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When mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions by responsible countries is insufficient to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”, 22 countries are forced to undertake disaster risk reduction and adaptation measures to prevent permanent loss and damage. There are, however, limits to how far disaster risk reduction and adaptation can reduce loss and damage. In the case of disaster risk reduction, some types of disasters will increase in frequency and severity (see Box 1 on the latest intergovernmental panel on climate Change (IPCC) findings regarding extreme events), overwhelming both risk reduction measures and generally the ability of most developing countries to cope with the impacts of those disasters. Moreover, loss and damage from extreme events extend beyond immediate losses of property and life. In St. Lucia, damage from hurricane Tomas was estimated at about 34% of total gdp. 23 Such devastating impact has a serious effect on long-term prospects for sustainable development. 24 Adaptation to 2°C of warming will be more difficult than for 1.5° c . Adapting to 4° c or 6° c of warming may be impossible. Moreover, given the changing nature of the global climate, adaptation will always be insufficient, requiring a continuous learning process towards a constantly moving boundary. The greater the warming, the more loss and damage that can be anticipated from the adverse effects of climate change. Similarly, the less support for adaptation in terms of finance, technology and capacity, the more loss and damage will result. A country’s level of development will also affect how its population experiences loss and damage, as poverty and related socio-economic and infrastructure weaknesses exacerbate the impacts and adverse effects of climate change. But a country’s lack of development or status of development is not an excuse for inaction by the global community to help them respond to severe climate loss and damage. There are very real limits to how far human systems and ecosystems can adapt to most of the slow-onset processes identified in UNFCCC decision 1/CP.16. This is true particularly for rises in temperature and sea levels, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, salinization and desertification. Because such processes progress and increase their impact over time – and often at large scale, adaptation gradually becomes less possible. As temperatures and sea levels rise, territory will become uninhabitable and unproductive. soil moisture levels will decrease to the point that cultivation of crops is no longer viable in entire regions. Groundwater sources in coastal areas will become too saline to be used as drinking water. Adaptation will become impossible on low-lying islands, in settlements close to sea level, and in the most arid regions. This will lead to permanent loss of lands, livelihoods and cultural resources. 26 Permanent loss and damage from slow-onset disasters will go far beyond economic loss – livelihoods will be lost, territory will have to be abandoned, and migrants from non-productive lands will lose their homes, culture and community. 

Thus, even as the court ‘reluctantly’ concludes that the fact that ‘the other branches may have abdicated their responsibility to remediate the problem does not confer on Article III courts [the type of US court involved in this case], no matter how well-intentioned, the ability to step into their shoes’,60 the opinion underscores the courts’ deep intuition that political inaction is untenable. Moreover, in a powerful dissent, Judge Staton decried political inaction and declared that the plaintiffs’ suit was necessary ‘to enforce the most basic structural principle embedded in our system of ordered liberty: that the Constitution does not condone the Nation’s willful destruction’. 61 Analogizing the court’s delay in stepping in to recognize fundamental rights in the climate context to the failures of the court to step in earlier than it did with respect to desegregation, Judge Staton states that:To be sure, unless there is a constitutional violation, courts should allow the democratic and political processes to perform their functions. And while all would now readily agree that the 91 years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the decision in Brown v. Board was too long, determining when a court must step in to protect fundamental rights is not an exact science. In this case, my colleagues say that time is ‘never’; I say it is now.62 The persistent failure of the state to address climate change threatens fundamental rights and derails the democratic and political processes. Judicial intervention is necessary to realign state responsibilities with fundamental rights. This is the role of the courts, and this is a core objective of climate litigation. Recognizing this relationship, and the role of the courts in safeguarding the fundamental rights of the people, is essential to upholding the rule of law and securing the wellbeing of the citizenry.

The state of patent law in America is this: You might as well appeal because if you get lucky and draw the right panel you will win. And like it or not, that is precisely what our patent justice system has become under the Federal Circuit. A crapshoot. And we all know it to be true.

The current state of utter disarray at the Federal Circuit, with panels doing whatever they want, judges not agreeing on anything, and ignoring en banc decisions as if they never happened isn’t what the Federal Circuit is meant to have become. The Federal Circuit is a disaster and the collective unwillingness of the judges to come together is making a mockery of an institution that is a critical piece in the U.S. innovation system. Indeed, the fact that the Federal Circuit is absent and unwilling to provide predictability and certainty, which literally was their only job, is why so many people are turning to Congress to solve the problems of the patent system.

The total number of climate change court cases has more than doubled since 2017 and is growing worldwide. These findings, published today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, show that climate litigation is becoming an integral part of securing climate action and justice. The report, Global Climate Litigation Report: 2023 Status Review, is based on a review of cases focused on climate change law, policy or science collected up to 31 December 2022 by the Sabin Center’s US and Global Climate Change Litigation Databases. It is published a day ahead of the first anniversary of the UN General Assembly’s declaration of access to a clean and healthy environment as a universal human right. “Climate policies are far behind what is needed to keep global temperatures below the 1.5°C threshold, with extreme weather events and searing heat already baking our planet,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “People are increasingly turning to courts to combat the climate crisis, holding governments and the private sector accountable and making litigation a key mechanism for securing climate action and promoting climate justice.” The report provides an overview of key climate litigation cases from the past two years, including historic breakthroughs (see selected cases below). As climate litigation increases in frequency and volume, the body of legal precedent grows, forming an increasingly well-defined field of law. The total number of climate change cases has more than doubled since a first report on the issue, from 884 in 2017 to 2,180 in 2022. While most cases have been brought in the US, climate litigation is taking root all over the world, with about 17 per cent of cases now being reported in developing countries, including Small Island Developing States. These legal actions were brought in 65 bodies worldwide: in international, regional, and national courts, tribunals, quasi-judicial bodies, and other adjudicatory bodies, including special procedures of the UN and arbitration tribunals. "There is a distressingly growing gap between the level of greenhouse gas reductions the world needs to achieve in order to meet its temperature targets, and the actions that governments are actually taking to lower emissions. This inevitably will lead more people to resort to the courts. This report will be an invaluable resource for everyone who wants to achieve the best possible outcome in judicial forums, and to understand what is and is not possible there,” said Michael Gerrard, Sabin Center’s Faculty Director.

