Data Crunching Justices' Writing Styles

If you've read Supreme Court cases from the early 19th century and the early 21st century, you probably have a sense that writing styles have changed. But can you quantify that?

Three scholars from Dartmouth and UVa (two mathematicians and a law professor) can. They find that opinions have grown longer but easier to read. Justices writing at the same time tend to have more similar styles than those separated by a hundred years. Consistency is probably aided by clerks.

You can read the whole paper on SSRN:

Keith Carlson, Michael A. Livermore, Daniel Rockmore, A Quantitative Analysis of Writing Style on the U.S. Supreme Court, 93 Wash. U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2016)

Hear also this interview with coauthor Michael Livermore, focusing on the increase in negative language.

Alternative Legal Research Databases

When you think of online legal research, LexisAdvance, WestlawNext, or BloombergLaw probably spring to mind. With summer fast approaching, it may be worthwhile to explore some alternative legal research databases. As a general rule, no other service provides the depth and breadth of coverage of primary law as the three big names. Additionally, editorial enhancements, like case headnotes or statute annotations, are limited on other services. Similarly, these alternative services have minimal coverage of secondary sources (that means sources like American Jurisprudence 2d or Washington Practice are not available). Nevertheless, you may find that  these services provide sufficient access to primary sources of law in a cost-effective manner. At the very least, it does not hurt to occasionally survey the competition to the industry leaders.

A good starting point in exploring alternative legal research services is the Gallagher Guide to Low-Cost Legal Research Services on the Web. That guide focuses on Casemaker and VersusLaw.

CaseMaker logo

Casemaker partners with bar associations across the country to provide access to their members. The Washington State Bar Association allows students to register for a free account for academic use and the WSBA provides Casemaker to its members for free. Among the services that Casemaker provides is CaseCheck+, a limited citator service, akin to Shepard's or KeyCite, that indicates when case law has received negative treatment. Casemaker also offers a subscription to secondary materials published by the WSBA, which includes a variety of deskbooks on topics like appellate practice, civil procedure, and real property, to new attorneys for $1,200 a year. WSBA deskbooks are available online to students and other library users when accessed through the library's network (a link is provided on the library's website). Students who wish to access the deskbooks remotely should contact a reference librarian for login information.

VersusLaw, which is free to law students for academic use, provides access to state, federal, and tribal court decisions. Additionally, access to state and federal statutes and accompanying regulations is available under various subscription plans.

While Casemaker and VersusLaw are prototypical legal databases with functionality that should be familiar to users of BloombergLaw, LexisNexis, or Westlaw, the following services try to deliver legal research in innovative ways.

Casetext logo

Casetext is a free service that provides access to a large variety state and federal decisions; its coverage starts in 1925. Casetext users are encouraged to provide annotations to judicial decisions in order to identify or explain key points in the decision. Another notable feature is ReCite. ReCite examines how other courts have summarized or explained a judicial decision and compiles those descriptions for easy review in a pane alongside the decision. This may be a helpful way to gain a quick sense of a how principles from specific cases have been practically employed.

Mootus is another legal research product that is trying to build its knowledge database through user participation. Unlike the services previously discussed, Mootus does not provide access to case law and other primary law sources. Rather, Mootus allows users to post questions about legal issues, such as whether the First Amendment protects a person from criminal prosecution based on threats made via Twitter, and other users answer the question by providing quotations, citations, and annotations that support their stance. While not offering the resources of a typical legal research database, Mootus allows you to explore novel or unresolved legal issues, either as someone asking questions or providing answers. Gallagher Blogs covered Casetext and Mootus in April 2014.

Ravel Law visualization screenshot

Finally, Ravel Law is a legal research database that uses visualization to present search results in unique ways. Ravel Law tries to show the connections among cases and areas of the law in a way that is appealing and comprehensible. Ravel Law is free for law students, and subscriptions are available for attorneys. Ravel Law's visualization features provide an interesting way to see the impact of a judicial decision over time. See this previous Gallagher Blogs post for an in-depth discussion of Ravel Law.

Oral Arguments in the Supreme Court Same-Sex Marriage Cases

SCOTUS heard arguments today and you can listen to the recordings on Question 1 and Question 2.

Oral Arguments in Same-Sex Marriage Cases

On Tuesday April 28th, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in four cases challenging state bans on same-sex marriages and state bans on recognition of existing same-sex marriages. When decided the consolidated cases will have the title Obergefell v. Hodges.

