Judicial Nomination Statistics and Analysis: U.S. District and Circuit Courts, 1977-2018, March 21, 2019. “Under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, the President and the Senate share responsibility for making appointments to the Supreme Court, as well as to various lower courts of the federal judiciary. While the President nominates persons to fill federal judgeships,… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Courts
Seeing Justice Done: The Impact of the Judge on Sentencing
“The recent sentencing of Paul Manafort by federal judges in two different district courts has renewed interest in the sentencing practices of individual judges. Countless studies over the years have documented a basic fact: while decisions should be determined by the law and the facts, in reality there is a third very important force at… Continue Reading
Politico – The Federal Courts Are Running An Online Scam
The website everyone uses to follow the Mueller probe is a hopeless, costly disaster. By Seamus Hughes, deputy director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. He also runs a company providing services on navigating the federal court records system. “Every day, dozens of hungry reporters lurk inside something called PACER, the online records system… Continue Reading
Database leaks 250K legal documents, some marked ‘not designated for publication’
ZDNet: “A database containing 257,287 legal documents, with some marked as “not designated for publication,” was left exposed on the public internet without a password, allowing anyone to access and download a treasure trove of sensitive legal materials. The database, which was left online for roughly two weeks, contained unpublished legal documents relating to US… Continue Reading
Newly Arriving Families Not Main Source for Immigration Court’s Growing Backlog
“Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: “”The Immigration Court backlog continues to rise. As of February 28, 2019, the number of pending cases on the court’s active docket topped eight hundred and fifty-five thousand (855,807) cases. This is an increase of over three hundred thousand (313,396) pending cases over the backlog at the end of January 2017… Continue Reading
Lawsuit Could Change How We Prosecute Mass Shootings
Politico “…the Connecticut Supreme Court allowed a claim brought by surviving family members of the Sandy Hook massacre against the manufacturers, distributors and direct sellers of the weapon to move forward toward trial. Soto v. Bushmaster Firearms International, LLC, has monumental implications not only for the surviving families, but potentially for the entire gun industry.… Continue Reading
Paper – Rethinking the Efficiency of the Common Law
Sokol, D. Daniel, Rethinking the Efficiency of the Common Law (February 3, 2019). Notre Dame Law Review, forthcoming 2020; University of Florida Levin College of Law Research Paper No. 19-14. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3328025 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3328025 “This Article shows how Posner and other scholars who claimed that common law was efficient misunderstood the structure of… Continue Reading
Coming Soon to a Courtroom Near You? What Lawyers Should Know About Deepfake Videos
The Recorder (Law.com / paywall] via free access on Yahoo} “Are rules that guard against forged or tampered evidence enough to prevent deepfake videos from making their way into court cases? …If you follow technology, it’s likely you’re in a panic over deepfakes—altered videos that employ artificial intelligence and are nearly impossible to detect. Or else you’re over… Continue Reading
How a Major SCOTUS Decision in Favor of Arbitration Is Shaping the Landscape for Workplace Lawsuits
National Law Journal [paywall – alternative – free acces via Yahoo and GitHub data and methodology for the research: “The case before U.S. District Judge Gerald McHugh Jr. was not unlike others he’d seen before. A woman alleged sexual harassment in the workplace so severe she had been forced to quit her job. Her former… Continue Reading
Judicial Conference Approves Package of Workplace Conduct Reforms
“The federal Judiciary’s national policy-making body today approved a package of workplace conduct-related amendments stating the obligations of judges and Judiciary employees to report reliable information likely to constitute misconduct; making clear that confidentiality obligations should never be an obstacle to reporting judicial misconduct or disability; and specifying that retaliation for disclosing misconduct is itself… Continue Reading
Taking Laughter Seriously at the Supreme Court
Jacobi, Tonja and Sag, Matthew, Taking Laughter Seriously at the Supreme Court (March 9, 2019). Vanderbilt Law Review, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract= “Laughter in Supreme Court oral arguments has been misunderstood, treated as either a lighthearted distraction from the Court’s serious work, or interpreted as an equalizing force in an otherwise hierarchical environment. Examining… Continue Reading
Millionaires and Corporate Giants Escaped IRS Audits in FY 2018
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: “The latest data from the IRS show an alarming and continued downward spiral in government audits of the wealthiest taxpayers and America’s corporate giants. Despite growing income inequality – where the top 1 percent of Americans control much of the wealth in the United States – less and less attention is… Continue Reading
