Does Chevron Matter?

In this article we evaluate whether the Supreme Court's much-discussed decision in Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council (1984) signaled a lasting difference in how the justices decide administrative law cases, by comparing and testing the predictions of three distinct theories of Supreme Court behavior. The legal model predicts an increase in deference to administrative agencies. This prediction is shared by the jurisprudential regime model, which also predicts that the justices evaluate key case factors differently before and after Chevron . The attitudinal model predicts no change in the justices' behavior as a result of Chevron . Although we find that attitudes matter, the fact that we also find support for the legal and jurisprudential regime models undermines the assertion of the attitudinal model that law cannot explain Supreme Court votes on the merits.     

Appellate Court Supervision in the Federal Judiciary: A Hierarchical Perspective

In this article, we examine factors that influence appellate supervision in the lower tiers of the federal judicial hierarchy. Drawing on the insights of agency theory, we develop a framework to assess the determinants of circuit panel decisions to affirm or reverse federal district court rulings. Our analysis of U.S. Courts of Appeals' published civil rights decisions over a 29-year period (1971–1999) offers support for several hypothesized relationships. As expected, the outcome of appellate review varied with the level of agreement between the preferences of the circuit (as principal) and the policy position of the trial court (as agent). In addition, we found that circuits were more likely to affirm trial court decisions that were contrary to the preferences of the federal district court judge, suggesting that circuit judges may rely on ideological signals when evaluating appeals before them. We also hypothesized that the monitoring activities of circuits would be influenced by individual circuits' relationship with their principal, the Supreme Court. Consistent with these expectations, panels were more likely to reverse district court rulings that were incongruous with the policy predisposition of the High Court. In addition, as Supreme Court scrutiny of a circuit increased, the likelihood of a circuit panel subsequently reversing a district court also increased. Although further inquiry is necessary to clarify the interpretation of this result, the finding does suggest that district courts are more likely to engage in decision making that deviates from circuit preferences when that circuit faces more intense supervision from the Supreme Court.     

The Use of Rhetorical Sources by the U.S. Supreme Court

This study considers whether U.S. Supreme Court justices use opinion content strategically, to enhance the legitimacy of case outcomes. This hypothesis is tested by examining the Court's use of rhetorical sources, which are references to esteemed figures and texts that corroborate the justices' views. The data are consistent with the position that justices use rhetorical sources strategically, citing them when the legitimacy of their actions is lowest, such as when they are overturning precedent, invalidating state or federal law, or issuing directives from a divided bench. The study also tests several other explanations for the use of these sources, such as legal considerations, the justices' ideologies, and efficiency concerns.     

Judicial Practical Reason: Judges in Morally Imperfect Legal Orders

I here address the question of how judges should decide questions before a court in morally imperfect legal systems. I characterize how moral considerations ought inform judicial reasoning given that the law may demand what it has no right to. Much of the large body of work on legal interpretation, with its focus on legal semantics and epistemology, does not adequately countenance the limited legitimacy of actual legal institutions to serve as a foundation for an ethics of adjudication. I offer an adjudicative theory in the realm of non-ideal theory: I adopt a view of law that has achieved consensus in legal philosophy, make some plausible assumptions about human politics, and then consider directly the question of how judges should reason. Ultimately, I argue that judges should be cognizant of the goods that are at stake on particular occasions of adjudication and that this requires treating legal requirements transparently, i.e., as sensitive to their moral justifications.     

The Incidence and Structure of Conflict on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

In 1982, Congress established the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized court, with the objective of reducing judicial conflict and harmonizing circuit law in specific policy areas of special complexity. This article examines the incidence and determinants of judicial conflict on the U.S. courts of appeals, focusing specifically on the Federal Circuit. Using international trade and customs regulation cases decided during the 1982 to 1995 terms, the analysis reviews three possible explanations of judicial conflict: policy-oriented, sociolegal, and organizational. The analysis shows that conflict appears in 8.4 percent of the trade and customs regulation decisions rendered by the Federal Circuit during the period of study. The policy direction of Federal Circuit decisions and the court's hierarchical relationship with lower specialized courts provide the strongest explanation for the emergence of conflict on the court. Organizational factors such as panel composition evinced rather anemic explanatory capacity. The results raise an important functional similarity between the Federal Circuit and the generalist courts of appeals. Contrary to the laments of legal practitioners that conflict on the Federal Circuit is excessive relative to conflict on the generalist circuit courts, this analysis finds little support for that claim. Rather, the level of overt conflict on the court is actually low and corroborates conflict levels that have been reported for other U.S. courts of appeals.     

