
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense
Find a Local Lawyer
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402
The Legal Workshop 

Legal scholarship published in the print editions of the law reviews and law journals of the following law schools: University of Chicago, Stanford, New York University, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, and Northwestern.
Post Frequency: 6.5/day Last Entry: April 21, 2017 at 06:21:46 Recent Entries: 222
By Law Students
Go to The Legal Workshop, find other Academic blogs, or browse all law blogs.
Off the Hook
Posted on March 29, 2010The structure of the digital economy will depend on a seemingly obscure debate about the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Congress established the FCC during the New Deal and vested it with authority over all interstate communication by wire or radio...
Duke Post
Posted on March 28, 2010INTRODUCTION: THE CONFLICT OVER THE RULE OF LAW This symposium asks how we can quantify and evaluate what judges do. Some of the papers are skeptical of attempts at quantification.[1] These questions are of importance to legal historians, who frequently seek to link judicial behavior to larger cultural, economic,… Read More »
Reining in Non-State Actors: State Responsibility and Attribution in Cases of Genocide
Posted on March 26, 2010In 2007, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) defined the scope of state responsibility under the Genocide Convention for the first time when it reached the merits in the Genocide Case, a case arising from the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia...
Devising Rule of Law Baselines: The Next Step in Quantitative Studies of Judging
Posted on March 25, 2010Political scientists and law professors have lately taken to asserting that quantitative studies of judging reveal worrisome findings about the rule of law in the U.S. judicial system. The authors of Are Judges Political? declare: ?variations in panel composition lead to dramatically different outcomes, in a way that creates serious… Read More »
Public Communities, Private Rules
Posted on March 24, 2010Place matters. No matter one?s income, and no matter one?s status as a renter or homeowner, the communities where we spend our lives strongly affect our daily enjoyment of life. The appearance of these communities is a strong component of this satisfaction...
Justice and Judgment Among the Whomever: An Anthropological Approach to Judging
Posted on March 23, 2010Prior to the conference, the organizers asked me for my thoughts on how an anthropologist might approach the problem of studying judging. Those thoughts follow. I have subsequently reflected on the discussion at the conference itself, and I conclude this essay with those reflections...
Deep Secrecy
Posted on March 21, 2010Donald Rumsfeld has been unfairly ridiculed. During a 2002 press conference, a reporter asked about the link between Iraq and al Qaeda, and he gave the following response: [A]s we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that… Read More »
The Substantive Due Process Turn: Identity-Based Uses of Copyrighted Works
Posted on March 19, 2010The dominant theoretical frame for conceptualizing uses of copyrighted works is the First Amendment?s protection for free speech. Despite numerous calls for greater First Amendment scrutiny in copyright cases, there has been an almost unrelenting rejection of independent First Amendment review in copyright cases...
Quantitative Legal History?Empirics and the Rule of Law in the Antebellum Judiciary
Posted on March 18, 2010I. Introduction: The Conflict over the Rule of Law This symposium asks how we can quantify and evaluate what judges do. Some of the papers are skeptical of attempts at quantification. These questions are of importance to legal historians, who frequently seek to link judicial behavior to larger cultural, economic,… Read More »
Talking Judges
Posted on March 16, 2010The Evaluating Judges conference held in October 2009 was the second in a series of conferences planned at Duke Law School in which judges and academics came together to discuss questions relating to research on judges. As two academics who study judges, we find these opportunities to interact with judges valuable...
The Meaning of the Word ?All? in Article III
Posted on March 15, 2010Samuel Adams, the Massachusetts patriot, was not enthusiastic about the newly proposed Constitution. He particularly did not like its introductory phrase, ?We the People of the United States.? The phrase signaled a departure from the Articles of Confederation that the Constitution was to replace...
Evaluating Judges
Posted on March 11, 2010Improving the quality of the judiciary is a noble cause. I welcome the participation of social scientists in the endeavor. But it is an open question whether social science can meaningfully contribute. Left to their own devices, social scientists are likely to produce work of dubious value...
