Judicial opinion

About: Judicial opinion is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5300 publications have been published within this topic receiving 64803 citations.

System, method, and software for identifying historically related legal opinions

Abstract: The American legal system, judges and lawyers are continually researching an ever-expanding body of past judicial opinions, or case law, for the ones most relevant to resolution of new disputes. To facilitate these searches, some companies collect and publish the judicial opinions of courts across the United States in both paper and electronic forms, with some of the cases containing references to prior cases from other courts that have previously ruled on all or part of the same dispute. Identifying the prior cases is problematic, because, for example, conventional computer text-matching not only suggests too many non-prior cases, but also misses too many actual prior cases. Accordingly, the present inventors devised systems, methods, and software that generally facilitate identification of one or more documents that are related to a given document, and particularly facilitate identification of prior cases for a given case. One specific embodiment retrieves prior-case candidates based on information extracted from an input case, and then uses a support vector machine to determine which of the prior-case candidates are most probably prior cases for the input case.

Judicial Politics in Unstable Democracies: The Case of the Philippine Supreme Court, An Empirical Analysis 1986-2010

Abstract: In this paper we investigate empirically the determinants of judicial behavior at the Philippine Supreme Court in the period 1986-2010. Our results show some alignment between individual Justices and the interests of the presidential appointers, although it varies across presidential terms. We discuss these empirical results in the context of the Philippine’s unstable democracy and the implications for the comparative literature on judicial behavior.

Marbury V. Madison and Judicial Review

Abstract: Few Supreme Court decisions are as well known or loom as large in our nation's history as "Marbury v. Madison." The 1803 decision is widely viewed as having established the doctrine of judicial review, which permits the Court to overturn acts of Congress that violate the Constitution; moreover, such judicial decisions are final, not subject to further appeal. Robert Clinton contends that few decisions have been more misunderstood, or misused, in the debates over judicial review. He argues that the accepted view of "Marbury" is ahistorical and emerges from nearly a century of misinterpretation both by historians and by legal scholars. "This book is without doubt one of the half dozen recent works that will be central to the scholarly dispute about judicial review." "Political Science Quarterly." "Clinton offers a resounding correction of the prevailing orthodoxy on the "Marbury" case that has dominated scholarship in law, history, and political science for roughly the last century. . . . If he contended only 'that Marbury was not a political decision but was based on sound constitutional doctrine and existing legal precedent', this book would still make a quite valuable contribution to the literature. . . . But there is more: the constitutional doctrine and legal precedents Clinton has rediscovered, in which the Marbury ruling is firmly grounded, reveal judicial review to be . . . of profoundly narrower scope than is admitted today by right or left, by originalists or nonoriginalists. . . . Clinton has done [much] to blow away a good deal of fog surrounding Marshall, Marbury, and the scope of judicial power." "Review of Politics." "Every student of judicial review should read this book. Even those who disagree with its main thesis will find it very stimulating." Christopher Wolfe, author of "The Rise of Modern Judicial Review: From Constitutional Interpretation to Judge-Made Law." "An important book. Clinton's new and unorthodox look at Marbury v. Madison is interesting, provocative, and controversial. He presents clearly, forcefully, and persuasively a great amount of evidence to support his thesis." "Social Science Quarterly." "Clinton's reconstruction of the legal academicians' wrangling over Marbury makes delightful reading. . . . He is witty, subtle, and makes points with great deftness." "William and Mary Quarterly." "A coherent, provocative, and welcome challenge to the liberal-Progressive interpretation of judicial review." "Journal of American History.""

Better language, better thought, better communication: the A-Hohfeld language for legal analysis

Abstract: A-HOHFELD is a representational language used in MINT (Multiple INTerpretation) Interpretation-Assistance (expert) systems for precisely expressing alternative structural interpretations of sets of legal rules. It draws heavily upon the timlamental legal conceptions formulated by Wesley N. HoMeld at the dawn of the Twentieth Century. In the current version of AHOHFELD the original conceptions have been modified and extended in seeking to define a language sufficiently robust to express all LEGAL RELATIONS and all changes in legal states of affairs. Hohfeld emphasized the use of fundamental legal conceptions in the analysis of judicial reasoning, elsewhere we have shown the use of A-HOHFELD for the analysis of sets of statutory rules, and here we illustrate its use in thinking about legal doctrine. This use of A-HOHFELD is offered as a possible example of where fluency in a more precise and complete language might have facilitated an earlier recognition of remedial alternatives that have apparently only recently been appearing in legal literature and judicial decisions. To the extent that AHOHFELD so strengthens legal analysis, it farther exemplifies how work on problems of artificial intelligence in computer science tiuittidly feeds back to law and illustrates how precision in language contributes to thought as well as communication.

Metaphor and reason in judicial opinions

Abstract: To the public, judges handing down judicial decisions present arguments arrived through rational discourse and literal language. Yet, as Judge Richard Posner has pointed out, "Rhetorical power counts for a lot in law. Science, not to mention everyday thought, is influenced by metaphors. Why shouldn t law be?" Haig Bosmajian examines the crucial role of the tropemetaphors, personifications, metonymiesin argumentation and reveals the surprisingly important place that figurative, nonliteral language holds in judicial decision making.Focusing on the specific genre of the legal opinion, Professor Bosmajian discusses the question of why we have judicial opinions at all and the importance of style in them. He then looks at specific well-known figures of speech such as "the wall of separation" between church and state, justice personified as a female, or the Constitution as "colorblind," explaining why they are not straightforward statements of legal fact but examples of the ways tropes are used in legal language.A useful example can be found in Judge Learned Hand s response to a 1943 case involving news gathering and monopoly. Hand found the need to protect the public s right to the "dissemination of news from as many different sources, and with as many different facets and colors possible," an interest "closely akin to, if indeed it is not the same as, the interest protected by the First Amendment; it presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and always will be folly; but we have staken upon it our all.""