The culprit, therefore, is the personal injury and death actions that of necessity increase in our expanding mechanized society, and of these cases, a small number retard the even flow of the whole but, merely to accelerate the trial of the more serious cases as recommended by some courts, would not remedy the sluggishness of case flow and would at the same time cause an injustice to the smaller cases. All cases, large and small, are entitled to expeditious disposition. A fairer and more effective solution must be found, as the victims of the vast majority of tortious acts are the viable and vociferous majority, causing disrespect for our judicial system.

In his most exhaustive study of the sluggishness of case-flow, Professor H. Zeisel of the University of Chicago has observed:

There is an intimate and neglected relationship between existential risk and democracy. Democracy must be central to efforts to prevent and mitigate catastrophic risks. It is also an antidote to many of the problems manifest in the TUA. Do those who study the future of humanity have good grounds to ignore the visions, desires, and values of the very people whose future they are trying to protect? Choosing which risks to take must be a democratic endeavour. We understand democracy here in accordance with Landemore as the rule of the cognitively diverse many who are entitled to equal decision-making power and partake in a democratic procedure that includes both a deliberative element and one of preference aggregation (such as majority voting)45,115. Decision-making procedures are not either democratic or non- democratic, but instead lie on a spectrum. They can be more or less democratic, inclusive, and diverse. We posit three reasons for why we should democratise research and decision-making in existential risk: the nature of collective decision-making about human futures, the superiority of democratic reason, and democratic fail-safe mechanisms. Avoiding human extinction, or crafting a desirable long-term future, is a communal project. Scholars of existential risk who take an interest in the future of Homo sapiens are choosing to consider the species in its entirety. If certain views are excluded, the arguments for doing so must be compelling. Democracy will improve our judgments in both the governance and the study of existential risks. Asking how our actions today influence the long-term future is one of the most difficult intellectual tasks to unravel, and if there is a right path, democratic procedures will have the best shot at finding it. Hong and Page116,117 demonstrate both theoretically and computationally that a diverse group of problem-solving agents will show greater accuracy than a less diverse group, even if the individual members of the diverse group were each less accurate. Accuracy gains from diversity trump gains from improving individual accuracy. Landemore115, builds on this work to advance a probabilistic argument that inclusive democracies will, in expectation, make epistemically superior choices to oligarchies or even the wise few. This is supported by promising results in inclusive, deliberative democratic experiments from around the world 118. In the long run, democracies should commit fewer mistakes than alternative decision-making procedures. If this is true, it should improve the accuracy of research efforts and decision-making. We are more likely to make accurate predictions about the mechanisms of extinction, probable futures, and risk prevention if the field invites cognitive diversity, builds flat institutional structures, and avoids conflicts of interest. Thereare many ways to consider the interests of the many. Democratic assemblies could allow global citizens to deliberate about the futures they prefer, citizens could be surveyed, and the field of ERS itself could be diversified. At the moment, the field is, as many academic disciplines are, unrepresentative of humanity at large and variably homogenous in respect to income, class, ideology, age, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, and professional background. The latter issue is particularly true of existential risk, which, despite being an inherently interdisciplinary endeavour, is at the highest levels dominated by analytic moral philosophers. We need to be vigilant to what perspectives are not represented in the study of existential risk. An awareness of bias will go some way towards mitigating its negative effects. To get close to replicating the cognitive diversity found among humans, we must begin by inviting different thinkers with different values and beliefs into the field. Democracies can limit harms. Any approach to mitigating existential threats could create response risks, and the TUA seems particularly vulnerable to this. Despite good intentions and curiosity-driven research, it could justify violence, dangerous technological developments, or drastically constrain freedom in favour of (perceived) security. If we hope to explore ideas but minimise harms, democracies can be used to moderate the measures taken in response to harmful ideas. It seems, for example, vanishingly unlikely that a diverse group of thinkers or even ordinary citizens would entertain the idea of sacrificing 1 billion living, breathing beings for an infinitesimal improvement in reaching an intergalactic techno-utopia. In contrast, the TUA could recommend this trade-off. The democratic constraint of extreme measures may simply be a form of collective selfinterest. Voters are unlikely to tolerate global catastrophic risks (GCRs), which incur the death of a sizeable portion of the electorate, if they know they themselves could be affected. We expect that scholars who do not support sacrificing current lives in the name of abstract calculations, but would still like to explore the use of expected value theory in existential risk, will be in support of democratic fail-safe mechanisms. Empirically, this fail-safe mechanism seems to work. Even deeply imperfect democracies, like the ones we inhabit now, often avert detrimental outcomes. Democracies prevent famines 119 (although not malnutrition)120. They make war — a significant driver of GCRs — less likely 121. The inclusion of diverse preferences in democracies, such as those achieved through women’s suffrage, further decreases the likelihood of violent conflict 122. Citizens often show a significant risk aversion in comparison to their government. While surveys are notoriously difficult to collect and interpret, existing data suggest that the public has little support for nuclear weapons use 123–125, but strong support for action against climate catastrophe 126–128. We can further show that when citizens deliberately engage with the subject at hand, their concern and readiness for action often increases 118. For example, citizen assemblies on climate change have recommended widespread policy-changes across sectors, amendments to incentive structures and laws against ecocide to reach emissions targets 129. Indeed, many lament that when it comes to genetically modified organisms and nuclear power, citizens are far too riskaverse130 . The problem is not that the public is riddled with cognitive biases that make them unconcerned about global catastrophes. Democratic debate cannot be an afterthought. Navigating humanity through crises will involve many value-laden decisions under deep uncertainty. Democratic procedures can deal with such hard choices. Greater cognitive diversity should be represented amongst scholars of ERS. Recommendations on policies that would reduce risk should be passed through deliberative assemblies and await the approval of a wider pool of ordinary citizens, as they will be the ones who will bear this risk. A homogenous group of experts attempting to directly influence powerful decision-makers is not a fair or safe way of traversing the precipice.

