Yearly Archives: 2020
Jan 21, 2020 Roger M. MichalskiCourts Law
Ryan Copus,
Statistical Precedent: Allocating Judicial Attention , __
Vand. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2020), available at
SSRN.
Courts of Appeals in the United States are busy and, as numerous commentators and judges have pointed out, are unable to give many cases the attention they deserve. Attention supply and demand are currently grossly misaligned. Worse, there is little realistic hope of reducing the number of appeals or increasing the number of appellate judges. Appellate courts have responded by enlisting attention aids (e.g., more staff attorneys, more clerks), reducing attention commitments (e.g., fewer oral arguments, short and unpublished opinions), and reallocating attention from some types of cases to others.
These moves create numerous practical and normative problems. Perhaps most serious is that appellate judges systematically shortchange some types of cases (e.g., pro se, immigration, social security, and prisoner appeals) and lavish attention on other cases that have superficial markers of importance. Courts of appeals allocate their precious attention according to a cobbled-together set of proxies, heuristics, norms, historic practices, and shortcuts. None of this is to fault appellate judges; many seem unhappy with the current state of affairs and try their best with the limited resources that they have. But it is difficult to avoid the impression that the current hodgepodge of solutions is neither transparent nor efficient nor evenhanded.
Ryan Copus’ article is not the first to consider how courts can improve their ad hoc attention-triage systems, but he creatively pushes methodological boundaries to attack old problems from a fresh angle. He combines machine learning with an impressive dataset to answer how frequently appellate courts have reversed a particular type of case. Cases with low or high probabilities of reversal represent “easy” cases that typically merit little attention and are good candidates for a first look by staff attorneys. Cases in the middle represent “hard” cases that present opportunities to develop law and enhance predictability in the future. The article also uses traditional indicators of error to boost our confidence in the ability of the machine-learning-generated model to usefully predict error. Continue reading "Attention Supplicants"
Jan 20, 2020 Melissa MortazaviLegal Profession
Legal scholarship that creates new avenues of inquiry is inherently appealing, but when it also reveals obscured narratives of power in American society, you have the makings of a truly important contribution. Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court, by Hannah Brenner Jonhson and Renee Knake Jefferson, is all that and an engaging read besides. In their book, Brenner and Knake resurrect the largely forgotten history of accomplished female lawyers nominated but not selected for the Supreme Court. As these narratives highlight the pitfalls of being shortlisted rather than selected, Brenner and Knake’s work queries whether the term “shortlisted” is pejorative rather than a boon for female candidates. The authors present the harm of historical obfuscation as compound: “it is not just that the women were denied positions of distinction, but that their tales have been subjugated…unfairly stifl[ing] national imagination.” (P. 133.) Compiling this history and bringing it forward alone would be enough to make the book worthwhile—but the project doesn’t stop there. Instead, Shortlisted also ambitiously engages with the question of how to sidestep such marginalization moving forward.
Throughout the book, stories of highly qualified female candidates who are summarily eliminated from contention or only facially considered for political cover pulls the distinction between consideration and appointment into stark relief. (One reporter quoted in the book notes, “The women…reflect another White House strategy: mentioning certain names to score political points, while not taking them seriously as contenders.”) (P. 122.) The book begins with a deep dive into the life of Florence Allen, a jurist “universally respected” for her work ethic and intellect, who was shortlisted by President Truman. She is not only the first person on the shortlist—in a way, she bookends Sandra Day O’Connor—but her downfall became Justice O’Connor’s entrée. Before nominating Judge Allen, Truman consulted with then-Chief Justice Fred Vinson about her potential nomination. Chief Justice Vinson negatively responded that the presence of a woman would inhibit needed deliberations amongst the men. As such, Judge Allen’s nomination stalled; she was shortlisted, more of an end game than a path forward. Only with this context, can one truly appreciate the weight that the law school friendship between Chief Justice Rehnquist and then-nominee Sandra Day O’Connor played in history. If the two hadn’t been friends, would history have been different? Continue reading "An Honor or a Curse? The Untold Story of Shortlisted Female Jurists"
Jan 17, 2020 Kim BrooksEquality
Many legal scholars who care about social and economic equality spend time focusing on constitutional, anti-discrimination, criminal, or private law subjects; yet, a country’s tax code is the government’s most substantial tool for advancing social and economic policy. Its ramifications for equality are substantial.