THE BOLDT DECISION

In 1974 Federal District Judge H. Boldt mandated that 50% of the salmon resource of Washington State be allocated to Indian treaty tribes. His decision produced what has been characterized as "except for some desegregation cases … the most concerted official and private efforts to frustrate a decree of a federal court witnessed in this century." This article argues that fishing rights litigation has played a significant role in defining and structuring the conflict over the salmon resource. An unanticipated or unavoidable "side effect" of the successful tribal litigation strategy is the restructuring of the conflict in a way that is likely ultimately to prove as detrimental as outright legal defeat. Focusing on the Indian fishing rights issue, the article also studies the use of litigation as a weapon for social change. The underlying assumption is that a legal order that denies impoverished and powerless constituents a meaningful avenue for social change is gravely flawed.     

Judicial Reform and Rationalization: The Diffusion of Court Reform Policies Among the American States

Explaining the diffusion of judicial reform policies among the American states is an elusive task. Are such policies simply part of the larger policy process revealed in the comparative state policy literature? Or b court reform a policy arena unto itself, responding to factors uniquely legal or professional in nature? Our inquiry begins with Max Weber's sociology of law from which we adopt his concept of rationalization as a schema of policy development. According to Weber, the “rationalization” of legal institutions would accompany the advancement of capitalism in modernizing nations. Thus, we might expect specific judicial reform policies expressly aimed at rationalizing the structure and process of state court systems to be closely associated with each other and with commonly accepted indicators of economic development among the states. As part of our investigation, we relate court reforms to broader policy innovations among the states, drawing on earlier “diffusion of innovations” research. Our data indicate a strong connection between judicial reform and more general patterns of innovation diffusion among the states, but provide only modest support for Weber's assertions about the rationalization of legal systems under advancing capitalism. Three of the selected reforms cluster together and are largely explainable by indicators of economic development. Two other reforms do not fit this pattern, and their “behavior” requires additional discussion and research. Thus, the diffusion of judicial reform policy is partly accounted for by factors found in explanations of general policy innovations across states, but other, as yet unidentified, factors apparently influence certain aspects of judicial reform. The connection between Max Weber's legal sociology and policy development among the American states might at first blush seem remote or tenuous. However, this article attempts to use Weber's insights into modern legal systems to (1) examine a specific area of state policy making–judicial reform–and (2) establish a connection between policy development in the court reform area and the larger literature on general policy innovation in the American states. This inquiry is inspired by the lack of theoretical integration apparent in the literature on court reform, on the one hand, and the absence of empirical analyses connecting court reform data with “diffusion of innovation” policy studies, on the other.     

Can Us-Type Court Management Approaches Work In Civil Law Systems? Experiences From The Balkans And Beyond

The benefit of applying modern management approaches to court operations to ensuring access to justice, timely and transparent dispositions, and increased public trust in courts is recognized in many countries. In the USA, the art of applying modern management techniques to court operations has evolved over the past 30 years into a now solidly established profession. Since the underlying principles and techniques of modern court management, such as case flow management, goal-oriented performance measures, workload assessments, customer surveys, etc., are derived from general management concepts they are not tied to a particular legal system or framework and can be successfully applied in non-US systems if they are properly adjusted. Interested in the positive results of court management in the USA, researchers and practitioners in several European countries have been looking at the applicability of the approaches used in the USA to improve their own ability to manage court processes more efficiently.Since court management has become a main staple of reforming court operations in the USA, it is not surprising that US-funded development assistance in the Balkan states and other countries often involves transferring court management US-style into the newly evolving democracies as part of rule of law or commercial sector development assistance. These projects frequently introduce, among others, case flow management techniques that sometimes seem to be in conflict with underlying legal principles or procedural laws, and often defy the local legal culture. The US-funded assistance programs are often introduced parallel to efforts funded by European and other donors, which may take and suggest different approaches to the host country. As a result, confusion and insecurity about which approaches are appropriate for a particular country can arise and impede much needed reforms or lead to legislative and regulatory changes that do not mesh well or even conflict with other parts of the legal framework.This article reviews the role of US-based court management approaches in recent court reform efforts under way in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia and, in light of lessons learned there and in other countries, assesses the reform processes applied and their status. It also outlines how these court management approaches fit into non-US court systems, how they can be adjusted according to individual country needs and what the main obstacles are that such reform efforts generally face.     

