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Historically, the debate over the judicial role has centered on the constitutional and administrative law decisions of the United States Supreme Court, with an occasional glance at the Federal Courts of Appeals. It has, moreover, been concerned solely with the "in-court" behavior of Article III appellate judges as they carry out their power and duty "to say what the law is" in the context of resolving "cases and controversies." This Article seeks to deepen the discussion of the appropriate role of Article III judges by broadening it to trial, as well as appellate, judges; and by distinguishing between an Article III judge's "decisional" activities on the one hand, and the judge's "hortatory" and other activities on the other. To that end, the Article focuses on a cohort of deeply respected federal district judges-many of whom, although not all, experienced Clinton appointees in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York-who, over the last decade, have challenged conventional norms of judicial behavior to urge reform of fundamental aspects of the federal criminal justice system. These "new" judicial activists have made their case for reform in the pages of their judicial opinions, often in dicta; in articles and speeches; and through advocacy within and beyond the judicial branch. This Article summarizes this activity, places it in historical context, and assesses its value as well as its risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author discusses the key role played by career clerks or term clerks in judicial decision making, as well as how U.S. district court judges choose their staff by carefully analyzing the pros and cons of employing term and career clerks. Other topics include the workload of district court judges, a comparison by Chief Justice John Roberts of the responsibilities of judges and baseball umpires, as well as the role of the courts in constitutional democracy.

The article discusses the methods used in the selection and appointment of members of the magistrate judge bench in the U.S., as well as the efforts to increase the diversity of the court. Other topics include the efforts by various U.S. presidents like Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush to appoint minority judges, a relative diversity comparison of district court bench and magistrate judge bench, as well as the effect of diversity on judgment quality in the courts.

The article discusses the Minnesota Supreme Court's adoption of a rule governing the recognition and enforcement of tribal court orders and judgments in the state's district courts, and it mentions judicial deference and the sovereignty and jurisdiction of tribal courts. According to the article, state legislatures in America should amend their state constitutions to give full faith and credit to tribal court orders.

Punishment scholars acknowledge the fundamental importance of both prosecutorial discretion and jurisdictional variation in punishment; yet, little is known about the extent to which charging practices vary across court contexts. This is especially true in the federal criminal justice system. This research investigates this issue by linking four years of charging data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC) to corresponding data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC). It incorporates unique information on district court contexts from a variety of sources to investigate jurisdictional variation in charge reductions. Findings provide evidence that federal charging practices vary across district courts. In particular, several structural court characteristics are significantly related to the likelihood of charge reduction for similarly-situated defendants. Results from this study are interpreted through the lens of contemporary legal perspectives on court communities and suggest several fruitful directions for additional research on the social contexts of criminal prosecution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use structural break analysis to estimate rates of patent validity and infringement in decisions on the merits in U.S. courts over 1929-2006. We separately estimate these rates for district court and appeals court decisions. We find multiple structural breaks in both validity and infringement, and the breaks do not coincide. The rate of validity falls around 1939 and rises around 1983, while the rate of infringement rises around 1950 and falls around 1991. We argue that these breaks, and the variation across the implied five 'eras' of decision standards, reflect political and legal innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been recent conflicting decisions in U.S. district courts of New York, Delaware, and others states regarding to the enforceability of make-whole provisions in bankruptcy. The ambiguity created by the courts' decisions has caused uncertainty for all parties involved in these kinds of loan documents. This comment is an analysis of the enforceability of make-whole provisions in the context of bankruptcy in light of the recent decisions. In order for a makewhole or a no-call provision to be upheld, a number of hurdles must be cleared. The provisions must be valid under both state law and bankruptcy law. Make-whole provisions are generally enforceable outside of bankruptcy under state law to the extent that they are not true penalties under a liquidated damages analysis. Once bankruptcy comes into play, the provisions must withstand a number of hurdles. In order to be enforceable in bankruptcy, a make-whole provision must be a valid liquidated damages claim under state law, it must be provided for and triggered under the contractual agreement, and it must not be tantamount to unmatured interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of federal court decisionmaking asks whether characteristics of a jurist including age, race, gender, and work experience, can affect results in the context of the nation's most frequently litigated administrative law dispute--social security disability claims. SSDI cases by and large are similar, turning most frequently on claims of mental illness and muscular skeletal pain. Thus, there is ample room for discretion among ALJs and federal judges in determining whether an applicant is entitled to benefits. The results are remarkable both in what they showed and did not show. First, decisionmaking patterns among district court judges and magistrates both reveal the same kind of inconsistencies that plague ALJ adjudication more generally. The results of an SSDI appeal might turn more on the hap of which judge or magistrate is slated to review the appeal than on the merits of the case. Second, if the cases are similar, the question arises as to what explains the difference in outcomes. Again, the results are striking in that no correlation can be drawn between results and the race, gender, seniority, and job experience of the jurist. Nor can they be explained by geography or the percentage of disabled within the region. Third, although sociological attributes did not explain much of the variation in resolution of the cases, we noted a substantial correlation between remand rates and the circuit in which the judges and magistrates sat. Remand rates from both judges and magistrates in the Tenth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits, for instance, were almost double those from judges and magistrates in the First and Fourth Circuits. The statistics strongly suggest that the "culture' within a particular judicial circuit makes a substantial difference in such decisionmaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Essay, Professor Pierce criticizes the decisions in six circuits that forbid a district judge from rejecting a finding of fact proposed by a magistrate without first conducting a new evidentiary hearing. Those decisions are inconsistent with the Magistrates Act of 1968, the Supreme Court's 1951 decision authorizing agencies to reject findings of fact made by administrative law judges without conducting a new evidentiary hearing, the consistent findings of empirical studies that a fact-finder's ability to observe the demeanor of witnesses does not improve the fact-finder's ability to evaluate the credibility of witnesses, and Articles I and III of the Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a survey which examines significant maritime decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate, and the district courts within the Ninth Circuit region. Various cases discussed include Institute of Cetacean Research v. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society which was concerning admiralty procedure, Habel v. Grove Farm Fish & Poi, LLC which was related to Jones Act, and Moore v. United States which was regarding discretionary function exception.

