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Full-Text Articles in Law

Where Equity Meets Expertise: Re-Thinking Appellate Review In Complex Litigation, Michael J. Hays Dec 2008

Where Equity Meets Expertise: Re-Thinking Appellate Review In Complex Litigation, Michael J. Hays

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The field of complex litigation continues to grow as both an academic study and a popular phenomenon. One cannot escape news accounts of major class action litigation, and lawyers continue to find new ways to push the outer bounds of civil litigation practices to accommodate large-scale disputes involving multiple claims or parties. Many question whether traditional procedures can or should apply to these cases. Drawing on this well-recognized procedural tension, this Article explores the relationship between trial and appellate courts in complex litigation and argues for a revised standard of appellate review for trial court decisions affecting the party structure …


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 …


Categorizing Categories: Property Of The Estate And Fraudulent Transfers In Bankruptcy, Michael R. Cedillos May 2008

Categorizing Categories: Property Of The Estate And Fraudulent Transfers In Bankruptcy, Michael R. Cedillos

Michigan Law Review

11 U.S.C. § 541 defines "property of the estate" in bankruptcy, but courts have not interpreted that section uniformly. The Fifth Circuit has read the term broadly to include both interests in property that the trustee recovers under § 541(a)(3) and legal or equitable interests under § 541(a)(1) that have purportedly been fraudulently transferred but which the trustee has not yet recovered. The Second Circuit, however, has taken a more restrained approach, holding that fraudulently transferred property that the trustee has not yet recovered does not constitute property of the estate. This Note argues that courts should adopt the Second …


War Tales And War Trials, Patricia M. Wald Apr 2008

War Tales And War Trials, Patricia M. Wald

Michigan Law Review

In this foreword, I will compare my experiences as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the work of war crimes tribunals generally, with a few of the recurrent themes in epic tales of war. Books and trials strive to educate and to persuade their audiences of the barbarity of war and its antipathy to the most fundamental norms of a humane society.3 War crimes tribunals began with Nuremberg and have proliferated in the past fifteen years. These tribunals were established to try and to punish individuals for violations of international humanitarian law ("IHL")-the so-called …


Deconstructing International Criminal Law, Kevin Jon Heller Apr 2008

Deconstructing International Criminal Law, Kevin Jon Heller

Michigan Law Review

After nearly fifty years of post-Nuremberg hibernation, international criminal tribunals have returned to the world stage with a vengeance. The Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ("ICTY") in 1993 and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ("ICTR") in 1994. Hybrid domestic-international tribunals have been established in Sierra Leone (2000), East Timor (2000), Kosovo (2000), Cambodia (2003), Bosnia (2005), and Lebanon (2007). And, of course, the international community's dream of a permanent tribunal was finally realized in 2002, when the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court ("ICC") entered into force. This unprecedented proliferation of international …


The Justiciability Of Eligibility: May Courts Decide Who Can Be President?, Daniel P. Tokaji Jan 2008

The Justiciability Of Eligibility: May Courts Decide Who Can Be President?, Daniel P. Tokaji

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The 2008 election cycle has been a busy one for legal disputes over the qualifications of presidential candidates, with federal cases having been filed to challenge both major candidates’ eligibility under the “natural born Citizen” clause. These cases unquestionably present vital questions of constitutional law, touching on matters of self-evident national importance. It is doubtful, however, that they are justiciable in lower federal courts. Standing requirements and the political question doctrine make it unlikely that a federal court will reach the merits in cases of the type filed to date.


Mccain’S Citizenship And Constitutional Method, Peter J. Spiro Jan 2008

Mccain’S Citizenship And Constitutional Method, Peter J. Spiro

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Many things may obstruct John McCain’s path to the White House, but his citizenship status is not among them. The question of his eligibility, given the circumstances of his birth, has already been resolved. That outcome has been produced by actors outside the courts. . . . If non-judicial actors—including Congress, editorialists, leading members of the bar, and the People themselves—manage to generate a constitutional consensus, there isn’t much that the courts can do about it. In cases such as this one, at least, that seems to be an acceptable method of constitutional determination.


Originalism And The Natural Born Citizen Clause, Lawrence B. Solum Jan 2008

Originalism And The Natural Born Citizen Clause, Lawrence B. Solum

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The enigmatic phrase “natural born citizen” poses a series of problems for contemporary originalism. New Originalists, like Justice Scalia, focus on the original public meaning of the constitutional text. The notion of a “natural born citizen” was likely a term of art derived from the idea of a “natural born subject” in English law—a category that most likely did not extend to persons, like Senator McCain, who were born outside sovereign territory. But the Constitution speaks of “citizens” and not “subjects,” introducing uncertainties and ambiguities that might (or might not) make McCain eligible for the presidency.


