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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... litigation. In the wake of Brown, judges took up the task of managing the transition to desegregation. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's strategy, joining of the plaintiffs and filing suit in class-actions ...
... litigation to reform public institutions and his concern for the expanding role of the federal courts in the post-Brown era—were just spoken obiter dicta, a form of judicial aside. The judge's comments readily applied, however, to the ...
... litigation.”14 The aims of the plaintiffs in the two school desegregation lawsuits examined in this chapter contributed to their different dispositions by their respective trial judges. Both of the suits were class actions filed by ...
... litigation. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp) led the fight after Du Bois and others founded the organization in 1909. The association eventually incorporated a separate litigation arm, the Legal ...
... litigation rather than the end of that struggle.33 Warren, in Brown I, set out the basic rationale for the court's decision but declined to broach the more contentious question regarding remedial actions that would be required to ...
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 |