The Success of Former Solicitors General in Private Practice: Costly and Unnecessary?

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Explaining the Supreme Court\u27s Shrinking Docket

In recent years, the United States Supreme Court has decided fewer cases than at any other time in its recent history. Scholars and practitioners alike have criticized the drop in the Court’s plenary docket. Some even believe that the Court has reneged on its duty to clarify and unify the law. A host of studies examine potential reasons for the Court’s change in docket size, but few rely on an empirical analysis of this change and no study examines the correlation between ideological homogeneity and docket size. In a comprehensive study, the authors analyze ideological and contextual factors to determine the conditions that are most likely to influence the size of the plenary docket. Drawing on empirical data from every Supreme Court Term between 1940 and 2008, the authors find that both ideological and contextual factors have led to the Court’s declining plenary docket. First, a Court composed of Justices who share largely the same world view is likely to hear forty-two more cases per Term than an ideologically fractured Court. Second, internal and external mechanisms, such as membership change and mandatory jurisdiction, are also important. Congress’s decision to remove much of the Court’s mandatory appellate jurisdiction is associated with the Court deciding roughly fifty-four fewer cases per Term. In short, the data suggest that ideology and context have led to a Supreme Court that decides fewer cases. The Court’s docket is not likely to increase significantly in the near future. Unless Congress expands the Court’s mandatory appellate jurisdiction or the President makes a series of unconstrained nominations to the Court that increase its ideological homogeneity, the size of the Court’s docket will remain relatively small compared to the past. Because the Court’s case selection process is an important aspect of the development of the law, this Article provides the basis for further normative and empirical evaluations of the Court’s plenary docket

Supreme Court Opinions and Audiences

This Article evaluates different rhetorical strategies Supreme Court justices employ in writing their opinions for specific audiences. Black, Owens, Wedeking, and Wohlfarth suggest justices keep lower federal courts, state governments, federal bureaucratic agencies, and the public in mind when crafting decisions, particularly to ensure compliance with the decision and avoid non-compliance. The Article identifies opinion clarity as a means of ensuring lower federal courts will follow precedent, as well as a way for smaller and less sophisticated bureaucratic agencies to avoid shirking the Court’s rulings. The Article concludes judicial clarity is only one of an arsenal of rhetorical devices used by the Supreme Court justices, and further evaluation and research may be helpful

Ideology, Qualifications, and Covert Senate Obstruction of Federal Court Nominations

Scholars, policymakers, and journalists have bemoaned the emphasis on ideology over qualifications and party over performance in the judicial appointment process. Though, for years, the acrimony between the two parties and between the Senate and President remained limited to appointments to the United States Supreme Court, the modern era of judicial appointments has seen the so-called “appointments rigor mortis” spread throughout all levels of judicial appointments. A host of studies have examined the causes and consequences of the growing acrimony and obstruction of lower federal court appointments, but few rely on archival data and empirical evidence to examine the underlying friction between the parties and the two branches. In a unique study, the authors examine archival data to determine the conditions under which Senators obstruct judicial nominations to lower federal courts. More specifically, the authors examine one form of Senate obstruction — the blue slip — and find that Senators use their blue slips to block ideologically distant nominees as well as unqualified nominees. More importantly, however, the authors find that among nominations to federal circuit courts, Senators block highly qualified nominees who are ideologically distant from them just as often as they block unqualified nominees who are ideologically distant from them. That is, stellar qualifications do not appear to mitigate the negative effects of ideological distance. The fact that blue slips occur in private, away from public view, allows Senators to block nominees entirely on ideological grounds, without fear of individualized public retribution. Senators, in short, have taken an aggressive role in blocking highly qualified nominees who would otherwise make significant — but opposing — policy and who might one day become credible nominees to the Supreme Court were their nominations to move forward. By killing these nominations in the cradle, and outside the public view, Senators can block or delay the confirmation of judges with whom they disagree ideologically. The authors point out that policymakers and scholars who seek to reform the judicial appointment process must therefore be very clear about their goals. If a reform’s goal is to minimize the role of Senate ideology in the appointment process, then proposals that insulate the process from the public eye are likely to backfire. For, as the data show, Senators take advantage of insulation to achieve ideological goals. On the other hand, if a reform’s goal is to maximize the role of Senate ideology — perhaps to offset the President’s first mover advantage or to recognize and directly address the fact that courts are policymaking bodies — then proposals that insulate the process from the public eye are likely to accomplish that goal

Upending a Global Debate: An Empirical Analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Use of Transnational Law to Interpret Domestic Doctrine,

