Law Commons^™

For Nontraditional Names' Sake: A Call To Reform The Name-Change Process For Marrying Couples, Meegan Brooks

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In a large number of states, women are encouraged to take their husbands’ surnames at marriage by being offered an expedited name-change process that is shorter, less expensive, and less invasive than the statutory process that men must complete. If a couple instead decides to take an altogether-new name at marriage, the vast majority of states require that each spouse complete the longer statutory process. This name-change system emerged from a long history of naming as a way for men to dominate women. This Note emphasizes the need for name-change reform, arguing that the current system perpetuates antiquated patriarchal values …

Ed Cooper, Rule 56, And Charles E. Clark's Fountain Of Youth, Steven S. Gensler

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Nobody had a greater impact on the formulation of the original Civil Rules than Clark. His role as both the principal architect2 and the principal draftsman3 of the Civil Rules is well known. As Professor Wright once put it, although the Civil Rules were a joint effort, "the end product bears the unmistakable Clark stamp."4 But Clark started shaping the Civil Rules even before drafting began.5 Initially, Chief Justice Hughes thought the civil rules project should be limited to creating rules for actions at law (leaving in place-and separate-the existing equity rules).6 A passionate advocate for merging law and equity …

The Twelve-Person Federal Civil Jury In Exile, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In the mid-1990s, the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, with Fifth Circuit Judge Patrick Higginbotham as Chair and our honoree, Professor Ed Cooper, in the early years of his long service as Reporter, unanimously (coincidentally, by a 12-0 vote) proposed an amendment to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 48 that would have required the seating of twelve-member juries in federal civil trials. The requirement of a unanimous verdict, unless waived by the parties, and the abolition of alternate jurors would have been unaffected; attrition could reduce a jury's size below twelve members, with a floor of six unless the parties …

Is Now The Time For Simplified Rules Of Civil Procedure, Paul V. Niemeyer

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Unfortunately, any objective evaluation of current federal civil process will inevitably lead to the conclusion that the process is functioning inadequately in its purpose of discharging justice speedily and inexpensively. One need only ask any trial lawyer whether he can try a medium-sized commercial dispute to judgment in a federal court in less than three years and at a cost of less than six figures. Is the iconic appellation of "making a federal case out of a dispute" not the ultimate condemnation of current judicial process in federal courts? Can we understand the private bar's flight from federal courts to …

Past The Pillars Of Hercules: Francis Bacon And The Science Of Rulemaking, Daniel R. Coquillette

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The parallels between Bacon's career and that of Edward H. Cooper are, of course, obvious. Bacon was one of the great legal minds of his day. Unlike the common-law judges who formed the law by deciding cases, Bacon expressed his greatness in writing brilliant juristic treatises and, as Lord Chancellor, drafting one of the first modern rule systems, the Ordinances in Chancery (1617-1620). Indeed, my thesis is that Bacon invented modern, scientific rulemaking by fusing his new theories of inductive, empirical research with the traditions of equitable pleading and is, in fact, the intellectual forbearer of the likes of Charles …

They Were Meant For Each Other: Professor Edward Cooper And The Rules Enabling Act, Mark R. Kravitz, David F. Levi, Lee H. Rosenthal, Anthony J. Scirica

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This introduction to the essays in this Symposium illuminates Professor Ed Cooper's years as Reporter to the Civil Rules Committee by first briefly describing those who preceded him in the position and his own background. We then describe some of Ed Cooper's many contributions to the Civil Rules Committee, the Federal Rules, rulemaking, and civil procedure by examining the present state of the Rules Committees' work under the Rules Enabling Act. We conclude that after almost eighty years of experience under that Act, it is working well in large part because of the sound leadership provided by Ed Cooper over …

Professor Ed Cooper: Zen Minimalist, Linda S. Mullenix

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In celebration of his twentieth year as the Reporter for the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, I write to contribute some modest reflections on Professor Cooper's tenure as Advisory Committee Reporter. My comments are those of an academic who had the opportunity to observe the Advisory Committee for nearly a decade, but they are largely the comments of an outsider. Readers might be disappointed to find that there is no dish or inside baseball here.

Looking Ahead: The Future Of Child Welfare Law, Donald N. Duquette

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Introduction to a 2007 Symposium held to mark the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Child Advocacy Clinic.

Walking The Beach To The Core Of Sovereignty: The Historic Basis For The Public Trust Doctrine Applied In Glass V. Goeckel, Robert Haskell Abrams

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In 2004, a split panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals announced its conclusion that Michigan littoral owners of property owned to the water's very edge and could exclude members of the public from walking on the beach. In that instant almost 3300 miles of the Great Lakes foreshore became, in theory and in law, closed to public use. The case became the leading flash point of controversy between the vast public and ardent private property rights groups. A little more than one year later, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed that ruling as errant on public trust grounds and returned …

Function Over Form: Reviving The Criminal Jury's Historical Role As A Sentencing Body, Chris Kemmitt

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article argues that the Supreme Court, as evinced by its recent spate of criminal jury decisions, has abandoned the criminal jury known to the Founders and, in so doing, has severely eroded the protections intended to inhere in the Sixth Amendment jury trial right. It then proposes one potential solution to this problem.