民事诉讼费用制度若干问题研究

在走向法治的时代,诉讼费用制度是否健全严重影响着民众对法院以及法律的信赖。然而,作为民事诉讼 法的重要组成部分,诉讼费用制度在我国长期以来并未得到学界的重视。本文拟通过对诉讼费用的构成、征收、救 助、担保以及诉讼费用的管理几个方面的探究以寻求完善我国诉讼费用制度的道路。     

The Powers of Application

This paper studies the formality of law and legal reasoning. It argues that, though the law (and its application) is indeed formal in that it does not take into account a significant number of considerations that should in principle be relevant for an all–things–considered decision, this is not to be explained on the basis of some ontology of rules (i.e., rules as exclusionary reasons), but upon the nature of legal discourse when viewed as a social practice. How the law is applied to particular cases, when substantive considerations not referred to by the rules are important enough to defeat their application to the case and questions of this kind are not answered by the legal material (which includes or might include rules, principles etc.), but by beliefs that underlie legal practice, beliefs about the world and its relation to human beings and society. Insofar as these beliefs have impact upon practices we recognise as legal they are termed "images of law." Legal reasoning cannot be understood without paying due attention to the nature and evolution of images of law.     

Domestic judicial defiance and the authority of international legal regimes

Tensions and occasional overt defiance of international courts suggest that compliance with international regimes is not a self-evident choice for domestic judges. I develop a formal theory of domestic judicial defiance in which domestic and supranational judges vie for jurisprudential authority in a non-hierarchical setting. The model emphasises the role of domestic non-compliance costs and power asymmetries in determining the conduct of domestic and international judges. I argue that the EU represents a special case of a particularly effective international regime. Weak domestic courts have little to gain from an escalated conflict with the European court of Justice. But even domestic judicial superpowers like the German Federal Constitutional Court have strong incentives to seek mutual accommodation with European judges. The analysis also yields new insights into concepts, such as “judicial dialogue” and “constitutional pluralism” that have featured prominently in the legal literature, and suggests new hypotheses for empirical research.     

Legal, Individual, and Environmental Predictors of Court Disposition in a Sample of Serious Adolescent Offenders

Historically, the juvenile court has been expected to consider each youth's distinct rehabilitative needs in the dispositional decision-making process, rather than focusing on legal factors alone. This study examines the extent to which demographic, psychological, contextual, and legal factors, independently predict dispositional outcomes (i.e., probation vs. confinement) within two juvenile court jurisdictions (Philadelphia, Phoenix). The sample consists of 1,355 14- to 18-year-old male and female juvenile offenders adjudicated of a serious criminal offense. Results suggest that legal factors have the strongest influence on disposition in both jurisdictions. For example, a higher number of prior court referrals is associated with an increased likelihood of secure confinement in both jurisdictions. Juveniles adjudicated of violent offenses are more likely to receive secure confinement in Phoenix, but are more likely to be placed on probation in Philadelphia. Race is unrelated to dispositional outcome, but, males are consistently more likely than females to be placed in secure confinement. Importantly, individual factors (e.g., developmental maturity) generally were not powerful independent predictors of disposition. Finally, an examination of the predictors of juvenile versus adult court transfer in Phoenix indicated that males, older juveniles, and those with a violent adjudicated charge were more likely to be transferred to adult court, while juveniles scoring high on responsibility as well as those juveniles with an alcohol dependence diagnosis were more likely to be retained in juvenile court.     

Legal Hybridity,Trust, and the Legitimacy of the Shari'ah in the Bangsamoro

Legal hybrids have the potential to address justice and development issues in both conflict and postconflict settings. Using the Philippine Shari'ah court system as a case study, this study demonstrates that state hybrids suffer from legitimacy and capacity issues that also constrain their ability to deliver effective justice services and respond to conflict challenges. Forging cooperative networks between secular courts and Shari'ah courts and between local justice personnel and central justice authorities can enhance the effectiveness and legitimacy of a formalized legal hybrid. This can assist in addressing the justice deficit that fuels the cycle of conflict and sustain peacebuilding efforts postconflict.     