Over the last ten years, judges, scholars, and policymakers have argued — quite vehemently at times — about whether U.S. courts should use transnational sources of law to interpret domestic legal doctrine. All eyes in this debate focus on the U.S. Supreme Court and its use, misuse, and alleged use of transnational law. And almost all the debates are normative. Some scholars and judges argue the Court is correct to use transnational law. Others believe to do so is constitutional apostacy. Still, the controversy seems to have generated more heat than light. Among the clamor can be found little empirical work on the conditions under which Supreme Court Justices actually use transnational law. Is it in fact the case that only liberal Justices employ transnational law — or do conservatives as well? In addition, there is little work on which countries Justices cite when they do use transnational law. Do they cherry pick whichever country works best in the given case, or is there a lower bound of plausibility when selecting countries to examine and cite? The authors provide the most systematic empirical exploration of the Court’s use of transnational law to date. Their results challenge conventional wisdom and prove to upend the existing debates over transnational law. The data show that Justices are more likely to reference transnational law when they exercise judicial review and when they overturn precedent, which likely explains much of the controversy around the practice. Importantly, the data show, further, that all Justices cite transnational law. Liberals cite transnational law when they render liberal decisions, and conservatives cite transnational law when they render conservative decisions. Liberals and conservatives alike employ such law because they are both ideologically conscious, strategic judicial actors who seek to support their decisions with as much persuasive material as possible. Finally, the results suggest that Justices cite countries with regard to their political and legal characteristics. They cite what the public would consider to be among the most legitimate countries across the globe. In other words, on the whole, Justices seem to borrow from countries most like the U.S. Whether these results are good or bad is unclear; what is clear, however, is that the normative debate over using transnational law must take a turn and address the authors’ findings

The Success of Former Solicitors General in Private Practice: Costly and Unnecessary?

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Gravitation Research

Contains research objectives and summary of research.Joint Services Electronics Programs (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DA 28-043-AMC-02536(E)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NGR 22-009-359)M.I.T. Cabot Solar Energy Fun

Parental Anxiety Associated with Summer Camp Experiences: A Comparative Analysis Across Volunteer and Employee-Staffed Camps

Parent anxiety can limit a parent’s willingness to involve their child in out-of-school time experiences such as summer camps. Researchers have studied anxiety within the context of camp, but these studies used narrow frameworks of anxiety. In this exploratory study, we collected open-ended responses about causes of parent anxiety associated with summer camp experiences from 656 parents whose children attended one of two Extension-administered camps. The camps represented different camp staffing models—one primarily staffed by volunteers and the other primarily staffed by employees. The primary purpose of the study was to identify salient categories of anxiety and to examine if anxiety differed based on staffing model. The secondary purpose was to develop a camp-related parent anxiety measure informed by the anxiety categories. Eleven categories were constructed from the data, which both affirmed and expanded existing literature on parent anxiety associated with camp experiences. No differences in parent anxiety were found based on staffing model, suggesting that parents were no more likely to perceive anxiety associated with camp when the program was staffed with volunteers as they were when the program was staffed by employees. Implications for practice and future directions are examined

Tracking and imaging gamma ray experiment (TIGRE) for 1 to 100 MEV gamma ray astronomy

A large international collaboration from the high energy astrophysics community has proposed the Tracking and Imaging Gamma Ray Experiment (TIGRE) for future space observations. TIGRE will image and perform energy spectroscopy measurements on celestial sources of gamma rays in the energy range from 1 to 100 MeV. This has been a difficult energy range experimentally for gamma ray astronomy but is vital for the future considering the recent exciting measurements below 1 and above 100 MeV. TIGRE is both a double scatter Compton and gamma ray pair telescope with direct imaging of individual gamma ray events. Multi‐layers of Si strip detectors are used as Compton and pair converters CsI(Tl) scintillation detectors are used as a position sensitive calorimeter. Alternatively, thick GE strip detectors may be used for the calorimeter. The Si detectors are able to track electrons and positrons through successive Si layers and measure their directions and energy losses. Compton and pair events are completely reconstructed allowing each event to be imaged on the sky. TIGRE will provide an order‐of‐magnitude improvement in discrete source sensitivity in the 1 to 100 MeV energy range and determine spectra with excellent energy and excellent angular resolutions. It’s wide field‐of‐view of π sr permits observations of the entire sky for extended periods of time over the life of the mission

Cues and knowledge structures used by mental-health professionals when making risk assessments

Background: Research into mental-health risks has tended to focus on epidemiological approaches and to consider pieces of evidence in isolation. Less is known about the particular factors and their patterns of occurrence that influence clinicians’ risk judgements in practice. Aims: To identify the cues used by clinicians to make risk judgements and to explore how these combine within clinicians’ psychological representations of suicide, self-harm, self-neglect, and harm to others. Method: Content analysis was applied to semi-structured interviews conducted with 46 practitioners from various mental-health disciplines, using mind maps to represent the hierarchical relationships of data and concepts. Results: Strong consensus between experts meant their knowledge could be integrated into a single hierarchical structure for each risk. This revealed contrasting emphases between data and concepts underpinning risks, including: reflection and forethought for suicide; motivation for self-harm; situation and context for harm to others; and current presentation for self-neglect. Conclusions: Analysis of experts’ risk-assessment knowledge identified influential cues and their relationships to risks. It can inform development of valid risk-screening decision support systems that combine actuarial evidence with clinical expertise