Law Commons^™

Late Night Confessions In The Hart And Wechsler Hotel, Ann Althouse

Vanderbilt Law Review

I began my work in this field about a decade ago, as a teacher, quite simply, trying to find some coherence, some sense in the notoriously complex doctrine. Finding a scheme of coherence, a framework, really is the process of understanding. To merely observe that the field is chaotic, arcane, or incoherent is to decline the work of understanding. That rejection of the subject matter may be a fair and appropriate reaction: witness my colleagues who regard Federal Courts as a "mind game" or a "crossword puzzle." (Indeed, vast numbers bf laypersons have this reaction to the entire subject of …

Legal Education In Germany And The United States--A Structural Comparison, Juergen R. Ostertag

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In this Article, Mr. Ostertag compares German and United States legal education. He believes that the differences in the two educational systems result from such factors as the separate development of the respective educational programs, the different training goals each system has for law students, and the relative significance of code law instruction and case method instruction. The author perceives a dichotomy between legal theory and practice, and he believes that law schools could bridge this gap through a comprehensive internship program that would expose students to all aspects of legal practice.

The Marginalist Revolution In Legal Thought, Herbert Hovenkamp

Vanderbilt Law Review

For legal policy the two most important scientific ideas of the nineteenth century were Darwinism and marginalism. Both became the starting points for the great revolutions in the social sciences that took place in the 1870s and later. The central principle of Darwinism is the theory of evolution by natural selection. Because nature produces many more offspring than each niche in the environment can accommodate, individuals of a particular species must compete to survive. Purely at random each individual acquires from its parents a set of characteristics that are different from those of any other individual. Those who inherit characteristics …

Law School Examinations, Philip C. Kissam

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Essay explores the values, limits, and adverse effects of our system of law school examinations. Law school examinations encourage or require students to acquire certain knowledge while measuring a kind of knowledge as well. Importantly, this process occurs within a context of political relationships between law schools, law firms, the legal profession, and the state, as well as between law school administrators, faculty, and students. This system of "power/knowledge"relationships constitutes the law school's basic mechanism of self-regulation or, more generally, a mechanism of social control over legal education. In this era of substantial uncertainty about purposes and methods in …

Keepers Of The Flame: Prosser And Keeton On The Law Of Torts, Craig Joyce

Vanderbilt Law Review

Rarely in the history of American legal education has one author's name been so clearly identified with his subject as the name of William L. Prosser is with the law of torts. Even today, fourteen years after his death in 1972, "Prosser on Torts" remains in the minds of students, teachers, the bench, and the bar alike a single thought, its parts indistinguishable one from the other. Indeed, the passage of time has done nothing to diminish the influence of the man on the subject. His articles remain landmarks in the development both of the literature of torts and of …

The Professional Responsibility Of The Law Professor: Three Neglected Questions, Monroe H. Freedman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Law professors have a great deal to say about the ethics of law practitioners. We write law review articles about lawyers' professional responsibilities, and we have participated in drafting codes of conduct for practicing lawyers.

Many of us bring to that task a significant perspective. We can be both informed about and detached from the pressures of daily practice. We are free of involvement or (worse yet) identification with particular clients. Indeed, in choosing to become law professors, we have made the choice to dissociate ourselves from contact with clients.

Not surprisingly, therefore, most law professors tend to minimize the …

Samuel Enoch Stumpf: A Man Of Many Dimensions, Joe B. Wyatt, Chancellor

Vanderbilt Law Review

For more than a generation, Professor Stumpf's students and colleagues have enjoyed the luxury of learning from a man whose own interests and expertise cross traditional lines in academic disciplines and whose analysis of problems, issues, and ideas arches high above the traveled paths of those disciplines.