Many tax scholars have uncovered the gender and race bias embedded in tax law. (Just to illustrate, see the work of terrific people like Dorothy Brown or Kathleen Lahey.) Yet, there has been surprisingly little change to codes around the world to bring them into conformity with the recommendations of those scholars. Perhaps Kleiman, Matsui and Mitchell’s report, The Faulty Foundations of the Tax Code: Gender and Racial Bias in Our Tax Laws, will help. Continue reading "Our most significant instrument to deliver social and economic policy"
Jan 16, 2020 Angela FernandezLegal History
Renisa Mawani’s Across Oceans of Law tells the history of the infamously failed passage of the ship the Komagata Maru and the 376 (mostly Punjabi and mostly adult male) people on it who found themselves denied entry to Canada in 1914. The leader of the expedition, Gurdit Singh, a British subject originally from Punjab, insisted on the right to travel and trade on the “free sea,” “a common place that was beyond national and imperial claims to sovereignty.” (P. 5.) Yet, as Mawani puts it, “Britain’s ascendancy as a maritime empire was achieved through a juridification of the sea, advanced in legislation, treaties, agreements and in legal restrictions imposed on ships, passengers, and cargos.” (P. 5.) These restrictions included the “continuous journey” provision used in this case to deny entry to “Asiatic” immigrants seeking entry into Canada. The idea of the Canadian and imperial government was to force all steamship routes (e.g. from Calcutta to Vancouver) to stop in another port of call (e.g. Hong Kong) and then use the journey’s interruption to deny the ship entry into Canada. The law, while facially race-neutral, was only ever invoked against non-white settlers (primarily from India) and is now widely regarded as a thin veneer on an explicitly racist measure aimed at keeping “white Canada white.”
Audrey Macklin explains that “Britain strenuously discouraged the one colony (Canada) from employing explicitly racist exclusionary measures that would exacerbate agitation against British rule in another part of Empire (India).” Britain “preferred to contain Indian British subjects within India . . . the proliferation of diasporic networks of Indian colonial subjects . . . multiplied potential nodes of resistance” to British rule in India. Continue reading "The Motion of the Ship and the Sea: Oceans as Method in Colonial Legal History"
Jan 15, 2020 Thomas BustamanteJurisprudence
More than forty years after his first take on the value of the rule of law, Professor Joseph Raz, in The Law’s Own Virtue, has recently revised his original view and given us an insightful and very sophisticated account of this political virtue, developing a framework that connects his theory of law with his moral philosophy and his neoclassical account of intentional actions.
Previously, Raz held that the rule of law was a formal value which concerns the particular ways by which the law must guide the behavior of its subjects. The rule of law was understood in a narrow way as “essentially a negative value” which was “designed to minimize the danger created by the law itself.” It was a value about what the government and its officials cannot do when they exercise power over their subjects. On this account, the point of the rule of law is to constrain government so the law can comply with its guiding function and enable the people it governs to go on with their lives and commit to valuable pursuits: “We value the ability to choose styles and forms of life, to fix long-term goals and effectively direct one’s life towards them.” And the basic idea of the rule of law is that governmental action, including adjudication and any act which produces particular directives, is subjected to “general, open, and stable” norms. One of the basic requirements of the rule of law is that “the making of particular laws should be guided by open and relatively stable general rules.” Continue reading "The Rule of Law and the Government’s Role in Our Lives"
Jan 14, 2020 Mariana Canales S.International & Comparative Law
After an unprecedented social crisis, Chile is seeking constitutional change. This decision is quite extraordinary: though the Constitution contemplates amendment rules, Chileans have decided to create a new mechanism for approving constitutional change. The Chilean constitution was written during a military regime, and despite its many reforms, its legitimacy is sometimes questioned. Of course, its amendment rules are questioned as well. Nevertheless, this new procedure aims to respect the rule of law: Congress must first approve a reform of the amendment rules to allow constitutional change by means not previously established. After that, the process contemplates two referendums and an election. If this process fails to result in approval of the new Constitution, then the current one will remain in force.
This process raises many questions. For instance, if we have rules to change and amend our Constitution, why did we decide not to follow them? And if we agree to change the Constitution, what should the design of the new amendment rules be? What are the relevant principles, criteria, and institutions? In this scenario, Richard Albert’s book, Constitutional Amendments, provides valuable input. Continue reading "Why Does Constitutional Amendment Design Matter?"
Jan 13, 2020 Christopher J. SprigmanIntellectual Property Law
Brian L. Frye,
Plagiarize This Paper,
IDEA: The IP Law Review (forthcoming 2020), available at
SSRN.
Oscar Wilde: “That was an awfully good joke you made last night. I wish I could say it was mine.
James Whistler: “You will my boy. You will.”
Melvin Helitzer: One day Milton Berle and Henny Youngman were listening to Joey Bishop tell a particularly funny gag. “Gee, I wish I said that,” Berle whispered. “Don’t worry, Milton, [said Henny,] you will.”
Plagiarism is not a crime, or even a cause of action. But it is the “academic equivalent of the mark of Cain,” a curse that cannot be undone. Even an unsubstantiated accusation leaves an indelible stain, and a credible complaint cannot be countered. A plagiarist is an academic pariah, a transgressor of the highest law of the profession, the embodiment of the “great deceiver,” who leads everyone astray. Anything else can be forgiven, for the sake of the scholarship. Plagiarism tarnishes the scholarship itself, and leaves it forever suspect. If the purpose of scholarship is dowsing for truth, then the plagiarist is a liar who poisons the well from which everyone draws.
This is a jot recommending Brian Frye’s short, lively, and incisive article about plagiarism, Plagiarize This Paper. And, fittingly, everything you’ve read before this paragraph I’ve plagiarized from Brian’s work.
