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Disagreement on law's relationship to morality has long been driven by disagreement about our ordinary concept. Until recently, however, there had been no systematic investigation of lay intuitions. In this paper, we advance this nascent effort. Across two studies (N = 697), our findings reveal that most people consider law to be more than a matter of political circumstance alone. Contrary to the expectations of most contemporary philosophers, morality (both substantive and procedural) emerges as a key influence on judgments of legal validity: many people say that conduct prohibited by immoral statutes is not truly illegal, and that immoral conduct which was never explicitly prohibited is truly illegal. This suggests that people often treat law as a dual character concept that, like the concepts of scientist or of artist, features autonomous concrete and abstract dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the feasibility of using the federal Indian law as a method to analyze the constitutionality of the acts of the U.S. Congress establishing the favorable or unfavorable treatment toward the Indian people. Also cited are the case Morton v. Mancari to determine whether federal statutes applied solely to Indians do not compromise the anti-discrimination principles of the Constitution and the core principles of federal Indian law.

The article explores the application of anti-SLAPP statutes in federal court and the conflict between these state laws and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. It discusses the interpretation of the Rules Enabling Act and the Erie doctrine in relation to this conflict. The article also examines Supreme Court cases that address the collision between federal rules and state laws in civil actions. It suggests that a limited delegation construction of the Rules Enabling Act is more reasonable and emphasizes the importance of maintaining a uniform federal court system. The article concludes that anti-SLAPP laws should not be applied in federal court to avoid conflicts with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. [Extracted from the article]

Our statute books use the word "any" ubiquitously in coverage and exclusion provisions. As any reader of the Supreme Court's statutory interpretation docket would know, a large number of cases turn on the contested application of this so-called universal quantifier. It is hard to make sense of the jurisprudence of "any." And any effort to offer a unified approach--knowing precisely when its scope is expansive (along the "literal-meaning" lines of "every" and "all") or confining (having a contained domain related to properties provided by contextual cues)--is likely to fail. This Article examines legislative drafting manuals, surveys centuries of Court decisions, and conducts in-depth pairwise comparisons of "any" cases to show the word's flexible set of uses in its multiple statutory guises. After evaluating evidence of the variability of "any," we recommend a new approach, a form of an "any" canon. We encourage adjudicators to appreciate the complexity of "any" more systematically and to consult a full range of sources--as even full-throated textualists have authorized from time to time--offering the relevant larger context judges will need to ascertain the scope of "any" in any given statutory scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Bankrecht und Bankwirtschaft is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Standard Picture holds that the contribution to the law made by an authoritative legal pronouncement is directly explained by the linguistic content of that pronouncement. This essay defends the Standard Picture from Mark Greenberg's purported counterexamples drawn from patterns of statutory interpretation in U.S. criminal law. Once relevant features of the U.S. rule of recognition are admitted into the analysis—namely, that it arranges sources of law hierarchically, and that judicial decisions are sources of valid law—Greenberg's counterexamples are revealed as only apparent, not genuine. The legal norms that result from the patterns of interpretation he identifies can be directly explained in terms of the linguistic contents of authoritative pronouncements: judicial decisions. Furthermore, those norms can be understood as modifications of the valid norms contained in their originating statutes because judicial decisions are permitted 'explanatory intermediaries' of statutes by the rule of recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article proposes a new framework for evaluating doctrines that assign legal significance to whether a statutory text is "clear." Previous scholarship has failed to recognize that such doctrines come in two distinct types. The first, which this Article calls evidence rules, instructs a court to "start with the text," and to proceed to other sources of statutory meaning only if absolutely necessary. Because they structure a court's search for what a statute means, the question with each of these evidence rules is whether adhering to it aids or impairs that search-the character of the evaluation is, in other words, mostly epistemic. The second type, which this Article calls decision rules, instead tells a court to decide a statutory case on some ground other than statutory meaning if, after considering all the available sources, what the statute means remains opaque. The idea underlying these decision rules is that if statutory meaning is uncertain, erring in some direction constitutes "playing it safe." With each such doctrine, the question is thus whether erring in the identified direction really is "safer" than the alternative(s)-put differently, evaluation of these doctrines is fundamentally practical. With the new framework in place, this Article then goes on to address the increasingly popular categorical objection to "clear" text doctrines. As this Article explains, the objection that nobody knows how clear a text has to be to count as "clear" rests partly on a misunderstanding of how "clarity" determinations work-such determinations are sensitive to context, including legal context, in ways critics of these doctrines fail to account for. In addition, the objection that "clear" text doctrines are vulnerable to willfulness or motivated reasoning is fair but, as this Article shows, applies with equal force to any plausible alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