Commercializing Patents
Posted on March 11, 2010About half, probably more, of all patented inventions in the United States are never commercially exploited. Many of these undeveloped inventions are commercially worthless ab initio, such as the anti-eating face mask, beer bottle mini-umbrella, and weed-cutting golf club...
Are All Legal Probabilities Created Equal?
Posted on March 10, 2010Legal payments are in many cases probabilistic. For example, in the criminal context, a fine is levied against a criminal only after a series of sequential probabilistic events occur: He must be caught by the police, charged by the prosecution, and convicted by a court in accordance with the procedural… Read More »
Rethinking The Federal Role in State Criminal Justice
Posted on March 10, 2010It is time for Congress to end its fifty-year experiment in post hoc federal court enforcement of constitutional criminal procedure. By clinging to ineffectual federal habeas review of state criminal cases, Congress is pouring tax dollars down the drain and overlooking a more effective way to enforce the Constitution: helping… Read More »
Distinguishing Causal and Normative Questions in Empirical Studies OF Judging
Posted on March 09, 2010In this Essay, I raise a metatheoretical question concerning the relationship between what seem to be two distinct categories of projects that might be lumped together under the rubric of empirical study of judicial performance. One kind of empirical project aims broadly at developing a social-scientific theory of judging, or… Read More »
Crossing Over: Why Attorneys (and Judges) Should Not be Able to Cross-Examine Witnesses Regarding Their Immigration Statuses for Impeachment Purposes
Posted on March 08, 2010You are sitting in an empty bar (in a town you?ve never before visited), drinking a Bacardi with a soft-spoken acquaintance you barely know. After an hour, a third individual walks into the tavern and sits by himself, and you ask your acquaintance who the new man is...
After the Fall: A New Framework To Regulate ?Too Big to Fail? Nonbank Financial Institutions
Posted on March 05, 2010This Editorial summarizes my forthcoming Note, 85 N.Y.U. L. REV. (forthcoming June 2010), in which I assert that our current regulatory structure is suboptimal in its regulation of the systemic risk created by the failure of large, interconnected ?nonbank? financial institutions (in general, a nonbank financial institution is any institution that… Read More »
Investigating Judicial Responses To Rules
Posted on March 04, 2010Much has been written about the process by which judges reach decisions in cases governed by the common law, but very little has been done to test this process empirically. Most empirical efforts have attempted to determine whether and to what extent judges? political views influence their legal decisions...
The Impact of West Tankers on Parties? Choice of a Seat of Arbitration
Posted on March 03, 2010In Allianz SpA v. West Tankers Inc., the European Court of Justice (ECJ) deemed antisuit injunctions, a tool that English courts commonly employ to enforce arbitration agreements, incompatible with EU law. As a result, English courts can no longer issue an antisuit injunction preventing a party?who is either ignoring or contesting… Read More »
Diversity, Tenure, and Dissent
Posted on March 02, 2010The primary goal of the Duke Law Journal?s Symposium on Evaluating Judging, Judges, and Judicial Institutions was to bring together judges and academics researching judges. Conversations between these groups can be constructive on both sides. Judges may benefit from learning about studies that show the influences on judicial performance or… Read More »
Pregnancy, Work, and the Promise of Equal Citizenship
Posted on March 01, 2010Can women capture the benefits of equal citizenship in a legal system that does not mandate accommodations for pregnant workers? This Article argues that they cannot. Current pregnancy discrimination law, which bases the right to work on full capacity, systematically deprives women of equal opportunity to make use of their… Read More »
The Costs of ?Discernible and Manageable Standards? in Vieth and Beyond
Posted on February 26, 2010Judges have the often unenviable task of having to answer very difficult legal questions. Some apprehension toward this task is understandable, so how might a judge duck the task of writing a new doctrinal test to resolve the hard question and similar claims in the future? Aside from using familiar… Read More »
The Costs Of Judging Judges By The Numbers
Posted on February 25, 2010What is to be gained by using empirical evidence to rank or ?judge? judges? These empirical studies claim two major benefits. First, because the criteria are assertedly apolitical, the resulting rankings will identify the ?best? judges across the political spectrum and thereby improve, for instance, the Supreme Court nomination process...
