“The county in the country with the fastest growing number of residents with pending cases before the Immigration Court was Mecklenburg County (Charlotte) in North Carolina. Pending cases there shot up by 34 percent between May and December 2017. Coming in second with a growth rate of 30 percent over this same period was Loudoun… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Courts
Access to the Justices’ Papers: A Better Balance
deMaine, Susan David, Access to the Justices’ Papers: A Better Balance (January 11, 2018). 110 Law Library Journal (2018 Forthcoming). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3100437 – “With the exception of official court records, the papers generated by the Supreme Court justices in their work for the Court are and have always been considered private property. As a… Continue Reading
Report – Secret Origins of Evidence in US Criminal Cases
Human Rights Watch Report – Secret Origins of Evidence in US Criminal Cases “In the United States today, a growing body of evidence suggests that the federal government is deliberately concealing methods used by intelligence or law enforcement agencies to identify or investigate suspects—including methods that may be illegal. It does so by creating a… Continue Reading
Two new resources – online dispute resolution
National Center for State Courts – “In case you haven’t seen them already, the Joint Technology Committee (JTC) published two resource bulletins last month on the topic of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). These papers provide excellent insight into how courts are leveraging technology to expand services and provide more timely and cost effective ways for… Continue Reading
Mandatory Minimum Sentencing of Federal Drug Offenses
Mandatory Minimum Sentencing of Federal Drug Offenses – CRS report via FAS – Charles Doyle, Senior Specialist in American Public Law, January 11, 2018: “As a general rule, federal judges must impose a minimum term of imprisonment upon defendants convicted of various controlled substance (drug) offenses and drug-related offenses. The severity of those sentences depends… Continue Reading
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s sneaky attack on partisan gerrymandering is beginning to pay dividends
Slate – Mark Joseph Stern: “On Tuesday, a federal district court made history by striking down North Carolina’s congressional map. The decision marks the first time a court has invalidated a congressional redistricting scheme as illegally gerrymandering along partisan lines. It arrives at a critical moment for the development of a legal theory that requires… Continue Reading
Online Publication of Court Decisions in Europe
Opijnen, Marc van and Peruginelli, Ginevra and Kefali, Eleni and Palmirani, Monica, Online Publication of Court Decisions in Europe (October 16, 2017). Legal Information Management, 17 (2017), pp. 136–145; doi:10.1017/S1472669617000299. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3088448 – “Although nowadays most courts publish decisions on the internet, substantial differences exist between European countries regarding such publication. These differences not… Continue Reading
Legal Boot Camp for New Judges in New York
NYT – “Each new year, about 100 freshly sworn-in New York State judges get robe fittings, courthouse assignments, chambers and staff members as they prepare to take the bench. But there is one thing these new jurists lack: judicial experience. So the state sends them to “Judge School,” a four-day judicial boot camp offered the… Continue Reading
New Database to Research International Institutional Law: Oxford International Organizations
Posting by Sherry Xin Chen: “Oxford University Press (OUP) has just released a new database specialized in international institutional law, Oxford International Organizations (OXIO). OXIO is “the first of its kind” to aid users in their research and understanding of the “acts and practices of international organizations”, an integral part of public international law. OXIO… Continue Reading
Immigration Court Backlog Tops 650,000
“During the first two months of FY 2018, the Immigration Court number of pending cases climbed by an additional 30,000. According to the latest case-by-case court records, the backlog at the end of November 2017 had reached 658,728, up from 629,051 at the end of September 2017. Despite the hiring of many additional immigration judges,… Continue Reading
Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary
The Chief Justice’s 2017 Year-End Report – Chief Justice John Roberts: “…We have a new challenge in the coming year. Events in recent months have illuminated the depth of the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace, and events in the past few weeks have made clear that the judicial branch is not immune. The judiciary… Continue Reading
Crowdsourcing accurately and robustly predicts Supreme Court decisions
Crowdsourcing accurately and robustly predicts Supreme Court decisions. Daniel Martin Katz, Michael James Bommarito II, Josh Blackman. arXiv:1712.03846 [physics.soc-ph] “Scholars have increasingly investigated “crowdsourcing” as an alternative to expert-based judgment or purely data-driven approaches to predicting the future. Under certain conditions, scholars have found that crowdsourcing can outperform these other approaches. However, despite interest in… Continue Reading