The article analyzes the tension between the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), district courts and the federal courts in patent reexamination proceedings. It describes the 35 U.S.C. &#167 302 that allows any person to request for a reexamination of an issued patent to ensure that the patent is valid and examines constitutional issues related to patent cases.

The article presents information on the evaluation of the U.S. Court of Appeals and district courts' decisions regarding the free exercise of religion and religious accommodation claims during 1996-2005. One of the major findings include that the ideology of the judges did not play crucial role in the Free Exercise clause, however, extra-judicial factors did. It highlights how extra-judicial factors, such as judge's ethnicity, influence the litigation outcomes and judicial decision-making.

The article discusses a court case entitled Coe v. Chesapeake Exploration LLC in the U.S. It mentions the decision by a federal district judge that Peak Energy Corp. had a valid, enforceable contract with Chesapeake and ordered Chesepeake pay over $19 million in damages for reneging on the contract. It also details the decision by the Fifth Circuit Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham in the said case.

In Novo Nordisk A/S et al. v. Caraco Pharma. Labs., Ltd. et al., 688 F.3d 766 (Fed. Cir. 2012), the Federal Circuit addressed the scope of the injunction issued by the District Court in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories Ltd. et al. v. Novo Nordisk A/S et al. (U.S. 2012). The Federal Circuit found that the District Court had abused its discretion in issuing its injunction and modified the injunction accordingly. This case report presents the arguments made to the Federal Circuit by the parties and how the Federal Circuit addressed those issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers information on regulations issued by the U.S. Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and discusses the court case United States v Any and All Radio Station Transmission Equipment, presented in the U.S. Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit. It analyzes the clauses mentioned in the legislation regarding jurisdiction of district courts in making judgments in the case.

The article discusses the case Avoyelles Sportsmen's League Inc. v. John o. Marsh in which the plaintiffs sued a number of corporations and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials for land clearing activities in Bayou Natchitoches basin, Louisiana that will result in the discharge of dredged and fill material into the waters of the U.S. It describes district court's decision granting plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction.

The article presents information on the constitutional issues and the development of bankruptcy court jurisdiction. It discusses a jurisdictional scheme in bankruptcy and offers solutions to the jurisdictional quandary. It discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Stern v. Marshall, involving the issues related to the constitutionality of bankruptcy court jurisdiction. It informs that the opinion in the case of Stern has helped in the modification of the standards of districts courts.

