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The Federal Circuit's jurisdiction is unique. Unlike the jurisdiction of all other U.S. courts of appeals, the Federal Circuit's jurisdiction is defined not by its geographical boundaries, but rather by the subject matter of the original claims and compulsory counterclaims. The court has appellate jurisdiction over final decisions from all U.S. district courts if a plaintiff's claim or a party's counterclaim arises under the patent laws. From this unusual jurisdictional grant, the Federal Circuit has concluded that, as a policy matter, it should apply and develop its own law only if the legal issue pertains to patent law. For all other legal issues, the Federal Circuit defers to the law of the court of appeals in which the case originated--i.e., it applies the procedural law and the non-patent substantive law of the regional circuits. This Article undertakes a thorough evaluation of the Federal Circuit's choice-of-law rule. It examines how the rule compares against the congressional objectives reflected in the court's enabling statute as well as against possible alternative rules. In addition, it considers how the court's rule causes the court to depart from the trans-substantivity principle of procedural law and a related principle of equity in a nontransparent manner, and, in doing so, engage in substantive lawmaking that may be beyond the court's authority. Finally, this Article contemplates solutions beyond a mere change in the court's choice-of-law rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the reasons why Florida's appellate courts have collectively issued few en banc opinions per year since 1982. Topics discussed include a brief history of the U.S. federal and Florida en banc history and several reasons why there are very few en banc opinions including each district court of appeal issuing a large number of per curium affirmed opinions.

There has been a significant increase in the use of a controversial, dramatic remedy known as the nationwide injunction. This development is worrisome because it risks substantial harm to the judiciary by encouraging forum shopping, freezing the "percolation" of legal issues among the circuits, and undermining the comity between the federal courts. But a complete ban on nationwide injunctions is both impractical and undesirable. This Note proposes a solution to limit the abuse of nationwide injunctions without banning them outright. When fashioning remedies, courts should simplify the sheer number of relevant factors by focusing on three main meta-factors, or categories, that should be used as a balancing test: the identity of the parties before the court, the nature of the claim being litigated, and the effect the remedy would have on the courts where the claim is being litigated--"who," "what," and "where," respectively. The balancing of these three meta-factors will enable district courts to weigh more clearly whether nationwide injunctions are proper and will also give appellate courts a framework for reviewing whether district courts have abused their discretion by issuing this type of relief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Racial mirroring" refers to efforts by one group to match the primary racial composition of another group. In contrast to racial balancing, which takes place when two groups are adjusted simultaneously to achieve a desired degree of racial equilibrium between them, racial mirroring occurs when the racial makeup of one group is adjusted so as to reflect the predominant racial identity of the second group. Employers and even federal courts engage in racial mirroring. For example, in order to generate trust among customers, employers have hired or promoted individuals of the same race as the employers' primary customer base. Further, in order to ensure that attorneys can fairly and adequately represent the interests of their clients, a federal district court judge required counsel in class action cases to staff attorneys that reflect the racial diversity of the clients. Federal appellate courts have approved these twin forms of racial mirroring. This Article challenges employer and judicial attempts to match the racial identity of one group to the primary racial identity of another. It argues that these practices, however intuitive and wellintentioned, violate the Equal Protection Clause, embody harmful racial stereotypes, and generate significant social costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Krys v Farnum Place, the Second Circuit ruled that, in a chapter 15 ancillary proceeding, a SIPA claim is within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States and its sale by the foreign representative must be subjected to review under Bankruptcy Code section 363. In so holding, the court vacated an earlier decision of the Bankruptcy Court, which held that that the SIPA claim was not within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States and that principles of comity could trump the requirements of section 363, as applied by section 1520. Two peculiarities in the facts limit the precedential impact of the decision: the claim sale agreement required approval by the Bankruptcy Court and the foreign court specifically deferred to the Bankruptcy Court to approve the sale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What factors explain when federal trial court judges will be influenced and constrained by their direct superiors in the judicial hierarchy? To empirically test this hierarchical relationship, this study utilizes an original database of cases terminated in 29 federal district courts from 2000 to 2004 and a research design that naturally incorporates hierarchical interactions through a focus on cases that were appealed to the U.S. courts of appeal and later reversed and remanded. After controlling for litigant, judge, political, and case characteristics, the results indicate that the likelihood of a district court case having an altered outcome after circuit court intervention is greatly affected by the content and context of the supervising circuit panel's opinion. These results have implications for the function and constraining ability of the judicial hierarchy and provide new insight into how judging significantly differs by court level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent research demonstrating the impact of inmate perceptions of correctional legitimacy on order maintenance, the extant literature has failed to examine the contextual reality of correctional excessive use of force claims. Utilizing legal cases from the U.S. Court of Appeals and U.S. District Courts, this article examines correctional officer excessive use of non-deadly force and identifies recurring themes in these claims. Findings highlight the common occurrence of retaliatory violence, negative attitudes, failure to listen to inmate concerns, inadequate training, and an inability to decipher reliable threat cues consistently present in correctional officer use of non-deadly force claims. Suggestions for future research and policy implications are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the University of San Francisco Maritime Law Journal Survey that examines the decisions of the U.S Supreme Court, federal appellate, and district courts. Court cases discussed include Americanwest Bank v. P/V Indian that involved ship mortgage, case Monjasa A/S v. M/V Peristil dealing with maritime lien and summary judgment and Good v. Nippon Yusen Kaisha based on a choice of law waiver.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the U.S. common law doctrine of stare decisis and its role in U.S. federal courts and at the agency the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). According to the article, stare decisis does not apply to agencies such as the ITC. It examines why U.S. government agencies can ignore precedents, how U.S. appeals courts review such decisions, and discusses several ITC decisions, including Amgen, Inc. v. U.S. Int'l Trade Comm'n.