If you would like to preview the arguments the Court will be presented with, the Court's website has posted briefs from the parties and amici. If reading over 1,000 pages of legal briefs doesn't fit into your weekend plans, SCOTUSblog has a four part series analyzing the briefs filed by the couples seeking to over turn the bans, the states defending the bans, the amici supporting the couples-including the federal government, and the amici supporting the states.

Robinson on Race and Criminal Justice

Remember Jeffery Robinson's presentation on Ferguson in December? You might be interested in this 9-minute interview with him on KUOW: Seattle Defense Attorney To Lead ACLU's Center For Justice (April 20, 2015). (The Center for Justice includes the National Prison Project, the Criminal Law Reform Project and the Capital Punishment Project.)

Environmental Law for Earth Day

Mark Earth Day with a quick look at some of the environmental law scholarship that's been produced at UW Law in the last several years:

• The Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy is now in its fourth year, publishing pieces by students and by outside authors.
• Other journals also can publish work on environmental topics. See, e.g., Robert W. Adler, The Decline and (Possible) Renewal of Aspiration in the Clean Water Act, 88 Wash. L. Rev. 759 (2013); Eri Osaka, Corporate Liability, Government Liability, and the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, 21 Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J. 433 (2012) (The Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal is now the Washington International Law Journal.) 
• For a sampling of recent faculty publications, see the SSRN pages for:
• Greg Hicks
• Sanne Knudsen
• Bill Rodgers 
• Thinking North? Check out the website of the Arctic Law & Policy Institute.

Legal Milestones in Choral Music

Two upcoming choral concerts honor historic legal events.

1297 copy of Magna Carta on display
in the National Archives
(and the NationalArchives
Featured Documents web exhibit)

UW Collegium Musicum presents a musical setting of a medieval poem about the events leading to the Magna Carta in 1215. Magna Carta 800: Music of the British Isles, Sat. April 18, 2015, 7:30 PM, Mary Gates Hall, $10.

Orchestra Seattle and Seattle Chamber Singers present 1954 in America , Sunday, May 17, 3:00 PM, First Free Methodist Church (in West Seattle). One of the works is Breathe, by Stacey Phillips:

Breathe, a work for chorus and orchestra selected as the winning entry in the 2014–2015 OSSCS Composer Competition, features lyrics drawn from the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Paul Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy.” Written during the months following protests in response to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, Breathe “raises the continuing question of how this country, founded on the principles of equality, continues to struggle with questions of social justice.”

Thanks to Patty Roberts.

National County Government Month #NCGM

"April is the cruellest month," wrote T. S. Eliot. If you're a fan of Eliot, you might be celebrating April as National Poetry Month.

But April is also National County Government Month (declared by the National Association of Counties (NACo)), and as lawyers you're more likely to deal with county government or even be a part of it than you are to be a professional poet, so let's take a minute to think about county government.

This year's theme is "Counties Moving America Forward: The Keys are Transportation and Infrastructure."

Washington County Profiles (from the Municipal Research and Services Center) offers quick access to county websites, codes, and comprehensive plans.

Working at the IRS; Pew on Taxes

Bloomberg News has a long story looking at life inside the IRS: Devin Leonard & Richard Rubin, IRS Workers Are Miserable and Overwhelmed, April 8, 2015. The headline conveys the gist of it, but read the article to learn more about budget cuts, hiring freezes, reorganizations, and other constraints that make the lives of these public servants challenging. 

Think of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NASA, or the Department of Defense: that agency can't do its work unless the folks at the IRS do their work. 

I listed those three agencies because they get very high approval ratings (65-70% favorable) while the IRS got more unfavorable (48%) than favorable (45%) responses. That's from the Bloomberg News article, crediting Pew Research Center. For more on that survey of attitudes toward agencies, see Most View the CDC Favorably: VA's Image Slips, Pew Research Center, Jan. 22, 2015. The complete report is here.

Speaking of reports from Pew, see 

• High-Income Americans Pay Most Income Taxes, But Enough to Be "Fair"? (March 24, 2015)
• 5 Facts on How Americans View Taxes (April 10, 2015)
• The Biggest U.S. Tax Breaks (April 13, 2015)
• Among Developed Nations, Americans' Tax Bills Are Below Average (March 30, 2015)
• Federal Tax System Seen in Need of Overhaul (March 19, 2015)

Growth of Incarceration

The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences (2014), packed with research and analysis from social scientists and policy experts, is available as a free PDF from the National Academies Press.