Assessing a year's worth of debate over the 2009 Supreme Court decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, this Article provides a novel explanation for the decision and presents it as radical indeed, but in a way previously unremarked by commentators. The sharp divisions in the responses to Iqbal have masked a deeper consensus and have blocked wide awareness of the decision's constructive potential for diverse interest groups. This consensus is based on a simplified account of the ideal function of pleading in our system of civil litigation, one that first took hold in the early twentieth century. What unsettles many observers about Iqbal is its suggestion that district court judges must interpret a civil complaint in order to decide whether it states a claim. As this Article explains, however, pleading scrutiny always has involved interpretation; if we find that suggestion troubling, it is only because the vocabulary we have long used to discuss the role and treatment of civil pleadings represses this fact. The Article describes the ways this vocabulary has shaped the debate over Iqbal and the contingent historical reasons for its dominance. Looking forward, it shows how Iqbal makes possible a new agenda for procedural scholarship that draws from work on other types of legal interpretation, and it suggests some of the specific ways in which this perspective can guide implementation of Iqbal and clarification of its requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the court ruling of the Supreme Court of Great Britain on the issue of copyright protection with reference to the case Lucasfilm Ltd. v. Ainsworth. It states that Andrew Ainsworth and his company were initially sued by Lucasfilm Ltd. in the District Court of the U.S. in California for the same issue. Information on copyright protection with reference to infringement of unregistered trade-mark and unfair competition is also presented.

There has been significant scholarly research on judicial decision making and bureaucratic control but little research on bureaucrats who perform a judicial function, namely, administrative law judges. In this article, we analyze the influences on the decisions of administrative law judges (ALJs) from 1991 to 2006. Using ordered logit, we examine the influence of policy preference and hierarchical and political constraint. We find that ALJs are comparable to Federal District Court judges in that they use ideology in their rulings, are also subject to hierarchical control by higher courts, and that they are constrained by separation of powers influences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Justice Sonia Sotomayor's assertion that female judges might be better than male judges has generated accusations of sexism and potential bias. An equally controversial claim is that male judges are better than female judges because the latter have benefited from affirmative action. These claims are susceptible to empirical analysis. Using a data set of all the state high court judges in 1998-2000, we estimate three measures of judicial output: opinion production, outside state citations, and co-partisan disagreements. For many of our tests, we fail to find significant gender effects on judicial performance. Where we do find significant gender effects for our state high court judges, female judges perform better than male judges. An analysis of data from the U.S. Court of Appeals and the federal district courts produces roughly similar findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information regarding various contributions and personality of the late Judge Ronald N. Davies during his tenure as a judge at the North Dakota District Court. It discusses several court cases of the U.S. related to Davies' career including Aaron v. Cooper, Stromsodt v. Parke-Davis & Co., and Merchant National Bank & Trust Co. v. United States. Also discusses brief information regarding the case related to the Little Rock School District.

This study invokes the common space scores of executives and senators to generate a number of alternative preference point positions for U.S. District Court judges. Tests of these continuous measures against a null case fact specification suggest that the legal model always proves an effective predictor of decisions, but that ideological influences have incrementally grown throughout the last century. Continuous preference measures that assume a traditional norm of senatorial courtesy tend to be robust in limited samples of more recent outcomes. However, measures that account for cyclical changes in interbranch appointment relationships are more effective for temporally lengthy large N samples. The magnitude of these ideological effects is modest, but not unsubstantial. During the recent era of independent executive-vetting practices, the likelihood of a conservative decision is approximately 78 to 85 percent for Democratic appointees, and 85 to 90 percent for Republican appointees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers an in-depth analysis of insurance law at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit during the survey period from July 1, 2009 up to June 30, 2010. It details the decisions given from the majority of cases coming from federal district courts in Louisiana, Mississippi, and in Texas. The author has elaborated the jurisdictional, procedural and substantive questions related to insurance controversies related to the Hurricane Katrina.

The article discusses Rule 23(b)(3) and its superiority requirement in transnational class actions. It explores foreign courts that may not recognize an opt-out class action judgment and examines U.S. district courts as they determine giving res judicata to class action judgment. It notes things to be considered in crafting solutions and comments on other preferred solutions, the Dutch Collective Settlement Act of 2005 and the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case Morrison v. National Australian Bank.

In this article, the author discusses the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court case Padilla v. Kentucky on practice in the U.S. district courts. He mentions that the court's decision in this case reminds that the plea process and its implications should never be dismissed. He suggests that the courts should always consider the consequences that might result from a defendant's plea of guilty.

In this article the author discusses the legal categorization of the Delaware District Court of photographer's work. The author explores the case, Moberg versus 33T LLC, and describes the court's holding and policy considerations surrounding the decision. She also looks into the controversy on the classification of Internet postings and suggests alternative classifications of the photographer's work for the future.

