US Federal Courts Research Articles

Review of scientific evidence presented at landmark US federal court trial on risk of developmental neurotoxicity from artificially fluoridated water

Review of scientific evidence presented at landmark US federal court trial on risk of developmental neurotoxicity from artificially fluoridated water

Intersectional disparities in sentencing: An application of MAIHDA to the US Federal Courts

Intersectional disparities in sentencing: An application of MAIHDA to the US Federal Courts

EDITORIAL: Gaza, genocide and media: Will journalism survive?

30th Anniversary Edition of Pacific Journalism Review: When editor Philip Cass and I, as founding editor, started planning for this 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review, we wanted a theme that would fit such an important milestone. At the time when we celebrated the second decade of the journal’s critical inquiry at Auckland University of Technology with a conference in 2014, our theme was ‘Political journalism in the Asia Pacific’, and our mood about the mediascape in the region was far more positive than it is today (Duffield, 2015). Three years later, we marked the 10th anniversary of the Pacific Media Centre, with a conference and a rather gloomier ‘Journalism under duress’ slogan. The PJR cover then featured a gruesome corpse at the height of Rodrigo Duterte’s callous and bloodthirsty ‘war on drugs’—and on media—in the Philippines. Three years later again the PMC itself had been closed in spite of its success. EDITORIAL NOTE: After the editorial of Pacific Journalism Review and the lead article in this edition (Vol 30, No 1&2) about the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were printed, the Australian journalist was set free and he arrived back in Australia after a plea bargain. The winner of his country’s Walkley Award for journalism excellence, Assange was freed by a US federal court in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on 26 June 2024 after a plea bargain to plead guilty to one charge of violating the US Espionage Act and the judge sentenced him to 62 months, jail time already served in the UK on remand. His 14-year struggle for freedom was over, but his lawyers say they will press for a full US presidential pardon.

War on Palestine: How the fates of Gaza and Julian Assange are sealed together

Commentary: Were they being properly reported, two critically important court hearings in February 2024, in London and The Hague, would expose the US ‘rules-based order’ as a hollow sham. Both posed globe-spanning threats to our most basic freedoms. Neither received more than perfunctory coverage in Western establishment media such as the BBC. One was a week-long hearing by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over a United Nations General Assembly request for an advisory opinion over Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and the other was a last-ditch appeal of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange against efforts by the United States to extradite him so that he can be locked away for the rest of his life. EDITORIAL NOTE: After the editorial of Pacific Journalism Review and the lead article in this edition (Vol 30, No 1&2) about the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were printed, the Australian journalist was set free and he arrived back in Australia after a plea bargain. The winner of his country’s Walkley Award for journalism excellence, Assange was freed by a US federal court in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on 26 June 2024 after a plea bargain to plead guilty to one charge of violating the US Espionage Act and the judge sentenced him to 62 months, jail time already served in the UK on remand. His 14-year struggle for freedom was over, but his lawyers say they will press for a full US presidential pardon.

War on Palestine: How the fates of Gaza and Julian Assange are sealed together

Commentary: Were they being properly reported, two critically important court hearings in February 2024, in London and The Hague, would expose the US ‘rules-based order’ as a hollow sham. Both posed globe-spanning threats to our most basic freedoms. Neither received more than perfunctory coverage in Western establishment media such as the BBC. One was a week-long hearing by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over a United Nations General Assembly request for an advisory opinion over Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and the other was a last-ditch appeal of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange against efforts by the United States to extradite him so that he can be locked away for the rest of his life. EDITORIAL NOTE: After the editorial of Pacific Journalism Review and the lead article in this edition (Vol 30, No 1&2) about the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were printed, the Australian journalist was set free and he arrived back in Australia after a plea bargain. The winner of his country’s Walkley Award for journalism excellence, Assange was freed by a US federal court in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on 26 June 2024 after a plea bargain to plead guilty to one charge of violating the US Espionage Act and the judge sentenced him to 62 months, jail time already served in the UK on remand. His 14-year struggle for freedom was over, but his lawyers say they will press for a full US presidential pardon.

Justice Isn’t Blind: Attorney Attractiveness and Success in US Federal Court

Abstract Many court observers have argued that judges are capable of avoiding the use of extraneous factors in decision-making. This study examines the influence of seemingly irrelevant heuristics on real-world courtroom proceedings. Drawing on theories from neighboring disciplines, I hypothesize that physically attractive attorneys have greater success in US federal court. Using a generalizable causal inference strategy and a dataset of over 1,000 cases and 3,000 votes, I find support for my expectations using multiple measures of attractiveness. These findings raise serious normative concerns about equality and underscore the need to adjust traditional models of judicial behavior to account for inherent biases.