This animated video summarizes the findings:

And this video summarizes it without the graphics:

 

Other National Academies publications in Law and Justice address topics such as:

• eyewitness identification
• the illicit tobacco market
• juvenile justice reform
• sex trafficking
• forensic evidence

Prohibition comes to Seattle!

Don't worry–you can still have your evening cocktail! MOHAI (the Museum of History & Industry) is presenting the exhibit American Spirits the Rise and Fall of Prohibition April 2 through August 23. Along with this exhibit on June 6, 2015, "MOHAI will present 21st Century Speakeasy - a chance for visitors to discover how our region has pushed boundaries and led national conversations about legislating morality, including, most recently, the legalization of marijuana in Washington State."

Poetry! Get Your Poetry!

April is National Poetry Month. Whether you like your poetry funny or serious, romantic or modern, one nice feature of most poems is that you can enjoy one or two even while keeping up with your law school reading assignments. (I know: you can't get through the Aeneid or Paradise Lost in a half hour. I said most poems.)

You can find free poetry and other resources on www.poetryfoundation.org and poets.org (the website of the Academy of American Poets).

If you like your poetry on paper, go to the University Bookstore on Friday, April 10, when all poetry books in stock are 25% off.

A poetry book is a bargain!
And gives a break from legal jargon!

Get prepared for April 30, Poem in Your Pocket Day.

Help Make LEGO Legal Justice Team a Reality!

Remember the Legal Justice League: Women of the Supreme Court in LEGO??

Well, they're back, but in a slightly different form. LEGO initially rejected Maia Weinstock's original proposal, featuring actual female justices from the U.S. Supreme Court, under its policy against creating political minifigures based on real individuals. Weinstock and LEGO have now reached a compromise and a proposed set including three generic female justices has now been submitted to LEGO Ideas (LEGO's crowdsourced incubator for potential sets).

photocredit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixbymaia/16320141884/

photocredit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixbymaia/16320141884/

The project requires 10,000 votes before it's qualified for LEGO Review. Help show your support by voting for the project here.

You can also find more details about Maia Weinstock's chronicle of events leading to the creation of the Legal Justice Team here.

You've Been Served.. via Facebook?

Traditionally, when commencing a lawsuit a person must be served in-person, or if not in person, through alternative service such as by publication. However, recently a New York State Judge ordered that the Defendant could be served via Facebook private messenger. What do you think of this new, alternative service? Is it constitutional? Read the Court's full opinion here.

Tips for Better To-Do Lists

Is it still early enough in the quarter that you aren't behind? or not too far behind?

If you're always scrambling to keep track of what's going on, you might find these tips helpful: What Happened When Fast Company Staff Created Better To-Do Lists (Sept. 22, 2014).

The article is from the blog How To Be a Success at Everything: "From big ideas like balancing work and life to small, everyday choices, we discover how talented people are so effective at what they do."

Federal Appellate Briefs to Get Shorter?

A proposed change to Rule 32 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure would put appellate briefs on an enforced diet:

• a principal brief would max out at 12,500 words (rather than the current 14,000 words)
• a reply brief would have half that.

Because the Judicial Conference uses Regulations.gov, you can read the comments that have been submitted.

Some of the comments are from individuals. Many are from organizations, for example

• Seth Waxman submitted a letter on behalf of the appellate practice groups of several large law firms (including his own firm, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP).
• EarthJustice, Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, and Western Environmental Law Center submitted joint comments.
• The American Academy of Appellate Lawyers also weighed in, approving changes to other rules but not Rule 32.
• Judge Frank Easterbrook (7th Cir.) wrote supporting the current, 14,000-word limit, and also explaining its origin. 

Most of the comments are against the change, but some support it. See Mark Wilson, FRAP 32: Do Federal Appellate Briefs Need to Be Shorter?, Strategist (Feb. 17, 2015).

By the way, the corresponding rule in Washington (RAP 10.4) limits brief length in terms of pages, not words. Its limit is 50 pages for a principal brief, which might work out to be about the same as 14,000 words. Judge Easterbrook says that the old federal rule was 50 pages; to change to a word count, he calculated the number of words in 50-page briefs and found an average of just under 40,000 words.