Modern Property Law: Cases And Materials, Dale A. Whitman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Most book reviews attempt to analyze the subject matter of the book under review. Casebooks, however, serve different purposes than other books; they are teaching tools that are useful only in the hands of an effective teacher. The editors of Modern Property Law are law teachers, and so am I. The purpose of this book review is to offer, as a professor of law, a personal view of this property casebook and to consider how it would function in the classroom. I have not yet used the book in my own property course because at the time of this writing …

The Japanese Law In English: Some Thoughts On Scope And Method, Dan F. Henderson

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Japanese law is a fledgling topic of comparative law in this country. The rapid growth of bilateral business and the integration of the United States and Japanese economies in recent years suggest the need for increased attention to this area. This Article first examines the prewar antecedents and the postwar developments of Japanese law in English in this country. It then reviews the present law school environment for the study of Japanese law as a comparative law subject. Finally, it briefly addresses three key issues basic to the development of this subject.

Professional Competence And Social Responsibility: Fulfilling The Vanderbilt Vision, Sandra D. O'Connor

Vanderbilt Law Review

In our laudable attempt to train law students to "think like lawyers" by teaching them legal method, we must not lose sight of the fact that questions of professional responsibility cannot properly be resolved with the same legal framework of analysis. Rather,we must see that as professionals with almost exclusive access to our system of justice, we have moral responsibilities totally outside the scope of the legal rules, and not amenable to analysis in terms of legal method. It is time to return to consideration of the moral and spiritual foundations of our legal system. It is time to train …

The Andragogical Basis Of Clinical Legal Education, Frank S. Bloch

Vanderbilt Law Review

Clinical legal education offers law students the opportunity to work together with faculty on cases that present the types of problems which law students want to learn how to solve. Andragogical theory holds that adult learners such as law students should be taught through mutual inquiry between teacher and student, through the use of actual experience, and with the recognition that students are ready and oriented to learn about that which they perceive to be relevant to their current social roles and professional goals. The clinical method of law teaching adds an important andragogical component to professional legal education; at …

Products Liability And Safety, Cases And Materials / Law, Intellect, And Education, Richard E. Speidel, Gene R. Shreve

Vanderbilt Law Review

Reviewed by Richard E. Speidel

In this brief review, I have attempted to determine whether this casebook makes the case for installing products liability and safety as an integral part of the law school curriculum. Admittedly, defective products pose an important social and legal problem with which lawyers are deeply involved. The question is, however, whether the casebook is, within the broader framework of contemporary legal education, both professionally relevant and educationally sound to a sufficient degree.

Reviewed by Gene R. Shreve.

This small book by a former dean of the University of Michigan Law School is the most confident …

Ted Smedley And The Law School, John W. Wade

Vanderbilt Law Review

Ted Smedley had been a member of the faculty at Washington and Lee for eighteen years when he accepted our invitation to come to Vanderbilt. We wanted him to become Director of the Race Relations Law Reporter and to teach some of his customary courses. His coming may well have been the most felicitous occurrence for the school in the 1950's... Ted's work in the field of race relations extended beyond publishing the Reporter. He also taught a seminar on varying aspects of the field some five or six times and gave addresses and informal talks on the subject to …

Paul J. Hartman And The Vanderbilt Law Alumni, Wilson Sims

Vanderbilt Law Review

One of the greatest assets of the Vanderbilt Law School is Professor Hartman's obvious love and appreciation for the School. When the Dutchman gets serious, this comes across in a powerful way. His unending effort on behalf of the Law School in working with the alumni over these many years has resulted in numerous tangible benefits for the Law School, but even more importantly, in many intangible ways, including the great sense of loyalty held by many of these alumni, all of them the Dutchman's former students. The School has no better salesman. He and his wife Dorothy command the …

The Evaluation Of A Clinical Legal Education Program: A Proposal, Junius L. Allison

Vanderbilt Law Review

Even though the Code of Professional Responsibility sets only general standards for competency, the competence of individual lawyers is now an area of active inquiry by the courts. Likewise, Legal Services are subject to regular evaluations. While these evaluations have had poor track records, the fault lies with their administration rather than their concept. If the practice of law is subject to scrutiny, it follows that schools for training the lawyers, and certainly parts of their curricula, such as clinical programs, can be evaluated." Legal education on its most basic level is preparation for a profession, the 'public profession of …

