Old Maxims Never Die: The "Plain-Meaning Rule" and Statutory Interpretation in the "Modern" Federal Courts

1975 ◽  
Vol 75 (7) ◽  
pp. 1299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur W. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Federal Courts ◽  
Statutory Interpretation

scholarly journals What Is a Social Group in the Eyes of the Law? Knowledge Work in Refugee-Status Determination

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (04) ◽  
pp. 1257-1278 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Robert Owens
Keyword(s):  
Social Group ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Knowledge Work ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Courts Of Appeals ◽  
Statutory Interpretation ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
Legal Concepts

This article explores the settling and unsettling of legal concepts in relation to refugee-status determination. To gain admission to the United States, asylum seekers are required to demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of one of five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Accordingly, many political asylum claims turn on the interpretation of “particular social group.” This article examines case law disputes in the federal courts of appeals over the meaning of that phrase and describes how statutory interpretation by judges has contributed to the persistence of such disputes over several decades since the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act. My analysis reveals the tensions between different forms of rationality at play in judicial statutory interpretation and applies the concept of legal settling to a new empirical domain.

scholarly journals Intent-to-Benefit: Individually Enforceable Rights in International Treaties

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sital Kalantry
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Courts Of Appeals ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Statutory Interpretation ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
History Of

Citizens of foreign countries are increasingly using international treaties to assert claims against Federal and state governments. As a result, U.S. courts are being asked to determine whether treaties provide litigants with individually enforceable rights. Although courts have no consistent approach to determining whether a treaty gives rise to individually enforceable rights, they often apply the textualist methodology derived from statutory interpretation. However, instead of using textual theories of statutory interpretation, I argue that courts should use intentionalist theories developed from contract interpretation in determining individually enforceable rights under treaties. Two positive arguments and one negative argument support my approach. First, the question of whether a non-party can enforce a treaty is structurally similar to the question of whether a non-party can enforce a contract, but structurally different from the issue of whether there is a private cause of action under a statute. Second, Supreme Court jurisprudence supports the view that treaties are contracts even though they have the effect of statutes. As such, it is appropriate to apply theories of contract interpretation to understanding treaties. Third, arguments used to justify using textualism for purposes of interpreting statutes are not relevant to interpreting treaties.I suggest that courts use a modified version of the "intent-to-benefit" test derived from contract law in determining whether a treaty is enforceable by a non-party. Under the modified "intent-to-benefit" test, a non-party will have individually enforceable rights and remedies under the treaty if the treaty identifies a class of individuals who are intended beneficiaries of the treaty and if such non-party is within that class of individuals. Applying this test suggests that courts should privilege the drafting history over the ratification history of a treaty in interpreting it.I apply the modified "intent-to-benefit " test to a case study-the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The Supreme Court recently decided in Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon that the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations does not provide individuals with any remedies, but refused to decide whether the treaty provides individuals with rights. Since that decision, two Federal Courts of Appeals have come to differing conclusions on the question of whether that treaty creates individually enforceable rights. Under the modified "intent-to-benefit," the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations would be found to give rise to individually enforceable rights.Published: Intent-to-Benefit: Individually Enforceable Rights in International Treaties, 44 Stanford Journal of International Law 63 (2008).

Appeals by the Prosecution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy J. King ◽  
Michael Heise
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Work ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Sample ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
High Courts ◽  
Extensive Information ◽  
State High Courts ◽  
State Prosecutors ◽  
Rate Of Success

Scholarly and public debates about criminal appeals have largely taken place in an empirical vacuum. This study builds on our prior empirical work exploring defense-initiated criminal appeals and focuses on criminal appeals by state and federal prosecutors. Exploiting data drawn from a recently released national sample of appeals by state prosecutors decided in 2010, as well as data from all appeals by federal prosecutors to the United States Court of Appeals terminated in the years 2011 through 2016, we provide a detailed snapshot of non-capital, direct appeals by prosecutors, including extensive information on crime type, claims raised, type of defense representation, oral argument and opinion type, as well judicial selection, merits review, and relief. Findings include a rate of success for state prosecutor appeals about four times greater than that for defense appeals (roughly 40% of appeals filed compared to 10%). The likelihood of success for state prosecutor-appellants appeared unrelated to the type of crime, claim, or defense counsel, whether review was mandatory or discretionary, or whether the appellate bench was selected by election rather than appointment. State high courts, unlike intermediate courts, did not decide these appeals under conditions of drastic asymmetry. Of discretionary criminal appeals reviewed on the merits by state high courts, 41% were prosecutor appeals. In federal courts, prosecutors voluntarily dismissed more than half the appeals they filed, but were significantly less likely to withdraw appeals from judgments of acquittal and new trial orders after the verdict than to withdraw appeals challenging other orders. Among appeals decided on the merits, federal prosecutors were significantly more likely to lose when facing a federal defender as an adversary compared to a CJA panel attorney.

The Certainty of the Legal Status of Court Secretary and Court Clerk in Federal Courts

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 26-34
Author(s):  
E. V. Gerasenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
System Analysis ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
Additional Qualification ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Russian Federation

Employees of the federal courts' apparatus, in accordance with the current regulations, are public civil servants. In practice and in existing scientific research there is an approach to determining the legal status of this category of public servants through their duties, without specifying the specific requirements for candidates for the position to be filled. The purpose of this study is to define additional qualification requirements to be imposed on the applicant for the position of State Civil Service «Court Secretary» in court, in addition to those contained in the Federal Law «On State Civil Service of the Russian Federation» and orders of the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. The tasks of this work are to study the theoretical foundations of the concept of «status of a State civil servant », to compare federal legislation, decrees of the President of the Russian Federation, decisions and other acts of ministries and departments in the field of the State civil service in the apparatus of federal courts; Justification for the need to include in the status of a public servant serving in the court apparatus additional requirements for the level of education. The methodological basis of the present study was the general scientific methods such as analogy, derivation, system analysis, as well as the private scientific methods: formal-logical, technical-legal and comparativelegal in their various combinations. The study concluded that it was necessary to distinguish the status of federal court staff according to the level of education required to replace a public civil service post, in particular the «Registrar of the Court».

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