Law Commons^™

Inside The Black Box: Comment On Diamond And Vidmar, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

It is an honor to be invited to comment on the first publication of the Arizona Jury Project, a study of Arizona juries that includes videotaping and analysis of jury room discussions and deliberations. It is a remarkable and unique project, made possible by an unusual confluence of people, places, and events. In an insightful opinion some years ago, United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis observed that "[i]t is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments …

Introduction To "Books", Margaret A. Leary

Articles

It's well known that graduate William B. Cook's generosity provided the Law School with its trademark Gothic Law Quadrangle. It is less universally known that Cook endowed the Law School with a trust to support faculty research, and had a strong interest in the nature of that research. He chose to call the library building "Legal Research" and to inscribe above the main entrance "Learned and cultured lawyers are safeguards of the republic." Cook often said that the lack of "intellectual leadership 1s the greatest problem which faces America," and he wanted this Law School to provide that missing leadership. …

Using A Civil Procedure Exam Question To Teach Persuasion, Sophie M. Sparrow

Law Faculty Scholarship

Studies show that learners master new material more effectively when it builds upon what they already know. By revisiting assignments from a previous semester, students can focus their efforts on persuading, rather than learning new doctrine or facts. Turning a predictive discussion into a persuasive argument demonstrates that making an argument requires the same rigorous thinking as predicting a result. One way to do this is to assign students to write an argument based on their fall Civil Procedure exam.

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.

Baker V. State And The Promise Of The New Judicial Federalism, Charles Baron, Lawrence Friedman

Charles H. Baron

In Baker v. State, the Supreme Court of Vermont ruled that the state constitution’s Common Benefits Clause prohibits the exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and protections of marriage. Baker has been praised by constitutional scholars as a prototypical example of the New Judicial Federalism. The authors agree, asserting that the decision sets a standard for constitutional discourse by dint of the manner in which each of the opinions connects and responds to the others, pulls together arguments from other state and federal constitutional authorities, and provides a clear basis for subsequent development of constitutional principle. This Article explores …

The President's Column, Jane Kent Gionfriddo

Jane Kent Gionfriddo

No abstract provided.

Play It Again, Sam: Repetition-Part Ii, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Repetition plays a key role in legal writing. The September "Scrivener" addressed using repetition to ensure accuracy, to build emphasis, and to connect ideas. This article focuses on using repetition to make readers comfortable with the writer's use of authorities and to alert them to key wording. In addition, the article explores balancing the use of repetition to avoid making readers bored or irritated.

An Arrow To The Heart: The Love And Death Of Postmodern Legal Scholarship, Stephen M. Feldman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Modernist legal writers, including Dennis Arrow in his well-known Pomobabble article, commonly criticize postmodern legal scholars for being muddle-headed nihilistic thinkers who write indecipherable jargon-filled nonsense and lack political convictions. Professor Feldman responds to these and other related criticisms and, in doing so, explains some key components of postmodernism. For instance, he describes how the pervasiveness of postmodern culture infuses legal scholarship with certain postmodern themes. Ironically, then, even the most vehement critics, like Arrow, display a surprising if unwitting affinity for postmodernism. Finally, in order to deflect precipitate denunciations of postmodernism, Professor Feldman suggests a refinement of terms, dividing …

Spaceball (Or, Not Everything That's Left Is Postmodern), Dennis W. Arrow

Vanderbilt Law Review

Given law-school postmodernism's epistemo/ontology of juvenile antirealist agnosticism, its commitment to Gadamerian and/or Derridean notions of linguistic indeterminacy, its mono- maniacal dedication to centrifugal end-justifies-the-means Lefty politics, its abhorrence of commonly recognized conceptions of neutral principle, its concomitant disrespect for the very notion of truth, and its inextricably intertwined obsession with names and propensity for linguistic doublespeak, Professor Arrow confesses to initially wondering what it might "mean" to take anything uttered by a postmodernist "literally," or at "face value." But undaunted by that 'paradox," Professor Arrow not only takes up Feldman's challenge to "critique postmodernism on its own terms" (by …

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.

The Quest For Scholarship: The Legal Writing Professor's Paradox, Susan P. Liemer

Publications

This article explores the many institutionalized obstacles placed in the paths of the legal academy's experts on legal writing when they themselves attempt to write.

Business Lawyer, Woman Warrior: An Allegory Of Feminine And Masculine Theories, Barbara Ann White

All Faculty Scholarship

The first part of this essay is a discourse on how two of the last half century’s most influential contributions to legal thinking: Law and Economics Jurisprudence and Feminist Legal Theory, whose adherents are normally adversaries, can function synergistically to create a greater analytic power. Using business law issues as an example - historically law and economics’ terrain but recently explored by feminism - I comment on how each can unravel different knots but each standing alone leave other conundrums unresolved.

Expanding on the feminist concept of “masculine thinking,” I discuss how, just as law and economics’ analytic style (i.e., …

Classical Citation, David S. Coale

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

Aristotle's classical rules for effective advocacy use the framework of logos, ethos, and pathos. Logos is the persuasive force of the reasoning and facts, ethos is the personal credibility of the advocate, and pathos is the emotional appeal of the argument. Citations usually focus on logos and overlook ethos and pathos.