The Claim Construction Effect, Lee Petherbridge Jan 2008

The Claim Construction Effect, Lee Petherbridge

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Claim construction refers to the task of construing, or interpreting, the words of patents' claims to establish the metes and bounds of a patent. Theoretically, the task of claim construction serves to operationalize the concept of "invention," which lies at the heart of the U.S. patent system.[...] Rather than focusing on the set of cases in which the Federal Circuit addresses claim construction, this study focuses on a set of cases defined by a different patent doctrine. The basic idea is to explore the impact of claim construction on other areas of patent law.[...] The hypothesis of the claim construction …


Research Tool Patents After Integra V. Merck - Have They Reached A Safe Harbor, Wolrad Prinz Jan 2008

Research Tool Patents After Integra V. Merck - Have They Reached A Safe Harbor, Wolrad Prinz

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The saga surrounding the Integra v. Merck cases has rekindled a heated debate about the proper scope of both common law exemption and the safe harbor provision, causing significant concern for owners of research tool patents. This Article will argue that the next judicial decision addressing the question of research tool patents should clarify that they are in a safe harbor because none of the two exemptions from infringement referenced above extends to the use of research tools in experiments in order to preserve the necessary incentives for their creation in the first place. Allowing access to research tools under …


Is A Burrito A Sandwich? Exploring Race, Class, And Culture In Contracts, Marjorie Florestal Jan 2008

Is A Burrito A Sandwich? Exploring Race, Class, And Culture In Contracts, Marjorie Florestal

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

A superior court in Worcester, Massachusetts, recently determined that a burrito is not a sandwich. Surprisingly, the decision sparked a firestorm of media attention. Worcester, Massachusetts, is hardly the pinnacle of the culinary arts-so why all the interest in the musings of one lone judge on the nature of burritos and sandwiches? Closer inspection revealed the allure of this otherwise peculiar case: Potentially thousands of dollars turned on the interpretation of a single word in a single clause of a commercial contract. Judge Locke based his decision on "common sense" and a single definition of sandwich-"two thin pieces of bread, …


From Pedagogical Sociology To Constitutional Adjudication: The Meaning Of Desegregation In Social Science Research And Law, Anne Richardson Oakes Jan 2008

From Pedagogical Sociology To Constitutional Adjudication: The Meaning Of Desegregation In Social Science Research And Law, Anne Richardson Oakes

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In the United States following the case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) federal judges with responsibility for public school desegregation but no expertise in education or schools management appointed experts from the social sciences to act as court advisors. In Boston, MA, educational sociologists helped Judge W. Arthur Garrity design a plan with educational enhancement at its heart, but the educational outcomes were marginalized by a desegregation jurisprudence conceptualized in terms of race rather than education. This Article explores the frustration of outcomes in Boston by reference to the differing conceptualizations of desegregation in law and social science. …


The Quest For Creative Jurisdiction: The Evolution Of Personal Jurisdiction Doctrine Of Israeli Courts Toward The Palestinian Territories, Michael M. Karayanni Jan 2008

The Quest For Creative Jurisdiction: The Evolution Of Personal Jurisdiction Doctrine Of Israeli Courts Toward The Palestinian Territories, Michael M. Karayanni

Michigan Journal of International Law

The thesis offered in this Article, marking three different stages in the development of the personal jurisdiction doctrine of Israeli courts toward the PT of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, has two additional attributes. One concerns the doctrinal innovation in the general personal jurisdiction doctrine of Israeli courts that also took place as these different stages unfolded. The evolving status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip over the years, together with the need of courts to reach conclusive results in the cases brought before them, made it necessary for courts to be creative in adjusting the …


Judicial Compensation And The Definition Of Judicial Power In The Early Republic, James E. Pfander Jan 2008

Judicial Compensation And The Definition Of Judicial Power In The Early Republic, James E. Pfander

Michigan Law Review

Article III's provision for the compensation of federal judges has been much celebrated for the no-diminution provision that forecloses judicial pay cuts. But other features of Article Ill's compensation provision have largely escaped notice. In particular, little attention has been paid to the framers' apparent expectation that Congress would compensate federal judges with salaries alone, payable from the treasury at stated times. Article III's presumption in favor of salary-based compensation may rule out fee-based compensation, which was a common form of judicial compensation in England and the colonies but had grown controversial by the time of the framing. Among other …


Why John Mccain Was A Citizen At Birth, Stephen E. Sachs Jan 2008

Why John Mccain Was A Citizen At Birth, Stephen E. Sachs

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Senator John McCain was born a citizen in 1936. Professor Gabriel J. Chin challenges this view in this Symposium, arguing that McCain’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone (while his father was stationed there by the Navy) fell into a loophole in the governing statute. The best historical evidence, however, suggests that this loophole is an illusion and that McCain is a “natural born Citizen” eligible to be president.


