Information, Litigation, and Common Law Evolution

It is common in the legal academy to describe judicial decisiontrends leading to new common law rules as resulting from consciousjudicial effort. Evolutionary models of litigation, in contrast,treat common law as resulting from pressure applied by litigants.One apparent difficulty in the theory of litigation is explaininghow trends in judicial decisions favoring one litigant, andbiasing the legal standard, could occur. This article presentsa model in which an apparent bias in the legal standard canoccur in the absence of any effort toward this end on the partof judges. Trends can develop favoring the better-informed litigantwhose case is also meritorious. Although the model does notsuggest an unambiguous trend toward efficient legal rules, itdoes show how private information from litigants becomes embodiedin common law, an important part of the theory of efficientlegal rules.     

THE SELF‐REPRESENTED LITIGANT: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE BENCH AND BAR

It is widely accepted that the number of self‐represented litigants has skyrocketed nationwide, especially in family law cases. Although nationwide comprehensive data on the number of self‐represented litigants do not exist, anecdotal evidence supports the belief that self‐representation is increasing. The challenge for courts and the entire legal profession is how to respond. Most observers in Indiana would agree that the traditional model of family law litigation—both spouses represented by lawyers settling their disputes before a judge—is no longer the norm in family law cases. Judges face a dilemma: assisting a self‐represented litigant to level the playing field against a represented party is seen by many as violating impartiality, even if the assistance is rendered to create a just result. In an effort to address the situation, the Indiana Supreme Court created the Pro Se Advisory Committee in April 2001. This article explores the long‐range implications of the issue of self‐represented litigants on Indiana's court system in hope that it will provide some insight for other jurisdictions. The first part of the article addresses the numbers of self‐represented litigants by tracking growth or declines in self‐represented cases and assessing whether there are any pockets of self‐represented litigants geographically or in certain case types. The second part of the article puts Indiana into context with the rest of the nation and reviews national trends. The third section reviews Indiana's response to self‐represented litigants over the last decade. The fourth section reviews current and ongoing projects in Indiana. The article concludes that the issue of self‐represented litigants will not fade away and that the challenge that guides the legal profession is how we provide equal access to justice for all who enter our courthouses.     

Appealing (but not Necessarily Winning) to Improve Your Social Status

In this article, I argue that litigants identify the appellate courts as offering a powerful and public arena where litigants' claims are placed (at least temporarily) on an equal footing with the current state of the law. In this context, the initiation of appeals is treated as synonymous with receiving endorsements from the appellate courts that the litigants' original claims had sufficient merit to deserve better treatment than they had received previously from either the opposing parties or the trial courts. These actions work to raise appellants' social status, and I propose that such activity is one additional reason why some litigants might appeal.     

辩护律师有效辩护的评价及其实现

审判中心主义是一个刑事诉讼程序内的话语,在该话语体系中,犯罪嫌疑人、被告人的辩护权有效行使是庭审实质化不可缺失的构成要素。我国《刑事诉讼法》第37条的规定是有效辩护的评价标准。评价主体是当事人和法律职业者。辩护律师有效辩护的评价标准,是律师诉讼程序的过程标准,而不是以案件的司法裁判结果为标准。可视性的辩护律师有效辩护的实现方式,是改革现行法庭审判程序的简单化运作模式,改革刑事判决书、裁定书对辩护律师辩护观点的评述,扩大庭审网络同步直播的案件范围,许可被告人以律师辩护无效为由提起上诉,许可辩护律师将未决案件争议点诉诸于公共领域,接受当事人和社会民众的检视。     

Institutional Arrangements and the Dynamics of Agenda Formation in the U.S. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals

The manner in which agenda change occurs demonstrates how institutional arrangements influence agenda priorities in the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals. A neo-institutional theoretic perspective is employed to examine the dynamics of agenda formation in these courts. The article finds that the Supreme Court's agenda choices influence the decisions of litigants, interest groups, and lawyers to appeal certain cases to the Courts of Appeals. While the Supreme Court's agenda primarily is influenced by internal factors, it is constrained by agenda changes in the appeals courts. Critically, it is shown that these federal appellate courts exist within an endogenous system with respect to agenda formation, as both courts respond to agenda changes made in the other over time.     

