Law Commons^™

Warrior Ants: The Enduring Threat Of The Small War And The Land-Mine, Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

This 1996 Times Literary Supplement essay examines two very different books about aspects of warfare. Robert O'Connell's Ride of the Second Horseman is a speculative history of the rise of warfare among human beings, looking back to early human beings. It is a striking account, even though speculative, because it deals in early human behavior without offering an explanation from evolutionary biology. O'Connell acknowledges that non-human species can engage in warfare, and specifically notes ants. In that process, he carefully distinguishes - as few writers do - between aggression, violence, weapons use, predation, and war.

The Fitness Of Law: Using Complexity Theory To Describe The Evolution Of Law And Society And Its Practical Meaning For Democracy, J. B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law Review

Why does law change, and how does that process unfold? In this Article, Professor Ruhl examines those questions using tools from the emerging field of Complexity Theory. Complexity Theory involves the study of change in dynamical systems. Its findings of unpredictable change in a variety of natural and social settings have profoundly effected the theoretical foundations of many fields of study. In particular, Complexity Theory has revisited the Darwinist theory of biological evolution and used it as a platform for developing a general theory of system evolution that focuses on the concept of fitness landscapes. The fitness, or sustainability, of …

Moral Discourse, Bioethics, And The Law, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Dan Callahan follows a distinguished tradition when he uses the phrase "moral discourse" to describe the law's work. The frequency with which that image is deployed suggests its resonance and even rightness: When we think about the way society considers moral issues and develops moral positions, it can be useful to imagine the law as one of many social institutions that contribute to a social discussion. Nevertheless, this image is misleading. At least for our (graying and balding) genera- tions, the law is regarded as a worthy participant in American moral discourse preeminently because of its part in the civil …

Lights, Camera, Litigate: Lawyers And The Media In Canada And The United States, Charles W. Wolfram

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Drawing on recent high profile cases in Canada and the United States, the author examines the different extent to which lawyers in those two countries comment to the media about ongoing litigation. He investigates various formal constraints upon lawyer comment, such as court-imposed publication bans and rules of professional responsibility. He also looks at the way in which lawyer behavior is attributable to non-formal, cultural determinants.

Negotiating Demands For Justice: Public Interest Law As A Problem Solving Dialogue, David Dominguez

In the Public Interest

No abstract provided.

Juror Delinquency In Criminal Trials In America, 1796-1996, Nancy J. King

Michigan Law Review

This article examines two aspects of the jury system that have attracted far less attention from scholars than from the popular press: avoidance of jury duty by some citizens, and misconduct while serving by others. Contemporary reports of juror shortages and jury dodging portray a system in crisis. Coverage of recent high-profile cases suggests that misconduct by jurors who do serve is common. In the trial of Damian Williams and Henry Watson for the beating of Reginald Denny, a juror was kicked off for failing to deliberate; Exxon, Charles Keating, and the man accused of murdering Michael Jordan's father all …

Children Going West, Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

(Review Essay of Hillary Clinton, it Takes a Village)This Times Literary Supplement (London) review essay from 1996 takes up Hillary Rodham Clinton's It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us, and Emmy E. Werner's, Pioneer Children on the Journey West. The review takes a tough line against the therapeutic yet simultaneously authoritarian ethic of Clinton's book; it argues that Clinton has essentially conflated a set of local community institutions - places of identity - with state institutions of therapeutic and social control - bureaucratic loci of state management of deracinated, passive individuals. It sets this against the ethic …

Children Going West (Review Essay Of Hillary Clinton, It Takes A Village), Kenneth Anderson

Kenneth Anderson

Commentary: Re-Positioning Human Rights Discourse On "Asian" Perspectives, Sharon K. Hom

Buffalo Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Was There Sex Before Calvin Klein?, Linda R. Hirshman

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

A New Class Of Lawyers: The Therapeutic As Rights Talk, Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

This 1996 essay reviews three books: Anthony T. Kronman, 'The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession' (Belknap 1993); Steven Brint, 'In an Age of Experts: The Changing Role of Professionals in Politics and Public Life' (Princeton 1994); and Christopher Lasch, 'The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy' (WW Norton 1995). The review essay argues that lawyers in the United States should be seen as part of the professional New Class who use the law as a monopoly in the management by elites of the rest of society. The review examines the history of New Class …

Measuring Poverty: A New Approach, Benjamin Hoorn Barton

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Measuring Poverty: A New Approach by The National Research Council.

