{"id":4747,"date":"2009-04-15T08:07:56","date_gmt":"2009-04-15T13:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=4747"},"modified":"2009-04-15T08:07:56","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T13:07:56","slug":"judge-barker-on-imaginative-judging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/04\/judge-barker-on-imaginative-judging\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Barker on “Imaginative Judging”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judge Sarah Evans Barker delivered a terrific Hallows Lecture <\/a>at the Law School\u00a0yesterday on “imaginative judging.”\u00a0 She was engaging obliquely with, and putting a fresh spin on,\u00a0the otherwise increasingly tiresome debates over “judicial activism.”\u00a0 While the activism\u00a0debate generally focuses on the law-declaring role of appellate judges, Judge Barker focused on the case management role of\u00a0trial-court judges.\u00a0\u00a0Although case management may seem far-removed from law-declaring, Judge Barker observed that judges operating in\u00a0either mode may sometimes face situations in which following the conventional rules of formal legal analysis produces absurd results.\u00a0 Where such situations are encountered in the trial court, Judge Barker endorsed the use of imaginative problem-solving.\u00a0 As an example, she cited her own work in bringing together public officials in Indianapolis to address chronic constitutional violations in the local jail.\u00a0 Had she played a more conventional, passive role as the judge in pending constitutional litigation, the result (in her view) would have been\u00a0a largely\u00a0ineffectual remedy.\u00a0 By imagining a different sort of role for herself, and engaging the key players outside of the formal legal process, a much better result was achieved.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

As with any exercise of judicial discretion (whether at the appellate level or otherwise), the real challenge for “imaginative judging” is to make decisions in ways that do not appear to be arbitrary or biased.\u00a0 If judges aren’t “just following the rules,” how can we be confident their decisions are principled, neutral, and consistent with established public values?\u00a0 Judge Barker argued that\u00a0meaningful constraints may exist even when\u00a0judges are operating in the “open area” of discretionary decisionmaking, for instance, the social norms of the legal communty and the practical constraints of enforceability.\u00a0 I would also add process-based constraints to the list, such as the requirements of notice, a right to be heard, and public explanation of decisions.\u00a0 In any event, I think that Judge Barker makes an important point in highlighting the many ways that judges are meaningfully constrained even when operating beyond\u00a0bright-line rules of substantive law.\u00a0 For instance, in the sentencing context — an area of particular concern to me, and a topic also covered by Judge Barker’s lecture — I think that greater attention to, and strengthening of, these more subtle constraints would help to make people more comfortable with the broad discretion traditionally enjoyed by judges when selecting punishments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judge Sarah Evans Barker delivered a terrific Hallows Lecture at the Law School\u00a0yesterday on “imaginative judging.”\u00a0 She was engaging obliquely with, and putting a fresh spin on,\u00a0the otherwise increasingly tiresome debates over “judicial activism.”\u00a0 While the activism\u00a0debate generally focuses on the law-declaring role of appellate judges, Judge Barker focused on the case management role of\u00a0trial-court 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