Rise of Judicial Management in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, 1955-2000This is the first book-length study of a federal district court to analyze the revolutionary changes in its mission, structure, policies, and procedures over the past four decades. As Steven Harmon Wilson chronicles the court's attempts to keep pace with an expanding, diversifying caseload, he situates those efforts within the social, cultural, and political expectations that have prompted the increase in judicial seats from four in 1955 to the current nineteen. Federal judges have progressed from being simply referees of legal disputes to managers of expanding courts, dockets, and staffs, says Wilson. The Southern District of Texas offers an especially instructive model by which to study this transformation. Not only does it contain a varied population of Hispanics, African Americans, and whites, but its jurisdiction includes an international border and some of the busiest seaports in the United States. Wilson identifies three areas of judicial management in which the shift has most clearly manifested itself. Through docket and case management judges have attempted to rationalize the flow of work through the litigation process. Lastly, and most controversially, judges have sought to bring "constitutionally flawed" institutions into compliance through "structural reform" rulings in areas such as housing, education, employment, and voting. Wilson draws on sources ranging from judicial biography and oral-history interviews to case files, published opinions, and administrative memoranda. Blending legal history with social science, this important new study ponders the changing meaning of federal judgeship as it shows how judicial management has both helped and hindered the resolution of legal conflicts and the protection of civil rights. |
From inside the book
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... opinion , usually known as Brown I , did not herald the swift disman- tling of segregation in schools or in any other public institution . Rather than sig- naling the end of “ separate but equal , ” which the court had sanctioned in the ...
Steven Harmon Wilson. opinion Plessy v . Ferguson , 44 Brown I actually marked the beginning of a new stage in African Americans ' long civil rights struggle . Political and legal equality required the enactment of new legislation and ...
... opinion. Hence, they argued that Brown was not a significant case. Another distinction between these two cases—and the critical difference that explains the disparate reliance on Brown—was the race of the plaintiff parents. In the ...
... opinion , that the practical reality of social , political , and economic segregation of the races was incommen- surable with the theory of legal equality the court had announced in 1896.20 The dissenters included W. E. B. Du Bois , who ...
... opinion for a three - judge appellate panel . Hutcheson , the son of a former Confederate officer who had migrated from Virginia to Texas after the Civil War , was born in 1879 and educated at Bethel Military Academy and the University ...
Contents
1 | |
11 | |
Legislation Litigation and Judicial Economy | 50 |
The Rules and Exceptions of Border Justice | 93 |
Managing Our Federalism in the Southern District | 140 |
Judicial Management of Triethnic Integration | 189 |
Federal Criminal Justice on Trial in the 1970s | 233 |
Adjuncts and the Oversight of Corporate Misconduct | 281 |
Masters Magistrates and Managerial Judges | 327 |
Just Speedy and Inexpensive Resolutions | 355 |
Notes | 359 |
Selected Bibliography | 521 |
Index | 547 |