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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.

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.

After Barrack Obama’s election to the presidency, he promised that one of his top priorities in office would be to relieve the restrictions initiated by President George W. Bush on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. President Obama followed through on his promise, but the celebrations in the nation’s research labs were short-lived. Anti-abortion advocates and other scientists working in the field that would allegedly be out-competed in the federal funding arena brought a legal challenge to the new government position. The struggle culminated in August 2010 with a federal district court issuing a preliminary injunction to halt the new funding initiative. Although the overnment successfully appealed for a stay on the injunction pending arguments in the Court of Appeals, the decision has paralyzed research in the field. This in Brief argues that the injunction was wrongly granted, predicts how higher courts might treat the case, and suggests that the proper forum for addressing this controversy lies within the scientific community, not the judiciary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the set of principles that draws refined understanding to the relationship between culpability and circumstantial evidence requirements in the U.S. The issue surrounds the prevalence of spoliation in civil litigation in the district court based on the case of Vodusek v. Bayliner Marine Corp. In this regard, the culpability requirement and the circumstantial evidence requirement should be met to serve the same fundamental purpose of restoring adversarial balance.

In recent years, the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies have greatly expanded their presence abroad, investigating everything from narcotics trade and Internet fraud schemes to terrorism. Where this law enforcement activity includes custodial interrogation of non-American citizens abroad, must American law enforcement officials provide Miranda warnings to such suspects? In 2001 in United States v. Bin Laden, a federal district court held that the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination applies to non-American citizens interrogated abroad, thus requiring Miranda warnings in this context. This Article criticizes the Bin Laden court's strict application of Miranda and suggests that Miranda should be interpreted as a flexible prophylactic rule that can be modified or discarded abroad where its application is illogical. The Article then argues that the policies behind Miranda do not always support its application abroad in the same way that it is systematically applied in the domestic setting. As a result, an FBI agent abroad should be required to advise a non-American suspect only of the rights that he enjoys in the country where the interrogation takes place, to the extent such rights can be reasonably determined by the agent under the circumstances surrounding the interrogation. In addition, if the FBI agent makes a mistake in interpreting the rights available to a given suspect under foreign law, and does not advise the suspect of a right which he in fact had, the exclusionary rule should not be employed as long as the agent misinterpreted the foreign law in good faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]