Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.CitesClass[0]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[1]

Details

Caselist.CitesClass[0]

EntryDate

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1		-2016-11-06 15:46:19.47
	1	+2016-11-06 15:46:19.0

Caselist.CitesClass[1]

Cites

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	1	+Court Clog DA
	2	+Link
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	4	+Qualified immunity reduces the number of cases there will be in the courts because attorneys will be deterred from taking the cases, interlocutory appeal is permitted at every stage, federal judges defer federal agents, the inability to attain attorney’s fees, and individual agents don’t pay indemnification fees.
	5	+Reinert ’10 - Reinert, Alexander A. "Does Qualified Immunity Matter." U. St. Thomas LJ 8 (2010): 477.
	6	+Nearly every respondent, regardless of the breadth of her experience, confirmed that concerns about the qualified immunity defense play a sub-stantial role at the screening stage.91 For some, qualified immunity was theprimary factor when evaluating a case for representation. Most of these re-spondents focused on the hostility to Bivens and other civil rights actions within our own circuits whgen explaining why qualified immunity was so significant a case-evaluation tool. For inctance, one advocate operating in the Fourth Circuit explained that the court’s approach forced him to take qualified immunity concerns into account at the outset of client screening. Similarly, a lawyer working in Illinois stated that because of the Seventh Circuit’s case law, he will not take a case if there is even the “slightest chance” the dismissal will be base on qualified immunity.∂ For those respondents who felt that qualified immunity was less signif-icant, the explanation often addressed other case-selection criteria. For in-stance, multiple respondents indicated that they only accepted the most egregious casa for representation, which made it unlikely that qualified immunity would play a role.94 While acceptance of egregious cases was not designed to avoid qualified immunity concerns, it had this incidental effect because it is unlikely that a defendant who committed an egregious viola-tion would also be protected by qualified immunity. For a few other respon-dents, qualified immunity did not play a role either because of self-professed hubris” or a unique mission. Respondents who worked at non-profit organizations or who had other law reform goals, for instance, ex-pressed concern about qualified immunity but stated that it was not disposi-tive because of their organization's mission.“∂ Only one respondent, with a small amount of experience litigating Biv-ens actions, the role of qualified immunity.” Instead, this re-spondent’s concerns about Riven: litigation had more to do with the “special factors” analysis than qualified immunity. Thus, my study suggests nearly overwhelming support for the proposition that qualified immunity considerations matter at the screening stage, and some attorneys consider them dispositive. 0n the substantive side, some respondents accounted for qualified immunity by not taking cases in which it could be raised, taking only the most egregious cases, or attempting to limit the impact of circuit precedent by litigating cases in state court (something that is a non-starter for Bivens claims).98∂ Qualified immunity also mattered to these attorneys on the procedural side. That is, the aspect of qualified immunity that permits interlocutory appeal at every stage of the proceeding, with stays of discovery routinely granted pending the resolution of a qualified immunity defense, also oper-ates as a substantial factor in case screening. Two respondents indepen-dently referred to the interlocutory appeal issue as a “killer,” because it slowa down the litigation.99 While an appeal is being resolved, evidence may become stale, witnesses may disappear, and a client may lose hope.100 For defendents in a case with political implications, the delays occasioned by the procedural aspect of qualified immunity may stretch litigation on so that it becomes the problem of a new administration.101∂ Finally, the attorneys offer some explanations regarding the relative scarcity of Bivens litigation and its perceived lack of success. Some respon-dents noted that one explanations for the difficulty bringing Bivens suits relates to the tendency of federal judges to defer to federal agents, particularly law enforcement agents.102 Others pointed to the related observation that federal agents are, as a matter of both perceptions and reality, more sophisti-cated, professional, and well-trained than their state counterparts.103 Finally, some respondents indicated that the inability to obtain attorneys’ fees for Bivens actions, as well as the formal position that the federal government takes regarding indemnification of individual employees, deters lawyers form bringing such claims. 104
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	8	+Qualified immunity is essential in preventing court clog.
	9	+Putnam ’92 - Charles T. Putnam Senior Assistant Attorney General, New Hampshire and Charles T. Ferris JD, Franklin Pierce Law Center, “Defending a Maligned Defense: The Policy Bases of the Qualified Immunity Defense in Actions Under 42 USC 1983,” Bridgeport Law Review, Vol. 12, 1992. MC
	10	+National resources are obviously scarce, yet increasing numbers of section 1983 actions are being filed in overburdened federal courts. Reducing the load of these cases on the court system is a third essential policy consideration. Some courts have questioned whether the abundance of section 1983 cases in fed-eral courts is an efficient use of judicial resources in light of the perception that many such actions are of questionable merit."6¶ The Supreme Court has thus encouraged the use of summary judgment where courts are faced with such cases. For instance, in Butz v. Economou,7 the Court held: Insubstantial lawsuits can be quickly terminated by federal courts alert to the possibilities of artful pleading. Unless the complaint states a compensable claim for relief under the Federal Constitution, it should not survive a motion to dismiss. Moreover, the Court recognized in Scheuer that damages suits concerning constitutional violations need not proceed to trial, but can be terminated on a properly supported motion for summary judgment based on the defense of immunity.... In responding to such a motion, plaintiffs may not play dog in the manger; and firm application of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure will ensure that federal officials are not harassed by frivolous lawsuits.18 The courts' use of summary judgment and other procedural devices is thus an important safety measure for both the courts and defendants facing suit.