The article discusses a court case Commerce Energy Inc. v. Levin, wherein plaintiffs, in-state and out-of-state retail natural gas suppliers, sued Ohio's Tax Commissioner, Richard Levin alleging that Ohio's tax scheme is discriminatory and thus unconstitutional under either the Commerce Clause or Equal Protection Clause. The trial court in the U.S. dismissed the plaintiff's suit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. It also looks at other cases including Hibbs v. Winn.

The article discusses the reversed district court decision on the case of T. Co Metals LLC v. Dempsey Pipe and Supply Inc. by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. It notes that the reversed case was an amended final award on the grounds that the arbitrator exceeded his power to correct his award. It mentions the decision of the Second Circuit that permits arbitrators to give themselves power to reconsider the decision they made in final awards.

The article focuses on the function of courts in relieving the woes of naturalization applicants in the U.S. It offers analysis on the conflicting opinions among courts as to the capability of 8 U.S.C. §1447 (b) to offer exclusive jurisdiction to the district court over pending naturalization applications as well as the possibility of the district courts and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to share jurisdiction over § 1447(b) actions. It addresses court decisions to send the matter back to USCIS or settle the application.

An essay is presented on the terms of contract between American lawyer Peter Zeidenberg and ProCD Inc. in the U.S. It discusses the lawsuit filed by ProCD against Zeidenberg for breach of contract. It states that Zeidenberg bought a product from ProCD where the box did not clearly stated the terms for the use of the product. It reveals that the district court ruled that Zeidenberg is not bound by the terms since he was not able to see them when he bought the product.

The article discusses the authorization of domestic prosecutions for violations in oil record book on all foreign-flagged vessels by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth and Second Circuit. It reveals the rulings of the cases United States v. Jho and United States v. Ionia Management S.A. It explores the development of prosecutorial approaches in district court decisions and analyzes how the Second and Fifth Circuits expand the regulatory power of the country by examining their decisions on the said cases. It cites international and domestic laws that govern marine pollution.

How should courts balance conflicting national security and environmental protection interests? The Supreme Court gave a fact-specific answer in Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, finding that the interests of the military outweighed the interests of environmental plaintiffs in this case. Winter is hardly revolutionary--courts have long balanced competing interests when determining equitable relief and that is precisely what the Court did in Winter, based on the unique circumstances presented. The Supreme Court gave greater deference to military commanders than the lower courts in reviewing a preliminary injunction issued to remedy the Navy's failure to prepare an environmental impact statement pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). In doing so, the Winter Court substituted its own judgment regarding the public interest among competing national priorities and unmoored itself from traditional standards of appellate review. While saying very little about the underlying merits of the case, the Court majority held that the district court abused its discretion, and on that basis it vacated two of six mitigation measures imposed under the preliminary injunction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the Final Judgments and remedies in the antitrust court case between Microsoft Corp. and the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found Microsoft liable for violations of Section 1 and Section 2 of the U.S. Sherman Act. To remedy the anticompetitive effects of Microsoft's exclusionary conduct, the district court gave an order requiring that Microsoft be broken up into two companies: an applications company and an operating system company.

The article focuses on the decision made by the U.S. District Court on the case between Jim Smith and Paul Green School of Rock Music on its ten-years franchise agreement. The court stated the franchise agreement has contained aspects suggesting procedural unconscionability. He adds that the presence of procedural unconscionability alone was insufficient to defeat the enforcement of the arbitration clause using the sliding scale test.

The article examines the alleged prejudice of the International Trade Commission (ITC) in its patent infringement cases in the U.S. It assumes to use the decisions of district courts as bases for review with ITC's judgments. Results from the review reveal that ITC favors patent holders more than district courts and grants injunctive help as a remedy for infringement more frequently.

The article presents additional developments related to the privacy-related law in the U.S. In the case, Pichler v. UNITE, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled that the Union of Needletrades Industrial & Textile Employees AFL-CIO (UNITE) had violated the Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) by recording the license plate numbers of vehicles in employee parking lots and using the numbers to obtain employees' names and addresses from state motor vehicle records. In the case, IMS Health Inc. v. Ayotte, the District Court for the District of New Hampshire struck down on First Amendment grounds a New Hampshire statute, 2006 N.H. Laws Section 328, that prohibited the transfer and use of prescriber-identifiable information for certain commercial purposes.