Law Commons^™

Dean's Column: In Law School, It's Pro Bono From Day One, Anne R. Traum

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Heller, Nevada And The Second Amendment: Minimalism, Tradition And Modern Constitutional Jurisprudence, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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No abstract provided.

Student, Esquire?: The Practice Of Law In The Collaborative Classroom, Nantiya Ruan

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Law faculty and non-profit lawyers are working together in a variety of partnerships to offer students exposure to "real life" clients in the first year of law school, as well as in advanced courses in substantive areas. Teachers engaged in this client-centered advocacy through experiential frameworks have broken out of their isolated silos in the law school (e.g., legal writing, clinical, externship, and doctrinal) and begun to work together. To help students develop a sense of professional identity, cultivate professional values, and tap into key intrinsic motivations for lawyering, such as serving the public good, collaborative classrooms have an important …

Writing (And Reading) Appellate Briefs In The Digital Age, Mary Beth Beazley

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In this essay, Professor Beazley briefly reviews a slice of the voluminous research about how human beings read digital as opposed to paper text. In particular, she discusses studies of knowledge workers (defined to include those who use or generate knowledge in their work)4 and those who engage in active reading (defined as a reading process that includes nonsequential reading, searching a text, comparing texts, annotating, bookmarking, and the like).She concludes by making suggestions for legal readers, legal writers, courts, and database providers as to how best to accommodate the process of digital reading.

Hiding In Plain Sight: "Conspicuous Type" Standards In Mandated Communication Statutes, Mary Beth Beazley

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Professor Beazley defines the concept of mandated communication statutes in this examination of typeface, language, and the mind's ability to comprehend certain syntax. This article has a simple premise: when a government mandates written communication, it should present the mandated communication in a way that speeds comprehension. When communication is so important that the government is mandating the words and the presentation method, the writer and not the reader should not bear the burden of making sure that the information is comprehensible. In other words, the reader should not have to work to decipher the information; the writer should work …

Racial Upside: Deconstructing The "Merits" Of Jeremy Lin's Nba Contract, Stewart Chang

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In this Article, Professor Stewart Chang disputes the common misperception that sports are a colorblind meritocracy that should serve as a model for the rest of society. The capacity of players to break into and succeed in professional sports is believed to be based purely on merit, with no consideration of race. Controversies that surfaced around the rise of professional basketball player Jeremy Lin, an Asian American not expected to succeed in a sport dominated by blacks and whites, challenged this popularly-held notion. He argues, not in a derisive way, that Lin's ability to secure a lucrative $28.8 million contract, …

The Postcolonial Problem For Global Gay Rights, Stewart Chang

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As the United States and Europe have progressed to the issue of same-sex marriage, countries that are still working through antecedent issues, such as the decriminalization of anti-sodomy laws, are regarded by international gay rights advocates as lagging behind the times. This often leads to pressures from the Western-dominated international community for reform. Through this Article, Professor Stewart Chang contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate between international human rights activists who desire to advance gay rights by utilizing the same rights-based models that prevail in the United States and Europe and critics of this approach who deem the universal imposition …

Dreams Of My Father, Prison For My Mother: The H-4 Nonimmigrant Visa Dilemma And The Need For An "Immigration-Status Spousal Support", Stewart Chang

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In this article, Professor Stewart Chang uses the situation of H-4 visa derivatives in the Asian Indian immigrant community as a case study to expose and critique larger incongruities within current American immigration policy, which on the one hand has historically extolled individuality, equality, and workforce participation as avenues to the American Dream, while enforcing gender hierarchy and dependency through requirements that prioritize family unity on the other. These incongruities remain largely unnoticed because the culture of dependency is often attributed to traditional ethnic culture, which then becomes the site of scrutiny and blame. The H-4 visa dilemma in the …

Neoliberalism And The Good Daddies And Bad Daddies Of Academic Freedom, Stewart Chang

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In this micro symposium article, Professor Stewart Chang joins his colleagues in addressing the questions posed by Stanley Fish, in his article, "Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution." Professor Chang specifically seeks to answer "What is the relationship between academic freedom and democracy?" as applied to Singapore.

A Material World: Using Trademark Law To Override Copyright's First Sale Rule For Imported Copies, Mary Lafrance

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When the Supreme Court held that the first sale rule of copyright law permits the unauthorized importation and domestic sale of lawfully made copies of copyrighted works, regardless of where those copies were made, copyright owners lost much of their ability to engage in territorial price discrimination. Publishers, film and record producers, and software and videogame makers could no longer use copyright law to prevent the importation and domestic resale of gray market copies, and therefore could no longer protect their domestic distributors against competition from cheaper imported copies.

However, many of these copyright owners can take advantage of a …

How Congress Killed Investment Crowdfunding: A Tale Of Political Pressure, Hasty Decisions, And Inexpert Judgments That Begs For A Happy Ending, Joan Macleod Heminway

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In April 2012, President Obama signed into law the Capital Raising Online While Deterring Fraud and Unethical Non-Disclosure Act (the “CROWDFUND Act”) as Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) was compelled to promulgate enabling regulation to effectuate the CROWDFUND Act. That rulemaking has been slow in coming.

