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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... sought relief from the U.S. Supreme Court , but Associate Justice Hugo Black , who oversaw the Fifth Circuit , also refused to countermand Connally's grade - a - year order . 85 Justice Black's denial finally had exhausted the HISD ...
... sought to be admitted to formerly all- white schools during the 1960–61 school year. During the second year of the stair- step schedule, he noted, hisd had accepted thirty-three of fifty applicants.98 These were not numbers to be ...
... sought to have Judge Allred consider their claims in light ofBrown.They could call upon earlier, and apparently more suitable, judicial precedents to be their tie to the Fourteenth Amendment. By the 1950s a host of federal and state ...
... sought to end the prevailing discriminatory practices, but also hoped to integrate their community into the social mainstream of the United States, that is, to “Americanize.” lulac's constitution called for members to become loyal ...
... sought to demonstrate that this was the result of “a system- atic, continual, and uninterrupted practice in Fort Bend County of discriminating against the Mexican Americans as a race, and people of Mexican extraction and ancestry as a ...
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 |