Close case

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In the law, a close case is generally defined as a ruling that could conceivably be decided in more than one way.^[1] Various scholars have attempted to articulate criteria for identifying close cases,^[2] and commentators have observed that reliance upon precedent established in close cases leads to the gradual expansion of legal doctrines.^[3]

Although some scholars have suggested that "a close case is in the eye of the beholder",^[4] other scholars have attempted to articulate specific criteria for identifying close cases.^[5] Maureen Armoor, for example, defines close cases as "the articulable outer limit of judicial discretion that most closely approximates the phenomenological experience of a sitting judge, in particular the dimension of discretion called into play when a judge is uncertain about an outcome".^[6] Ward Farnsworth, dean of the University of Texas School of Law, has suggested that close cases could be defined as either "cases close enough to provoke dissent" or cases that "are flexible enough to comfortably admit of more than one reading".^[7] Likewise, a 1980 comment in the Stanford Law Review defined close cases as appellate decisions that generated multiple dissenting opinions.^[8]

Consequences of close cases

References

↑ See, e.g., Maureen Armoor, Rethinking Judicial Discretion: Sanctions and the Conundrum of the Close Case, 50 S.M.U. L. Rev. 493, 496 (1997); Ward Farnsworth, The Role of Law in Close Cases: Some Evidence from the Federal Courts of Appeals, 86 B.U. L. Rev. 1083, 1095 (2006).
↑ See, e.g., The Selection of Interim Justices in California: An Empirical Study, 32 Stan. L. Rev. 433, 437 (1980).
↑ Guido Calabresi, The Exclusionary Rule, 26 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 111, 112 (2003) (characterizing this process as a "slippery slope").
↑ Frank E. Jr. Watkins; Daniel G. Kyle, A Proposal for the Operation of Section 534 with Section 535, 52 Taxes 240, 248 (1974).
↑ See, e.g., The Selection of Interim Justices in California: An Empirical Study, 32 Stan. L. Rev. 433, 437 (1980); Maureen Armoor, Rethinking Judicial Discretion: Sanctions and the Conundrum of the Close Case, 50 S.M.U. L. Rev. 493, 496 (1997).
↑ Maureen Armoor, Rethinking Judicial Discretion: Sanctions and the Conundrum of the Close Case, 50 S.M.U. L. Rev. 493, 496 (1997).
↑ Ward Farnsworth, The Role of Law in Close Cases: Some Evidence from the Federal Courts of Appeals, 86 B.U. L. Rev. 1083, 1088, 1095 (2006).
↑ The Selection of Interim Justices in California: An Empirical Study, 32 Stan. L. Rev. 433, 437 (1980); see also Stephen R. Barnett; Daniel L. Rubinfeld, The Assignment of Temporary Justices in the California Supreme Court, 17 Pac. L. J. 1045, 1064–67 (1986) (critiquing the methodology of the Stanford study).
↑ John E. Coons, Approaches to Court Imposed Compromise-The Uses of Doubt and Reason, 58 Nw. U. L. Rev. 750, 751 (1963).
↑ Guido Calabresi, The Exclusionary Rule, 26 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 111, 112 (2003) (noting that Chief Judge John M. Walker, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit described this process as "[t]he hydraulic effect").
↑ Guido Calabresi, The Exclusionary Rule, 26 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 111, 112 (2003).
↑ Ward Farnsworth, The Role of Law in Close Cases: Some Evidence from the Federal Courts of Appeals, 86 B.U. L. Rev. 1083, 1095 (2006).

Consequences of close cases

See also

References

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