Workshop on Judicial Behavior

Note from Emily Bazelon on her paper and workshop:

Dear All,

For the workshop, I'm submitting a part of one of the chapters in the book I'm writing about bullying.  It's about cases regarding student free speech.  It happens to feature Judge Posner-for me, a happy coincidence.

I would like to spend most of the workshop discussing this excerpt, which is very much a work in progress, and which I'm eager to hear your thoughts about.  I'm also sending two recent articles I've written for the New York Times Magazine, one about Justice Alito and one about the upcoming Supreme Court team.  I am of course happy to discuss these pieces as well.

Thank you very much, and I'm looking forward to joining you!

Emily

New York Times Magazine Articles:

Mysterious Justice
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/magazine/mag-20Lede-t.html 

The Supreme Court's Painful Season
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/magazine/the-supreme-courts-painful-season.html?pagewanted=all



Note to participants in the November 16th Workshop from Larry Baum:

       In this workshop I’ll discuss ideas and findings about judicial specialization, drawing on a book that was published earlier this year, Specializing the Courts.  In the book I speak of two dimensions of specialization, based on the extent to which particular judges concentrate on narrow sets of cases and the extent to which certain sets of cases are concentrated among a small number of judges.  I describe the degree of specialization along both dimensions that exists in court systems in the U.S., but the book is primarily concerned with analysis of the causes and effects of specialization.

       I’ve attached the table of contents for the book to provide a sense of what the book covers.  I’ve also included two chapters from the book.  Chapter 4 is one of the chapters that focuses on specialization in a particular field, in this case criminal cases.  The material in that chapter will provide a sense of the findings that are the basis for my conclusions about causes and effects of judicial specialization.

       I’ve also included chapter 7, which contains the book’s conclusions.  The chapter builds on theoretical material in chapter 2 of the book, so some of the material in the conclusions will not have the full context that would be useful for readers.  But I thought that chapter 7 would be more interesting than chapter 2, since it summarizes the results of the first broad inquiry into the causes and effects of judicial specialization in the U.S.  If the theoretical frameworks for those conclusions (or the book’s inquiries into other fields of judicial activity) are of interest, of course, we can talk about them at the workshop.