However, contrary to Kelsen, who wants to remove all extra-legal aspects from the law, Schmitt defends the autonomy of legal science by subordinating these aspects to jurisprudence. However, this aporia is only apparent, as the sovereign realizes a central function in I The Value of the State, i as abstract law must become positive statute by a sovereign decision. Initially, Schmitt investigates the relationship between law and power and recognizes two distinct opinions on this issue: (a) might makes right or (b) the irreconcilable antithesis between law and power. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Bucerius Law Journal is the property of Bucerius Law School e.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A specter is haunting The Hague—the specter of American federalism. On July 2, 2019, the Hague Conference on Private International Law finalized the Hague Judgments Convention. The Convention seeks to establish a global floor for judgment recognition and promote seamless recognition and enforcement of judgments between signatories. Although virtually all observers in the United States recognize the value and importance of ratifying the Convention, stakeholders cannot agree on how to implement it: by federal statute or by uniform state law. Proponents of a socalled “cooperative federalism” approach to implementation, principally led by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC), have previously derailed U.S. ratification of the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements (COCA) by insisting that principles of federalism required implementation through uniform state law. This argument is wrong as a matter of doctrine and policy. It is time to put it to rest once and for all. This Note is the first piece of scholarship to squarely address the “cooperative federalism” argument as applied to the Hague Judgments Convention. It makes two principal arguments. First, it identifies the principles that ought to guide the implementation of a treaty on foreign judgments recognition and concludes that federal implementing legislation optimizes these interests. Implementation primarily by uniform state law is inferior and poses serious disadvantages. Second, the ULC’s primary legal objection to the implementation proposal for the COCA outlined by the State Department—that the doctrine of Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins prohibits federal courts sitting in diversity jurisdiction from applying federal rules of decision prescribed by federal statute—was meritless in 2012, and it is meritless now. If any objections remain to implementing the Judgments Convention by federal statute, they are about turf and ideology. To the extent that the relevant stakeholders want to accommodate those political objections, this Note concludes by briefly outlining areas for compromise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State ex rel. Kalal v. Circuit Court for Dane County sets forth a controlling two-step framework for interpreting Wisconsin statutes. Under Kalal, the first step is to start with a statute's text and apply linguistic tools of analysis (Step One). If the meaning of the statute is clear at this first step, that is the end of the inquiry. Only if the language of the statutory text is ambiguous is a court to go to step two and turn to "extrinsic sources of interpretation, such as legislative history" (Step Two). Kalal has been one of the most influential cases in Wisconsin history. Its two-step process is so embedded in Wisconsin courts that it has been cited in published Wisconsin appellate decisions more than 1,200 times, on average once every six days, since it was decided eighteen years ago. Kalal was one of several examples used by Professor Abbe Gluck over a decade ago to show that, despite ideological differences, state courts have settled into a "methodological consensus" about a form of "modified textualism" for statutory interpretation. As Professor Gluck recognized though, "a consensus on interpretive methodology cannot entirely eliminate normative disputes in statutory interpretation cases." That much is certainly true. Courts do not just apply linguistic algorithms. So, a methodology's test cannot be simply whether it eliminates the role of judgment in judging (although one factor might be how much discretion it allows). No methodology can do that. Instead, the test--or at least, one test--of an interpretive methodology ought to be whether it illuminates, rather than obscures, a court's actual levers of decision. I use a high-profile case involving ideological (and, arguably, methodological) differences among the Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices, Wisconsin Carry v. City of Madison, to explore the question of how well Kalal helps us understand the true nature of the dispute in statutory interpretation cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Certain Defendants and the Applicability of Section 1442(a)(1) When determining whether a defendant meets the requirements to remove a case pursuant to § 1442(a)(1), the type of defendant in the case may slightly alter the analysis. This hypothetical is actually reflective of hundreds, if not thousands, of cases currently pending in federal courts across the nation, where defendants argue that federal officer jurisdiction applies, regardless of the fact that the causes of action all sound in violations of state statutory law or state common law. When determining whether a defendant is acting under color of federal office, the defendant's conduct must amount to more than simply following orders or directives of a federal agency. These different types of defendants include government military or defense contractors, certain private corporate defendants, and, interestingly, certain types of environmental contractors or defendants. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Direito da Cidade is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the 1976 case Proffitt v. Florida, the Supreme Court of the United States approved Florida's death penalty statute, which enumerated eight aggravating factors. According to that statute, a finding of at least one of those factors made a first-degree murder conviction eligible for the death penalty. The Court held that these eight factors adequately narrowed, at the legislative level, the class of crimes eligible to receive the death penalty. Since the Supreme Court's decision in Proffitt, the Florida legislature has doubled the number of aggravating factors. The inclusion of these numerous additional aggravating factors avoids the constitutionally required narrowing that must occur, at the legislative level, between those defendants convicted of first-degree murder and those eligible to be sentenced to death. The Supreme Court denied certiorari when a similar challenge was voiced against Arizona's death penalty statute. This denial, and acquiescence in the unfettered addition of aggravating factors, violates the cruel and unusual punishments clause of the Eighth Amendment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Chilena de Derecho is the property of Revista Chilena de Derecho and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the court case Pinnacle Health Hosps. v. Unemployment Comp. Bd. of Review which deals with the dismissal of a pharmacist for using the Internet while on duty. Topics mentioned include the status of the law on the mailbox rule before the decision was made on the case, the statutes and case law related to the court case, and the factors that contributed to the decision of the court to reverse the order of the Unemployment Compensation Board of Review.

