front cover of In Defense of Youth
In Defense of Youth
A Study of the Role of Counsel in American Juvenile Courts
William Vaughn Stapleton
Russell Sage Foundation, 1972
In recent years the decisions of the United States Supreme Court in the area of juvenile law and the growing public awareness of the delinquency problem have brought about drastic changes in American juvenile courts. This book represents a major research effort to determine the effect of defense counsel's performance on the conduct and outcome of delinquency cases. After a brief historical analysis of the factors leading to changes in juvenile law, the authors explore in detail the impact of the lawyer's presence and performance on the outcomes of cases in two juvenile courts. The analysis further explores the various factors influencing a lawyer's defense posture and develops the thesis that the effectiveness of counsel is determined largely by the structure of the delinquency hearing and the willingness and ability of court personnel and procedures to adapt to the introduction of an adversarial role of defense counsel. What makes this study unique is the large-scale effort to combine legal analysis and sociological methodology to the study of an action-oriented program. The use of the classical experimental design, the selection of control and experimental groups by random assignment, and the extent to which the use of this methodology increases the validity of the results, will be of interest to both lawyers and social scientists. The book is a major contribution to the growing literature in the field of the sociology of law.
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front cover of Inside Appellate Courts
Inside Appellate Courts
The Impact of Court Organization on Judicial Decision Making in the United States Courts of Appeals
Jonathan Matthew Cohen
University of Michigan Press, 2002
Inside Appellate Courts is a comprehensive study of how the organization of a court affects the decisions of appellate judges. Drawing on interviews with more than seventy federal appellate judges and law clerks, Jonathan M. Cohen challenges the assumption that increasing caseloads and bureaucratization have impinged on judges' abilities to bestow justice. By viewing the courts of appeals as large-scale organizations, Inside Appellate Courts shows how courts have walked the tightrope between justice and efficiency to increase the number of cases they decide without sacrificing their ability to dispense a high level of justice.
Cohen theorizes that, like large corporations, the courts must overcome the critical tension between the autonomy of the judges and their interdependence and coordination. However, unlike corporations, courts lack a central office to coordinate the balance between independence and interdependence. Cohen investigates how courts have dealt with this tension by examining topics such as the role of law clerks, methods of communication between judges, the effect of a court's size and geographic location, the role of argumentation, the use of visiting judges, the significance of the increasing use of unpublished decisions, and the nature and role of court culture.
Inside Appellate Courts offers the first comprehensive organizational study of the appellate judicial process. It will be of interest to the social scientist studying organizations, the sociology of law, and comparative dispute resolution and have a wide appeal to the legal audience, especially practicing lawyers, legal scholars, and judges.
Jonathan M. Cohen is Attorney at Gilbert, Heintz, and Randolph LLP.
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