Litigant Status and Trial Court Appeal Mobilization

The advantages held by haves over have nots in litigation have long fascinated scholars, with a long line of research revealing that litigant status often affects litigant resources, experience, and chances of overall success from trial courts to appellate courts. What has received considerably less attention, however, is how this status affects the decision to appeal. Bringing a new perspective to this important area holding implications for the shape and content of the judicial hierarchy, this study analyzes the decision of the losing federal district court litigant to appeal to the US courts of appeals. Utilizing an original database containing a sample of federal district court civil cases decided between 2000 and 2004, the results indicate, as predicted, that litigant status differentials affect whether there will be an appeal. This influence is further magnified when conditioned upon the relative costs of the appeal. These findings provide one of the first detailed examinations of litigant status and appeals coming from US trial courts and, simultaneously, offer the first empirical evidence to date that business litigants, like previously known government parties, are advantaged over individuals when deciding whether to appeal.     

论刑事诉讼中的当事人证据

诉讼中的当事人具有诉讼主体和知情证人的双重属性.英美法系与大陆法系国家对此的立法存有较大的差异.比较和研究这一差异,指出应当将当事人作为诉讼证据的证据形式,以便充分利用其通过大脑记忆的案件事实的有关信息来帮助查明案件事实.由此,还对诉讼当事人作为证据的条件和分类作了研究.     

民事当事人申请再审的检察监督

2012年新《民事诉讼法》进一步修改完善了民事审判监督程序,增加了检察机关对民事当事人申请再审的监督保障机制,使检察机关的审查决定具有终止当事人诉权的法律效力。准确理解立法规定,包括监督内容、监督方式、监督程序与效力等,采取有效措施应对该制度实施可能带来的各种问题,是各级检察机关贯彻实施新《民事诉讼法》的应然要求。     

以小见大:我国小额诉讼立法之透析

我国民事诉讼法修正案确立的小额诉讼的“二元标准”,决定了“对简单的小额案件适用简易程序并一审终审,对非简单的小额案件适用普通程序并两审终审”的“双轨机制”的必然采用.这既对民事诉讼当事人权利平等原则提出了挑战,也大为抑制了设置小额诉讼机制的目标和意义,难以有效解决由于我国第一审程序区分性能薄弱而导致的诉讼拥堵和司法效率低下、品质低劣的状况.因此,我国民事诉讼法应建构与纠纷自身及解纷诉求更具匹配性的司法替代性解纷机制,以真正体现其人性关怀和程序理性.     

Judicial and Litigant Perceptions in Dutch Court Cases: Perceptions of Outcome Importance Overlap,Perceptions of Procedural Justice Diverge

Social Justice Research - The current paper aims to provide insight into judges’ perceptions of how fairly they treat litigants and how important case outcomes are to litigants, and whether...     

Institutional Reform and Social Changes in Northeast China During the Late Qing: A Case Study of Appeal Trials

Institutional reform and social changes in northeast China during the late Qing period are usually attributed to the Qing dynasty changing its policy on immigration to northeast China. However, institutional reform because of debt appeals between civilian creditors and the Mongolian princes is often overlooked. Using administrative cases from Fengtian Governor Archives and Kirin Prefecture Archives, this study identifies how the governor officers of northeast China changed Mongolian land rights and official finance institutions through appeal judgments in the late Qing dynasty. Appeals were related to Mongolian land rights reform and promoted the financial institutional reform in northeast China. This study concludes by arguing that the judgments affected the profits of the litigants and changed the local society.     