The Rooster's Egg: On The Persistence Of Prejudice, Elise M. Bruhl

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Patricia J. Williams, The Roosters' Egg: On the Persistence of Prejudice

Whose Justice? Which Victims?, Lynne Henderson

Michigan Law Review

A Review of George Fletcher, With Justice for Some: Victim's Rights in Criminal Trials

The Real Ethic Of Death And Dying, Norman L. Cantor

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Peter Singer, Rethinking Life and Death

An "Age Of [Im]Possibility": Rhetoric, Welfare Reform, And Poverty, Lisa A. Crooms

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Joel F. Handler, The Poverty of Welfare Reform and Mark Robert Rank, Living on the Edge: The Realities of Welfare in America

A New Class Of Lawyers: The Therapeutic As Rights Talk, Kenneth Anderson

Kenneth Anderson

Comments By Angel Oquendo, Ángel Oquendo

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Remarks: Address By The Honorable J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Attorney General, State Of Maryland , J.Joseph Curran Jr.

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Never Again, Franklin D. Cleckley

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Reaffirming Affirmative Action We've Come A Long Way, But Not Far Enough, Cynthia R. Mabry

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Taking And Giving: Police Power, Public Value, And Private Right, Gerald Torres

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This lecture is divided into three parts. First, I will outline a critique of efficiency as it has functioned as the metanarrative underlying our basic current understanding of social institutions. A metanarrative is merely a legitimating background story rooted in the claim that it is the "story that can reveal the meaning of all stories." The claim I am making is that the standards of efficiency in common usage have operated in this way in questions of social policy. For government institutions, this is summed up in the popular claim of politicians that they will "run government like a business." …

Better Living Through Crime And Tort, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lessons From The Past: Revenge Yesterday And Today Symposium, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Seipp's Paper transports us to the Middle Ages to discover a society that views crime and tort quite differently from the way we view these categories today. Yet our discovery of that society offers a perspective about our own. In Professor Seipp's world the victim of a wrong had a choice: demand revenge by determining how the wrongdoer would be punished, or demand monetary compensation. These two entitlements were mutually exclusive. The victim could choose either one, but to some extent, especially in earlier times, the right of revenge was considered a higher right that the victim was expected …

Of Narrative In Law And Anthropology (Reviewing Three Titles), Rebecca Redwood French

Book Reviews

Reviewing Martha Minow et al. eds., Narrative, Violence, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover (1992); Robin West, Narrative, Authority, and Law (1993); and Lila Abu-Lughod, Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories (1992).

The Continental Moral Rights Doctrine And Its Applicability In The United States Copyright System, Oswaldo Jose Quintana

LLM Theses and Essays

In the last half of the twentieth century, international copyright protection has become of much greater concern as the copyright industry has become supranational. Treaties enacted in the last ten years such as the Berne Convention Implementation Act, the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, provide the highest copyright protection available at the international level. Global piracy has declined in the last several years because of these provisions. However, the adherence by the United States to these treaties has caused controversy; some maintain that it represents a major overhaul of federal law …

Punitive Damages In Ancient Roman And Contemporary American Tort Law, Esther Julia Sonntag

LLM Theses and Essays

Both ancient Roman and contemporary American tort law recognize a type of damages that, instead of compensating the plaintiff for harm suffered, punishes the wrongdoer. In American law, courts can award two distinct amounts of money: compensatory damages for the plaintiff’s loss, and punitive damages as punishment and deterrence. Ancient Roman law had more extreme forms of remedies. In both legal systems there has been a trend to restrict punitive damages over time. The United States made efforts in the 1980s to place caps on punitive damages, which were referred to as “relics of the past,” and enhance requirements for …

Plenary Power And Constitutional Outcasts: Federal Power, Critical Race Theory, And The Second, Ninth, And Tenth Amendments , Nicholas J. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Rights and power in modern American constitutionalism are conceptually interdependent: "We have no way of thinking about constitutional rights independent of what powers it would be prudent or desirable for government to have." In an era where substantive boundaries on federal power seem ephemeral, this suggests that what we call rights may be primarily fair weather or illusory barriers to the exercise of power.From a majoritarian perspective, the shifting boundary between rights and powers, and the capacity of power to consume rights, may be unproblematic and even attractive. If the exercise of plenary power reflects majority will, then this exercise …

Vagueness And Indecency, Jonathan Weinberg

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

A Feminist Theory Of Malebashing, Susan H. Williams, David C. Williams

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The concern about feminist "malebashing" is increasingly common, inside the university and out, but unfortunately, because of the emotions involved, most discussions of malebashing generate more confusion than understanding. When feminists say negative things about men, they often speak in anger and perhaps fear. When men respond, they are often angry, defensive, and perhaps hurt. While this confusion may be understandable, it is still counter-productive. The dialogue is plagued by a failure to answer with precision or rigor the most basic questions about this subject: What is "malebashing," i.e., illegitimate negative statements about men, and how is it different from …