Judicial hierarchy and discursive influence.

We apply a dynamic influence model to the opinions of the US federal courts to examine the role of the US Supreme Court in influencing the direction of legal discourse in the federal courts. We propose two mechanisms for how the Court affects innovation in legal language: a selection mechanism where the Court's influence primarily derives from its discretionary jurisdiction, and an authorship mechanism in which the Court's influence derives directly from its own innovations. To test these alternative hypotheses, we develop a novel influence measure based on a dynamic topic model that separates the Court's own language innovations from those of the lower courts. Applying this measure to the US federal courts, we find that the Supreme Court primarily exercises influence through the selection mechanism, with modest additional influence attributable to the authorship mechanism. This article is part of the theme issue 'A complexity science approach to law and governance'.

Models on trial: antitrust experts face Daubert challenges

ABSTRACT Economists are often called upon as expert witnesses by the parties involved in antitrust litigation. One challenge they may face in US federal courts is compliance with the Daubert standard of admissibility of expert testimony. The interplay between model applicability and the Daubert standard is analyzed, suggesting the importance of distinguishing between weak applicability claims, those that state that a model’s critical assumptions are shared by the target, and strong applicability claims, those that connect empirical models and quantitative market features. Recent antitrust cases in which expert testimonies based on economic models have been assessed following the Daubert standard are examined using this framework. Some normative implications are drawn concerning how to improve judges’ assessment of model-based arguments.

The Dilemmas of Silence: Evidence, Indigenous Traditional Knowledge and Secrecy in Four Cases Involving Indigenous Peoples in Cultural and Territorial Isolation

Within many Indigenous cultures, traditional and spiritual knowledge is considered secret. It requires initiation and is safeguarded by different groups or levels of religious authority within a community. Transmission of such knowledge is usually performed at specific times, places and to selected peoples only. When Indigenous communities are claiming their rights to traditional land in western-oriented legal forums, they are required to provide proof of their connection to the lands and speak about the importance the sacred grounds hold in their tradition–and are required to do so according to Western legal discourse and protocol. When requirements for evidence neither represent nor respect Native culture, Indigenous parties to the claim often go silent, or else risk silencing the practices they originally aimed to protect. This article discusses the dilemma Indigenous communities face when asked to provide evidence despite cultural restrictions on traditional knowledge transfer. It first looks at evidence and secret knowledge in the case Pueblo of Jemez vs. United States of America (2019) adjudicated in federal US courts, and suggests a set of alternative evidentiary mappings that respect Jemez Pueblo rules of traditional knowledge sharing, produced by the author and Jemez tribal members. It then turns to acts of refusal to share detailed information on sacred sites and its consequences, litigated over in the US federal court cases Havasupai Tribe v. United States of America (1990) and Pueblo of Sandia vs. United States of America (1995). Finally, it discusses questions of evidence production in the case Pueblos Indígenas Tagaeri y Taromenane vs Ecuador, the first case on peoples in voluntary isolation to be adjudicated by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Increased HIV Transmissions With Reduced Insurance Coverage for HIV Preexposure Prophylaxis: Potential Consequences of Braidwood Management v. Becerra.

A US federal court recently ruled against requiring health insurers to cover human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) under the Affordable Care Act. For every 10% decrease in PrEP coverage resulting from this ruling among US men who have sex with men, we estimate an additional 1140 HIV infections in the following year in that population.

Inventors must be human, US federal court rules

Inventors must be human, US federal court rules

Patent inventors must be human, a US federal court rules

Patent inventors must be human, a US federal court rules

Public Health Risk and Civic Peership.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some US federal courts required jurors' vaccination against COVID-19, which, according to some, made a juror less representative of a peer. This comic investigates this set of concerns narratively and visually.

Medicolegal Sidebar: Are Implant Sales Reps in the Operating Room Legally Untouchable?

Medicolegal Sidebar: Are Implant Sales Reps in the Operating Room Legally Untouchable?