论我国劳动争议处理制度的重构

劳动争议处理制度具有独特的程序价值,应当体现促进劳动关系和谐的精神,有助于释放争议劳动关系中的紧张因素,公正、及时地化解劳动争议,降低当事人耗费和社会成本,强化处理过程及结果的定纷止争功能和积极导向作用。我国现行“先裁后审模式”和学者建议的“单一机构处理模式”不足以实现上述目的,有必要重新构建,即实行“或裁或审、裁审自择、两裁终局、两审终审”的制度;设置三级两裁的劳动争议仲裁体系,落实“三方原则”,加强仲裁机构“实体化”建设;在人民法院内部设立专门的劳动法庭,并对劳动争议诉讼时效、当事人等制度进行改造。     

Seasonal Affective Disorder: Clerk Training and the Success of Supreme Court Certiorari Petitions

We investigate why the Supreme Court grants a smaller percentage of cases at the first conference of each term compared to other conferences. According to received wisdom, Supreme Court law clerks are overly cautious at the beginning of their tenure because they receive only a brief amount of training. Reputational concerns motivate clerks to provide fewer recommendations to grant review in cert. pool memos written over the summer months. Using a random sample of petitions from the Blackmun Archives, we code case characteristics, clerk recommendation, and the Court's decision on cert. Nearest neighbor matching suggests clerks are 36 percent less likely to recommend grants in their early cert. pool memos. Because of this temporal discrepancy, petitions arriving over the summer have a 16 percent worse chance of being granted by the Court. This seasonal variation in access to the Court's docket imposes a legally irrelevant burden on litigants who have little control over the timing of their appeal.     

Perceptions of Remote and Walk‐In Service Delivery in Family Law Cases

In recent years, the number of litigants representing themselves without legal counsel has increased across the United States. Courts have responded by creating programs and services to help litigants represent themselves. Self‐help centers nationwide use different models to deliver legal advice and information to unrepresented litigants. Some offer court‐based, walk‐in self‐help centers. Others provide services remotely via phone, web, email, video conferencing, and live chat. In Maryland, self‐help center services are offered at walk‐in centers and remotely by phone and live chat. This article examines litigants' perceptions of in‐person and remote delivery of legal advice and information on family law matters. Results revealed that all three service delivery methods have high satisfaction rates, but chat users were less likely to feel as though they knew what to do next. They were also less optimistic about their case than were phone or in‐person users.     

Homogenous Base Rates for Malingering in Neuropsychological Examination of Litigants

Base rates for malingering are often obtained and averaged across multiple clinicians who apply heterogeneous methods for detection (Mittenberg et al., J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 24: 1094?1102, 2002; Young, Psychol Inj Law 8: 200–218, 2015). Our aims of obtaining homogenous base rates included the following: (a) evaluation of all our legal cases in accordance with the guidelines set forth in the position papers by both the National Academy of Neuropsychology and the Association for Psychological Advancement in Psychological Injury and Law, (b) minimal variation between our comprehensive neuropsychological examinations, and (c) determination of base rates of failed effort in 150 consecutively examined legal cases in one medical setting. To assess the various levels of volitional exaggeration, we introduced four gradations of poor effort definitions, which relied on performance validity tests (PVTs). A comparison between two consecutive samples of 75 litigants indicated less frequent poor effort with increasingly more conservative criteria. In our analysis of a subset of litigants who sustained traumatic brain injuries (N?=?115), the four base rates for mild versus moderate-severe TBI groups were equivalent for the two more lenient malingering definitions but varied for the two more conservative definitions. Specifically, for the mild TBI cases investigated, the percentage of three PVT failures (or one PVT failure significantly below chance) arrived at 3.4 %. Our final aim was to compare the base rates of poor effort that were obtained with PVTs to the base rates of emotional and physical symptom endorsement, which were obtained with symptom validity tests (SVTs). No significant correlations emerged in this analysis. The discussion emphasizes the relatively lower base rates of poor effort found in the convenience sample studied in neuropsychological evaluations relative to the higher estimates in the literature (40 +/? 10 %, Larrabee et al., Clin Neuropsychol 23: 841–849, 2009) but not others based on comprehensive review (Young, Psychol Inj Law 8: 200–218, 2015).     

