Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Circuit Courts (circuit + court)
Selected AbstractsEvolution of hazardous waste combustors MACT standardsENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS & SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, Issue 4 2001Charles W. Lamb Ph.D. This year, on July 24, the DC Circuit Court ruled that the EPA had not correctly derived emission standards, and vacated the MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technology) rule for Hazardous Waste Combustors (HWC) [1, 2]. A major complaint, voiced by the Sierra Club, was that the MACT methodology was misapplied in a manner that produced overly lenient standards. Industry and trade associations argued just the opposite. The Sierra Club won the first round when the court agreed that the emission standards should be based on the average of the best-performing 12% of units in each category. The next question was, "What will be the regulations until the final standards can be developed?" This caused considerable angst because, if no standards were in place by May 15, 2002, control would revert to case-by-case permits by Federal and State regulatory agencies as set forth in Section 112 of the Clean Air Act. Obviously, that would be the antithesis of the Congressional mandate and the objectives of environmental groups. The Sierra Club and most litigants did not want the uncertainties and inconsistencies this would introduce. [source] The Study of Gender in the Courts: Keeping Bias at BayLAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 2 2002Lilia M. Cortina I am pleased to introduce the following two companion papers on gender in the United States Eighth Circuit courts. They emerge from a partnership of social scientists and legal professionals, spurred by a national movement to understand influences of gender on the judicial system. These studies reflect a majority of voices in the Eighth Circuit bench and bar, women and men who work in and preside over the federal courts of seven states. This project yielded a wealth of data, the analysis of which reveals ways both subtle and overt by which gender bias threatens fairness in the courts. Underscoring the importance of this and similar projects, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor once stated, "by acknowledging and not trivializing the effects of gender bias on reasonable women and men, courts can work toward ensuring that neither men nor women will have to run a gauntlet of abuse in return for the privilege of being allowed to work and make a living" (as quoted in the Final Report of the Eighth Circuit Gender Fairness Task Force [ECGFTF] 1997, 8). [source] At the Crossroads of Policymaking: Executive Politics, Administrative Action, and Judicial Deference by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals (1985,1996),LAW & POLICY, Issue 3-4 2004Kiki Caruson This study seeks to expand our understanding of judicial deference to administrative agencies within the context of one particularly important legal forum , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The DC circuit functions as a key venue for administrative law cases and the opinions of the court constitute a growing body of common law in the field of administrative law. We investigate the importance of several agency-centered and judge-centered variables in explaining judicial deference to administrative agencies in cases before the DC circuit court during a twelve-year period (1985,1996). We find that an integrated model of judicial deference, combining both legal and attitudinal factors, best explains judicial deference. Like judges on so many other courts, judges on the DC circuit are politically motivated, but their political activism is tempered by agency-centered factors such as the type of case before the court, and environmental factors such as the composition of the judicial panel reviewing the case and the behavior of the Supreme Court. [source] Change over Tenure: Voting, Variance, and Decision Making on the U.S. Courts of AppealsAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2008Erin B. Kaheny Existing scholarship on the voting behavior of U.S. Courts of Appeals judges finds that their decisions are best understood as a function of law, policy preferences, and factors relating to the institutional context of the circuit court. What previous studies have failed to consider, however, is that the ability to predict circuit judge decisions can vary in substantively important ways and that judges, in different stages of their careers, may behave distinctively. This article develops a theoretical framework which conceptualizes career stage to account for variability in voting by circuit judges and tests hypotheses by modeling the error variance in a vote choice model. The findings indicate that judges are more predictable in their voting during their early and late career stages. Case characteristics and institutional features of the circuit also affect voting consistency. [source] Is the Sum Greater than Its Parts?LAW & POLICY, Issue 4 2010Circuit Court Composition, Judicial Behavior in the Courts of Appeals Building on strategic models and the collegial nature of the U.S. courts of appeals, this article assesses the influence of a circuits' composition on individual judges' behaviors and the president's role in shaping the courts. As partisanship is one of the few signals of a nominee's ideology known to an executive administration at the time of appointment, it is important to measure partisan composition as a factor in individual behavior as well as other measures of overall ideology of the circuit. This article finds that the composition of the circuits influences individual behavior, even after controlling for individual ideology, panel effects, and other contextual factors. This remains true whether we examine composition based on partisanship or on more nuanced ideological measures. Noting that presidents, on average, create new partisan majorities within two circuits per four-year term, these findings suggest turnover on circuit courts may have influences on case outcomes outside of a particular new appointee's voting record. [source] The Incidence and Structure of Conflict on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal CircuitLAW & POLICY, Issue 1 2001Isaac Unah In 1982, Congress established the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized court, with the objective of reducing judicial conflict and harmonizing circuit law in specific policy areas of special complexity. This article examines the incidence and determinants of judicial conflict on the U.S. courts of appeals, focusing specifically on the Federal Circuit. Using international trade and customs regulation cases decided during the 1982 to 1995 terms, the analysis reviews three possible explanations of judicial conflict: policy-oriented, sociolegal, and organizational. The analysis shows that conflict appears in 8.4 percent of the trade and customs regulation decisions rendered by the Federal Circuit during the period of study. The policy direction of Federal Circuit decisions and the court's hierarchical relationship with lower specialized courts provide the strongest explanation for the emergence of conflict on the court. Organizational factors such as panel composition evinced rather anemic explanatory capacity. The results raise an important functional similarity between the Federal Circuit and the generalist courts of appeals. Contrary to the laments of legal practitioners that conflict on the Federal Circuit is excessive relative to conflict on the generalist circuit courts, this analysis finds little support for that claim. Rather, the level of overt conflict on the court is actually low and corroborates conflict levels that have been reported for other U.S. courts of appeals. [source] How to prevent mediation from running aground,Also: Busting myths about what arbitrators doALTERNATIVES TO THE HIGH COST OF LITIGATION, Issue 1 2005Article first published online: 13 DEC 200 Three recent CPR Meeting sessions are summarized, including panel segments on creative ways for breaking impasse; busting myths about conflict resolution practice, and mediating appeals in the U.S. federal circuit courts. [source] | ||||||||||