Needless to say, threats to American interests still exist. They include international terrorism; economic competition that could produce dangerous regional trade blocs and trade wars; environmental degradation reaching crisis proportions; the proliferation of weapons, both conventional and nuclear; and ethnic and national conflicts that could lead to war. These threats and others may not be easy to encapsulate in the public’s mind, but any one of them could affect, fundamentally, our way of life—what Tom Friedman would call “our flat world.”1 And together they constitute ample reason for an engaged America in the international arena. The answer to today’s threats is not to win a metaphorical war against a single adversary. The answer lies in creating an overall environment in which international cooperation is emphasized, and in which conflict can be managed and terrorism effectively confronted militarily, economically, and politically. In this context, foreign assistance is not only a charitable endeavor, but also an exercise in enlightened self-interest and the promotion of democracy—not some idealistic crusade, but rather quintessentially an exercise in realpolitik. Nothing better serves the interests of this country— economic, political, or ideological—than the promotion of democratic practices and institutions. A more democratic world is not simply a more orderly and humane place: It is a more peaceful and prosperous place. The notion that there should be a dichotomy between our moral preferences and our strategic goals is a false one. Our ultimate foreign policy goal is a world that is secure, stable, humane, and safe, where the risk of war is minimal. Yet, the undeniable reality is that the geostrategic hotspots most likely to erupt into violence are found, for the most part, in areas of the world that are nondemocratic, or where governments are antidemocratic. Even from the traditional foreign assistance perspective, the establishment of democratic institutions has been found to assure sustainable development. Deforestation, rural dislocation, environmental degradation, and agricultural policies that lead to famine all trace to political systems in which the victims have no political voice; in which government institutions feel no obligation to answer to the people; and in which special interests feel free to exploit the resources, land, and people without fear of oversight or the need to account. Terrorism and political extremism pose an immediate security threat that must be confronted directly and forcefully. Concurrently, there must be a new urgency in the promotion of the rule of law, pluralism, and the respect for human rights. Democracy and human rights are not only ideals to be pursued by all nations; they are also pragmatic tools that are powerful weapons against extremism.

The suspect in Barrett's death eventually turned himself in to authorities and is charged with second-degree murder and vehicular manslaughter. But nearly five years later, no evidence has been presented to a jury. The trial has been postponed 20 times. Jim and Colette Grabow with a photo of their son, Barrett Jim and Colette Grabow have been waiting nearly five years for the trial of the man accused of killing their son, Barrett, in a hit-and-run in San Jose, California. "This is absolutely a crisis," said Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, who is prosecuting the Grabow case. "There's not accountability in our court system because cases are not moving, and we need to break through this kind of thinking and have an all-hands-on deck approach." Criminal attorneys and political leaders blame this delay, and others, on courts backlogs they say have paralyzed the pursuit of justice. "The same sense of urgency that we have around COVID we need to have around this judicial emergency," Rosen said. It's not just crime victims and their families who are coping with the impact of the backlog. Sarina Borg was arrested in May 2020, accused of aiding and abetting a murder. She tells CBS News she spent two-and-a-half years in a San Francisco city jail cell, waiting for her case to be presented in court. When she finally appeared before a judge on November 7, 2022, the case was dismissed because of a lack of evidence. "I felt like I was going to die in there," said Borg. "I felt like I was never going to come home." "We knew if we could just get into a trial courtroom the truth would come out, the facts would come out," said San Francisco Assistant Public Defender Alexandra Pray, who represented Borg. "We were just consistently denied the opportunity to prove her innocence. “San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju says the struggle to catch up with cases that were postponed during the pandemic is only part of the problem. He says courts around the country are also coping with staffing shortages and the lack of adequate space to hold trials. Raju urges court administrators — including judges — to take emergency action. "Bring in retired judges, bring in whoever you can," said Raju. "Other spaces need to be made available. We'll use gymnasiums, we'll use tennis courts!" Raju sued San Francisco Superior Court in September 2021, claiming the court had violated the rights of hundreds of people by failing to hold jury trials within 60 days as required by law. In May 2022, an appeals court declined to issue an order forcing the San Francisco Superior Court to eliminate its backlog. CBS News contacted the California Judicial Council, the policymaking body of the California courts, for comment on the ongoing backlog. The Council declined an interview request, but a spokesperson wrote to CBS news in an email: "How courts process their cases is a local operational decision/issue that is outside the control of the Judicial Council. Addressing backlogs must happen in collaboration with local justice system partners, including district attorneys, public defenders, and local law enforcement." "We're doing the best we can," said Dallas County, Texas, Superior Court Judge Stephanie Huff, whose jurisdiction is also struggling with a major case backlog. "The judiciary is an important part of the criminal justice system, but it's one part," said Huff. "You've got labs that are backlogged at this point. You've got the district attorney's office that is backlogged in trying to get these cases presented to a grand jury and trying to get their cases in order for trial. The defense bar has a load of cases that they're trying to deal with, and we're still in the middle of people contracting COVID and not being able to appear in court." Having a multitude of court stakeholders, with no main overseeing body or authority to resolve systemwide backlogs, is an issue in other locations, including New York. "We have an emergency," New York Governor Kathy Hochul told CBS News. "This is an indictment on all of us as a society. The wheels of justice have spun to a halt." Hochul has introduced a two-year plan to increase the resolution rate for criminal cases throughout New York State. "I said, 'Get the district attorneys, get the judges, get the court personnel, put them in a room and [ask them to] put together a plan and we'll execute it,'" the governor said. "I'm judging their success. How many cases will these judges dispose of in the next six months? I'm watching." With Hochul's guidance, the New York Office of Court Administration is working with the Center for Court Innovation, a national nonprofit based in New York City that succeeded in reducing felony case backlogs during a 6-month pilot project in Brooklyn Superior Court in 2019. That project set three goals to improve case processing: instituting formal timelines for court case milestones, establishing target adjournment lengths, and mandating case conferences between defense attorneys and prosecutors to improve communications. The pilot project produced an 11% increase in the number of cases resolved within the state's 6-month time standard. "What you have to do is bring all the players together and work it out and figure out what we can do," said Courtney Bryan, director of the Center for Court Innovation. "At the end of [the pilot project], nobody loved every part of the plan, but everybody agreed that overall this was in their agency's best interest, this was in their client's best interest to pursue it.” Governor Hochul says addressing the backlog is not just a matter of efficiency and fairness, but of public safety. "It's stunning," Hochul said, noting that more than 8,000 people convicted of crimes in New York City were awaiting sentencing in October. "That's frightening to think about," said Hochul. "It's now a crisis on steroids."