Autism Awareness

Today is World Autism Awareness Day (see the UN General Assembly resolution and President Obama's proclamation) and April is National Autism Awareness Month.

For an essay criticizing the rhetoric of "celebrating" autism, see this essay on the Washington Post website by the mother of three adult daughters with autism.

Prof. Steve Calandrillo

To sample some of the legal issues, visit SSRN and search for "autism." When I did, the top article (in a ranking by number of downloads) was by UW Law's Prof. Steve Calandrillo: Vanishing Vaccinations: Why Are So Many Americans Opting Out of Vaccinating their Children?, 37 U. Mich. J. L. Reform 353 (2004). (It's been downloaded 1336 times.) Other papers address special education, criminal law, bullying, trial practice (children with autism as witnesses), and more.

Last year, the Autism CARES Act tweaked autism-related provisions of the Public Health Service Act. (The full title is a mouthful: Autism Collaboration, Accountability, Research, Education, and Support Act of 2014, Pub. L. 113-157, 128 Stat. 1831.) Because autism issues are within the domains of different agencies (e.g., Health and Human Services and Education), the federal government has an Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee. Among other thing, the committee provides a range of publications. For less technical, more accessible information, see HHS's Autism Information page.

Group Study Rooms to Be Remodeled

Associate Dean Hazel Pennington announced today that over spring break the law library had plumbing installed to accommodate hot tubs in three of the group study rooms rooms on L2. "I think this will increase usage of the study rooms, while improving student morale and well being."

Students enjoying a relaxing study session.

An extension of the chair yoga offered during Wellness Wednesdays, the availability of whirlpool hot tubs should contribute to the mellow vibe in the law school. "We are cooperating with a cognitive psychologist on campus who is interested in the performance enhancing effects of regular hot tubbing by law students," said Dean Pennington. "As well as making our students' lives more pleasant, we might be improving their performance. And if not, well, at least the students will be relaxed."

Dean Pennington reported that the location of the study rooms on the lowest level of the building is ideal. The increased weight from the hot tubs would unduly stress upper floors. "While we want to relieve students' stress, we don't want to increase the building's structural stress!"

---

Graphic: mashup by Mary Whisner of her own photo of a study room and a hot tub photo by Travis Rigel Lukas Hornung. Hot tub photo used under Creative Commons license. 

Let the Sunshine In: Open Meetings and Open Records in Washington State

Today is the last day of the annual Sunshine Week, a "celebration of access to public information." While you contemplate our gloomy spring weather (at least west of the Cascades), check out these Washington State sunshine laws and resources:

• Public Records Act, RCW 42.5
• Open Meetings act, RCW 42.30
• Office of the Attorney General’s Open Government site, which links to two brochures: Obtaining Public Records and Denials of Public Records.
•  The Municipal Research and Services Center's topical pages on public records and open meetings.
• Washington State Bar Association,  Public Records Act Deskbook: Washington's Public Disclosure and Open Public Meetings Laws, KFW 462.5.P8. P83 2014 at Reference Area.

Interested in Federal open government resources? Check out the open government guide created by the UW Libraries and our 2014 Sunshine Week blog post on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Interested in actual sunshine? Well, we may or may not have sunbreaks this weekend, but the UW cherry trees are in bloom on the quad and worth a look no matter the weather.

Death Penalty Research Made Easy!

Researching death penalty laws and practices of a country can be a daunting task, but the Death Penalty Worldwide (DPW) website is a great starting point. Created by Professor Sandra Babcock (Cornell University Law School) in partnership with the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, this website provides a multitude of death penalty statistics, research, and even legal analysis broken down by country and by issue. The DPW database focuses on countries that still retain the death penalty for ordinary offenses. Thus, over 90 countries are covered.

Death Penalty Worldwide Website

Big Money in Judicial Campaigns

Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Sue Bell Cobb decries the effect of money on judicial campaigns: I Was Alabama's Top Judge. I'm Ashamed by What I Had to Do to Get There. Politico, March/April 2015.

Cobb cites a 2014 report by Emory law professors Joanna Shepherd and Michael S. Kang that found a strong link between campaign spending and ruling against criminal defendants: Skewed Justice: Citizens United, Television Advertising and State Supreme Court Justices' Decisions in Criminal Cases.

