Appellate Courts and Civil Juries

Constructing Legal Rules on Appellate Courts

Appellate courts make policy, not only by hearing cases themselves, but by establishing legal rules for the disposition of future cases. The problem is that such courts are generally multimember, or collegial, courts. If different judges prefer different rules, can a collegial court establish meaningful legal rules? Can preferences that take the form of legal rules be aggregated? I use a “case-...

Church Property Disputes in the Civil Courts

T HE EXTENT to which civil courts may assume jurisdiction of ecclesiastical matters in church property disputes1 was involved in the North Carolina case of Reid v. Johnston. 2 There, a Baptist church, organized in 1894, -received land on a conveyance which attached no doctrinal limitations to its use. In 1953, a new pastor, supported by a majority of the congregation, led a movement to withdraw...

Is Justice Really Blind? Race and Appellate Review in U.S. Courts

In this paper, I use two new data sets to demonstrate that black federal judges are consistently overturned on appeal more often than white judges. The racial gap is robust and persists after taking into account previous professional and judicial experience, educational backgrounds, qualification ratings assigned by the American Bar Association, and differences in partisanship. This study is th...

Judicial Opinions and Appellate Advocacy in Federal Courts - One Judge's Views

Female Judges Matter: Gender and Collegial Decisionmaking in the Federal Appellate Courts