Choosing Law Clerks In Massachusetts, Robert Braucher

Vanderbilt Law Review

About the summer of 1875" Chief Justice Horace Gray of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts "began a practice, which he continued until the end of his judicial career, of employing a young graduate of the Harvard Law School as a secretary. At first he paid the expense of this from his own purse, but before he had been many years at Washington" as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States "the Government provided for the appointment of a clerk for each of the justices of the Supreme Court. His colleagues generally appointed as their clerks stenographers …

Mr. Wade And Wade Torts, James H. Wildman

Vanderbilt Law Review

We, his students, have never called him "Mr. Wade;" nor have we called him "Professor Wade." These words do not sound even faintly familiar. Yet Mr. Wade can rightfully claim major responsibility for the causal connection between Vanderbilt law student and Vanderbilt lawyer. Indeed, in this connection, the sine qua non rule applies to Mr. Wade. To the older of us, much of the detail of his visage and style have doubtless been lost--the jabbing hand, the lanky, angular figure, the Abe Lincoln face, the outstretched arms with fingers intertwined, the hands thrust deeply into pockets jingling change, and the …

John W. Wade: An Appreciation, Reber Boult

Vanderbilt Law Review

Without going back to the year of his advent as Dean when the placement of law graduates was largely a catch-as-catch-can proposition, but starting with the academic year 1965-66, there were approximatly 35 law firms, government agencies, or other entities that sent representatives to the Law School to interview candidates and to make offers for legal opportunities. During the 1971-72 academic year, there were over 100 such interviewers, a number of whom represented some of the most prestigious law firms in the United States. This record of achievement speaks eloquently of the end work product of the Vanderbilt School of …

Dean John Webster Wade, Robert J. Farley

Vanderbilt Law Review

John Wade began his teaching career at Ole Miss the next year after graduation from Harvard. It was a difficult initiation because many of his students were former contemporaries and all of the faculty were his former instructors. He handled this situation with natural dignity and the assurance of superior capability, yet modestly and conscientiously. Although during the next several years he was offered visiting position elsewhere, both Chancellor Butts and Dean Kimbrough found that they could not spare him. Perhaps they would not recommend him for a leave of absence because they were afraid of losing such a prize. …

John W. Wade: Friendly Critic And Sensitive Scholar, Wex S. Malone

Vanderbilt Law Review

The teacher could boast only three or four years of maturity over his students; hence, he was vulnerable and was often at-tacked with considerable spirit. From the beginning John Wade faced me with the kind of challenge that can be both the delight and the despair of a beginning law teacher. His characteristic mode of attack by way of imperturbable but relentless prodding will be recalled with admiring pleasure by more than a generation of his own law students. This role of the friendly, reflective skeptic, which is so fundamental a part of the intellectual make-up of John Wade, has …

John W. Wade: Gentle Scholar, Pilot Lawyer, Roger J. Traynor

Vanderbilt Law Review

His contributions to the work of the American Law Institute, his career as the dean of a first-rate law school, and his essays on restitution,torts, and conflict of laws would be more than enough to place John Wade in the first rank of American lawyers. The very constructiveness of his work makes him pre-emininently a modern teacher and lawyer.

John W. Wade And The Development Of The Vanderbilt Law School, Paul H. Sanders

Vanderbilt Law Review

John W. Wade made a decided imprint upon the Vanderbilt Law School in the years before he became Dean in 1952. His contributions to the development of the institution were impressive, not only as a skillful "case-method" teacher in the classroom, but also as Faculty Editor for volumes two through five of the Vanderbilt Law Review at a time when this position entailed responsibilities for all phases of the publication greatly in excess of those imposed upon the Faculty Adviser in later years. Without question he was the person most responsible for the firm and early establishment of the Vanderbilt …

The Education Of Legal Paraprofessionals: Myths, Realities, And Opportunities, William P. Statsky

Vanderbilt Law Review

The response to the challenge of training legal paraprofessionals is in a state of disarray. This is due not so much to poor planning on the part of the trainers as it is to the inherent difficulty of designing a training program for a role that as yet has no clear boundary lines. On the one hand, this difficulty invites the trainer to give full rein to his imagination in breaking new ground, but on the other hand, the instability in the area has been sufficiently great to scare off would-be participants from a much needed dialogue about how to …