Why Senator John Mccain Cannot Be President: Eleven Months And A Hundred Yards Short Of Citizenship, Gabriel Chin Jan 2008

Why Senator John Mccain Cannot Be President: Eleven Months And A Hundred Yards Short Of Citizenship, Gabriel Chin

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Article II, section 1 of the Constitution provides that “No Person except a natural born Citizen . . . shall be eligible to the Office of President . . . .” A person must be a citizen at birth to be a natural born citizen. Senator McCain was born in the Canal Zone in 1936. Although he is now a U.S. citizen, the law in effect in 1936 did not grant him citizenship at birth. Because he was not born a citizen, he is not eligible to the office of president.


Can Glucksberg Survive Lawrence? Another Look At The End Of Life And Personal Autonomy, Yale Kamisar Jan 2008

Can Glucksberg Survive Lawrence? Another Look At The End Of Life And Personal Autonomy, Yale Kamisar

Articles

In Washington v. Glucksberg, the Court declined to find a right to physician-assisted suicide ("PAS") in the Constitution. Not a single Justice dissented. One would expect such a ruling to be quite secure. But Lawrence v. Texas, holding that a state cannot make consensual homosexual conduct a crime, is not easy to reconcile with Glucksberg. Lawrence certainly takes a much more expansive view of substantive due process than did Glucksberg. It is conceivable that the five Justices who made up the Lawrence majority-all of whom still sit on the Court-might overrule Glucksberg. For various reasons, …


Craft And Power, Carl E. Schneider Jan 2008

Craft And Power, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Oliver Wendell Holmes-a great judge-said that "the command of the public force is intrusted to the judges in certain cases, and the whole power of the state will be put forth, if necessary, to carry out their judgments and decrees." Appellate courts command that force in ways that principle and practicalities leave little fettered. Judges must fetter themselves, not least by honoring the judicial duty of craftsmanship. That duty obliges courts to respect procedural rules, for they keep courts within their bounds and promote fair and sound decisions. That duty obliges courts to analyze legal authority scrupulously, since judicial legitimacy …


The Victims Of Victim Participation In International Criminal Proceedings, Charles P. Trumbull Iv Jan 2008

The Victims Of Victim Participation In International Criminal Proceedings, Charles P. Trumbull Iv

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article proceeds as follows. Part I discusses the emerging norms regarding victims' rights in international law and the factors that influenced the victim participation scheme in the Rome Statute. Section A focuses on the victims' rights movement in domestic and international law; Section B examines the case law on victim participation from several treaty-based international human rights tribunals; and Section C explains how criticisms of the ICTY and the ICTR resulted in extensive rights for victims in the ICC. Next, Part II explains the statutory framework that governs the victims' role in ICC proceedings. It then discusses the emerging …


Is A Forensic Laboratory Report Identifying A Substance As A Narcotic 'Testimonial'?, Richard D. Friedman Jan 2008

Is A Forensic Laboratory Report Identifying A Substance As A Narcotic 'Testimonial'?, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

Is a state forensic analyst's laboratory report, prepared for use in a criminal proceeding and identifying a substance as cocaine, "testimonial" evidence and so subject to the demands of the Confrontation Clause as set forth in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004)?


Does An Accused Forfeit The Confrontation Right By Murdering A Witness, Absent A Purpose To Render Her Unavailable?, Richard D. Friedman Jan 2008

Does An Accused Forfeit The Confrontation Right By Murdering A Witness, Absent A Purpose To Render Her Unavailable?, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

If an accused murdered a witness, should he be deemed to have forfeited the right under the Sixth Amendment "to be confronted with" the witness, absent proof that the accused committed the murder for the purpose of rendering her unavailable as a witness?


The Proper Tax Treatment Of The Transfer Of A Compensatory Partnership Interest, Douglas A. Kahn Jan 2008

The Proper Tax Treatment Of The Transfer Of A Compensatory Partnership Interest, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

If a person receives property as payment for services, whether for past or future services, the receipt typically constitutes gross income to the recipient. If a person performs services for a partnership or agrees to perform future services, and if the person receives a partnership interest as compensation for the past or future services, one might expect that receipt to cause the new partner to recognize gross income in an amount equal to the fair market value of the partnership interest. After all, if a corporation compensated someone for services rendered or to be rendered by transferring the corporation's own …


Cameras Should Not Be Allowed In The Supreme Court, Christina B. Whitman Jan 2008

Cameras Should Not Be Allowed In The Supreme Court, Christina B. Whitman

Book Chapters

There are understandable reasons for televising U.S. Supreme Court arguments. It is reasonable for the American public to want to understand the thinking behind so many important decisions, and other governmental branches have allowed electronic media access, as have lower courts. Such access, however, would be misleading, as oral arguments would receive attention that is disproportionate to their significance. For many justices, oral arguments play an insignificant role in their decision making, and the remarks they make during such arguments may not be indicative of their actual stances. Televising the Court's oral arguments, may result in undue attention for those …