The article discusses the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court case Crocco v. Pennsylvania Department of Health which focuses on whether the citizens have the right to know if their public officials are affiliated with abortion clinics. Topics mentioned include the use of the personal security exception provided in the right-to-know law (RTKL), the background and statutes of the RTKL, and the protection of individuals who are facing with death threats for doing their jobs relating to medicine.

The article discusses the inconsistent application of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1984 ruling in the case Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. National Resources Defence Council, Inc. by lower federal courts. In the case, the court issued a two-step test to determine whether a court defer to a federal agency's reasonable interpretation of ambiguous statutes. Also cited are the latest deference transformations in state administrative law as of January 2021.

In Open Road Tracking, LLC v. Swanson, the North Dakota Supreme Court issued an opinion on matters of first impression that impacts debtors who paid more than their share of a judgment and how they may collect the amount due from jointly liable co-debtors. First, the court held payment to a judgment creditor does not satisfy the judgment between the debtor paying it and those jointly liable. Second, the court held judgment debtors who have paid more than their proportionate share of a judgment should not have to bring a separate action against co-debtors to compel contribution. Finally, the court held a debtor or assignee of a judgment debtor may take an assignment of the judgment for the purpose of enforcing contribution against co-debtors. Lund argued that Swanson satisfied the judgment when he paid the full amount to Western State Bank. However, the court ex-plained that the judgment was not satisfied between Swanson and Lund, in part because Western State Bank assigned the judgment to Swanson. The court examined case law and statutes from California, Nebraska, and several other states, finding they were persuasive in deciding the issues of first impression. North Dakota practitioners and their clients can take advantage of the judgment satisfaction and assignment rules, as well as the judicial efficiency improvements. As a case of first impression, Open Road Trucking, LLC will provide guidance for North Dakota practitioners handling commercial assignments of judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the preemption statute in the U.S. by analyzing the history and evolution of the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) and the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Virginia Uranium, Inc. v. Warren. Topics include the decision's affirmation of the states' authority to ban traditional uranium mining, and the Navajo Nation's exercise of its power under the Diné Natural Resource Protection Act (DNRPA) as example.

The article presents a court case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied a rehearing en banc of a lawsuit allowing domestic corporate liability claim. In the case Doe I v. Nestle, S.A., six former enslaved children on a cocoa plantation in Cote d'Ivoire filed a case due to forced labor without pay, intimidation, and torture. The circuit ruled that a domestic corporation can be sued under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).

No set-off (NSO) clauses, widely used in various contracts and transactions, typically state that payment must be made by one party to the other party without deduction, set-off or counterclaim. Relevant statutes regulate the validity or enforceability of such clauses or have an impact on them in other ways. But court decisions on the relationship of NSO clauses with some statutes are arguably problematic. The court has held that NSO clauses override s 290(4)(b) of the Companies Act 1993, so that an offsetting claim precluded by such a clause can no longer be a ground for setting aside a statutory demand, even though it would be a valid ground according to s 290(4)(b). This article argues that there is no conflict between NSO clauses and s 290(4)(b); and that, even assuming a conflict, s 290(4)(b) should prevail. The court has also held that NSO clauses exclude mortgagees' duty of care under s 176 of the Property Law Act 2007 and are therefore invalid. Again, this article argues for the contrary conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the constitutionality of right to farm statutes in the U.S. Also cited are the statutes' protection to farmers against nuisance lawsuits, the farm statute in Iowa allowing the unconstitutional taking of landowners' properties, and the cases in which the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the state's right to farm statute is unconstitutional, including Gacke v. Pork Xtra, LLC and Bormann v. Board of Supervisors ex rel. Kossuth County.

