Symposia
Duke Law Journal's 37 Annual Administrative Law Symposium: "Administrative Law, Preemption and Federalism - April 15, 2008
Duke Law Journal's 37th Annual Administrative Law Symposium, titled "Administrative Law, Preemption and Federalism," was held on April 15, 2008. The guests discussed the role of administrative law in preserving federalism values. Guests included Brian Galle, Mark Seidenfeld, Gillian E. Metzger, Stuart Minor Benjamin, Ernie A. Young, and Nina A. Mendelson. The articles and essays from the sympoosium are available at: http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dlj/dljtoc57n7
A Webcast of this event, and previous administrative law symposiums, are available at: http://www.law.duke.edu/webcast/?match=Administrative+Law+Conference
Duke Law Journal Conference on Measuring Judges and Justice - February 6, 2009
Over the past 25 years, political scientists, economists and legal scholars have created a large body of empirical work that studies judicial decisionmaking. Although early work focused on the Supreme Court of the United States, subsequent studies have examined lower federal courts, including trial courts, state supreme and appellate courts. and foreign courts. In the main, these studies confirm the "attitudinal model," which suggests that judges' policy preferences account for their decisions, at least in the "open areas" of the law. Yet it seems fair to observe that most judges are either unaware of this literature or deem it badly mistaken. Judges who are most opposed to the conclusions of these studies take issue with the criteria selected to evaluate judicial decisionmaking and reject the attitudinal model. But this is not the universal response of the bench. In the past year, one of the most prominent appellate judges published a work that seriously considers the implications of the attitudinal model and calls upon judges to be more self-conscious and explicit about their decisionmaking. In keeping with this call, the purpose of this conference is to begin a discussion between the judiciary and scholars who use empirical tools to study the judiciary.
We will be looking particularly at three issues:
- Why is there such resistance to the attitudinal model among judges? What is it about the model that seems so deeply flawed to the judiciary and what is the response of the academic community to this critique? Do the judges and the researchers have the same understanding of the model?;
- What objective criteria could be used to evaluate judicial decisonmaking that reasonable judges would find helpful to their own efforts to improve their performance? Are these criteria amenable to study in existing data bases?;
- Would there be different insights to be gained by expanding the study of judicial behavior by using other methodologies, such as detailed case studies or judicial biographies?
The Conference will bring together thoughtful judges and legal academics for the first time to study these issues and to engage each other. It will draw upon the expertise of the Federal Judicial Center and the National Center for the Study of State Courts. Professor Mitu Gulati and Dean David Levi are collaborating with the editors of the Journal in organizing the conference.
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Duke Law Journal Administrative Law Symposium - March 20, 2009
The 2009 Duke Law Journal Administrative Law Symposium will focus on administrative law under the George W. Bush administration and the future of administrative law. The symposium will look retrospectively at thecharacteristics and accomplishments of the administrative state under the Bush Administration and prospectively at the direction the next President will or should take the administrative state. The symposium expects to include general articles about the larger themes and trends in administrative law as well as articles focusing on specific administrative law fields.