Understanding Pathways to Family Dispute Resolution and Justice Reforms: Ontario Court File Analysis & Survey of Professionals

This article reports on two related studies about varying pathways to the resolution of family disputes and the effects of family justice reforms in Ontario: a survey of family court professionals (n = 118) and an analysis of 1,000 closed court files of family cases involving children. Both studies reveal that the vast majority of cases are resolved without a trial, often by negotiation. While professionals generally support family justice reform initiatives, there remain significant gaps in the implementation of these strategies. For example, many litigants do not attend information programs despite the requirement for mandatory attendance; there is limited use of mediation; the views of children are being sought in only a small number of cases; and there is a large proportion of self‐represented family litigants. Despite the increase in shared care and joint decision‐making arrangements, a majority of cases in the court file study were sole custody arrangements to the mother, whether the case was settled or resolved by trial. Mediation was associated with greater time of contact with the non–primary residential parent (usually the father).     

Pragmatic Discourse and Gender Inequality in China

Using courtroom dialogs from actual court trials in China as data, this article analyzes an emerging “pragmatic discourse,” deployed by judges to assist, but at the same time to constrain divorcing women. Through questions, statements, rebuttals, and other interactional devices, Chinese judges define the premises that underpin the law's understanding of gender equality and women's welfare. By looking at how discourses are deployed by judges and litigants, we link micro linguistic practices to more general social forces and processes. Despite their honest effort to protect women's rights, Chinese judges often inadvertently reinforce and reproduce the patriarchal norm. The data demonstrate how the hegemonic patriarchal order reasserts itself in an institutional forum that is meant to promote gender equality. The interaction of the discourses also highlights the tensions in Chinese society and displays the effect of changing social environment on the legal operation.     

Perspective and procedural justice: Attorney and litigant evaluations of court procedures

A comparison of the procedural justice judgments of attorneys and those of lay people judging the same procedures offers an opportunity to generate new information on what factors affect judgments of fairness. In a survey of reactions to conventional and innovative procedures in a United States district court, attorneys and lay people involved in tort and contract cases were asked to judge the overall fairness of court procedures and the fairness of specific procedures used in arbitration hearings. The respondents were also asked for their judgments concerning the favorability of the procedure's outcome, the opportunity to have the case heard and decided by an impartial third party, and their side's control over what happened in the case, all of which are factors found in previous studies to affect procedural fairness judgments. The results showed that, while attorneys gave higher overall fairness ratings than did litigants, the difference was not affected by the procedure assigned to the case. In addition, attorneys and litigants appeared to use the same standards to evaluate the fairness of procedures, although they disagreed about where the procedures they experienced fell on these dimensions. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.     

The Role of Panels in Enhancing Legal Predictability

This article considers the justification for using panels of judges to make decisions in common law systems. The usual argument is that panels are more likely than lone judges to make correct judgments. This article suggests an additional justification: panels increase the law's predictability, so potential litigants can anticipate correctly which legal rules will apply in their cases. Three models, each with a different conception of the legal process, are employed to demonstrate the predictability-enhancing effect of panels. Comparison of the models suggests the effect is strongest when precedent has a substantial impact on how judges make decisions.     

关于刑事诉讼当事人处分权的思考

刑事诉讼当事人处分权的正当性来源于两个方面:一是权利具有可分性;二是当事人作为程序主体理应具有自主性.刑事诉讼当事人处分权的内容体现在程序启动、程序选择和变更以及程序参与的过程中.对刑事诉讼当事人的处分权应予以适度限制,具体体现为效力范围的限制、社会公益的限制和国家权力的限制.