Judicial review of environmental compliance orders.
I. INTRODUCTION Federal environmental laws are enforced in a variety of ways. In addition to the traditional route of judicial enforcement, Congress has armed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with various administrative means of ensuring compliance with environmental laws. Among these enforcement weapons is the administrative "compliance...

Does an Equal Rights Amendment make a difference?
Because the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the United States Constitution was never ratified, one cannot know what its impact might have been. At the state level, however, the consequences of a constitutional gender equality guarantee can be assessed empirically. This Article employs several analytical approaches to ascertain...

Three strikes: is an assisted suicide right out?
In 1997 advocates of legalized physician-assisted suicide ("PAS") got three strikes in their effort to establish a constitutional right to assisted suicide. Two federal appellate court decisions finding a federal constitutional right to PAS were unanimously reversed by the United States Supreme Court--on both substantive due process(1) and equal...

Not supreme but still powerful.
The high court is supreme. But, the 90 or so federal district and 11 federal circuit courts--hearing only matters involving the Constitution, federal statutes or disputes between citizens of different states--have tremendous influence. With the Supreme Court deciding which appeals from the various circuit appellate courts it takes, oftentimes...

What appellate judges do.
INTRODUCTION: THE PAST AS PROLOGUE As we all know, partisan battles have been raging in the United States Senate over the confirmation of President Bush's nominees to various circuits of the United States Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court. This is nothing new. We saw similar...

A new "sliding scale of deference" approach to abuse of discretion: appellate review of district court departures under the federal sentencing guidelines.
I. INTRODUCTION II. SENTENCING IN THE FEDERAL COURTS: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW III. PRINCIPLES OF APPELLATE REVIEW A. Clearly Erroneous Review for Factual Findings B. De Novo Review for Questions of Law C. Review of Mixed Questions D. Abuse of Discretion...

Statistical data regarding state courts.
The National Center for State Courts Appellate Appellate courts, as the final arbiters of disputes, shape and define the law. Appellate courts, whether at the intermediate or highest level, provide review of decisions of lower courts and, as the final arbiters of disputes,...

Improving the appellate process worldwide through maximizing judicial resources.
ABSTRACT As the number of cases filed each year has surged, U.S. federal appellate courts have evolved in order to fulfill their core functions of deciding appeals and setting guiding precedent. Many of the challenges created by overwhelming caseloads are also being tackled in foreign judicial systems....

The myth of superiority.
Get a group of civil rights lawyers together and there is at least one thing they would agree upon--they prefer to litigate in federal, not state, court.(1) Writing in 1977 from his decade-long experience as a civil liberties litigator, Burt Neuborne codified this sacred tenet in the pages of...

Toward the decentralization of criminal procedure: state constitutional law and selective disincorporation.
I. INTRODUCTION When one surveys the growing body of criminal procedure cases in which the decision is grounded in a state constitutional provision, a rather startling trend becomes manifest.(1) It is increasingly evident that at some time during the early years of the next century virtually every...