Mental health courts (MHCs) generally began to appear in 1997. Today, more than 80 courts exist in the United States. In the present article, the authors argue that the 2nd generation of MHCs has arrived. The authors compare 8 previously described courts (P. A. Griffin, H. J. Steadman, & J. Petrila, 2002) with 7 newer courts that have not been previously described in the psycholegal literature....

Lower courts supposedly follow Supreme Court precedent—but they often don’t. Instead of adhering to the most persuasive interpretations of the Court’s opinions, lower courts often adopt narrower readings. For example, recent courts of appeals’ decisions have narrowly interpreted the Court’s rulings on police searches, gun control, and campaign finance. This practice—which I call “narrowing from...

Several states have enacted statutes to protect minors from harmful or obscene materials disseminated over the Internet, as well as from pedophiles seeking to use the Internet to lure them into sexual conduct. State and federal courts have diverged in their analysis of the Dormant Commerce Clause’s impact on state regulation in these areas. While state courts have held that the Dormant Commerce...

The democratic critique of judicial review by constitutional courts has prompted its defenders to counter that courts have democratic qualities as good as, and in certain respects even stronger than, conventional democratic politics. This article offers a critical analysis of three arguments favouring this approach. The first argues that constitutional courts operate as exemplars of democratic ...

Several recent decisions by the US Supreme Court have strengthened the ability of federal courts to consider medical testimony regarding injuries associated with exposure to toxic substances. Judges are expected to examine the basis of all expert testimony before it is introduced at trial to ensure that it meets the same standards of intellectual rigor that professionals use outside the courtro...

This Article discusses the concept of judicial independence, the political nature of the courts, and efforts to insulate the courts from the ordinary politics engulfing the popularly elected branches. It reviews Florida’s political history and changing political landscape. It traces the development of the state’s judicial selection processes and ties them to current legislation being considered...

The impetus of the drug court movement can be traced to a number of factors, such as the social and organizational costs of imprisonment and the literature surrounding the effectiveness of community-based treatment. Regardless of its origins, however, drug courts have altered the way in which court systems process drug cases and respond to drugdependent offenders. Evaluations of U.S. drug court...

Computer forensic software is used by lawyers and law enforcement to collect and preserve data in a “forensic image” so that it can be analyzed without changing the original media, and to preserve the chain of custody of the evidence. To the extent there are vulnerabilities in this software, an attacker may be able to hide or alter the data available to a forensic analyst, causing courts to ren...

In their article, How Courts Adjudicate Patent Definiteness and Disclosure, John R. Allison and Lisa Larrimore Ouellette present a comprehensive study—thirty years’ worth of cases—of federal courts’ application of patent law’s written-description, definiteness, and enablement requirements. Using their own hand-coded dataset, Allison and Ouellette measure a number of interesting disparities in c...

This article asses what is known and what remains to be understood about problem-solving courts. Specifically, the article asserts that drug courts serve a needy population, court mandated treatment programs have higher retention rates, those who participate longer have better outcomes, those in drug courts had lower rates of recidivism, drug use, and that graduated sanctions have statistically...