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Magistrate judges function as a shadow judiciary, assisting U.S. district court judges--and sometimes standing in their shoes--in managing caseloads, resolving disputes, making law, and choosing winners and losers. Yet we lack basic knowledge about magistrates themselves, the rules that govern their activity, and the ways in which they execute their duties. To fill those gaps, this Article offers a detailed typology of the district-level local rules and standing orders that govern magistrate operations in civil cases. It also describes a case study of ten years of magistrate practice in a single federal district court, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, in resolving summary judgment motions. The case study reveals that the involvement of a magistrate makes a difference to the outcome, and that the way that a magistrate became involved (by automatic operation of court rules, by consent of the parties, or by the discretion of the district judge) matters as well. Further, case characteristics such as claim complexity and plaintiffs' pro se status amplify magistrate judge effects while others weaken it. We also observe the effects of district judges' race, age, and experience on the bench on case referrals and adoptions of magistrates' recommendations. These findings suggest multiple avenues for future research, nationwide, to understand the complexities of the interactions between magistrates and district judges, and the role of magistrates more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces several appointments, awards and hirings which include Raymond E. Patricco, Jr. for appointment as a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the District of Idaho; Andrew Brassey awarded for Carl P. Burke Award and appointment of attorney Kyle Brekke for Hawley Troxell & attorneys .

The article discusess how Texas exploited divisional judge-assignment systems for securing favorable judges challenging former U.S. President Obama administration initiatives. Topics discussed icnlude survey of the judge assignment procedures used in district courts; challenges of divisional judge-shopping; and Nevada v. U.S. Department of Labor court case on Fair Labor Standards Act.

The common law style of judging appears to be on its way out. Trial courts rarely shape legal policymaking by asserting decisional autonomy through distinguishing, limiting, or criticizing higher court precedent. In an earlier study, we demonstrated the reluctance of lower court judges to assert decisional autonomy by invoking the holding-dicta dichotomy. In this Article, we make use of original empirical research to study the level of deference U.S. district court judges exhibit toward higher courts and whether the level of deference has changed over time. Our analysis of citation behavior over an eighty-year period reveals a dramatic shift in judges' practices. In the first fifty years included in our study, district court judges were not notably deferential to either their federal court of appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court. District court judges regularly assessed the relevance and scope of precedents from those higher courts and asserted their prerogative to disregard many of them. Since then, judges have become far more likely to treat a given higher court precedent as dispositive. In so doing, lower courts have embraced a hierarchical view of judicial authority at odds with the common law style of judging. The causes of this shift are multifold and likely permanent; we discuss several of them, including dramatic changes in legal research, the proliferation of law clerks throughout the legal system, the growing docket of lower court judges, the growth of the administrative state, and the Supreme Court's increasing embrace of judicial hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author talks about the recollections of how the circuit and district court functioned in courthouse at Seventh and Mission Streets in San Francisco. Topics discussed include his experience as U.S. Ninth Circuit judge; mention of Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co. court case; and functioning of the courthouse.

In the wake of United States v. Booker and Gall/Kimbrough v. United States, sentencing researchers and legal scholars conducted research designed to identify their impact on the federal sentencing process, with a focus on determining whether the decisions increased unwarranted disparity. In this article, we extend this body of research. Using 10 years of data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission and data from other sources, we assess whether and how these decisions influence sentence severity. Results indicate that sentence severity declined following Booker and, especially, Gall/Kimbrough, but that the decisions’ effects on sentence severity varied significantly across U.S. District Courts. Most importantly, the impact of Gall/Kimbrough sentence severity was conditioned by districts’ percent Black population, level of socioeconomic disadvantage, and degree of political conservatism; each of these factors moderated the decisions’ effects on the harshness of the sentences imposed by the districts’ judges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the decision of Jack B. Weinstein, Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, in the case 'In re Agent Orange'. Topics discussed include his contribution in the construction of the tort laws in the U.S.; judicial responsibility concerning tort laws; and implications of the Agent Orange litigation on the U.S. tort laws.

The article presents an essay that discusses the career of Judge Jack B. Weinstein of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Topics discussed include his views on the use of class actions to deal with mass torts; his use of tactics described by writer Walter Murphy to attain influence for his opinions; and presentation of the Edward J. Devitt Award to Weinstein's achievements.