The article examines the legal bounds of judicial development of family law in Wales and England by focusing on the judicial engagement with the statutes, the Children Act 1989 and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. Also cited are the role of family law judges to interpret a statute's provisions, the legal scope of judicial power, and some cases like Miller v. Miller and McFarlane v. McFarlane.

The article discusses issues on surrogacy contracts in the U.S. and why the medical requirements of these contracts are unconstitutional based on the U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Skinner v. Oklahoma and Obergefell v. Hodges. Also cited are commercial surrogacy and altruistic surrogacy arrangements, the people's rights to procreate, and the alleged unconstitutionality of surrogacy statutes in Florida and Illinois.

Tenancy relationships in Nigeria are largely regulated by statutes. Most of the provisions of these statutes to lawyers and other stakeholders are susceptible to inconsistent interpretations. In recent times, the courts in Nigeria have taken steps to look beyond the law books and give flesh to areas in tenancy matters where there seem to be inadequacies in the provisions of the laws. In doing this, the courts have come up with some legal principles that the relevant statutes do not explicitly provide for, but arguably flow from the provisions of such statutes – a good example being the principle that a tenant who contests ownership with the landlord loses right to statutory notice to quit. Terms such as 'landlord' and 'tenant' are not as simple as they appear, especially considering the statutory definitions given to them by some of the tenancy statutes in Nigeria – particular attention is given in this regard to Tenancy Law of Lagos State 2011. This paper considers the intricacies of the definition of and relationship between the landlord and the tenant as provided in statutes and as interpreted by overtime by courts in Nigeria. The paper analyses the nature of the relationship between the landlord and the tenant as may be conceived and disambiguates the scope of law of a landlord and tenant relationship in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Article 58a of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, introduced through Regulation 2019/629, establishes a filtering mechanism for appeals brought before the Court of Justice against General Court decisions concerning the decisions of the Boards of Appeal (BoAs) of certain EU offices and agencies. This article analyses the significance and consequences of art. 58a. It opens with the background to this latest reform to tackle the problem of the steady increase in the workload of the EU judiciary. It then proceeds with: an overview of the BoAs; an analysis of the significance of art. 58a; an examination of two problematic aspects of the new provision, the first regarding its scope of application, the second concerning the relationship between the subject of the administrative appeal and that of the judicial proceedings; and a discussion on several organisational and procedural shortcomings in the current regulation of the BoAs that have been accentuated by the introduction of art. 5 8a and an account ofpossible ways to rectify them. The article concludes with an illustration of how art. 58a is the latest in a series of legislative acts that have inconsistently characterised the protection of the rights ofparties to the decisions of EU agencies and mention of tools that could guarantee greater normative coherence and certainty in this area of rights protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the concerns raised by the rapporteur of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs regarding the proposal of the Court of Justice. Topics include how the rapporteur expresses significant concerns about the Court's proposal; while acknowledging proposals to enhance the efficiency of the Court's procedures; and how committee highlights potential challenges, such as the risk of conflicting decisions when different courts are simultaneously competent in infringement.

The article discusses various aspects of the relationship between the Solicitor General of the U.S. and America's Supreme Court (Supreme Court), and it mentions the Supreme Court's shadow docket which consists of the judicial orders and summary decisions that are issued without full briefing and oral argument procedures. The statutes, case law, and rules involving the most common forms of emergency and extraordinary relief in the Supreme Court are assessed, along with appellate litigation.

The article presents a court case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the revocation-on-divorce statute in Minnesota did not violate the Contracts Clause of the Constitution. In the case 'Sveen v. Melin,' the plaintiff claimed that she should receive the proceeds of the insurance policy of her divorced husband because the retroactive application of the statute violated the clause. Also cited are the contrasting rulings of a Minnesota district court and U.S. court of appeals on the case.