Personal effects: The hidden costs greater workloads. The hallmark of federal justice traditionally has been the searching analysis and thoughtful opinion of a highly competent judge, endowed with the time as well as the intelligence to grasp and resolve 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: sufficient courtroom and chambers space, competent administrative and research staff, a good library, and a comfortable salary that relieves the judge from personal financial pressure. Although salary levels have lagged--encouraging judges to engage in the limited teaching and publication activities that are their sole means of meeting such newly pressing financial 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 resources. It is unlikely that there is any further significant gain to be realized in the productivity of individual federal judges through increased levels of tangible resources,13 other than by redressing the pressure to earn supplemental income.1 On a personal level, the most important resource available to the federal judge is time."5 Caseload pressures secondary to the indiscriminate 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 operating 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.16 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,17 and enlargement of the federal judiciary is likely to continue to be the default response, albeit a more grudging one, to judicial 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 must ultimately rule out its continued acceptability as a countermeasure to caseload growth. While the dilution of workload through the addition of judges is always incrementally attractive, in the long run it will cause the present system to collapse. I am not persuaded by arguments that the problem lies in the declining quality of the pool of lawyers willing to assume the federal bench18 or in the greater risk that, as the ranks of federal judges expand, there will be more frequent lapses of judgment by the president and the Senate in seating the mediocre on the federal bench.19 In my view, the diminished desirability of federal judicial office is more than offset by the rampant dissatisfaction of modern lawyers with the excessive commercialization of the practice of law. There is no shortage of sound judicial prospects willing and able to serve, and no sign that the selection process-never the perfect meritocracy-is becoming less effective in screening out the unfit or undistinguished. Far more serious are other institutional effects of continuously compounding the number of federal judges. Collegiality among judges, consistency of decision, and coherence of doctrine across courts are all imperiled by the growth of federal courts to cattle-car proportions. Yet the ability of the system to tolerate proliferation of courts proportional to the proliferation of judges is limited, and while collapse is not imminent, it cannot be postponed indefinitely. Congress could restructure the federal trial and appellate courts without imperiling the core functions, but the limiting factor is the capacity of the Supreme Court to maintain overall uniformity in the administration and application of federal law. That Court is not only the crown but the crowning jewel of a 200-year-old system of the rule of law within a constitutional democracy, and any tinkering with its size or jurisdiction would raise the most serious questions of the future course of the nation.

