This is an essay about public memory and about the ways in which the law selects and shapes our recollections of the past to fit the purposes of those who dominate the present.

Since 1980, District Court Judges, designated pursuant to federal statute, have helped decide over 75,000 court of appeals cases—nearly one of every five merits decisions. Although scholars and judges have warned that the presence of these visitors on appellate panels may undermine consistency, legitimacy, or collegiality, little empirical evidence exists related to such concerns. Working with an especially complete data set of labor law opinions, the authors found that district court visitors perform in a much more diffident fashion than their appellate colleagues. They contribute notably fewer majority opinions and dissents. In addition, their participations do not reflect their professional or personal backgrounds to nearly the same degree as their appellate colleagues do when voting on labor law matters. The authors' findings and analyses regarding the behavior of designated district judges should be of interest to appellate courts considering the challenges of caseload management and to scholars studying processes and outcomes in the courts of appeal.

This study examines the effect of case-processing time on judicial sentencing decisions of economic crime in Taiwan. Studies have been conducted with cases involving misdemeanors and felony homicide, but not with serious economic offenses committed in countries outside of North America. As economic crime becomes increasingly an international problem, research from other countries will be more important. The hypotheses considered were as follows: as the time between the decision to prosecute and the judicial sentencing outcome decreases, both the likelihood of being sent to prison and the likelihood of receiving a longer prison sentence increases. Our findings indicated that case-processing time is not only an indicator of offense severity but also a factor in judicial sentencing decisions.

In 1992, the National Law Journal (NLJ) published a study claiming that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discriminated against minorities in its civil judicial enforcement actions by penalizing environmental law violators in minority areas far less than in white areas. NLJ claimed that this differential showed a lack of commitment to protecting the environment and public health in minority areas. This article augments, reexamines, and analyzes in a more sophisticated manner the available data. My empirical analyses demonstrate the unreliability of NLJ's methods and conclusions and indicate that minorities have not been discriminated against in these enforcement actions.

I agree completely with most of the issues raised in Mark Atlas's article “Rush to Judgment” in this issue (Atlas 2001). First, environmental justice is an important research topic that is too often addressed by writers with preconceived notions about the presence or absence of discrimination in environmental protection. Second, I agree with Mark's critique of the National Law Journal (NLJ) study, the first to investigate possible racial or class inequities in civil environmental penalties. Third, I agree that researchers need to use appropriate data, controls, and statistical techniques and that there is no evidence that civil penalties for violating environmental regulations are systematically lower in poor and/or minority communities. Finally, I agree that in “Rush to Judgment” Atlas makes a unique and valuable contribution to the environmental justice literature—which is why I recommended that the manuscript be published in Law & Society Review. Nevertheless, I believe that “Rush to Judgment” has substantial weaknesses that detract from its stature as a piece of social science research. Not surprisingly, I disagree with Mark's assessment of the validity of the conclusions from my previous work in this area—conclusions that “Rush to Judgment” reinforces in every respect. More important, however, I believe that Mark's article displays fundamental flaws regarding how we use evidence to draw generalizable conclusions about the world around us, and how one makes use of extant research to carve out a niche for one's own work.

Many points raised by Dr. Evan J. Ringquist's response in this issue already are addressed in my article, so readers should simply review its relevant portions. Just as he indicated that space constraints limited his response, I am limited to focusing on his comments that are less fully addressed in my article.