According to the Supreme Court, this recent line of cases has been motivated by the need to preserve the "ancient guarantee" articulated in the Sixth Amendment under a new set of legal circumstances. Unfortunately, the Court misinterprets the ancient guarantee that it is ostensibly attempting to …

Race, Class, And Suburbia: The Modern Black Suburb As A 'Race-Making Situation', Mary Jo Wiggins

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In her Article, Professor Wiggins discusses the complex social phenomenon of "Black suburbanization, " focusing on the commercial "disinvestment" in and around predominately Black suburbs. She traces the historical relationship between Black Americans and the suburbs, and describes in detail the commercial disinvestment in two contemporary Black suburbs, Prince George's County, Maryland, and south DeKalb, Georgia. In her Article, she offers possible explanations for disinvestment, including the application of protective zoning; inefficient zoning laws and practices; prior investment decisions; demographic explanations; and independent effects .of race. Wiggins analyzes some of the resulting negative social and economic consequences, including a sense …

Civil War Pension Attorneys And Disability Politics, Peter Blanck, Chen Song

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Professor Blanck and Dr. Song provide a detailed examination of the pension disability program established after the Civil War for Union Army Veterans. They use many original sources and perform several statistical analyses as the basis for their summary. They draw parallels between this disability program and the ADA, and they point out that current ADA plaintiffs encounter many of the same social, political and even scientific issues that Union Army veterans dealt with when applying for their disability pensions. The Article demonstrates that history can help predict the trends within, and evolution of the ADA--essentially leading to a better …

Franco's Spain, Queer Nation?, Gema Pérez-Sánchez

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article discusses how, through its juridical apparatus, the Spanish dictatorship of Francisco Franco sought to define and to contain homosexuality, followed by examples of how underground queer activism contested homophobic laws. The Article concludes by analyzing a literary work to illustrate the social impact of Francoism's homophobic law against homosexuality.

Querying A Queer Spain Under Franco, Peter Kwan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

There should be more articles in the legal journals such as Professor Gema Pérez-Sánchez's. In Franco's Spain, Queer Nation?, Professor Pérez-Sánchez has done a great service to legal scholarship in four respects. Firstly, she has written an appropriately far-ranging piece. In a discipline that has as one of its central missions the broadening of critical legal discourse, LatCrit can sometimes appear to suffer from symptoms of parochialism in its understandable emphasis on the Latina/o experience within American borders, or on the experience of its Latina/o immigrants once they have reached these shores. To be sure, this is not a problem …

Hegemony, Coercion, And Their Teeth-Gritting Harmony: A Commentary On Power, Culture, And Sexuality In Franco's Spain, Ratna Kapur, Tayyab Mahmud

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Professor Gema Pérez-Sánchez's article, Franco's Spain, Queer Nation? focuses on the last years of Francisco Franco's fascist dictatorship and the early years of the young Spanish democracy, roughly from the late 1960's to the early 1980's. The centerpiece of her article looks at how, through law, Franco's regime sought to define and contain what it considered dangerous social behavior, particularly homosexuality. She traces how the state not only exercised hegemonic control over definitions of gender and sexuality, but also established well-defined roles for women and drew clear lines between what constituted legitimate and illegitimate sexualities, namely, the line between heterosexuality …

Establishing New Legal Doctrine In Managed Care: A Model Of Judicial Response To Industrial Change, Peter D. Jacobson, Scott D. Pomfret

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Courts are struggling with how to develop legal doctrine in challenges to the new managed care environment. In this Article, we examine how courts have responded in the past to new industries or radical transformations of existing industries. We analyze two historical antecedents, the emergence of railroads in the nineteenth century and mass production in the twentieth century, to explore how courts might react to the current transformation of the health care industry.

In doing so, we offer a model of how courts confront issues of developing legal doctrine, especially regarding liability, associated with nascent or dramatically transformed industries. Our …

Fictions, Fault, And Forgiveness: Jury Nullification In A New Context, David N. Dorfman, Chris K. Iijima

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Recently, critics of the Anglo-American jury system have complained that juries in criminal trials have been ignoring the law, in favor of defendants who claim that they lack criminal responsibility because they are afflicted by the various victimization syndromes now popularized in the mass media. In this Article, Professors Dorfman and Iijima counter this characterization of the "runaway" jury and argue that juries are not ignoring the law, but rather, are exercising a primary power of the jury, to nullify the application of the law when such application to a particular defendant is unjust. The Authors trace the development of …

Eyes To The Future, Yet Remembering The Past: Reconciling Tradition With The Future Of Legal Education, Amy M. Colton