This Article examines the effects of judicial emergencies on the federal district courts. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts declares judicial emergencies when a weighted statistic of filings and vacancy days exceeds certain thresholds. This Article presents evidence on the relationship between emergency status in a judicial circuit and the frequency of pretrial disposition in federal district courts within that circuit: a federal district court is statistically more likely to dismiss a case before trial if its corresponding circuit court is in emergency. This evidence suggests that emergency status may affect normative expectations between the federal district courts and the federal courts of appeals. Federal district courts in circuits under stress appear to increase their "gatekeeping" function by reducing the number of full trials that they hear. The evidence presented in this Article also suggests that the stability of vertical norms between the federal district courts and the federal circuit courts plays an important role in the federal district courts fulfilling their trial-like institutional role [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on brief writing regarding the U.S. Court of Appeals Rule 12 on dismissal motions and on the U.S. District court Rule 56 on summary judgment motions. It evaluates the causes of pretrial dispositive motions losses in employment discrimination cases. Rule 56, explains that nondiscrimination arises if the person who fired a plaintiff was the same person who hired him, whereas for Rule 12, a defense argues that complaints fail to mention reasonable allegations.

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 the legal rights of American prisoners and an empirical study of non-capital habeas corpus cases after appellate review in U.S. courts as of April 2012. Grants of relief by American district courts are addressed, along with an examination of the number of prisoner-filed non-capital habeas corpus lawsuits that reach the appellate court level in the U.S. Several legal cases are assessed, including the U.S. Supreme Court case Day v. McDonough.

The article looks at the legality of political campaign finance in the U.S. after the Davis v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) case. It examines the legal challenges brought against the state laws which help political candidates finance campaigns and curtail campaign spending, the logic that courts have utilized to ignore these challenges, and the way in which the Davis case affects that logic. It also examines the U.S. Supreme Court's treatment of campaign finance limitations before the Davis case, discusses the various types of state campaign finance laws, and shows how federal district courts and courts of appeals employed the Supreme Court's pre-Davis decisions to state's election laws. It is concluded that the matching funds of state campaign finance laws are still constitutional.

The article discusses the court decisions which set aside the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Convention) in 2009 in the U.S. A federal district court decision in Virginia ruled that Chapter 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act does not apply to a motion to vacate an international arbitration award. In another case Gulf Petro Trading Co. versus Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., the Fifth Circuit reaffirmed that the New York Convention conferred primary jurisdiction to review the award on courts.