Talking Judges

What kinds of empirical questions about themselves and their colleagues on the bench are judges interested in asking? This was the topic of a recent conference at the Duke Law School. Our Essay reflects on the ways in which the judges at this conference and at a prior one talked about the empirical study of their community. To put it mildly, most of the judges were not fans of the empirical research. Our interest in this Essay is not, however, in responding to the judicial criticisms. Rather it is in drawing insights about how judges view themselves and their profession from how they discussed the research at the conference

In the Absence of Scrutiny: Narratives of Probable Cause

This Article reports on a set of roughly thirty interviews with federal magistrate judges. The focus of the interviews was the impact of the Supreme Court case, United States v. Leon, on the behavior of magistrate judges. Leon, famously, put in place the good faith exception for faulty warrants that were obtained by the officers in good faith. The insertion of this exception diminished significantly the incentive for defendants to challenge problematic warrant grants. That effect, in turn, could have diminished the incentive for magistrate judge scrutiny of the warrants at the front end of the process. We do not find any indication of diminished scrutiny. What we do find, however, is a highly ritualized and formalistic process for the evaluation of warrants where calculations of probabilities are viewed through a legalistic rather than a pragmatic lens

The Hymenopterous Parasites Agathis Pumila (Braconidae) and Epilampsis Laricinellae (Eulophidae) on the Larch Casebearer (Lepidoptera: Coleophoridae) in the Northern Lake States

Excerpt: The larch casebearer Coleophora laricella (Hübner) is a defoliator of larch (Larix spp.). The insect was introduced into North America from Europe at some time prior to 1886, and since has spread steadily westward. It was causing heavy defoliation by the early 1920\u27s near Ann Arbor in southern Michigan and was recorded in northeast Wisconsin in 1939, at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario in 1942, and Port Arthur, Ontario in 1947. Many native parasites attack the case bearer but seem to effect little control. Parasites were imported from Europe beginning in 1928, but the first attempts to establish them were unsuccessful. In 1932, the United States Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine made releases of Agathis pumila (Ratz.) at Lynwood, Massachusetts, and Epilampsis laricinellae (Ratz.) in Lunenburg Township, Massachusetts. These two species were successfully established

U.S. federal judges are motivated by much more than putting their policy and political preferences into law

What motivates U.S. federal judges and the types of decisions they make? While for a great deal of time, many judicial commentators have maintained that translating their own political values into law is the prime motivator for federal judges, Lee Epstein and Jack Knight disagree. Looking at the U.S. courts over the past 60 years, they find evidence that policy-centric accounts can no longer explain judicial behavior. They argue that judges are motivated by aspects of job satisfaction, external satisfaction, leisure, salary, and promotion – not just by ideology