The SEC’s recent—and controversial—choice to make more frequent use of internal enforcement actions has raised several questions. Some have asked whether the SEC has attempted to advantage itself by prosecuting in-house; others have asked whether the SEC’s internal enforcement scheme is unconstitutional. This Note asks a largely overlooked threshold question: Do—and just as importantly, should—federal district courts have parallel...
Federal Courts
The All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651, authorizes federal courts to “issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.” The Act has applications in a variety of contexts, including law enforcement investigations, the detention of military prisoners, and the management of complex multidistrict litigation. Another important but less studied area is the Act’s use...
One of the most dramatic exercises of a court’s equitable authority is the nationwide injunction. Although this phenomenon has become more prominent in recent years, it is a routine fixture of the jurisprudence of federal courts. Despite the frequency with which these cases arise, there has been no systematic scholarly or judicial analysis of when courts issue nationwide injunctions and little discussion of when they should issue such relief. States abdicate many of their federal responsibilities to local governments. They do not monitor local compliance with those laws, they disclaim responsibility for the actions of their local governments, and they deny state officials the legal capacity to bring local governments into compliance. When sued for noncompliance with these federal laws, states attempt to evade responsibility by arguing that local governments—and not the state—are... This Note examines the impact of Stern v. Marshall—the Supreme Court’s recent decision on the authority of bankruptcy judges—on United States magistrate judges, with a particular focus on two exercises of magistrate judge authority that have been called into question by circuit courts post-Stern. The Note argues that institutional differences between magistrate judges and bankruptcy judges should lead circuit courts to be... The Mandatory Victims Restitution Act requires restitution for federal crimes involving property. In particular, the defendant is required to return any property taken, or, if return is impossible, to pay for the victim’s loss, which may be offset by a partial return of the property. In mortgage fraud cases, this usually entails calculating the lender’s loss—an unpaid loan—and offsetting that loss by the value of the collateral for... In 2011, the federal district courts began a pilot program to record and post full-length videos from selected civil proceedings. The program was deliberately structured to preserve the quality and integrity of ongoing adjudication. Three-and-a-half years in, the program has revealed an equally important, and unanticipated, benefit: improving the quality and integrity of future adjudication. This Essay describes this second benefit... How does making law through private lawsuits differ from making law by other means? That question is especially important where legislators deputize “private attorneys general” as statutory enforcers, from antitrust and securities to civil rights and consumer protection. Yet legal scholars have not offered sustained theoretical or empirical analysis of how private... In a recent case, the Eighth Circuit, following the lead of other courts interpreting Minnesota law, hinted that a plaintiff may not be able to pursue an unjust-enrichment claim if a statutory cause of action is available. It did so by calling unjust enrichment an equitable remedy and invoking the “irreparable injury rule,” which states that a plaintiff may not... Law has been trapped in a stylistic straitjacket. The Internet has revolutionized media and communications, replacing text with a dizzying array of multimedia graphics and images. Facebook hosts more than 150 billion photos. Courts spend millions on trial technology. But those innovations have barely trickled into the black-and-white world of written law. Legal treatises...