Rise of Judicial Management in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, 1955-2000University of Georgia Press, 2010 M07 1 - 576 pages This 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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... appoint for limited purposes tem- porary adjuncts known as special masters . 28 Federal district judges rely on their law clerks , staffers , and adjuncts to help them to do their job better . 29 But what is the judges ' job ? One of ...
... appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 1955 , just as the school desegregation crisis commenced , explained in 1959 that tenure only “ insulates judges from anxiety over worldly cares for body and home and ...
... time when conservative Democrats resisted the federal government's program of economic recovery.5 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed the steadfast New Dealer to 11 ONE: The Varieties of Public School Desegregation.
Steven Harmon Wilson. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed the steadfast New Dealer to the newly created second seat in the Southern District in 1938. The judge resigned in 1942, however, to run in the Democratic primary for the ...
... appointed Senator Connally's thirty - nine - year - old son to another new seat — which made a total of four judgeships — in the Southern District.11 Houston was the largest city in the South by the 1950s , and the Houston In- dependent ...
Contents
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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 |