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	12	+Impacts
	13	+T/ Makes Civil Litigation Harder
	14	+Court clog increases the cost of civil litigation and the amount of time it takes for civil cases to get to trial, which turns case.
	15	+Thanawala ’15 - Thanawala, Sudhin Legal affairs expert and reporter for US News and Associated Press “Overloaded federal courts lead to delays in civil, criminal cases as judges try to keep up,” US News, September 27, 2015. http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2015/09/27/wheels-of-justice-slow-at-overloaded-federal-courts. LG
	16	+Across the country, federal district courts have seen a rise in recent years in the time it takes to get civil cases to trial and resolve felony criminal cases as judges' workloads have increased, according to statistics from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.∂ The problem is particularly acute in some federal courts such as California's and Texas's Eastern Districts. Judges there have workloads about twice the national average and say they are struggling to keep up.∂ The result, the judges and attorneys say, is longer wait times in prison for defendants awaiting trial, higher costs for civil lawsuits and delays that can render those suits moot.∂ "I think it's fair to say that things are quite bad," said Matt Menendez, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law who has studied judicial caseloads.∂ Legal scholars say Congress needs to fill judicial vacancies more quickly but also increase the number of judges in some districts — both issues that get bogged down in partisan political fights over judicial nominees.∂ California's Eastern District, which covers a large swath of the state that includes Sacramento and Fresno, has had an unfilled judicial vacancy for nearly three years, and it has the same number of judicial positions — six — it had in 1978, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.∂ The Judicial Conference of the United States, the national policy-making body for the federal courts, has recommended Congress double the number of judicial positions in the district.∂ In the late 1990s, the median time for civil cases to go to trial in the district averaged 2 years and four months. From 2009 to 2014, that number jumped by more than a year. The median time to resolve criminal cases nearly doubled to an average of 13 months.∂ "You're never out from under it," said Morrison England, the court's chief judge. "You're constantly trying to do what you can to get these cases resolved, and we just can't do it."∂ The weighted caseload per judge has climbed from an average of nearly 600 in the late 1990s to over a 1,000.∂ The Eastern District of Texas has seen similar increases.
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	18	+Court clog decreases the quality of judgments, which turns case.
	19	+Oakley ’96 - Oakley, John B. “The Myth of Cost-Free Jurisdictional Reallocation.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 543, 1996, pp. 52–63. www.jstor.org/stable/1048447.
	20	+Personal effects: The hidden costs of greater workloads. The hallmark of federal justice traditionally has been the searching analysis and thought-ful opinion of a highly competent judge, endowed with the time as well as the intelligence to grasp and re-solve the most nuanced issues of fact and law. Swollen dockets create assembly-line conditions, which threaten the ability of the modern federal judge to meet this high standard of quality in federal adjudication. ∂ No one expects a federal judge to function without an adequate level of available tangible resources: suffi-cient courtroom and chambers space, competent administrative and re-search staff, a good library, and a comfortable salary that relieves the judge from personal financial pres-sure. Although salary levels have leased—encouraging judges to engage in the limited teaching and publica-tion activities that are the sole means of meeting such newly pressing fi- nancial obligations as the historically high mortgage expenses and college tuitions of the present decade—in the main, federal judges have received a generous allocation of tangible re- sources. It is unlikely that there is any further significant gain to be re-alized in the productivity of individ-ual federal judges through increased levels of tangible resources, other than by redressing the pressure to earn supplemental income. ∂ On a personal level, the most im-portant resource available to the federal judge is time.” Caseload pressures secondary to the indisr-criminate federalization of state law are stealing time from federal judges, shrinking the increments available for each case. Federal judges have been forced to compensate by operat-ing more like executives and less like judges. They cannot read their briefs as carefully as they would like, and they are driven to rely unduly on law clerks for research and writing that they would prefer to do themselves."∂ If federal judges need more time to hear and decide each case, an obvious and easy solution is to spread the work by the appointment of more and more federal judges. Congress has been generous in the recent creation of new judgeships," and enlargement of the federal judiciary is likely to continue to be the default response, albeit a more grudging one, to judi-cial concern over the caseload consequences of jurisdictional reallocation.∂ Systemic effects: The hidden costs of adding more judges. Increasing the size of the federal judiciary creates institutional strains that reduce and most ultimately rule out its contin-ued acceptability as a countermea-sure to caseload growth. While the dilution of workload through the ad-dition of judges is always incremen-tally attractive, in the long run it will cause the present system to collapse.

EntryDate

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	1	+2016-11-06 15:46:19.306

Judge

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	1	+Tim McHugh

Opponent

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	1	+Brentwood KM

ParentRound

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	1	+0

Round

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	1	+1

Team

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	1	+Marlborough Danielpour Real Neg

Title

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	1	+Court Clog DA

Tournament

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	1	+Damus