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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... called of his fellow Houstonian that , “ in his heart , Connally always felt that Brown v . Board of Education was wrong - that it made bad law . " 63 Despite his evident reservations about the wisdom of the Supreme Court's decisions ...
... called “brother-sister rule,” which required all school-age children of the same family to attend the same school. A seven-year-old boy could not transfer to a desegregated school, for example, while his eight-year-old sister attended a ...
... called “other white” races—that is, white but not Anglo-Saxon. Mexican Americans in Texas and else- where sought to maintain white status because, although de jure racial segregation of public schools was condemned in Brown , the binary ...
... called expert authority , Davis argued , did not yield a consensus suffi- cient to justify overruling a local administrator's judgments . 181 To stress the point , Davis called as his own " experts " the Driscoll officials , who denied ...
... called " some indication of my thinking at the present time . " He recognized that there might be reasons for maintaining separate classes for beginners , he said , al- though he added that Sanchez's opinion to the contrary was ...
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 |