Cobb is one of four former chief justices of Texas and Alabama who submitted an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold Florida's rule that bans direct solicitation by judicial candidates. The case is Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar (docket number 13-1499), which was argued in January. On the other side, the ACLU has an amicus brief arguing that the ban infringes free speech. For much more about the case and the arguments, see SCOTUSblog.

Brief Quality Makes a Difference

A fascinating study of briefs opposing summary judgment in a particular class of employment discrimination cases—a topic with conflicting cases within the circuit—found that a majority omitted available case law that would have countered the defendants' arguments. And it makes a difference: "while bad brief-writers lose summary judgment at a remarkably high rate (86%), good brief-writers do not (42%)."  Scott A. Moss, Bad Briefs, Bad Law, Bad Markets: Documenting the Poor Quality of Plaintiffs’ Briefs, Its Impact on the Law, and the Market Failure It Reflects, 63 Emory L.J. 59, 65 (2013).

Here's the author's abstract:

For a major field, employment discrimination suffers surprisingly low-quality plaintiffs’ lawyering. This Article details a study of several hundred summary judgment briefs, finding as follows: (1) the vast majority of plaintiffs’ briefs omit available caselaw rebutting key defense arguments, many falling far below basic professional standards with incoherent writing or no meaningful research; (2) low-quality briefs lose at over double the rate of good briefs; and (3) bad briefs skew caselaw evolution, because even controlling for win-loss rate, bad plaintiffs’ briefs far more often yield decisions crediting debatable defenses.

These findings are puzzling. In a major legal service market, how can clients persistently choose bad lawyers, lawyers persistently perform so poorly, and judicial and ethics authorities tolerate this situation? Answers include poor client information, ethics authorities’ limited ability or will to discipline bad lawyers, and two troubling lawyer behaviors: (1) overoptimistically entering the field without realizing, until suffering losses, that it requires intensive research and writing; and (2) knowingly litigating on the cheap, rather than expending briefing effort to maximize case value, because contingency-paid lawyers may profitably run “mills” and live off quick, small settlements. A survey of the worst brief-writers’ law firms hints that the problem may be a mix of the former (nonspecialists in over their heads) and the latter (knowingly litigating cheaply).

This Article offers the following reforms that, while no cure-all for a problem stemming from stubborn market forces, could help: (1) expanding educational efforts, including law school experiential learning, bar resource-sharing, and bar exam reform; (2) enhancing client access to information on lawyers by liberalizing ethics rules restricting expertise claims and public access to court files; (3) broadening the supply of competent lawyers by liberalizing rules restricting the standing to sue of discrimination “testers” and ethics rules on corporations owning law firms; and (4) toughening ethics enforcement against the worst offenders, who almost all go unpunished now.

There's lots to think about here, from many perspectives: employment discrimination law, civil procedure, access to justice, legal ethics, and (of course) legal research and writing.

LEGO Supreme Court Justices

UPDATE: A variation of this project has now been submitted to LEGO Ideas! Please see this post for more information.

Hopefully by now you've had the chance to check out Maia Weinstock's (deputy editor at MIT News) Legal Justice League: Women of the Supreme Court in LEGO:

photocredit: https://flic.kr/s/aHsk8XD6q8

photocredit: https://flic.kr/s/aHsk8XD6q8

Weinstock created the minifigures, featuring Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, in recognition of International Women's Day this year. This isn't Weinstock's first foray into creating unique LEGO minifigures--in the past she's created minifigures of female scientists, such as Temple Grandin:

photocredit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixbymaia/sets/72157623988000684/

Law Library Closed on Monday, March 23

When winter quarter finals end for UW School of Law students, the Law Library will operate on a reduced schedule.

March 21 - 23, Saturday - Monday: Closed
March 24 - 27, Tuesday - Friday: 8am - 5pm
March 28 & 28, Saturday & Sunday: Closed

The Reference Office will be open from 9am -12noon and 1 - 5pm March 24-27.

Regular hours resume when spring quarter classes begin on Monday, March 30.

Legal Research: Which Court is Binding?

Are you having trouble figuring out which courts’ rulings are binding for your particular legal issue? If so, check out Which Court is Binding? a guide drafted by the Writing Center at the Georgetown University Law Center. This guide is a useful tool in determining whether federal or state law applies, and then determining which court’s rulings are mandatory and which are persuasive.