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Full-Text Articles in Law

Uncertainty Revisited: Legal Prediction And Legal Postdiction, Ehud Guttel, Alon Harel Dec 2008

Uncertainty Revisited: Legal Prediction And Legal Postdiction, Ehud Guttel, Alon Harel

Michigan Law Review

Legal scholarship, following rational-choice theory, has traditionally treated uncertainty as a single category. A large body of experimental studies, however, has established that individuals treat guesses concerning the future differently than guesses concerning the past. Even where objective probabilities and payoffs are identical, individuals are much more willing to predict a future event (and are more confident in the accuracy of their predictions) than they are willing to postdict a past event (and are also less confident in the accuracy of their postdiction). For example, individuals are more willing to bet on the results of a future die toss than …


Practice Makes Perfect? An Empirical Study Of Claim Construction Reversal Rates In Patent Cases, David L. Schwartz Nov 2008

Practice Makes Perfect? An Empirical Study Of Claim Construction Reversal Rates In Patent Cases, David L. Schwartz

Michigan Law Review

This Article examines whether U.S. district court judges improve their skills at patent claim construction with experience, including the experience of having their own cases reviewed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In theory, higher courts teach doctrine to lower courts via judicial decisions, and lower courts learn from these decisions. This Article tests the teaching-and-learning premise on the issue of claim construction in the realities of patent litigation. While others have shown that the Federal Circuit reverses a large percentage of lower court claim constructions, no one has analyzed whether judges with more claim construction appeal …


A Guide To Searching Cyberspace Law Online, Jennifer L. Selby Jan 2008

A Guide To Searching Cyberspace Law Online, Jennifer L. Selby

Law Librarian Scholarship

Cyberspace law is an umbrella term that touches on and encompasses many different areas of the law, including Internet, intellectual property, cybercrime, e-commerce, and privacy, among others. Cyberspace law includes aspects of United States law, in addition to foreign, comparative, and international law.1 Today, legal researchers in cyberspace law can enhance their search capabilities with web-based resources, including primary and secondary materials. Many of the resources discussed here are available freely on the Internet. For those resources that are licensed and networked, researchers may access them only at subscribing law libraries, and not remotely.2


Using Ethics Codes To Reinforce Lessons Of Statutory Interpretation, Edward R. Becker Jan 2008

Using Ethics Codes To Reinforce Lessons Of Statutory Interpretation, Edward R. Becker

Articles

To increase my students' exposure to statutory interpretation, I assign them early in the second semester to argue a motion to disqualify counsel based on imputed disqualification under Michigan's ethics ruls. Interpreting ethics rules involves many of the same "pure" statutory interpretation techniques I introduced the previous semester, and the students appear to easily make any needed translations. This exercise also helps prepare students to interpret other quasi-legislative authorities like court or evidentiary rules, administrative codes, and municipal ordinances.


Did Bankruptcy Reform Fail? An Empirical Study Of Consumer Debtors, Robert M. Lawless, Angela K. Littwin, Katherine M. Porter, John A. E. Pottow, Deborah K. Thorne, Elizabeth Warren Jan 2008

Did Bankruptcy Reform Fail? An Empirical Study Of Consumer Debtors, Robert M. Lawless, Angela K. Littwin, Katherine M. Porter, John A. E. Pottow, Deborah K. Thorne, Elizabeth Warren

Articles

Before 2005, many people went broke and many filed for bankruptcy. After 2005, many people still go broke, but not so many file for bankruptcy. Why has the number of bankruptcies declined? Surely it is not the economy. All throughout the 2000s, families have been under increasing economic pressure. Median family incomes have declined, basic expenses have risen, and families are shouldering unprecedented debt loads. Defaults remain high for credit cards and car loans, while mortgage foreclosures have soared. By 2008, over half of all Americans reported that their incomes were falling behind their cost of living. These data all …


The Articulate Frank Allen, James J. White Jan 2008

The Articulate Frank Allen, James J. White

Articles

Frank Allen had all of the wonderful talents that Ted St. Antoine and Rick Lempert ascribe to him. He was exceptionally smart and thoughtful (no one gets to give those fancy lectures who is not). He was a wise man (he led the faculty through the tough times at the end of the Vietnam War). And he was compassionate but tough as nails (he favored affirmative action, but was willing to close down the BAM affirmative action disruption with police if necessary-Frank's statement of his intention to call the police after the law school classes were disrupted forced the timorous …


Empirical Research For Public Policy: With Examples From Family Law, Richard O. Lempert Jan 2008

Empirical Research For Public Policy: With Examples From Family Law, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

Perhaps more than in any other field, legal scholarship has aimed directly at influencing public policy. Hence, it is not surprising that empirical scholarship on law related issues often seems to have an agenda that extends beyond the common social science goals of adding to our knowledge base and understanding of human behavior to suggesting to policy makers and practitioners legal and administrative changes that will ameliorate problems they confront and, by the researcher’s lights, make this a better world in which to live.