Demonstrators gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013, as the court heard arguments on campaign finance. (AP/Susan Walsh)Demonstrators gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013, as the court heard arguments on campaign finance. (AP/Susan Walsh) Introduction No matter the issue—whether it’s marriage equality, voting rights, health care, or immigration—the U.S. federal courts play a vital role in the lives of all Americans. There are two types of courts: state and federal. The federal courts are those established to decide disagreements that concern the Constitution, congressional legislation, and certain state-based disputes. Although most Americans are familiar with the lifetime appointment of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, many are surprised to learn that more than 900 judges have lifetime appointments to serve on lower federal courts, where they hear many more cases than their counterparts on the Supreme Court. Each year, the Supreme Court reviews around 100 of the most significant cases out of the nearly 30 million cases resolved by state and federal courts. These courts hear the majority of cases and, most of the time, they have the final say. That is why, along with the Supreme Court’s justices, the judges who sit on the nation’s federal district and circuit courts are so important. WhyCourtsMatter_webfig1 At any given time, there are vacancies on U.S. federal courts that need to be filled. If they are not filled, federal caseloads get backlogged, and as a result, Americans’ access to justice is limited. As of March 9, 2015, there were 50 current vacancies on U.S. federal courts. These seats have been vacant for a total of 22,222 days, resulting in a backlog of 29,892 cases. The Administrative Office of the United States Courts has designated 23 of these pending vacancies as judicial emergencies, meaning that filling them is a critical task. As the Center for American Progress has noted, “in practical terms,” these are the judicial districts “where judges are overworked and where justice is being significantly delayed for the American public.” The Constitution dictates that the president appoints federal judges while the Senate advises and consents on these appointments. The result is a delicate balance between the desires of the White House, deference to home-state senators, and the power of the party that controls the Senate. WhyCourtsMatter_webfig2 Recently, politics has played a big role in the pace at which judicial nominees are confirmed. In an attempt to slow President Barack Obama’s effect on the federal courts, Senate Republicans have obstructed the president’s judicial nominees at unprecedented levels by attempting to prevent or delay a vote through filibustering a record number of nominees and making them await confirmation for long periods of time. WhyCourtsMatter_webfig3 The reason many Senate Republicans have played politics with President Obama’s judicial nominees is because they know the dramatic impact the judiciary can have on policies, including marriage equality and reproductive choice. The fewer judges that President Obama appoints to fill federal judicial vacancies, the greater leverage the next president will have in deciding the make-up of these courts. Yet in the face of unprecedented obstruction, President Obama has made great strides to fill vacancies and to ensure that federal judges meaningfully reflect the dynamic diversity of the nation. A diverse federal bench improves the quality of justice and instills confidence that judges understand the real-world implications of their decisions. Americans have different backgrounds, as well as an assorted set of professional, educational, and life experiences. It is important that the federal courts reflect the diversity of the public they serve. As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor once wrote, “The dynamism of any diverse community depends not only on the diversity itself but on promoting a sense of belonging among those who formerly would have been considered and felt themselves outsiders.” Furthermore, scholars have found that judges often change their minds during the deliberative process. In one study, researchers concluded that having a woman on the panel affected “elements of both deliberation and bargaining—alternative perspectives, persuasive argument, and horse trading.” Not only do the federal courts play a vital role in preserving democracy, but who sits on the courts has an effect too. This issue brief examines the ways in which our federal courts influence important policy issues and illustrates how judges’ decisions are often aligned with the legal philosophy of the presidents who appoint them. This fact drives home one of the reasons why courts matter: The decisions of federal judges have repercussions on people’s lives. Through its review of how the federal courts affect three specific policy issues—gun violence, money in politics, and voting rights—this issue brief shines a light on how important the federal courts are for the progressive community. Federal courts affect the issues that progressives care about Gun violence Gun violence has become all too familiar in America. However, research shows that reasonable gun control efforts decrease its occurrence. In particular, the Center for American Progress has determined that there is “a clear link between high levels of gun violence and weak state gun laws,” and that “the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have an aggregate level of gun violence that is more than twice as high—104 percent higher, in fact—than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.”In short, evidence shows that with more guns, there are more gun deaths. U.S. federal courts play a significant role in determining whether states can impose reasonable gun regulations. For 70 years, the Supreme Court never took a case that dealt with the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. But in 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents changed course, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm unconnected with militia service. Four justices appointed to the Court by Democratic presidents disagreed. Less than one day after the decision, gun rights activists began to flood courts with lawsuits that challenged any and all gun regulations. According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, since the Heller decision, federal and state courts have issued more than 700 decisions on Second Amendment challenges. WhyCourtsMatter_webfig4 In many of these cases, judges appointed by Republican presidents have struck down gun regulations, while judges appointed by Democratic presidents have interpreted the Supreme Court’s decision less broadly and upheld them. For example, there is an ongoing debate over the states’ right to impose regulations on applicants for concealed-carry permits. Prior to Heller, many states required a permit applicant to show “good cause” or a “justifiable need” to carry a gun in public. After reviewing these common-sense laws, panels of the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 7th and 9th Circuit struck them down. In Peruta v. County of San Diego, two judges appointed by Republican presidents struck down California’s requirement that concealed-carry permit applicants show “good cause” before carrying guns in public, with the majority interpreting the Second Amendment in an expansive manner. This prompted Judge Sidney Thomas, who was appointed by a Democratic president, to author a vigorous dissent: This case involves California’s “presumptively lawful” and longstanding restrictions on carrying concealed weapons in public and, more specifically, an even narrower question: the constitutionality of San Diego County’s policy of allowing persons who show good cause to carry concealed firearms in public. When we examine the justification provided for the policy, coupled with Heller‘s direction, our conclusion must be that the County’s policy is constitutional. Unfortunately, the majority never answers the question posed. Instead, in a sweeping decision that unnecessarily decides questions not presented, the majority not only strikes down San Diego County’s concealed carry policy, but upends the entire California firearm regulatory scheme. The majority opinion conflicts with Heller, the reasoned decisions of other Circuits, and our own case law. Therefore, I must respectfully dissent. As Judge Thomas noted, other courts have upheld state laws that promote public safety. Judges on the Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Circuit have found that laws requiring permit applicants to show “good cause” do not interfere with the Second Amendment and instead promote balancing gun use with safety. In each of the decisions, judges appointed by Democratic presidents upheld longstanding permit regulations that are utilized by states across the country. The Heller decision emboldened gun rights groups. One particular organization, the Second Amendment Foundation, or SAF, has adopted a legal strategy of “swinging for the fences and often making very broad constitutional arguments.”[xxiv] Alan Gottlieb, the SAF’s founder, has said, “Our feeling is strike while the iron is hot … [t]hen weave [the case law] into a spider web that’s strong enough so our opponents can’t get through it.” Money in politics America’s representative democracy rests on the notion that elected officials are responsive to the people who elect them. Currently, however, political campaigns and elections are dominated by large amounts of money from individuals, corporations, and special interests that politicians rely on to run for office. During the 2014 election cycle, mega-donors dominated spending, with the top 100 campaign donors pouring in nearly enough money to match some 4.75 million small donors combined.[xxvi] The Center for Responsive Politics found that “just 666,773 individuals had donated more than $200 to campaigns, parties and political action committees in the 2014 election cycle.” This means that only 0.2 percent of the population financed the midterm elections. This is concerning because, as a recent study detailed, “the preferences of economic elites … have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do.” New research makes clear that members of Congress are more likely to meet with a constituent if they say they are a campaign donor. As Adam Lioz wrote in The American Prospect, “[T]he wealthy prefer policies that make them even richer … and government responds almost exclusively to their preferences. He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Why has the United States seen such an expansion of special interest money in its electoral system? One does not have to look much further than the federal courts. In a series of high-profile decisions, the Supreme Court has turned campaign finance law upside down. In a 1976 case known as Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court determined that spending money for political campaign purposes was a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. This money-is-speech rationale was used to strike down portions of the campaign finance reforms that followed the Watergate scandal. It has also been used to open the floodgates for more money in politics. In the now infamous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, five justices appointed by Republican presidents held that, although entities such as corporations could not contribute directly to individual political campaigns, they could contribute unlimited amounts of money to independent political action committees, or PACs. This decision caused an “explosion of political money,” epitomized by the continued growth of super PACs—independent entities that can raise unlimited amounts of money from corporations, unions, and individuals but are prohibited from coordinating with a political candidate’s campaign. This ruling prompted an impassioned dissent by Justice John Paul Stevens and three justices appointed by Democratic presidents. They lamented that, “While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.” The Supreme Court continued to loosen restrictions on campaign funding in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, in which the same five justices appointed by Republican presidents struck down the aggregate campaign contribution limits, which restricted how much money a donor could contribute to all candidates for federal office combined.