In 2018, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a jury's finding that a corrections officer deprived a female inmate of her civil rights through his commission of aggravated sexual abuse. Following the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals while splitting with the Fifth, Eighth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals, the Third Circuit held that size and coercive power disparities between a defendant and a victim do not speak to the force element of the federal aggravated sexual abuse statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2241(a). Although the Third Circuit takes a balanced approach, its adoption of the Seventh Circuit's analysis is problematic because the court ignores the Seventh Circuit's underlying assumption that force must result in bodily injury. Such thinking ignores the legislative intent behind the statute and effectively reintroduces the outdated resistance doctrine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent commentary has questioned the validity of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's use of Rule 36 affirmances in deciding appeals from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). One article in particular posits that 35 U.S.C. § 144 and 15 U.S.C. § 1071(a)(4) require the Federal Circuit to write an opinion in every appeal from the USPTO and therefore the court's use of Rule 36 affirmances, particularly with appeals of cases from the America Invents Act, is improper. This Article presents a reasoned counterpoint to that argument. A complete analysis of the statutory text, the legislative history, the historical context of the statutes, and other considerations, including other applicable Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, the delegation of authority under the Rules Enabling Act, and traditional deference afforded the judiciary in how it applies procedural rules, support the conclusion that Rule 36 affirmances are entirely within the authority and discretion of the court. A contrary conclusion would rest on a slender reed of statutory text and would create a rare situation-- perhaps the only instance--in which Congress has directly dictated procedure for the federal courts of appeal since the enactment of the Rules Enabling Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines current law in the U.S. and proposes constructive change to deal with inequities for students with behavior challenges. Topics discussed include behavior provisions in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, state statutes and rules and similarities and differences in appellate court decisions of the eleven federal circuits from 2011 through 2016.

Rather than something extraordinary, this article strives to provide something ordinary--a rough map, an assured but imperfect sketch--sorely needed by practitioners yet strangely missing from modern commentary, scholarly and otherwise. In less than 10,000 words, it summarizes the presumptions, precedents, and provisions applicable to a court's decision regarding the proper location of a deposition under federal law, whether embodied in explicit text or conveyed in often qualified prose. As it shows, in making these fact-specific determinations over the last fifty years, this nation's federal courts have mined a default presumption from Rule 30, focused their energies on Rule 26, and crafted two more tenets and at least two substantially identical, and increasingly narrowed, tests. Indubitably, these ad hoc analyses have engendered a perplexing and contradictory body of law. Yet, in the midst of this jarring cacophony, directions for the busy can be imparted, and checklists adumbrated. In an era of transnational defendants and cross-border cases, even such tentative directions can aid the pressured and puzzled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bentham is a severe critic of common law, denouncing it as 'sham law'. Bentham's denunciation of common law as 'sham law' is, however, an evaluative censure, not a descriptive account. A realistic account of the nature of common law can be constructed from his writings. According to this account, first, common law is a collection of authoritative mandates. Second, judicial decisions do not evidence common law; on the contrary, judges, through their decisions, create common law by means of legalizing both customs and single actions. Common law is not, therefore, immemorial, nor did it originate in the people's consent. Third, stare decisis is necessary for common law to fulfil the function of law, but it has no independent value: it is the principle of utility alone that explains, justifies, and decides the use of stare decisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to literature on legislative-court relations by incorporating the states. Pickerill (2004) examined congressional responses to court rulings declaring statutes unconstitutional, classifying responses into three categories--amending, repealing, or doing nothing. I assembled a list of all Minnesota, Michigan, and Wyoming statutes declared unconstitutional from 1940 to 2008 by state or federal courts. I then determined the legislature's response. I find unexpected differences in state responsiveness, and between the states and Congress. Also, state legislatures are more likely to respond to a ruling of unconstitutionality from their own courts than from the federal courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various aspects of statutory interpretation, including how the principles have been adopted and applied by the courts to interpret legislation have developed over many years, though not always consistently. Legislation should always strive to be drafted with precision and clarity; for after all, there may be serious consequences for failing to adhere to a legislative instrument. The principles of statutory construction should not become too prescriptive, and in the main, common sense should prevail in interpreting any statute. Four recent High Court decisions are used to illustrate this common sense approach to interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On most accounts, access to justice presupposes access to the law. To understand the state of access to justice for injured people in New Zealand engaged in ACC disputes, we studied the state of access to law as evident from several hundred judicial decisions determined under the ACC legislation’s statutory dispute resolution process decided between 2009 and 2015. We employed a retrospective thematic analysis, by which we gave a detailed description of access to law as expressed in court decisions. Based on that analysis, we conclude that barriers to access to law for that period are comprehensive. Seven themes emerged that indicated barriers: lack of citation of the governing statute, or case law, lack of reference to parties ’ submissions, problems with public availability of legal materials, undue deference given to the review decision by courts on appeal, misuse of the legal test for an appeal against discretion, and the nature of the appeals structure. We conclude by considering the implications of this state of affairs on New Zealand's personal injury system and explaining why we believe these findings are significant in that context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]