Or have I? Continue reading "Plagiarize This Jot"
Jan 10, 2020 Carl ColemanHealth Law
Nir Eyal, Paul L. Romain, & Christopher Robertson,
Can Rationing through Inconvenience Be Ethical? 48
Hastings Ctr. Rep. 10 (2018), available at
SSRN.
An unfortunate reality of all healthcare systems is that, left unchecked, demand for medical services will inevitably outpace available supply. On the one hand, there will almost always be one more intervention that might, at least in theory, improve a patient’s condition or avert a future harm. On the other hand, in a society with multiple urgent priorities—education, poverty reduction, and national defense to name just a few—devoting all available resources to health care is neither possible nor desirable. Moreover, some healthcare resources are finite in an absolute sense; for example, there are simply not enough transplantable organs for everyone in need.
In light of this conundrum, no matter how much the public tends to bristle at the concept of “rationing,” setting limits on access to health care is ultimately unavoidable. In a few situations, limit-setting mechanisms are explicit and transparent; examples include the national system for allocating transplantable organs, or insurers’ use of formularies to limit the cost of prescription drug coverage. Often, however, healthcare rationing occurs implicitly, with limited public scrutiny. Examples of implicit rationing include governmental decisions about which healthcare services to fund, or a healthcare professional’s judgment about whether to prescribe a particular drug or refer a patient to a hospital. Continue reading "In Praise of Hassles: Why “Rationing through Inconvenience” May Be More Ethical than Other Mechanisms for Allocating Care"
Jan 9, 2020 Suzette M. MalveauxCourts Law
A slow, insidious creep of procedural law has been systematically eroding the private rights enforcement regime. For years, many of us proceduralists have sounded a clarion call over this unrelenting, incremental attack on private enforcement of substantive rights. Rights and Retrenchment in the Trump Era by Stephen Burbank and Sean Farhang unpacks this troubling phenomenon and offers us a cogent way for understanding how we got here. Burbank and Farhang do an excellent job of unearthing the history and future prospects of this entrenchment, illuminating through archival research, data, and theory how various institutions have taken a swipe at private enforcement.
The authors explore how Congress, the federal court rulemakers, and the Supreme Court have strategically sought to undermine substantive law, with varied success. Burbank and Farhang ultimately conclude that the Supreme Court is the winner in rights retrenchment—the most successful player in the counterrevolution against federal litigation vis-à-vis the other branches of government—for reasons of competency, opportunity and lack of democratic accountability. In pinpointing the Court as the victor, Burbank and Farhang focus our attention and effort toward resurrecting precious substantive rights in jeopardy. Their work is not only critical to understanding the problem, but represents an important step toward designing prescriptive measures. For those of us invested in protecting the rule of law—whether it be civil rights, environmental protection, consumer safety, or immigration policy—this article is essential reading for understanding the complexity, dynamism, and relentless way in which process (shrouded in neutrality and legalese) can quietly undercut democracy and more fundamentally humanity. Continue reading "Procedural Law, the Supreme Court, and the Erosion of Private Rights Enforcement"
Jan 8, 2020 Eyal ZamirContracts
Julian Nyarko,
Stickiness and Incomplete Contracts (Sept 1, 2019), available at
SSRN.
According to prevailing conceptions, the primary role of contract law is to give effect to the parties’ will (the so-called will theory of contract), thereby enhancing overall human welfare (the standard law and economics perspective). Thus, the law may legitimately intervene in the content of contracts, or otherwise try to influence the contracting process and its outcomes, only if there is some flaw in the contracting process (such as duress) or if there is a market failure (such as a monopoly or an acute information problem). In recent years, the notion of market failure has been extended to encompass behavioral market failures as well—that is, deviations from the assumption that people are invariably rational maximizers of their own utility. However, it is still commonly believed that the need for compulsory (mandatory rules) or choice-preserving interventions (nudges) is limited to transactions with relatively weak and unsophisticated parties—such as consumers, employees, and tenants. When it comes to commercial transactions in competitive markets, the very fact that a contract does or does not contain a given term is perceived as a proof that that term (or its absence) is optimal—that is, maximizes the joint surplus of the parties. Otherwise, why would sophisticated parties include (or fail to include) that term in the contract? In fact, some scholars have grounded an entire theory of contract law on such strong belief in the rationality and competence of commercial contracting parties (Schwartz & Scott).
Until recently, people’s beliefs about these issues were primarily based on anecdotal evidence, personal experience, and ideological inclinations. With the advancement of empirical legal research, observational and experimental studies offer more reliable and systematic evidence about such matters (which does not mean, of course, that ideology ceases to play a role, as people often do not allow themselves to be confused by the facts). In his intriguing new research, Julian Nyarko uses cutting-edge methods of machine learning to study the inclusion or non-inclusion of choice-of-forum clauses in hundreds of thousands of contracts contained in a dataset of commercial agreements reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He then examines what factors might explain the inclusion or non-inclusion of such clauses in any agreement. Continue reading "The Power of Default: Path Dependence in the Drafting of Commercial Contracts"