Equal access to justice is a pillar of our justice system and a core American value. In fact, it has been fundamental to our self-understanding since even before we were a nation. It informs the principle of righteousness in the Iroquois Confederacy’s Great Law of Peace: “Each individual must have a strong sense of justice, must treat people as equals and must enjoy equal protection under the Great Law.”

It is embodied in one of the chief principles of the Mayflower Compact drawn up in 1620 by the Pilgrims, calling for “just and equal laws.”

The culprit, therefore, is the personal injury and death actions that of necessity increase in our expanding mechanized society, and of these cases, a small number retard the even flow of the whole but, merely to accelerate the trial of the more serious cases as recommended by some courts, would not remedy the sluggishness of case flow and would at the same time cause an injustice to the smaller cases. All cases, large and small, are entitled to expeditious disposition. A fairer and more effective solution must be found, as the victims of the vast majority of tortious acts are the viable and vociferous majority, causing disrespect for our judicial system.

In his most exhaustive study of the sluggishness of case-flow, Professor H. Zeisel of the University of Chicago has observed:

Leading American financial analyst Warren Pollock has warned that the US will slip into the biggest ever financial depression in the history of the world. Not stopping there, the veteran also cautioned that the lingering economic turbulence in China and US will eventually trigger a war, which will be like "resetting the old order.” Pollock notes that a climate of war is already in the offing and the world is getting ready for war. In his analysis, he brought to the fore many geo political variables to explain the current strains in the political economy of the world. They included China, Russia and the US Fed, among others. However, Pollock is optimistic that gold will survive all vagaries of depression or war, reports USA Watchdog.

“I wouldn’t sell my gold for anything because it’s going to survive through this crisis. It’s going to survive through deflation. It’s going to survive through hyperinflation. Gold is going to survive through war, assuming that you do,” Pollock said. Economy and war Pollock said the global economy is the key to the timing of war and argued that the world economy is in a tailspin. "War starts when China’s economy implodes. . . . The economy in China is coming to a halt. It’s in deflation. It’s in a depression. All the capital that has been pouring into China has been misallocated. It’s similar to the 1920’s in the United States. The onset of the boom-time and the follow-on depression. . . . People in China want to get out of China. They want their assets out of China. . . They see this is going to be a full-blown deflation where debt is going to go bad. People’s commitments are not going to be honored, and they might try to delay . . . bide for time and try the old formula first," Pollock said. Message to China Pollock sees signs of war manifest everywhere, including the recent US missile launch off the coast of California which is a message to China.

