Law Commons^™

Do Courts Matter?, Stephen L. Carter

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Hollow Hope: Ca Courts Bring About Social Change? by Gerald N. Rosenberg

Tdhs V. E.B., The Coup De Grace For Special Issues., John J. Sampson

St. Mary's Law Journal

Although the bench and bar have been recalcitrant in recognition, the Texas Supreme Court has declared the special interest experiment a failure. For nearly eighty years Texas has engaged in an experiment requiring juries answer specific, factually detailed inquiries in various circumstances. The theoretical justifications of special issue inquiries were to ease appeals processes and add clarity to jury decisions. Although the goals were meritorious, the actual result was jury confusion, inefficiency, complexity, and too many retrials. The Texas Supreme Court’s ruling in TDHS v. EB signals the end of special issues and mandates the use of broad form submissions. …

Reformers' Regress: The 1991 Texas Workers' Compensation Act., Jill Williford

St. Mary's Law Journal

The revision of the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act will affect most Texas taxpayers and workers. The Act, entering into force January 1, 1991, significantly restructures the preexisting seventy-six-year-old system. Before the advent of workers’ compensation systems employees relied on the court and common-law causes of action as the sole means of recovery. In 1913, Texas enacted one of the first versions of workers’ compensation in the United States. The original act created a system to compensate workers for injuries sustained during employment without regard to fault. Initially the act was elective for employers and mandatory for employees but was later …

An Independent And Adequate Procedural Rule Bars A State Prisoner, Who Has Defaulted His Entire Appeal, From Asserting A Federal Claim Unless The Prisoner Demonstrates Cause For, And Actual Prejudice Resulting From, The Procedural Default, Or In The Alternative, Proves A Fundamental Miscarriage Of Justice Will Result If The Federal Habeas Court Fails To Hear The Claim., Jared R. V. Woodfill

St. Mary's Law Journal

The current jurisprudential regime accepts a blanket procedural default policy which denies the federal habeas court its proper constitutional role. An ideological coup d’etat is needed which reappraises the modern procedural default doctrine and supplants it with a rule in the spirit of Fay v. Noia. Such a revolution would emphasize the federal habeas court’s role as a defender of constitutional rights. In an era of multifarious litigation and sociological jurisprudence, a habeas prisoner should not lose his life because a negligent public defender failed to preserve the right in procedural formaldehyde. On April 23, 1982, a court convicted Roger …

The Obliging Shell: An Informal Essay On Formal Equal Opportunity, Patricia Williams

Michigan Law Review

I am struck by the Court's use of the word "equality" in the last line of its holding. It seems an extraordinarily narrow use of "equality," when it excludes from consideration so much clear inequality. It, again, resembles the process by which the Parol Evidence Rule limits the meaning of documents or words by placing beyond the bounds of reference anything that is inconsistent, or, depending on the circumstances, even that which is supplementary. It is this lawyerly language game of exclusion and omission that is the subject of the rest of this essay.

Corporations And Society: Power And Responsibility, Sara Anne Engle

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Corporations and Society: Power and Responsibility edited by Warren J. Samuels and Arthur S. Miller

The Right To Speak, The Right To Hear, And The Right Not To Hear: The Technological Resolution To The Cable/Pornography Debate, Michael I. Meyerson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article concludes that the power of government to regulate cable pornography is limited to that which is legally obscene. Part I reviews Supreme Court cases delineating the relationship between the rights of privacy in the home and of freedom of speech. Part II demonstrates that the technology of cable television provides the solution to the pornography dilemma. Cable television preserves both privacy and speech interests because individual subscribers can be given the physical means to block out programming they find personally offensive without affecting the ability of others to receive that programming. Where such accommodation of interests is permissible, …

Civil Rights In Transition: Sections 1981 And 1982 Cover Discrimination On The Basis Of Ancestry And Ethnicity, Eileen Kaufman, Martin A. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

New Jersey V. T.L.O.: The Supreme Court's Lesson On School Searches Symposium On Education Law., Gerald S. Reamey

St. Mary's Law Journal

Considerable disagreement persists as to the fourth amendment rights of students within schools. Particularly, this disagreement regards the extent to which fourth amendment rights possessed by students may frustrate reasonable attempts by educators to maintain the order necessary to preserve an educational environment. In New Jersey v. T.L.O., the Supreme Court considered an argument advanced by the State of New Jersey that the “pervasive supervision” of school children diminishes the legitimate expectation of privacy a child may have in property “unnecessarily” brought to school. The Court concluded that the necessity of maintaining security and order in the educational environment was …

A Judge's View On Justice, Bureaucracy, And Legal Method, Harry T. Edwards

Michigan Law Review

At the recent Inaugural Lecture of the University of Windsor's Distinguished Scholars Program on Access to Justice, my former law teaching colleague, Professor Joseph Vining, delivered a speech entitled Justice, Bureaucracy, and Legal Method. Because, in my view, Professor Vining's address raised some disturbing questions, and some seriously misguided suggestions, about the growth of bureaucracy in the courts and the delivery of justice, I believe that a response is appropriate.

The Nonpartisan Freedom Of Expression Of Public Employees, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Governmental activities affect each of us in a myriad of ways. The government's role as employer may pale in comparison with the more glamorous activities of the government as national defender, law enforcer, and allocator of scarce resources. Yet the legal ramifications of public employment-where the public interest in efficient governmental operation often conflicts with the public employee's freedom-have a profound influence upon American society.

In 1968, the Supreme Court in Pickering v. Board of Education formulated a test designed to balance these interests in defining the scope of a public employee's freedom of expression. In examining the nonpartisan free …

A Requiem For Requiems: The Supreme Court At The Bar Of Reality, Stanley K. Laughlin Jr.

Michigan Law Review

It is true that the test set out in Roth v. United States is moribund. In a sense it was stillborn. While five Justices, only one of whom remains on the Court, joined in the majority opinion in Roth, that case only adumbrated certain considerations that later were forged into what has come to be known as the Roth test. No sooner did the forging process begin than the Court became fragmented on this issue, and a majority of the Justices has never since concurred in the test-certainly not in a compatible formulation of it. Today, it is not …