scholarly journals Some Open Questions on the Work of State Appellate Courts

1957 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger J. Traynor
Keyword(s):  
Appellate Courts ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
State Appellate Courts

Delay in State Appellate Courts of Last Resort

1960 ◽  
Vol 328 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-163
Author(s):  
John R. Dethmers
Keyword(s):  
Appellate Courts ◽  
State Appellate Courts

scholarly journals Compelling Interests and Substantial Burdens: The Adjudication of Religious Free Exercise Claims in U.S. State Appellate Courts

SAGE Open ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 215824401985389
Author(s):  
Robert R. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Appellate Courts ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
State Appellate Courts

Does Judicial Selection Affect Judicial Performance? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Mona Vakilifathi ◽  
Thad Kousser
Keyword(s):  
Objective Measure ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Reversal Rate ◽  
Appellate Courts ◽  
Trial Court ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Trial Courts ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
State Appellate Courts ◽  
Judicial Performance

AbstractDo judges selected by merit review commissions perform better than elected judges or those directly appointed by elected officials? This is a central question in both the academic study of state judicial institutions and the policy discourse about how to reform them. To address it, we take advantage of the variation in the means of the selection for trial court judges within Arizona, a state comprised of appointed, elected, and merit-selected trial court judges. This unique context allows us to use an objective measure of judicial performance – the reversal rate of trial court cases appealed to Arizona’s state appellate courts – to evaluate judges by their means of selection. We gather an original dataset on 2919 cases heard by 176 judges, estimating multivariate models that control for characteristics of cases and of judges. Overall, we find that elected judges have a lower reversal rate than merit-selected judges. Our findings question the conventional wisdom in the state courts literature in favor of merit selection and against judicial elections, and encourage further work on the effects of judges’ means of selection beyond state supreme courts to include state appellate and trial courts.

State Constitutional Law in 1945–46

1946 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 703-728
Author(s):  
Jacobus Tenbroek ◽  
Howard Jay Graham
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Nuclear Physics ◽  
Price Control ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Appellate Courts ◽  
National Politics ◽  
State Appellate Courts ◽  
Internal Pressures ◽  
State Constitutional Law

The end of the momentous year symbolized by the physical scientists' entrance into national politics and political scientists' introduction to nuclear physics finds state appellate courts focusing on problems of business and reconversion; professionally critical, if not apprehensive, of the course taken by their superior in Washington; dubious of the behavior of organized labor, yet divided upon both the desirability of judicial discipline and the proper means of administering it; maintaining their separate, often irreconcilable, views on regulation of business and agriculture; above all, enjoying, like their superiors and predecessors, the historic, self-imposed duty of fitting constitutional garments to institutional girth.How to constrict the swollen national waistline without risking grave internal pressures taxes ingenuity to the utmost. On the whole, a prudent realism still is evident in dealing with problems of price control. The restlessness and doubts noted last year, however, have persisted and find freer expression. Paradoxically, state enforcement of federal penalties is generally sustained, despite ancient but dissolving dogmas to the contrary; whereas coöperative state or municipal action designed to reinforce and supplement the Emergency Price Control Act has suffered serious reverses.

State Constitutional Law in 1939–1940

1940 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 700-718
Author(s):  
Charles Aikin
Keyword(s):  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Appellate Courts ◽  
State Legislation ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Liberal Attitude ◽  
Degree Of Restraint ◽  
State Appellate Courts ◽  
The Times ◽  
National Constitution

During the past year, the state appellate courts have reviewed state legislation with a degree of restraint more marked than in the preceding year. The present attitude of the courts toward the work of legislatures may be in part the result of a change in court personnel. It is also both possible and probable that judges have been impressed by the more tolerant or liberal attitude of the United States Supreme Court. Finally, a few of the judges may have become aware of the fact that the times demand the relinquishment of an assumed judicial “supremacy” and the examination of legislative and administrative action under specific constitutional provisions in the light of social and economic realities. At all events, judicial review in the grand manner has given way to a more vigorous application of technical constitutional requirements. Courts are tending to emphasize procedure rather than substance; review appears to be at once more tolerant and more precise; decisions turn on narrower grounds, premises are less sweeping. When applied to state constitutions, this tendency means something quite different from what it means when applied to the national constitution.This tendency may perhaps be regarded as charged with possible evil results for the courts. Although state constitutions are, in most cases, so detailed and diverse that no actual diminution of the courts' discretionary powers need result, and although to a successful litigant it makes little difference whether a statute is invalidated for want of due process or for want of a proper title or enacting clause, it is difficult to conceive of many things that will bring the courts more quickly into popular disrepute than an exaggeration of constitutional technicalities.

scholarly journals Misdemeanor Appeals

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy J. King ◽  
Michael Heise
Keyword(s):  
State Court ◽  
Appellate Court ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Appellate Courts ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
Trial Court ◽  
Crime Type ◽  
New Information ◽  
State Appellate Courts ◽  
Judicial Scrutiny

Misdemeanor cases affect far more people than felony cases, outnumbering felony cases by more than three to one. Yet very little empirical information exists on many aspects of misdemeanor prosecutions. This Article provides the first quantitative look at appellate review in misdemeanor cases, nationwide. It uses data drawn from a random sample of direct criminal appeals decided by every state appellate court in the nation, unpublished aggregate data on misdemeanor trial court cases provided by the Court Statistics Project, and published state court statistics.We provide the first estimate of the rate of appellate review for misdemeanors, concluding that appellate courts review no more than eight in 10,000 misdemeanor convictions, and disturb only one conviction or sentence out of every 10,000 misdemeanor judgments. This level of oversight is much lower than that for felony cases, for reasons we explain. To develop law and regulate error in misdemeanor cases, particularly in prosecutions for the lowest-level offenses, courts may need to provide mechanisms for judicial scrutiny outside the direct appeal process.Additional findings include new information about the rate of felony trial court review of lower court misdemeanor cases, ratios of appeals to convictions for various misdemeanor-crime categories, detailed descriptive information about misdemeanor cases that reach state appellate courts, the results of a complete statistical analysis examining which features are significantly associated with a greater or lesser likelihood of success, including crime type, claim raised, judicial-selection method, and type of representation, and the first quantitative look at how misdemeanor appeals differ from felony appeals.

What’s Next?

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Vorderer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Entertainment Products ◽  
Entertainment Theory

This paper points to new developments in the context of entertainment theory. Starting from a background of well-established theories that have been proposed and elaborated mainly by Zillmann and his collaborators since the 1980s, a new two-factor model of entertainment is introduced. This model encompasses “enjoyment” and “appreciation” as two independent factors. In addition, several open questions regarding cultural differences in humans’ responses to entertainment products or the usefulness of various theoretical concepts like “presence,” “identification,” or “transportation” are also discussed. Finally, the question of why media users are seeking entertainment is brought to the forefront, and a possibly relevant need such as the “search for meaningfulness” is mentioned as a possible major candidate for such an explanation.

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