Breaking the Law to Enforce It: Undercover Police Participation in Crime
Posted on February 24, 2010Covert policing necessarily involves deception, which in turn often leads to participation in activity that appears to be criminal. In undercover operations, the police have introduced drugs into prison, undertaken assignments from Latin American drug cartels to launder money, established fencing businesses that paid cash for stolen goods and for… Read More »
Evaluating Judges and Judicial Institutions: Reorienting the Perspective
Posted on February 23, 2010In September 2009, we hosted an unusual workshop at Duke Law School. The workshop focused on the empirical evaluation of judges, judging, and judicial institutions. Most work in this area has been driven by the agendas and constraints of empirical researchers, and empiricists from multiple disciplines?including history, sociology, anthropology, political… Read More »
In 2007, the International Court
Posted on February 22, 2010In 2007, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) defined the scope of state responsibility under the Genocide Convention for the first time when it reached the merits in the Genocide Case,[1] a case arising from the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia...
Differential Formalism in Claiming Intellectual Property: A Response to Fromer
Posted on February 22, 2010This article is a response to an earlier posted piece by Jeanne C. Fromer: Claiming Intellectual Property. Claiming intellectual property is an act of communication, but as with all communication not everything can be spelled out with exactitude all the time?far from it...
Protect Us, Lord, from Richard Epstein
Posted on February 22, 2010This article is a response to an earlier posted piece by Richard Epstein: Protect Us, Lord, from Title VII: A Response to Gelbach, Klick, and Wexler. We thank Richard Epstein for commenting on our online Article. He brings a unique perspective to the field of employment discrimination and pushes other scholars… Read More »
Previous | Next
Update on AILF's Legal Action Center Visa Bulletin Litigation (Updated 7/10/07)
The following is the latest update from AILF regarding its pening ...
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center Legislative Forecast
The ILRC Forecast on Immigration ReformJudith Golub, Executive Dir...
The Christian Legal Society and "discrimation": Response to Susan
In response to Susan's post, I'm inclined to think that, yes, the ...
Stacy Scnheider Legal Commentator Apprentice
Catholic Legal Theory and life and death
Tom Berg’s question regarding the propriety or not of capital pu...
Pre-paid Leagal Services
What are Prepaid Legal Benefit Plans
Legal Forms
Business and Commercial Legal Forms
Best Law Movies
Greatest Legal Movies selected by ABA Journal
Law & Order Depicts Police Procedures and Criminal Justice
Accuracy of Criminal Justice Depiction on Television
Did I harass someone?
Oh, yes. This can be taken in as so many things, especially since you had testif...
How to evict a roommate?
First, in most jurisdictions "self-help" is not a remedy available to any party ...
I have worked for this employer for only three weeks. The employer makes up his own rules as to what he chooses to report for the purpose of property taxes. He tells me to "let them come after us". He defines Entertain
He arrogantly insists, "let them come after us." Well, if you are invo...
This has happened 3 or 4 times a month now- they have turned the electric off 2 days consecutively, the water off about 9 or 10 times now, and our heat has broken 5 times (once it would not shut off, and we were forced t
i say stick with the apartment. eventually, everything possible will be replaced...
The company I worked for forced me to quit instead of dealing with someone harassing me, what can I do?
Look up CONSTRUCTIVE DISCHARGE...................this looks like what happened t...

Did I harass someone?
Oh, yes. This can be taken in as so many things, especially since you had testif...
How to evict a roommate?
First, in most jurisdictions "self-help" is not a remedy available to any party ...
I have worked for this employer for only three weeks. The employer makes up his own rules as to what he chooses to report for the purpose of property taxes. He tells me to "let them come after us". He defines Entertain
He arrogantly insists, "let them come after us." Well, if you are invo...
This has happened 3 or 4 times a month now- they have turned the electric off 2 days consecutively, the water off about 9 or 10 times now, and our heat has broken 5 times (once it would not shut off, and we were forced t
i say stick with the apartment. eventually, everything possible will be replaced...
The company I worked for forced me to quit instead of dealing with someone harassing me, what can I do?
Look up CONSTRUCTIVE DISCHARGE...................this looks like what happened t...








