Administrative law judges (ALJ) (not administrative judges) are executive judges for official and unofficial hearings of administrative disputes in the Federal government. Because they only hear administrative law issues as designated in the...
lawsuit
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Autopsy, borrowed from the Greek autopsia, meaning “the act of seeing with one’s own eyes” means the detailed medical examination, and/or dissection of a dead body to determine the cause of death, or for any scientific and medical purpose....
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Baker v. Carr (1962) is the U.S. Supreme Court case that held that federal courts could hear cases alleging that a state’s drawing of electoral boundaries, i.e. redistricting, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment...
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A declaratory judgment is a binding judgment from a court defining the legal relationship between parties and their rights in a matter before the court. When there is uncertainty as to the legal obligations or rights between two parties, a...
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Justiciability refers to the types of matters that a court can adjudicate. If a case is "non-justiciable," then the court cannot hear it. Justiciability rulings usually arise either when a court does not have power to hear the case under the...
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Litigation is the process of resolving disputes by filing or answering a complaint through the public court system.
In federal courts, litigation is governed by a number of federal rules: the Federal Rules of Civil...
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A motion to dismiss is a formal request for a court to dismiss a case. The reasons for a dismissal vary greatly.
Settlement: Approximately 95% of civil cases reach settlements at some stage (can be before, after, or during...
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One-person, one-vote refers to the rule that one person’s voting power ought to be roughly equivalent to another person’s within the same state.
The rule comes up in the context of strategically drafting voting laws and...
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Pleading is one of the first stages of a lawsuit. In a pleading, the parties formally submit their claims and the defenses against the opposition’s claims. The parties can make specific pleas, such as a guilty plea or a not guilty plea....
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Polygamy is the practice of having more than one spouse at the same time. Polygamy as a crime originated in the common law, and it is now outlawed in every state. In the United States, polygamy was declared unlawful through the passing of...