The Impact of Supreme Court Activity on the Judicial Agenda

When the Supreme Court takes action, it establishes national policy within an issue area. A traditional, legal view holds that the decisions of the Court settle questions of law and thereby close the door on future litigation, reducing the need for future attention to that issue. Alternatively, an emerging interest group perspective suggests the Court, in deciding cases, provides signals that encourage additional attention to particular issues. I examine these competing perspectives of what happens in the federal courts after Supreme Court decisions. My results indicate that while Supreme Court decisions generally settle areas of law in terms of overall litigation rates, they also introduce new information that leads to increases in the attention of judges and interest groups to those particular issues.     

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.     

美国联邦巡回上诉法院的演进及启示——兼谈我国知识产权审判体制改革的方向

虽然我国已在北京、上海、广州正式设立了知识产权法院,但知识产权审判体制改革仍需进一步深化.在国际层面上,美国联邦巡回上诉法院属于较有特点的一种知识产权法院模式.通过对其设立动因、组织架构、实际效用及引发的争议进行深入考察,结合美国的政治结构、经济形势、司法传统,可以较为客观地认识美国联邦巡回上诉法院发挥的作用.我国知识产权制度赖以发展的制度环境与美国不同,但美国联邦巡回上诉法院在美国专利保护中发挥的作用以及演进轨迹,能够为我国知识产权法院在知识产权保护中发挥的功效提供更为理性的认识,进而为知识产权审判体制的进一步变革提供有益的启示.     

What Determines Judicial Prestige? An Empirical Analysis for Judges of the Federal Court of Australia

This article examines judicial citations to analyze the determinantsof judicial prestige in the Federal Court of Australia. Firstwe construct two alternative measures of judicial prestige forall current and retired judges of the Federal Court. Second,we regress these measures of judicial prestige on a series ofexplanatory variables covering age on appointment, appointinggovernment, prior experience, which law school the judge attended,how many law review articles the judge has published, gender,and tenure. We compare our results with those of previous studiesthat examine the determinants of judicial influence and prestigein courts in the United States and the High Court of Australia.One of the main contributions of the article is to provide evidencefrom an intermediate appellate court that can be used to testthe general application of findings as to what determines judicialprestige in the United States to courts in other countries withdifferent institutional frameworks.     

Expertise,Experience, and Ideology on Specialized Courts: The Case of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

What roles do prior expertise and accumulated experience play in shaping ideologically consistent voting on a specialized court? Using a dataset of obviousness patent cases from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit spanning 1997–2007, we show that prior expertise enhances the influence of ideology on judicial decisionmaking, but that accumulated experience does not. In addition, we build on previous work and show that ideology is a factor in decisionmaking in technical areas of law, contrary to the received wisdom on patent cases.     

A Court Quietly Rewrote the Federal Pesticide Statute: How Prevalent is Judicial Statutory Revision?

Author's Note: My thanks to Lloyd Musolf, Paul Sabatier, Martin Shapiro, John M. Thomas and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft. I also acknowledge the generous support of the Energy and Environmental Policy Research Program at the Institute of Ecology, University of California at Davis.
The resurgence in policymaking by American courts has revitalized the longstanding debate over judicial activism. Yet much of that debate addresses judicial interpretations of the Constitution, as distinct from statutory law. When interpreting vague statutes, judges can make inconspicuous but fundamental policy reforms. This paper discusses the political circumstances encouraging this form of judicial intervention. The enormous subtlety in judicial capabilities is illustrated. The paper concludes that by focusing primarily on obvious features of court activism, the contemporary debate may be seriously under representing the extent of judicial contributions to our fragmented form of governance.     

Regarding/Disregarding: The Judicial Rhetoric of President Barak and the International Court of Justice's Wall Advisory Opinion

In Mara'abe v. Prime Minister of Israel (September 2005), Israel'sHigh Court addressed the effect which it should give to theInternational Court's Legal consequences of the constructionof a wall in Occupied Palestinian Territory advisory opinion.This had declared the wall illegal but, while affirming thatit shared the International Court of Justice's normative rulings,the High Court reiterated that it thought the wall a lawfulsecurity measure. Rather than dissect the substantive treatmentof the issues involved, this article examines the structureand rhetorical techniques employed by President Barak in hisleading judgment in Mara'abe. He effected a skilful practicaldisregard of the International Court's normative findings throughan elision of argument by relying on the doctrine of res judicata—aconcept that has no relevance whatsoever to advisory opinions.     

Implementing Prior Judicial Decisions as Precedents: The Context of Application and Justification

The paper concerns the conditions and methods of using previous judicial decisions as a kind of precedents in the processes of application of law within the statutory legal order. The use of such decisions, not announced by the legislator, depends on the courts, undertaking such actions on the grounds of similarity of cases or of decisional processes. Such decisions do not become an exclusive validation argument and may create a situation of their potential conflict with legal regulations as well as an inferential supplementation of their content. Dissemination of such activity of the courts leads to the development of precedential practice (relevant to the statutory legal order), though, its actual jurisdictional role depends on proper justification of decisions, within which reference to these decisions should be adaptive (in relation to the elements of the current case), generalizing (forming elements of ratio decidendi) as well as argumentative and discursive (in respect of the way in which the decisional reasoning and arguments expressed in the prior justification are used).