Search Centres Publications Events Forum Agenda Intelligence Videos Podcasts About us UpLink GEO-ECONOMICS AND POLITICS The next economic crisis could cause a global conflict. Here's why Nov 13, 2018 This article is published in collaboration with Project Syndicate. Final numbers for the Dow Jones industrial average are displayed after the close of trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in Manhattan in New York, U.S., October 11, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid? - RC110DE21200 The 2008-09 global financial crisis almost bankrupted governments. Image: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Qian Liu Managing Director, Greater China, The Economist Group Share: OUR IMPACT What's the World Economic Forum doing to accelerate action on Geo-Economics and Politics? THE BIG PICTURE Explore and monitor how Geo-economics is affecting economies, industries and global issues A hand holding a looking glass by a lake CROWDSOURCE INNOVATION Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale Stay up to date: Geo-economics The response to the 2008 economic crisis has relied far too much on monetary stimulus, in the form of quantitative easing and near-zero (or even negative) interest rates, and included far too little structural reform. This means that the next crisis could come soon – and pave the way for a large-scale military conflict. The next economic crisis is closer than you think. But what you should really worry about is what comes after: in the current social, political, and technological landscape, a prolonged economic crisis, combined with rising income inequality, could well escalate into a major global military conflict. The 2008-09 global financial crisis almost bankrupted governments and caused systemic collapse. Policymakers managed to pull the global economy back from the brink, using massive monetary stimulus, including quantitative easing and near-zero (or even negative) interest rates. Image: UN But monetary stimulus is like an adrenaline shot to jump-start an arrested heart; it can revive the patient, but it does nothing to cure the disease. Treating a sick economy requires structural reforms, which can cover everything from financial and labor markets to tax systems, fertility patterns, and education policies. Policymakers have utterly failed to pursue such reforms, despite promising to do so. Instead, they have remained preoccupied with politics. From Italy to Germany, forming and sustaining governments now seems to take more time than actual governing. And Greece, for example, has relied on money from international creditors to keep its head (barely) above water, rather than genuinely reforming its pension system or improving its business environment. The lack of structural reform has meant that the unprecedented excess liquidity that central banks injected into their economies was not allocated to its most efficient uses. Instead, it raised global asset prices to levels even higher than those prevailing before 2008. In the United States, housing prices are now 8% higher than they were at the peak of the property bubble in 2006, according to the property website Zillow. The price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratio, which measures whether stock-market prices are within a reasonable range, is now higher than it was both in 2008 and at the start of the Great Depression in 1929. As monetary tightening reveals the vulnerabilities in the real economy, the collapse of asset-price bubbles will trigger another economic crisis – one that could be even more severe than the last, because we have built up a tolerance to our strongest macroeconomic medications. A decade of regular adrenaline shots, in the form of ultra-low interest rates and unconventional monetary policies, has severely depleted their power to stabilize and stimulate the economy. If history is any guide, the consequences of this mistake could extend far beyond the economy. According to Harvard’s Benjamin Friedman, prolonged periods of economic distress have been characterized also by public antipathy toward minority groups or foreign countries – attitudes that can help to fuel unrest, terrorism, or even war. For example, during the Great Depression, US President Herbert Hoover signed the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, intended to protect American workers and farmers from foreign competition. In the subsequent five years, global trade shrank by two-thirds. Within a decade, World War II had begun. To be sure, WWII, like World War I, was caused by a multitude of factors; there is no standard path to war. But there is reason to believe that high levels of inequality can play a significant role in stoking conflict. According to research by the economist Thomas Piketty, a spike in income inequality is often followed by a great crisis. Income inequality then declines for a while, before rising again, until a new peak – and a new disaster. Though causality has yet to be proven, given the limited number of data points, this correlation should not be taken lightly, especially with wealth and income inequality at historically high levels. Have you read? How to prevent World War 3 How countries have recovered from the financial crisis and other top economic stories of the week Four things not to do in an economic crisis This is all the more worrying in view of the numerous other factors stoking social unrest and diplomatic tension, including technological disruption, a record-breaking migration crisis, anxiety over globalization, political polarization, and rising nationalism. All are symptoms of failed policies that could turn out to be trigger points for a future crisis. Voters have good reason to be frustrated, but the emotionally appealing populists to whom they are increasingly giving their support are offering ill-advised solutions that will only make matters worse. For example, despite the world’s unprecedented interconnectedness, multilateralism is increasingly being eschewed, as countries – most notably, Donald Trump’s US – pursue unilateral, isolationist policies. Meanwhile, proxy wars are raging in Syria and Yemen. Against this background, we must take seriously the possibility that the next economic crisis could lead to a large-scale military confrontation. By the logic of the political scientist Samuel Huntington , considering such a scenario could help us avoid it, because it would force us to take action. In this case, the key will be for policymakers to pursue the structural reforms that they have long promised, while replacing finger-pointing and antagonism with a sensible and respectful global dialogue. The alternative may well be global conflagration.

While consensus judicial nominations are stalled without a final vote by the Senate, millions of Americans across the country are being harmed by delays. The American people and our Federal courts cannot afford these unnecessary and damaging delays. As the ABA president noted last week: Backlogs mean justice delayed in cases involving protection of individual rights, advancement of business interests, compensation of injured victims and enforcement of federal laws. Longstanding vacancies on courts with staggering caseloads impede access to the courts. They create strains that, if not eased, threaten to reduce the quality of our justice system. They erode confidence in the courts' ability to uphold constitutional rights and render fair and timely decisions. Delay at the federal courts puts people's lives on hold while they wait for their cases to be resolved. Businesses face uncertainty and costly holdups, preventing them from investing and creating jobs. In sum, judicial vacancies kill jobs. Justice delayed, as the famous maxim goes, is justice denied. It's bad for business, it's unfair to individuals, and it slows government enforcement actions, which ultimately costs taxpayers money.