Frequency And Predictors Of False Conviction: Why We Know So Little, And New Data On Capital Cases, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien Jan 2008

Frequency And Predictors Of False Conviction: Why We Know So Little, And New Data On Capital Cases, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien

Articles

In the first part of this article, we address the problems inherent in studying wrongful convictions: our pervasive ignorance and the extreme difficulty of obtaining the data that we need to answer even basic questions. The main reason that we know so little about false convictions is that, by definition, they are hidden from view. As a result, it is nearly impossible to gather reliable data on the characteristics or even the frequency of false convictions. In addition, we have very limited data on criminal investigations and prosecutions in general, so even if we could somehow obtain data on cases …


Pharma's Nonobvious Problem, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 2008

Pharma's Nonobvious Problem, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

This Article considers the effect of the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc. on the nonobviousness standard for patentability as applied to pharmaceutical patents. By calling for an expansive and flexible analysis and disapproving of the use of rigid formulas in evaluating an invention for obviousness, KSR may appear to make it easier for generic competitors to challenge the validity of drug patents. But an examination of the Federal Circuit's nonobviousness jurisprudence in the context of such challenges reveals that the Federal Circuit has been employing all along the sort of flexible …


Waiting For The Other Shoe: Hudson And The Precarious State Of Mapp, David A. Moran Jan 2008

Waiting For The Other Shoe: Hudson And The Precarious State Of Mapp, David A. Moran

Articles

I have no idea whether my death will be noted in the New York Times. But if it is, I fear the headline of my obituary will look something like: "Professor Dies; Lost Hudson v. Michigan' in Supreme Court, Leading to Abolition of Exclusionary Rule." The very existence of this Symposium panel shows, I think, that my fear is well-grounded. On the other hand, I am not quite as fearful that Hudson foreshadows the complete overruling of Mapp v. Ohio2 and Weeks v. United States3 as I was when I published an article just three months after the Hudson decision …


Patients As Consumers: Courts, Cotnracts, And The New Medical Marketplace, Mark A. Hall, Carl E. Schneider Jan 2008

Patients As Consumers: Courts, Cotnracts, And The New Medical Marketplace, Mark A. Hall, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

The persistent riddle of health-care policy is how to control the costs while improving the quality of care. The riddle's oncepromising answer-managed care-has been politically ravaged, and consumerist solutions are now winning favor This Article examines the legal condition of the patient-as-consumer in today's health-care market. It finds that insurers bargain with some success for rates for the people they insure. The uninsured, however, must contract to pay whatever a provider charges and then are regularly charged prices that are several times insurers'pricesa nd providers' actual costs. Perhaps because they do not understand the healthcare market, courts generally enforce these …


Scrutiny Land, Randy E. Barnett Jan 2008

Scrutiny Land, Randy E. Barnett

Michigan Law Review

Scrutiny Land is the place where government needs to justify to a court its restrictions on the liberties of the people. In the 1930s, the Supreme Court began limiting access to Scrutiny Land. While the New Deal Court merely shifted the burden to those challenging a law to show that a restriction of liberty is irrational, the Warren Court made the presumption of constitutionality effectively irrebuttable. After this, only one road to Scrutiny Land remained: showing that the liberty being restricted was a fundamental right. The Glucksberg Two-Step, however, limited the doctrine of fundamental rights to those (1) narrowly defined …


Death, Dying, And Domination, Marc Spindelman Jan 2008

Death, Dying, And Domination, Marc Spindelman

Michigan Law Review

This Article critiques conventional liberal arguments for the right to die on liberal grounds. It contends that these arguments do not go far enough to recognize and address private, and in particular structural, forms of domination. It presents an alternative that does, which is thus more respectful of true freedom in the context of death and dying, and also more consistent with liberalism. After discussing obstacles to the achievement of a right to die that encompasses freedom from both public and private domination, the Article closes with a significant reform project within bioethics that might help bring it about.


A Call For The End Of The Doctrine Of Realignment, Jacob S. Sherkow Jan 2008

A Call For The End Of The Doctrine Of Realignment, Jacob S. Sherkow

Michigan Law Review

In Indianapolis v. Chase National Bank, 1941, the Supreme Court established the doctrine of realignment, requiring federal courts to examine the issues in dispute and realign each party as plaintiff or defendant if necessary. Due to the complete diversity requirement, realignment gave the federal courts the ability to both create and destroy diversity jurisdiction. Since 1941, the federal courts have struggled to interpret the central holding in Indianapolis, and have created several competing "tests" for realignment. This confusion has made the doctrine of realignment unworkable. Realignment along with each of the present tests-encourages jurisdictional abuses by forcing the federal …