CategoryPrint

How should judges go about assessing the admissibility of evidence? In this Article, I explore a key and underexamined issue within evidence law: the interpretive tension between atomism and holism. Should judges assess the admissibility of an item of evidence atomistically—piece by piece, and by itself? Or should they engage in a more holistic, synthetic, and relational inquiry? I argue that...

Judges decide complex cases in rapid succession but are limited by cognitive constraints. Consequently judges cannot allocate equal attention to every aspect of a case. Case outcomes might thus depend on which aspects of a case are particularly salient to the judge. Put simply, a judge focusing on one aspect of a case might reach a different outcome than a judge focusing on another. In this...

This is a piece written on the retirement of Professor Stephen Yeazell, whose distinguished career is almost contemporaneous with my own time in law teaching. I started teaching Civil Procedure in the fall of 1973 fresh from a federal district court clerkship. I was attracted to the possibilities of using the civil litigation system to provide justice to those who were otherwise without much...

Over the past thirty years, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Judicial Conference have modified the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to address concerns that litigation costs too much, takes too long, and leads to unjust results. The Supreme Court’s opinions have focused primarily on fortifying what I refer to as the gateways of civil procedure— including motions to dismiss, motions for class...

Professor Stephen Yeazell once wrote, “A society based on the rule of law fails in one of its central premises if substantial parts of the population lack access to law enforcement institutions.”* One apparent threat to access to justice in recent years has been the erosion of notice pleading in the federal courts in favor of a plausibility-pleading system that screens out potentially meritorious...

This is an edited version of remarks I gave January 24, 2013, at the UCLA Law Review Symposium honoring the contributions of Professor Steve Yeazell to the field of Civil Procedure.

During the last four decades the United States has witnessed first the emergence and then the disappearance of civil litigation as a topic of partisan debate in national politics. Following two centuries in which neither party thought the topic worth mentioning, in the last decades of the twentieth and the first decade of the twenty-first century, both parties made it part of their agendas...

Each year, the UCLA School of Law hosts the Melville B. Nimmer Memorial Lecture.  Since 1986, the lecture series has served as a forum for leading scholars in the fields of copyright and First Amendment law.  In recent years, the lecture has been presented by many distinguished scholars.  The UCLA Law Review has published these lectures and proudly continues that tradition by publishing an...

Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court will determine the constitutionality of affirmative action.  Once again, the focus will be on the diversity rationale for the policy.  And, once again, the discussion will likely center on whether the admissions regime of a particular school (this time, the University of Texas) can take steps to ensure that it admits a certain number—or to put the point more...

On December 17, 2010, a young Tunisian street vendor protesting an abusive police official set off a wave of democratic uprisings throughout the Arab world.  In rising up against their governments, the peoples of the Arab countries were confronting an age-old problem in political theory: When is it acceptable to rise up against an unjust authority?  This question is not only of great importance...

As banking has evolved over the last three decades, banks have become increasingly interconnected.  This Article draws attention to an effect of this development that has important policy ramifications yet remains largely unexamined—a dramatic rise in interbank discipline.  The Article demonstrates that today’s large, complex banks have financial incentives to monitor risk taking at other banks. ...

The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (Vienna Convention), to which the United States is a party, requires signatories to notify the consulates of and to grant consular officers physical access to foreign criminal defendants.  While the treaty has mostly functioned well for its states parties, the United States has recently encountered substantial problems—and international ill will—for its...

Urban bias shapes social perceptions about sexual minorities. Predominant cultural narratives geographically situate sexual minorities in urban gay communities, dictate the contours of how to be a modern gay person, and urge sexual minorities to come out and assimilate into gay communities and culture. This Article contests the urban presumption commonly applied to all sexual minorities and...

After the financial crisis, Congress directed regulators to enact new rules on CEO pay at public companies. The rules would address the possibility that directors of public companies put managers’ interests ahead of shareholders’ when setting executive pay. Yet little is known about how CEOs are paid in companies whose directors have undivided loyalty to shareholders. These directors can be found...