The Legal Paraprofessional: An Introduction, Elliott E. Cheatham

Vanderbilt Law Review

In this country, persons who have not been admitted to the bar are widely used in law offices. In fact, A Lawyer's Handbook, edited by the American Bar Association's Committee on the Economics of Law Practice, devotes an entire chapter to the nonlawyer employee. Investigators and accountants are common and legal secretaries are universal. There are pressing questions on what more should be done to utilize laymen in making legal services available. This issue of the Vanderbilt Law Review considers the paraprofessional in law. The Symposium opens with an article by Mr. William P. Statsky. In his discussion, The Education …

Preventive Law And The Legal Assistant, Louis M. Brown

Vanderbilt Law Review

An examination of paraprofessionalism may begin with an evaluation of society's need for legal services, a need that is not always obvious,nor indeed even recognized by the general public.' One area in which the provision of legal services to all but the most wealthy clients is notably deficient is that of preventive law. This kind of legal practice seeks to help individuals regulate their activities to avoid legal trouble, in contrast to the litigating aspect of law that comes into play only after a dispute has developed. Since the practice of preventive law requires the use of specialized tools and …

Law Reform And Law For The Layman: A Challenge To Legal Education, Walter Barnett

Vanderbilt Law Review

Most of the current debate over academic neutrality has centered on whether the university as an institution--the faculty and students as a corporate body--should take formal positions on political issues, such as the war in Vietnam. This article will address the related, but perhaps more mundane, question whether law professors should take a more active role in providing legal services to government and to the public when this activity might provoke attacks on academic freedom. Traditionally, law professors who have sought to serve society in ways other than educating lawyers have engaged in the following five extramural activities:' (1) The …

Law Reform And Legal Education, Robert E. Keeton

Vanderbilt Law Review

Painfully slow as the mills of law reform grind, they have moved faster in our generation than in most. This appraisal may seem overly generous to our own day when we reflect on the difficulties and delays encountered in achieving some particular reform. But if we measure progress in another way--comparing what has happened in the last dozen years with what happened in other time periods of similar length--differences emerge. The most easily documented difference concerns the performance of appellate courts of last resort in reforming private law by candidly overruling precedents. In the last dozen years, there have been …

Book Reviews, Elliot E. Cheatham, Robert N. Covington

Vanderbilt Law Review

SOURCES OF LAW By Helen Silving Buffalo: William S. Hein & Co., Inc., 1968. Pp. viii, 404. $20.00.

reviewer: Elliot E. Cheatham

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LAW OF PARTNERSHIP By Judson A. Crane & Alan R. Bromberg St.Paul: West Publishing Co., 1968. Pp. xviii, 615. $12.00.

reviewer: Robert N. Covington

The Published Works Of Elliott E. Cheatham, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Published Works of Elliott E. Cheatham

conflict of laws, legal education, professional standards

BOOKS CASES AND MATERIALS ON CONFLICT OF LAWS Chicago, 1936(with others); 2d edition, 1941; 3d edition, Brooklyn, 1951; 4th edition, 1957; Supplement, 1961; 5th edition, 1964.

CASES AND OTHER MATERIALS ON THE LEGAL PROFESSION. Chicago, 1938; 2d edition, Brooklyn, 1955.

COURS GENERAL SUR PROBLEMES ET METHODES EN MATIERE DECONFLIT DE LOIS. Paris, 1960. A LAWYER WHEN NEEDED. New York, 1963.

ARTICLES

What Can Law Schools Do to Raise the Standards of the Legal Profession? Symposium on Co-operative Efforts to Raise the Standards of the Legal Profession), …

Elliott Evans Cheatham, Willis L.M. Reese

Vanderbilt Law Review

Cheatham has made a marked imprint through his teaching and his writing on five areas of the law: international law, property, legal education, the legal profession, and conflict of laws. Of these, the legal profession is probably the field where his influence has been most deeply felt. Indeed, it is largely because of his ground-breaking casebook that the subject figures so prominently today in law school curriculums. Likewise, his Carpentier Lectures of a few years ago on "A Lawyer When Needed" provided the entering wedge into a subject that is of great contemporary significance. What Cheatham has done in the …