Digitalization of civil proceedings in the USA: consolidation of the procedure for electronic disclosure of evidence (“e-discovery”)

The article notes that electronic disclosure of evidence (“e-discovery”) refers to the disclosure of evidence during the pre-trial stage of court proceedings, such as civil proceedings (litigation) or government investigations, when the requested information is in electronic format. Electronic information is considered different from paper because of its immaterial form, volume, transience and impermanence. Electronic information is usually accompanied by metadata, which is not present in paper documents and which can play an important role as evidence. The main document that allowed the digitalization of US civil proceedings was the amendments of 2006 and 2015 to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governing the conduct of Court proceedings in US federal Courts. It is emphasized that one of the most hotly contested aspects of electronic disclosure of evidence has become the problem of electronic data security. The destruction of emails and other electronic data is as egregious and punishable by the court as the destruction of other documentary evidence related to a civil lawsuit. The decision in the case “Zubulake v. UBS Warburg” 2005 established important practices regarding “e-discovery”. In addition, this decision showed that various specialists can be involved in the project of electronic disclosure of evidence: lawyers of the parties, forensic experts, IT managers and office managers. In this regard, the comparative analysis of the above issues is of particular importance.

The Declining Significance of Race in Criminal Sentencing: Evidence from US Federal Courts

Abstract Racial inequality in sentencing has decreased substantially over the last decade. In 2009, the average sentencing difference between black and white defendants in federal court was nearly 3 yrs. By 2018, this difference was less than 6 mos. Among drug offenders over this same period, the black–white gap went from 47 mos. down to zero. Yet, despite the fact that racial inequality in the legal system remains at the fore of sociological discourse, these developments remain conspicuously under-evaluated and the underlying processes driving these changes remain unknown. This article fills this gap by applying longitudinal decomposition methods to US District Court data between 2009 and 2018. Three notable findings emerge. First, the declining racial gap was driven, in equal parts, by decreasing black sentences and increasing white sentences. Second, black and white sentences became more equal almost entirely due to changes in observable case characteristics and not due to changes in the treatment of offenders. Third, shifts in the prosecutorial use of mandatory minimums played a critical role in decreasing black–white sentencing inequality.

Dietary supplements in the USA: problematic trends.

More than 25 years have passed since the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 classified dietary supplements as a subcategory of food, thereby exempting manufacturers from providing premarket evidence of product safety and efficacy. In this commentary, I discuss problems in the supplement industry through an examination of cases introduced or decided in US federal courts between 2010 and 2019. More than half the cases located involved defendants charged with introducing misbranded food or drugs into interstate commerce. Contaminants included anabolic steroids, erectile dysfunction medications, weight-loss drugs, workout stimulants and mind-altering substances. As the article points out, raw powders obtained in bulk quantities facilitate the practice of 'home brewing' and the introduction of prescription drugs into dietary supplements.

Estimating Judicial Ideology

We review the substantial literature on estimating judicial ideology, from the US Supreme Court to the lowest state court. As a way to showcase the strengths and drawbacks of various measures, we further analyze trends in judicial polarization within the US federal courts. Our analysis shows substantial gaps in the ideology of judges appointed by Republican Presidents versus those appointed by Democrats. Similar to trends in Congressional polarization, the increasing gap is mostly driven by a rightward movement by judges appointed by Republicans. We conclude by noting important avenues for future research in the study of the ideology of judges.

Agenda Setting and Attention to Precedent in the US Federal Courts

AbstractTo what degree is judicial agenda setting top-down or bottom-up? Existing studies lack evidence of the frequency or magnitude of these two processes. We conceptualize the judicial agenda as the legal questions/rules receiving judicial attention, measure it using citations to Supreme Court opinions, and estimate vector autoregression models to identify how each level of court initiates or responds to variation in attention to precedent at other levels of the judiciary. The Supreme Court exerts some top-down control, but agenda setting is more often bottom-up, revealing lower courts are more integral to setting the federal judicial agenda than previously understood.

A Thankfully Wide Sea between England and Apprendi-Land

ABSTRACT This article uses the US Supreme Court’s line of cases beginning with Apprendi v. New Jersey to illuminate territory in which English law, in comparison to American law, is comparatively underdeveloped—currently affording a Newton-style hearing only where a guilty plea obliterates any previous evidence. This need not be so. Both before and after Apprendi, US federal and state courts have implemented post-trial fact-finding procedures for sentencing purposes, and we could do the same. The Davies case, where the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt was imported from the trial phase, into consideration of the statutory starting points for murder sentencing, will, for reasons to be given, be doubted.