Constitution Day Lecture – Written and Unwritten: The Rules, Internal Procedures and Customs of the United States Courts of Appeals

Judge Jon O. Newman and Professor Marin K. Levy will speak on their new book, Written and Unwritten: The Rules, Internal Procedures and Customs of the United States Courts of Appeals

 

Although the 13 United States Courts of Appeals are the final word on 99 percent of all federal cases, there is no detailed account of how these Courts operate. How do judges decide which decisions are binding precedents and which are not? Who decides whether appeals are argued orally? What administrative structures do these Courts have? The answers to these and hundreds of other questions are largely unknown, not only to lawyers and legal academics, but by many within the judiciary itself. Written and Unwritten is the first book to provide an inside look at how these Courts operate. An unprecedented contribution to the field of judicial administration, the book collects the differing local rules and internal procedures of each Court of Appeals. In-depth interviews of the Chief Judges of all 13 circuits and surveys of all Clerks of Court reveal previously undisclosed practices and customs.

 

Jon O. Newman is a United States Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He assumed senior status in 1997. At the time of his appointment in 1979, he was a United States District Court Judge for the District of Connecticut. Judge Newman was Chief Judge from 1993 to 1997.

 

Judge Newman received his B.A. degree from Princeton University in 1953, and his LL.B. degree from Yale Law School in 1956.

 

Judge Newman served in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1954 until 1962. Following his graduation from law school, he was a law clerk for Judge George T. Washington of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 1957 to 1958, he was senior law clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren of the United States Supreme Court. Judge Newman returned to Connecticut in 1958 to engage in private law practice in Hartford. In 1960, he was appointed Special Counsel to Governor Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut. The next year he became Executive Assistant to Mr. Ribicoff in the latter’s new position as U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. In 1963, after Secretary Ribicoff had been elected United States Senator from Connecticut, Judge Newman became his Administrative Assistant. From 1964 until 1969, Judge Newman was the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut. He returned to private law practice in Hartford in 1969, at which he remained until taking up service in 1971 as a United States District Court Judge for the District of Connecticut.

 

Marin K. Levy is a Professor of Law at Duke University Law School. Her principal academic interests include judicial administration, civil procedure, remedies, and federal courts. Her work has been published in the Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Cornell Law Review, and California Law Review, among other scholarly journals, and has been discussed in The New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, and other public outlets. Levy is also a co-author of Federal Standards of Review: Appellate Court Review of District Court Decisions and Agency Actions (2nd ed.) with Judge Harry T. Edwards and Linda A. Elliott, and Written and Unwritten: The Rules, Practices, and Internal Operations of the United States Courts of Appeals, with Judge Jon O. Newman (in progress).

 

Levy joined the Duke Law faculty in 2009, and received the law school’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2017. She currently serves as the Director of Duke’s Program in Public Law, and is the Faculty Director of the Bolch Judicial Institute. Levy is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and has testified before Congress and the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.

 

Prior to coming to Duke, Levy served as a law clerk to Judge José A. Cabranes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and was an associate at Jenner & Block LLP in Washington, D.C. She received her J.D. in 2007 from Yale Law School, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law & Policy Review. She is a 2004 graduate of the University of Cambridge, where she earned an M. Phil in the History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine. Levy received a B.A. in Ethics, Politics, and Economics and in English from Yale College in 2003, graduating cum laude with distinction in both majors.