During this period of delay, commentators have routinely denounced the postponement and expressed fear that the SEC’s rulemaking would unduly limit investment crowdfunding. This Article demonstrates, however, that it is principally the U.S. Congress that has limited the capacity of the CROWDFUND Act …

Business Lawyering In The Crowdfunding Era, Joan Macleod Heminway

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Crowdfunding is all the rage in conversations about small business finance. Yet, as with many other rapidly developing business innovations, practicing lawyers were, perhaps, secondary players in the development of business models for crowdfunding. The advent of crowdfunding (and crowdfund investing, in particular) has exposed fault lines in business lawyering. This short Article defines the crowdfunding era, highlights a few examples of observed lawyering lapses, and, in concluding, offers a brief, preliminary assessment of possible sources of these dislocations and best practices. The conclusion also expresses a related cautionary note about the need for lawyers to redouble their efforts at …

Teaching Transactional Skills Using Real Clients From Clinic To Classroom, Brian Krumm, Shelley Dunck

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No abstract provided.

Securitization Of Aberrant Contract Receivables, Thomas E. Plank

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Originators of traditional receivables, such as automobile loans, use securitization and structured finance debt transactions to obtain financing at lower net costs than traditional secured financing. The typical securitization or structured finance debt transaction combines (i) a sale of receivables to a separate, bankruptcy remote, special purpose legal entity (an “SPE”) and (ii) a loan to the SPE secured by the receivables. This combination produces lower net financing costs because the SPE’s lender can obtain repayment of its loan from the receivables while avoiding the costs that the Bankruptcy Code imposes on direct secured lenders to originators that could become …

A Primer On Professionalism For Doctrinal Professors, Paula Schaefer

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Legal education reform advocates agree that law schools should integrate “professionalism” throughout the curriculum. Ultimately, it falls to individual professors to decide how to incorporate professionalism into each course. This can be an especially difficult task for doctrinal professors. The law — and not the practice of law — is the focus of most doctrinal casebooks. Law students typically do not act in role as lawyers in these classes, so they are not compelled to resolve professional dilemmas in class, as students would be in a clinic or simulation-based course. As a result, it takes some additional preparation and thought …

How Can Competition Agencies Use Behavioral Economics?, Maurice Stucke

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No abstract provided.

Representing Entities: The Value Of Teaching Students How To Draft Board Resolutions And Other Similar Documentation, Joan Macleod Heminway

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This edited transcript comprises a panel presentation and related Q&A at "Educating the Transactional Lawyer of Tomorrow," Emory University School of Law's biennial transactional law conference held June 6-7, 2014. The transcript includes Professor Heminway's talk and a separate presentation by Professor Marcia Narine on "How to Make Transactional Law Less Terrifying and a Bit More Interesting." The panel, "Transactional Drafting: Beyond Contracts," features approaches to teaching transactional business law courses.

Professor Heminway's presentation addresses the benefits of teaching the drafting of board resolutions, minutes, and consents in corporate finance and corporate governance courses. She describes how teaching law students …

Will Ticket Scalpers Meet The Same Fate As Spinal Tap Drummers? The Sale And Resale Of Concert And Sports Tickets, Gregory M. Stein

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When a concert or sporting event sells out, the performer appears popular and the venue enjoys the opportunity to maximize profits from the sale of parking, merchandise, food, and beverages. For these and other reasons, event sponsors often underprice tickets. This underpricing creates commercial opportunities for ticket resellers, who purchase in bulk at the lower price and resell the tickets at a profit, and also for intermediaries such as StubHub. Legal and technological efforts to squelch ticket resales have largely failed, leaving the secondary ticket market stronger than ever.

This secondary ticket market is economically efficient, but it also creates …

Indie Lawyering: A New Model For Solo And Small Firm Practice, Lucille Jewel

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Indie lawyering is a new style of lawyering that uses technology to connect the individual practitioner with individual clients and collaboratively solve legal problems in a community-centered way.

Employer Retaliation Policies And The Retaliation Catch-22, Alex B. Long

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No abstract provided.

The Hyperregulatory State: Women, Race, Poverty And Support, Wendy A. Bach

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Vulnerability and dependency theory offers a rich and promising vision for those who seek to conceptualize and build a more responsive state. In theorizing a road to a supportive state, however, what would it mean to take up the challenge of intersectionality? What would it mean to center the analysis around key aspects of the relationship between legal institutions and the poor, disproportionately women and families of color who have no choice but to avail themselves of what remains of a shredded social safety net? The Hyperregulatory State argues that, for women who have no choice but to avail themselves …

Respecting Parents' Fundamental Rights In The Adoption Process: Parents Choosing Parents For Their Children, Teri Dobbins Baxter

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The Supreme Court has a long history of recognizing parents’ fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children. While courts have recognized that this right requires deference to parents’ decisions regarding education, religion, and medical decisions, little attention has been paid to parents’ fundamental rights in the adoption process. Specifically, relatively few courts or scholars have addressed parents’ right to choose adoptive parents if the biological parents voluntarily agree to terminate their rights and place the child for adoption. Because choosing adoptive parents for their child is an exercise of the right to control the care and custody of …

The Ohio State University Dispute Resolution In Special Education Symposium Panel, Dean Rivkin

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No abstract provided.

The Doctrine Of Legal Writing - Book Review Of Linda H. Edwards's Readings In Persuasion: Briefs That Changed The World, Lucille Jewel

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In legal education, the word “doctrinal” is most often used to refer to courses such as Contracts, Torts, Property, and Criminal Procedure. Doctrinal has long been used as a descriptive adjective, but also as a word of exclusion. We often hear that legal writing courses are not substantive and not as significant as doctrinal courses. Linda Edwards’s new book, Readings in Persuasion: Briefs that Changed the World, persuasively challenges this view.

This paper evaluates what we mean when we use the term doctrinal in a legal education context and considers six powerful descriptors for the doctrine of legal writing, all …