刑法类推解释如何得以进行——刑法演绎推理中的类推解释

类推是重要的法学思维方法,罪刑法定允许类推解释,但是禁止作为法律漏洞填补方法的"类推适用"。类推解释以不法类型为指导,在三段论演绎推理的逻辑外壳下得以进行。类推解释的关键在于就问题案例与概念核心中的特例进行比较,衡量它们在语义、目的上的相同点的重要程度,作出等值评价或反对解释。类推解释有助于解决实践中争议很大的存疑案件。     

批准生效合同报批义务之违反、请求权方法与评价法学

批准生效合同报批义务的违反带来一道法教义学难题,对法学方法的会通提出了要求。此前的解决方案大都株守涵摄模式,停留于民法外部体系,即便偶尔触及个别原则,亦仅一笔带过,缺乏系统性价值评价的自觉。就此难题应该借助请求权方法的指引,从外部体系透入到内部体系中去,然后再返回到外部体系中来。在内部体系中结合具体情形下的利益冲突,参酌社会经济发展导致的价值变迁,遴选评价因素,构建评价标准,动态而务实地解决问题。然后再继续借助请求权方法的指引,沟通原则体系、法教义学概念(类型)体系乃至法律(司法解释)条文体系。在此过程中,各种法学方法也将围绕制度问题的解决而融会贯通。     

Court Considerations in the Termination of Parental Rights: A Comprehensive Analysis of Israeli Court Decisions

Court decisions to terminate parental rights (TPR) have a major impact on parents and children, but the decision‐making process is unclear. Analysis of 261 Israeli TPR court cases indicated the dominance of considerations relating to normative parental functioning, the parents' ability to change, the impact of separating a child from his family, the parents' social normativity and educational ability. The legal considerations relate to the importance of the biological family, the necessity of adoption and the importance of a fair legal process. Insufficient consideration is accorded to cultural differences in parenting practices and the voice of the child.     

法律推理中的法律理由和正当理由

法律推理具有逻辑方法和审判制度的双重属性,它的发展经历了一个从前者向后者的演进过程。法律推理是一个综合运用法律理由和正当理由的法庭决策过程。法律解释作为该过程的一个环节,是以正当理由阐释法律理由而获得法律推理大前提的手段。     

论我国行政诉讼和行政复议制度之创新

行政诉讼制度与行政复议制度的冲突,是导致行政诉讼和行政复议不能有效发挥作用的原因之一。建立行政法院,并将行政复议纳入行政诉讼的范畴。由行政法院统一行使对行政相对人的法律救济和对行政主体的法律监督权,可以彻底解决现行制度中存在的矛盾,有利于依法行政和法律监督制度的创新和完善。     

某商贸大厦地基基础工程质量司法鉴定的案例介绍

通过对某大厦地基基础工程质量的司法鉴定,发现其中存在严重的质量安全隐患,为法院提供了具有高度公信力的证据,为诉讼多年的疑案划上句号做出了应有的贡献,揭露了被告偷工减料、野蛮施工的丑恶行为,保障了受害者的合法权益,有力地维护司法公正,促进社会和谐稳定。建筑工程质量司法鉴定涉及着控辩双方较大的利害关系,鉴定资料和鉴定文书的庭审质证过程必然充满着对抗情绪,司法鉴定人更加需要在本职工作中坚持科学、严谨、客观、公正的基本原则。     

Validity and Defeasibility in the Legal Domain

In jurisprudential literature, the adjective ‘defeasible’ appears as a predicate of many terms: concepts, laws, rules, reasoning, justification, proof, and so on. In this paper, we analyze the effects of some versions of the thesis of the defeasibility of legal norms on the reconstruction of the notion of legal validity. We analyze some possible justifications of this thesis considered as a claim concerning validity, and enquire into two possible sets of problems related to the defeasibility of the criteria of identification of a legal system. We also provide a formalization of some options regarding defeasible criteria of identification, which can be used as a tool for meta-jurisprudential analysis. Finally, the thesis according to which defeasibility is better conceived of as a feature of legal application is examined and questioned.