Gossip about judges is an essential source of information to civil litigators. Hearing third-party assessments of a judge's personality, demeanor, intelligence, curiosity, and openness to new interpretations of the law can substantially affect a lawyer's strategic decisions during the course of litigation, and sometimes whether litigation occurs at all. Yet gossip about judges rarely merits mention and has evaded serious study. This Article brings attorney gossip about judges out into the open, identifying its strategic benefits and drawbacks and explaining how attorneys use gossip (and other secondhand information on judges) to anticipate the likely outcome of judicial decisions. It further explains how common attorney practices in modern civil litigation unintentionally compromise the accuracy and reliability of gossip about judges and offers some thoughts on restoring the full value of this little-discussed resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the legal aspects related to the Hatch-Waxman Act for generic drugs in eastern districts of Virginia. Topics include the Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) for generic drugs which requires approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the good speed of trial in the courts of the eastern districts of Virginia as compared to the U.S. District Courts and the Federal Circuit, and experienced judges for patent related cases in eastern Virginia courts.

Over the past 30 years many observers of the federal courts have expressed concern over mounting dockets, arguing that the taxing workloads for federal judges could have a variety of negative consequences, including difficulties in judicial recruitment and retention. However, assessing the plausibility of those and similar claims requires the use of appropriate measures of judges' workload. We introduce scholars and practitioners to new measures of caseload for the district courts available from 1964 through 2012. We detail the methodology for constructing our measures and then assess changes in caseload over time, both within and across courts. We argue that, in most cases, the preferred measure of caseload incorporates weighted filings and accounts for the service of senior status judges and vacancies. We conclude by pointing scholars toward additional research avenues that can be undertaken with our publicly available data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents legal announcements from Minnesota, including the appointment of Andrew R. Pearson as a district court judge, the hiring of Roxann M. Beranek by Rosengren Kohlmeyer Law Office Chtd., and the creation of a family law firm by Jennifer J. Roben.

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.

In this article the author discusses the arguments concerning the right to wear the niqab in the U.S. courtrooms. The author mentions the lawsuit filed by Ginnah Muhammad in federal district court against Judge Paul J. Paruk alleging that the latter had violated the right of the former to exercise the religion freely and access the courts. He says that the individuals who refuse to remove the religious headgear are excluded from courtrooms across the U.S.

Decision making in the U.S. courts of appeals occurs primarily in three-judge panels. A substantial number of cases are decided by panels that include a judge who is a district court judge serving temporarily on the appeals bench. This means that court of appeals decision making is often a function of small groups with temporary members. Here, we examine whether designated district court judges behave differently than their court of appeals colleagues when they cast their votes in cases they are deciding as members of three-judge appellate panels. In doing so, we suggest a profitable direction for theory building vis-à-vis judicial decision making. Our analysis of the ideological direction of the votes judges cast, as well as the variance in those votes, indicates that judges on three-judge panels are influenced by the preferences of their fellow panelists, and that designated district court judges, while no more variable than their court of appeals colleagues, are more susceptible to the influence of their peers than are regular members of the courts of appeals in a nontrivial number of cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the important goals of the federal sentencing guidelines was to reduce inter-judge disparity in sentencing. In this paper, we test the assumption that structuring discretion produced uniformity in federal sentencing and consistency in the process by which judges arrive at the appropriate sentence. We also examine whether background characteristics of judges affect the sentences they impose on similarly situated offenders. We used hierarchical linear modeling, nesting the offenders in the judges that sentenced them in order to examine the sentencing decisions of federal judges in three U.S. District Courts. While we found that significant variation between judges in sentencing is largely accounted for by our level 1 characteristics, we also found that judges arrive at decisions regarding the appropriate sentence in different ways, by attaching differential weights to several of the legally relevant case characteristics and legally irrelevant offender characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The parsimony provision contained in 18 U.S.C. § 3553 (a) directs district courts to impose a sentence sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to effectuate the statutory goals contained in section 3553 (a)(2). The parsimony limitation and the substantive reasonableness review analyzed by Justice Scalia in Rita make clear that district judges do not have the unfettered discretion to sentence within the statutory range that they enjoyed prior to the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act. If a non-elemental fact is significant enough to effect an increase in the sentence that would be parsimonious as to the offense simpliciter, the Sixth Amendment applies to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about recent hires, promotions, and awards in the Minnesota legal community as of November 2013, including the appointment of Colleen Goggins as a district court judge, the hiring of patent attorney David Buck by law firm Hollingsworth Davis, and the selection of family law specialist James J. Vedder by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.