Court Administration

the negotiation class

The Negotiation Class

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Vol. 104 No. 1 (2020) | A Clearer View

Growing dockets have long been the mother of judicial invention. In 1968, Congress created the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation and authorized it to create multidistrict litigations (or MDLs) to […]

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Courts Must Lead in the Crisis of Addiction

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Vol. 104 No. 1 (2020) | A Clearer View

Last year, more Americans died of opioid overdoses than of many cancers, gunshot wounds, or even car crashes. In fact, by at least one metric, the epidemic is more dire […]

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Person marking paper with red pen

The Plague of String Citations

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Vol. 104 No. 1 (2020) | A Clearer View

Check out the original paragraph from this opinion, which dealt with a motion to quash two subpoenas on grounds of attorney-client privilege. In the entire 262-word paragraph, covering 20 lines, […]

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Connecticut Court House

Sitting on the Bench: My Adventures in a Connecticut Court

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Vol. 104 No. 1 (2020) | A Clearer View

Fellow judges, I highly recommend keeping a diary of your daily adventures in the courthouse. It would be hard to make up stories that are better than the reality of […]

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preparing for a pandemic

Preparing Courts for a Pandemic

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Vol. 104 No. 1 (2020) | A Clearer View

As the coronavirus emerged around the globe early this year, it quickly began to affect every facet of society and government, including state courts. Unlike in prior instances of mass […]

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Distinguishing Between Reliable and Unreliable Eyewitnesses

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Vol. 104 No. 1 (2020) | A Clearer View

Increasing research shows that eyewitness confidence at the time of the initial identification can be a strong predictor of accuracy under appropriate lineup identification conditions.1 In such conditions, police show […]

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The Creation and Conclusions of the Third Circuit Task Force on Eyewitness Identifications

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Vol. 104 No. 1 (2020) | A Clearer View

In 2016, the Third Circuit sat en banc to hear the case of Commonwealth v. Dennis.1 Little did the court realize the sustained impact this single appeal would have on […]

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Assessing Risk: The Use of Risk Assessment in Sentencing

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Vol. 103 No. 2 (2019) | Pay NCAA athletes?

Judges are using risk assessment instruments in criminal cases more than ever before. Their role is increasingly prominent at all stages of the criminal justice system, including policing, pretrial detention, […]

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Envelope with wings being shot of slingshot

Emails to a Federal Judge

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Vol. 103 No. 3 (2019) | Fees, Fines, and Bail

Recently an esteemed member of the bar died. In closing out the lawyer’s laptop, a legal assistant discovered a trove of emails the lawyer had composed and addressed to a […]

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Portrait of three women judges sitting at the bench

Shattering Glass Ceilings from the Bench

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Vol. 103 No. 3 (2019) | Fees, Fines, and Bail

Federal Judge Sylvia Rambo first thought of a legal career in the 1940s when her school bus drove by a local law school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. “It was like a […]

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