Hart), in combination with a tsunami of Charter decisions early in 2015 (the 2015 Labour Trilogy; Carter v. Canada; R. v. Nur; and others), made this a legacy-building year. More than an overview, this Article probes the nature of the McLachlin Court’s legacy this year and the relationship between legal and political dynamics, to ask: in …

The Ideal Judge: How Implicit Bias Shapes Assessment Of State Judges, Rebecca D. Gill, Rafael Oganesyan

Political Science Faculty Research

Judicial Performance Evaluation (JPE) is generally seen as an important part of the merit system, which often suffers from a lack of relevant voter information. Utah’s JPE system has undergone significant change in recent years. Using data from the two most recent JPE surveys, we provide a preliminary look at the operation of this new system. Our results suggest that the survey component has difficulty distinguishing among the judges on the basis of relevant criteria. The question prompts intended to measure performance on different ABA categories are also indistinguishable. We find evidence that, on some measures, female judges do disproportionately …

Restoring The Civil Jury In A World Without Trials, Dmitry Bam

Faculty Publications

Early in this nation’s history, the civil jury was the most important institutional check on biased and corrupt judges. Recently, concerns about judicial bias, especially in elected state judiciaries, have intensified as new studies demonstrate the extent of that bias. But the jury of Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson is nowhere to be found. In fact, the civil jury is virtually dead. It is used in less than 1% of all civil cases, and even when it makes a rare appearance, the jury’s powers have been significantly curtailed.

This article argues that we must reimagine the civil jury to match the …

Whole Other Story: Applying Narrative Mediation To The Immigration Beat, Carol Pauli

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

If Donald Trump, in kicking off his campaign for the White House, was saying "what everyone is thinking" about illegal immigration, it must be that his message mirrored a narrative that already existed in the minds of his audience. That fearful story of criminals invading the U.S. borders has long been a dominant theme in the mainstream news immigration story. Like all news stories, this one focuses attention on some facts at the expense of others. Like many news stories, it draws its power from earlier, well-known tales-some as old as The Flood. This article reconsiders news stories-and the storytelling …

The Call And The Response: The Call, The 1991 Open Letter From Federal Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., And The 25 Years Of Response From Justice Clarence Thomas, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

In 1991, Clarence Thomas was confirmed as the first Black radical conservative Justice, in spite of opposition including credible allegations of sexual harassment lodged against him. His unprecedented confirmation evoked unprecedented reactions, including written ones. One such written action is the basis for this article. Our nation is now fast approaching the anniversary, not only of Thomas’ 25 ceremonial years on the Court, but also of almost 25 years since an unprecedented, published, pointed, open, publicly and widely circulated correspondence was sent to the newly confirmed Justice Thomas by another Black judge. Esteemed Federal Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., penned …

Underinclusivity And The First Amendment: The Legislative Right To Nibble At Problems After Williams-Yulee, Clay Calvert

UF Law Faculty Publications

Using the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 opinion in Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar as an analytical springboard, this Article examines the slipperiness — and sometimes fatalness — of the underinclusiveness doctrine in First Amendment free-speech jurisprudence. The doctrine allows lawmakers, at least in some instances, to take incremental, step-by-step measures to address harms caused by speech, rather than requiring an all-out, blanket-coverage approach. Yet, if the legislative tack taken is too small to ameliorate the harm that animates a state’s alleged regulatory interest, it could doom the statute for failing to directly advance it. In brief, the doctrine of underinclusivity requires …

The Fourth Chief Justice Of The United States, John Marshall, Meagan Schantz

Writing Across the Curriculum

The fourth Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall (1755-1835), served thirty-four years (1801-1835) in the United States Supreme Court. During his term, Marshall established a stable foundation for the United States Judiciary, which in turn increased the role and scope of the federal government. Marshall’s life and achievements are documented in the biography, The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law by Charles F. Hobson, the editor of The Papers of John Marshall.

Judging Identity, Carla Pratt

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

A Referee Without A Whistle: Magistrate Judges And Discovery Sanctions In The Seventh Circuit, Landyn Wm. Rookard

Indiana Law Journal

This Note ultimately argues that, if the Seventh Circuit is not willing to reverse its holdings in Alpern v. Lieb and Retired Chicago Police Ass'n v. City of Chicago in light of recent developments, Congress should again clarify its intent. In the face of the crushing "costs of discovery [that] threaten to exceed the amount at issue in all but the largest cases," it is the Seventh Circuit's responsibility to employ all just and legal devices to comply with Congress's mandate "to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action and proceeding."