     

The Impact of Training and Language Competence on Judicial Application of EU Law in Hungary

The aim of this research is to identify the role that training in EU law and in a foreign language play in the use of EU law by Hungarian judges in domestic proceedings. Judges in the new Member States face the problems of no or inadequate official EU translations of relevant EU law or case‐law. The need to compare the meaning of other language versions therefore comes into play in order that the judges comply with the requirements of Union loyalty in the Treaty on European Union: Hungarian judges are shown to exhibit certain creative responses to these challenges. The approach to the research is based on an examination of the institutional framework for judicial training, a selection of pertinent case‐law of the Hungarian courts as well as interviews with a number of judges involved in the application of EU law in their courts.     

法院微博:司法效用与规范路径

法院微博的开通标志着司法机关主动加强与民意之间的互动。民意与司法的理性互动,有助于民众理解、接受和信任司法权威。法院微博具有推进司法民主、司法公开和司法独立的司法效用。但是,当下法院微博运行中存在诸多困境。在深入解读法院微博困境的基础上,应当从三个向度进行规范:在理念层面,以司法和民众双向需求为出发点、事前引导舆论风向和事后疏导舆论压力;在制度框架层面,法院微博的覆盖面应逐步自上而下推进、建立法院微博的专人管理和报道事件的选取制度;在运行机制层面,构建微博更新的常态化机制、微博互动的及时性机制和个案追踪机制。最终为重塑司法权威和提升司法公信力提供助力。     

The Nature of Circuit Court Gatekeeping Decisions

This article provides an analysis of the nature of circuit court threshold decisions. Specifically, a model sensitive to the institutional context of the circuits is developed and tested across all threshold decisions in the sample and in more limited samples of proper party and proper forum votes. The results suggest that circuit court gatekeeping is a function of multiple factors, including circuit court law, litigant status, the lower court decision, and, at times, the ideological preferences of the circuit judge or that of his or her circuit.     

法院司法信息公开的初步研究

法院司法信息是指法院在履行职责过程中制作或者获取的、与法院及法官司法活动有关的、并且以一定形式记录与保存的信息,可以分为司法审执信息和司法审务信息两大类。法院司法信息公开,在发挥诸多正面功能的同时,也面临着一些需要克服的障碍。为落实法院司法信息公开,应当在法院内部成立专门工作机构,界定信息公开范围,明确信息公开途径,并且建立考核、监督与问责制度。     

香港法院的司法审查权

香港原来的司法审查制度类似于英国。香港回归祖国后 ,在香港基本法的框架下并无“违宪审查”发展的空间 ,因此 ,香港特别行政区法院无权审查香港特别行政区法律是否违背香港基本法。     

我国成文法体制下判例嵌入司法场域的机理

判例经由法律职业共同体的具体运用实践,正在全面且深刻地嵌入我国司法场域。这种嵌入过程或现象具有与域外判例实践所不同的独特机理。恰当把握这一机理需要突破域外以判例"效力"为核心的理论认识,转变为以判例"效用"为导向。这一机理包括嵌入形态、嵌入动力与嵌入主线三个方面。嵌入形态体现为判例智识性信息泛在形态向选择形态的转化;嵌入动力体现为判例自发性运用与建构性运用的耦合;嵌入主线体现为判例运用的组织意图对个体意图的吸纳。揭示这一机理不仅有助于加深对我国判例运用现象的认识,把握判例运用现象的特征和规律,从而有助于理性地建构和完善中国特色判例制度,同时也有利于促成判例运用成为一种惯常化的司法习性。     

法院、法官与司法改革

今天,应邀参加中国人民大学法学院举办的"大法官讲坛",并作首场演讲,我感到十分荣幸.举办这个讲坛很有意义,它可以作为司法理论与实践的结合点,促进我国法学事业的繁荣,促进司法界与法学界的交流.……     

国际刑事法院司法合作的基本原则

目前,国际刑事法院研究已成为当代国际刑法领域的一个热点。平等互利原则、法院权威原则、相对主权原则和诉讼便宜原则是国际刑事法院进行司法合作的几项基本原则。贯彻基本原则时应限制检察官权力,强化对不合作的制裁。     

“保护的责任”：国际法院相关司法实践研究

“保护的责任”自提出以来,迄今已在政治层面获得了广泛的国际共识。在法律层面特别是可操作性层面,国际法院通过对《灭种罪公约》及《消除一切形式种族歧视国际公约》的解释和适用,提出了“作为一种义务存在的干涉”这样一种新观念,强调了所有公约当事国所应承担的“预防责任”,间接地回应了《国家对国际不法行为的责任》条款草案第48条,也从法律实践的角度回应了“保护的责任”,特别是其中的“预防责任”。通过这种回应,就使国家基于“保护的责任”而采取的某些干涉行动具有合法性。这种回应,将会深刻地影响到国家的行为模式。面对这种新发展所带来的挑战,中国有必要调整自身外交策略。