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note explores the relationship between legal education and the legal profession, and what can be done to stop the two institutions from drifting farther and farther apart. Part I examines the history of the American law school, focusing on how the schools came into existence and what goals they intended to serve. Part II questions whether these goals have been reached, and dissects the present-day law school curriculum in search of both its triumphs and its failures. A necessary part of this curriculum analysis includes examining the evolution of the profession into a creature of both law and business, …

Revitalizing Our Cities Or Restoring Ties To Them? Redirecting The Debate, Donald A. Hicks

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, I generally concur that certain legal reforms do hold considerable potential for ameliorating some of the desperate circumstances we find in our cities today. My view is rooted in the recognition that past reforms which dismantled legal barriers to equal opportunity were of monumental significance in broadening social and economic access to our urban arrangements. But it also is rooted in the conviction that a new wave of legal reform might well be required in order to reconsider other past reforms that, however unintentionally, have made many matters worse. Above all, any proposed legal reform should be …

Promulgating The Marriage Contract, Lynn A. Baker

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

I begin Part I of this Article by positing several logically necessary, but insufficient, conditions that precede a state's decision to promulgate a law more aggressively than usual. I then show that each of these conditions was met with regard to the economic terms of the marriage contract in virtually all states by 1975. In Part II, I explore what Louisiana's unusually aggressive promulgation of certain terms of the marriage contract reveals about the legal system's conception of the marital relationship as of 1975. In Part III, I discuss what is added to that conception of the modern marital relationship …

The Law Of Pretrial Interrogation, Department Of Justice Office Of Legal Policy

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The existing rules in the United States governing the questioning of suspects in custody are based on the Supreme Court's five to four decision in Miranda v. Arizona. The Court in Miranda promulgated a new, code-like set of rules for custodial questioning, including the creation of a right to counsel in connection with custodial questioning, a requirement of warnings, a prohibition of questioning unless the suspect affirmatively waives the rights set out in the warnings, and a prohibition of questioning if the suspect asks for a lawyer or indicates in any manner that he is unwilling to talk. These …

Affordable Housing For The 1990'S, Harold A. Mcdougall

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article examines the history of national housing policy and the factors that will influence its future. Part I discusses the role of capital costs in influencing housing policy. Part II summarizes the changes that have occurred in housing policy in the last fifty years. Part III studies how local- and state-level institutions have reacted to these changes. Finally, Part IV predicts the future of national housing policy, focusing particularly on local efforts.

Environmental Litigation In Historical Perspective, Samuel P. Hays

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

During the past several decades, litigation has played a major role in the attempt by citizens to realize environmental objectives. Its impact has been elaborated extensively in the vast array of writing in law journals as well as in the cases themselves. Most analyses have focused on specialized subjects of either substantive policy or legal procedure. In this brief Essay I attempt a more comprehensive overview involving two background factors- the growth of environmental values since World War II and the response of governmental institutions to the resulting demands placed upon them. Among these institutions were the courts. Their role …

The Law School Of The University Of Michigan: 1859-1984: An Intellectual History, Elizabeth Gaspar Brown

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The intellectual history of the University of Michigan Law School is recorded in the titles of contributions to legal literature published from its organization in October 1859 to the present. These writings demonstrate a continued commitment to legal scholarship and illustrate both the changing patterns in the subjects chosen for research and writing, and the methods utilized for treatment of the subjects.

Political Asylum Under The 1980 Refugee Act: An Unfulfilled Promise, Arthur C. Helton

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I of this Article reviews the history and development of asylum law in the United States which culminated in the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. It analyzes the failure of the responsible administrative authorities to follow the dictates of the law - a circumstance which prompted the passage of the Act and which now threatens to subvert the right to asylum in the United States. Part II considers the impact on asylum seekers of new alien interdiction and detention programs, and the legality of those programs under domestic and international law. Finally, Part III makes specific recommendations, …

Perlman V. Feldmann: A Case Study In Contemporary Corporate Legal History, Jan G. Deutsch

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The author gives the following introduction to this article: “When I was a law student, taking a course in introductory corporate law, what was heard around the halls was that most of corporate law would be learned if one understood Perlman v. Feldmann. I agree with that statement, and I have agreed more strongly each year I myself have taught introductory corporate law. Indeed, I now believe one would also learn a good deal about the significance of-the corporation in American life during the past two decades. Unfortunately, however, it seems to me-on the basis of having read everything …

Article V: Changing Dimensions In Constitutional Change, Francis H. Heller

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

To anyone raised under the Constitution of the United States, that document's declaration that it is "the supreme law of the land" may appear as a commonplace assertion. In some other nations the constitution is not viewed as law, but is seen as a primarily political document. In fact, some foreign constitutions are formally proclaimed to be "political constitutions." The writers of the American Constitution were well aware that they were engaged in fashioning an arrangement for the exercise of political functions and the peaceful adjustment of political conflict. And, however much validity there continues to be to de Tocqueville's …