Writing A Better Brief: The Civil Appeals Style Manual Of The Office Of The Maryland Attorney General, Andrew H. Baida

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

The office of the Attorney General of Maryland conducts the Civil Appellate Brief Writing Program in order to improve the level of written appellate advocacy of its attorneys. The program centers on the Office's Civil Appeals Style Manual. The Manual's principles have improved the office's appellate brief writing.

Listening To John W. Davis, D. P. Marshall Jr.

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

From the Library is a new section in The Journal that will reprint the best that has been written about appellate practice and the appellate process. The first piece features timeless advice about oral argument by John W. Davis. Davis was a country lawyer, law teacher, state legislator and congressman, Solicitor General of the United States, Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Democratic candidate for President in 1924, and managing partner of a New York City law firm.

The Argument Of An Appeal, John W. Davis

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

John W. Davis candidly offers ten pieces of advice for oral appellate advocacy.

Law Reviews And Their Relevance To Modern Legal Problems, Thomas L. Fowler

Campbell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.

Play It Again, Sam: Repetition-Part I, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Repetition is part of learning. Advertising specialists do not expect their message to stick with consumers until the ad has aired at least three times. Yet, too much repetition can be both distracting and irritating. This column, and Part II, which will appear in the November 2001 issue, will address the role of repetition in legal writing.

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.

Cross-References, As Stated Above, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Often one argument in your brief may share common elements with another. Have you ever attempted to save space and time by simply referring your readers to another argument in a brief with "as stated above" or a similar cross-reference? This article provides tips for helping your readers follow such cross-references with ease.

"Rights Revolutions And Counter-Revolutions" Book Note, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

The rise of rights talk is a subject that has gripped academia in recent years. Many historians of modem America are now searching for the origins of the rights revolution and the feverish use of rights arguments on the left and on the right. Two recent works of legal history tackle one part of this question with trailblazing interpretations, focusing on left-wing rights discourse and the successes of the civil rights movement. Both books offer compelling and well-written narratives of post-war legal issues, and they present innovative arguments that this revolution began in response to global crises.¹ Richard Primus's …

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.

The Buddha's Parable And Legal Rhetoric, David M. Zlotnick

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Footnote Citations?, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Let's face it-legal citations can interrupt the flow of sentences and make them harder to read. In comparison, the widely used Modem Language Association documentation style recommends short parenthetical citations in text that direct readers to a list of authorities at the end: for example, "(Gilli- gan 105)."Another format commonly used in history, art history, and other disciplines is that of the Chicago Manual of Style. The Chicago note style uses raised numerals in the text to refer readers to authorities in endnotes or footnotes. Although such a footnote style is predominant in law reviews, few have advocated it in …

Democratic Justice In Transition, Marion Smiley

Michigan Law Review

Ruti Teitel's Transitional Justice and Ian Shapiro's Democratic Justice come out of very different academic traditions. But they both develop a view of justice that might loosely be called pragmatic by virtue of its treatment of justice as a value that is simultaneously grounded in practice and powerful in bringing about social and political change. Moreover, they both use this shared pragmatic view of justice to provide us with two things that are of great importance to the study of transitional justice and democracy in general. The first is an explanatory framework for understanding how legal institutions and claims about …

Foreword: On Academic Fads And Fashions, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

Why did critical legal studies disappear? Will it reappear? Why does the Federalist Society prosper? Why, and when, do people write books on constitutional law, rather than tort law or antitrust? Why did people laugh at the notion of "animal rights," and why do they now laugh less? Why do law professors seem increasingly respectful of "textualism" and "originalism," ideas that produced ridicule and contempt just two decades ago? How do book reviewers choose what books to review? Why has law and economics had such staying power? Academics are generally committed to truth, and they are drawn to ideas that …

Where Is My Body? Stanley Fish's Long Goodbye To Law, Richard Delgado

Michigan Law Review

Stanley Fish, author of Doing What Comes Naturally, Is There a Text in This Class?, There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing, Too, and other paradigm-shifting books, and who recently left law teaching for a position in university administration, has written one last volume giving his colleagues in the profession he left behind something to think about. In his previous work, Fish, who taught English and law at Duke University, addressed central legal issues such as meaning, communication, and textual interpretation, challenging such received wisdoms as that every text has a single, determinate meaning, or …

Common Disorders Of The Appendix And Their Treatment, Roger J. Miner

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

In the legal profession, an appendix is an integral part to an appellate brief. An appendix is as important as oral argument or the written brief. This essay examines the function of and rules for preparing an appendix. The discussion then identifies common deficiencies of appendices along with the consequences of the disorders.

The Alwd Citation Manual: A Clear Improvement Over The Bluebook, M.H. Sam Jacobson

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

The Association of Legal Writing Directors released a new legal citation manual in 2000. The ALWD Citation Manual is designed to meet the needs of legal practitioners rather than the needs of law journals. M.H. Sam Jacobson discusses how well the manual promotes atrribution of ideas and statements and communicates how sources support the text for which they are cited.