Consider the position of a business executive in such a circumstance. His [Their] own highly paid lawyers cannot tell him [them] with realistic probabilities, much less any kind of certainty, whether the particular product infringes the patent in question. Therefore, the business leader is unable to make secure judgments about what steps he [they] should take and faces compounded dangers. He [They] faces not only the unpredictability of the litigation process from the standpoint of its ultimate outcome, but also from the standpoint of how long it will take, how much it will cost, and how much disruption company employees will suffer in the process of discovery, trial preparation, and trial. Whether a given case from start to finish will take two, four, six, or eight years is very difficult to assess. Similarly, whether it will cost half a million, a million, two million, or four million dollars may be equally hard to predict and depends on many variables. Such variables include the judge in question, the number of cases on that judge’s docket, the nature and complexity of the case, the number of patents being asserted, the tactics of the opposition, the relative strength of the companies, and many additional factors. The essential reality for the business leader, however, is that he [they] is facing a process that can be enormously expensive, disruptive, entirely uncontrollable, and unpredictable. Therefore, it is likely that as business leaders become more aware of such risks and uncertainties, they will insist on arbitration clauses, or other such contractual provisions, in an attempt to avoid the risk of becoming victims of the uncertainties of the U.S. litigation process.49

IN THEORY America's three branches of government are equal. In practice the judiciary is the weakest, as Alexander Hamilton cautioned in “The Federalist Papers”, because it controls neither sword nor purse. Of late, state legislatures and executives have been closing their purses as they struggle to balance tight budgets. At the same time, the federal bench is being weakened by both stagnant salaries and frozen politics. This is now swelling dockets, delaying cases, and reducing access to the legal system.

Ask, for example, Katherine Feinstein, the presiding judge of the San Francisco Superior Court (and daughter of Dianne, California's senior senator). She says that her court narrowly missed “falling off a cliff” last month by getting an emergency loan. But she expects worse later in this fiscal year because California's current budget, which has already cut court funding by $350m, contains a trigger [prompt] for even more reductions. Between 15 to 28 of California's 58 county courts could go over that cliff in the coming year, she thinks.

Court delay is costly – to the parties to the case and to society as a whole. The lapse of time between the filing of a case and its resolution lessens the chances that the dispute will be justly decided; witnesses may die or disappear and memories can fade. Frustrated by long waits, parties may abandon the effort to vindicate their rights, and a few may turn to violence. Delay undermines public confidence in the court system and in government itself. There are economic consequences as well. Businesses are reluctant to trade with parties they do not know, fearing that if these individuals breach a contract the business will be without a remedy. Banks hesitate to lend to new enterprises out of concern that if the borrower defaults, resort to the courts will be futile. Applicants wrongly denied government benefits or permits must wait years for court review of the bureaucracy’s decision.

Despite these criticisms, Congress's decision to create the Federal Circuit has been, from most perspectives, a "success." Industry groups are largely satisfied with the court, other countries have begun imitating the U.S. patent institutional structures, and generalized appellate courts have rarely complained about the absence of patent cases on their dockets. As hoped, the court's virtual monopoly over patent appeals has eliminated patent forum shopping, at least at the appellate level. The court has also implemented a number of procedural and case management innovations that have improved the predictability of patent [*978] enforceability and standardized various aspects of patent litigation. Most importantly, some observers credit the court with making substantive alterations to patent jurisprudence that have resulted in increased predictability across the most critical aspects of patent enforcement including infringement, validity, and licensing.

The principal goal of the American patent system is to stimulate innovation, as manifested in the Constitution's articulation of Congress's power "To promote the Progress of … useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to … Inventors the exclusive Right to their … writings and discoveries." Stimulation occurs by rewarding inventors with a time-limited exclusive patent right for taking two steps they typically would not otherwise take: to invent in the first instance and to reveal information to the public about these inventions, thereby enabling other innovators to build on earlier insights. The government will grant a utility patent for an invention only if it is novel, nonobvious "at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art," and "useful." The Patent Act also requires disclosure of certain content within the patent by calling for a "written description," "enablement," and "best mode." The written-description requirement ensures that the inventor is in possession of the claimed invention. To enable the invention, the patent applicant must demonstrate in the specification to "any person skilled in the [relevant] art [how] … to make and use the [invention]" without "undue experimentation." Also, the patent applicant must set out "the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention." The best mode requirement is met so long as the [*1451] patent document objectively discloses the best mode that the inventor subjectively conceived by the time the inventor filed the patent application. Patents are granted after successfully undergoing examination by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), an administrative agency within the Department of Commerce, to ascertain that an invention meets the patentability conditions and that the description in the patent application satisfies the disclosure requirements. The patent's scope is defined principally by its claims, which "particularly point[] out and distinctly claim[] the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention." The patent right permits the patentee to exclude others from practicing the invention claimed in the patent for a term of typically twenty years from the date the patent application was filed. With this primer on substantive patent law, I turn to the institutional structure of patent litigation, focusing on both district courts and the Federal Circuit. Section A sets out the venue rules in the district courts. Section B discusses the Federal Circuit, the centralized and specialized appeals court for almost all patent litigation. Section C then describes the interaction between the district courts and the Federal Circuit by laying out the standards under which the Federal Circuit reviews patent decisions by the district courts. A. Venue Rules in District Courts Patent litigation is generally distinct from other federal causes of action, in that there is but one choice - the Federal Circuit - for almost all appeals from whichever district court a litigant chose as the court in the first instance. However, given patent law's permissive venue rules, a patent plaintiff may frequently choose to initiate a lawsuit in virtually any federal district court. [*1452] In the American patent system, the power to adjudicate patent disputes is vested exclusively in the federal courts. Venue rules dictate which of these courts can entertain particular patent cases, assuming personal jurisdiction over the defendants also exists in that court. Venue rules typically seek to ensure a convenient forum for litigation, particularly for the defendant, who has been haled into court, but these rules differ depending on the type of patent suit and status of the defendant.