Why do some international courts and judges extensively borrow from other international courts while others do not? Answers to this question have important implications for debates on transjudicial communication, the diffusion of international legal norms, and international judicial behavior. Judges may use external sources because they help improve decisions or because it fits their ideologica...

DNA plays an indispensable role in modern law enforcement, and courts uniformly find that DNA extraction statutes targeting criminals satisfy the Fourth Amendment. Courts differ on which Fourth Amendment test--totality of the circumstances or special needs--ought to be employed in this context. This Note concludes that courts should apply Samson v. California's less stringent totality of the ci...

There is an overall legitimacy crisis in courts. The sources of this crisis have, to a large extent, been misconstrued. While there has been significant writing depicting the diminished quality, effectiveness, and fairness of courts, these phenomena have, for the most part, been viewed as distinct problems that warrant discrete solutions. This article shows that these problems are all manifesta...

-

Among the major decisions any legal system must make is deciding whether to establish general courts with broad jurisdiction, or specialized limited jurisdiction. Under one influential argument—advanced by both judges and theorists—general foster coherence within system. This Article identifies a distinct effect of establishing courts: “complementarity effect.” In case complementarity, strategi...

It is often conjectured that non-state dispute resolution blossoms when state courts are not independent or are perceived as low-quality courts. This conjecture implies a substitutive relationship between state and nonstate dispute resolution. An alternative hypothesis argues that both the quality and the frequency of use of these two alternative mechanisms are complementary: societies with hig...

Over the past two decades, drug courts have emerged as a viable alternative for addressing drug cases within the criminal justice system. In California, the Drug Court Partnership Program (DCPP) was created in 1998 and has supported and funded the development of drug courts throughout the State. This article reports on a review of California drug court evaluations through January 2000 conducted...

This article touches upon the different ways of specialization of courts and judges that exist under the legislation of the Russian Federation. The lack of a unified and circumspect approach is noted. The formation of specialized courts, according to the national legislation, takes the form of their establishing within the existing subsystems of regular and arbitration courts. As for the specia...

Although the Supreme Court’s 1989 decision in Teague v. Lane generally prohibits the application of new constitutional rules of criminal procedure in federal habeas review of state-court judgments, the Court’s 2008 decision in Danforth v. Minnesota frees state courts from Teague’s strictures. Danforth explicitly permits state courts to fashion their own rules governing the retroactive applicati...