Law Commons^™

James K. Robinson—56th President Of The State Bar Of Michigan, John W. Reed

Articles

On September 14, 1990, James Kenneth Robinson became the 56th President of the State Bar of Michigan. The process that has brought him and the Bar to this good hour has produced a fortunate match between man and mission.

Judging The Judges: Three Opinions, James Boyd White

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For some time I have been working on the problem of judicial criticism, focusing especially on the question: What is it in the work of a judge that leads us to admire a judicial opinion with the result of which we disagree, or to condemn an opinion that "comes out" the way we would do if we were charged with the responsibility of decision? The response I have been making is that this kind of judicial excellence (and its opposite too) lies in the sort of social and intellectual action in which the opinion engages: in the character the court …

Stalking The Squeeze: Understanding Commodities Market Manipulation, Richard D. Friedman

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This article addresses the perplexing and important problem of how to distinguish valid, large-scale trading activity from a squeeze. Part I analyzes and reformulates what I will call the price-impact test, according to which manipulation is conduct motivated by its impact on price. This test, I contend, states a necessary but not sufficient condition for characterizing conduct as a squeeze. Part II offers a substantially different test, which I call the modified-sanctions approach. Under this approach, the price-impact test is used as a preliminary safe-harbor standard. The modified-sanctions approach goes further, however, recognizing that the essence of a squeeze is …

Gender And Race Bias Against Lawyers: A Classroom Response, Suellyn Scarnecchia

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In reviewing other clinicians' approaches to teaching about bias, I identified problems that eventually led me to design a two-hour class session on bias against lawyers. The following is a review of a few other teaching methods and a description of my own approach, detailing its own strengths and weaknesses. This is not an exhaustive review of all possible approaches to bias. It is offered to promote classroom discussion of bias against lawyers and to invite the development of innovative alternatives to my approach.

Some Implications Of Cognitive Psychology For Risk Regulation, Roger G. Noll, James E. Krier

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Beginning with a set of books and articles published in the 1950s, cognitive psychologists have developed a new descriptive theory of how people make decisions under conditions of risk and uncertainty. A dominant theme in the theory is that most people do not evaluate risky circumstances in the manner assumed by conventional decision theory-they do not, that is, seek to maximize the expected value of some function when selecting among actions with uncertain outcomes. The purpose of this article is to consider some implications of the cognitive theory for regulatory policies designed to control risks to life, health, and the …

Remembering The 'Old World' Of Criminal Procedure: A Reply To Professor Grano, Yale Kamisar

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When I graduated from high school in 1961, the "old world" of criminal procedure still existed, albeit in its waning days; when I graduated from law school in 1968, circa the time most of today's first-year law students were arriving on the scene, the "new world" had fully dislodged the old. Indeed, the force of the new world's revolutionary impetus already had crested. Some of the change that the criminal procedure revolution effected was for the better, but much of it, at least as some of us see it, was decidedly for the worse. My students, however, cannot make the …

The Two Faces Of Tax Neutrality: Do They Interact Or Are They Mutually Exclusive?, Douglas A. Kahn

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The term "tax neutrality" refers to at least two quite different concepts. In its most common usage, tax neutrality refers to tax provisions that conform to an ideal tax system. A tax provision that is consistent with such an ideal system is described as "neutral." A tax provision that cannot be reconciled with the ideal system is sometimes referred to as a "tax expenditure" item. I will discuss tax expenditures later in this paper.

Generalization In Interpretive Theory, Joseph Vining

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There are arguments at large about the nature of legal interpretation, proceeding from an implicit proposition that interpretation is the same phenomenon or experience whatever its setting. An assumption that there is one phenomenon can be found in discussions among lawyers of interpretation and in discussions among nonlawyers of legal interpretation-and as often in the work of those who would deny there is any significance to theorizing about interpretation, as of those who think persuasion to a particular theory will have the utmost consequence for law and society. Proceeding from such a proposition, rather than toward it, raises the risk …

The (Unlikely) Death Of Property, James E. Krier

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Is property dead? Thomas Grey has argued that it is.' If he is right, we have an answer to the principal question of this symposium panel, which asks whether regulation and property are allies or enemies. If Professor Grey is right, they are neitherbecause property no longer exists. If he is wrong (as I believe he partly is), then, I argue, regulation and property are allies and enemies alike, and will remain so.

The First-Party Insurance Externality: An Economic Justification For Enterprise Liability, Jon D. Hanson, Kyle D. Logue

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This Article explores the insurance and deterrence implications of important and long overlooked facts. Consumers are insured through first-party mechanisms against most of the risks of product accidents. However, first-party insurers rarely and imperfectly adjust premiums according to an individual consumer's decisions concerning exactly what products she will purchase, how many of those products she will purchase, and how carefully she will consume them. Such consumer decisions we refer to as "consumption choices. " This failure by first-party insurers to adjust premiums according to consumption choices gives rise to a first-party insurance externality. Based on this insight, this Article offers …

The Right To Die: Green Lights And Yellow Lights, Yale Kamisar

Articles

In the long-awaited and much-discussed Nancy Cruzan case, a 5-4 Supreme Court majority ruled that absent "clear and convincing evidence" that a once but no longer competent patient wishes to discontinue her life support (in this instance artificial nutrition and hydration) a state is not constitutionally compelled to terminate that support.

Nancy's situation is tragic. Since suffering severe injuries in 1983, she has been in a persistent vegetative state. Yet medical experts testified that if her feeding tube were not removed she could linger on in her present condition for many years.

But the first thing to keep in mind …

Synthesizing Related Rules From Statutes And Cases For Legal Expert Systems, Layman E. Allen, Sallyanne Payton, Charles S. Saxon

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Different legal expert systems may be incompatible with each other: A user in characterizing the same situation by answering the questions presented in a consultation can be led to contradictory inferences. Such systems can be ”synthesized’ to help users avoid such contradictions by alerting them that other relevant systems are available to be consulted as they are responding to questions. An example of potentially incompatible, related legal expert systems is presented here - ones for the New Jersey murder statute and the celebrated Quinlan case, along with one way of synthesizing them to avoid such incompatibility.

Kevin E. Kennedy, Joseph Vining

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Our first encounter was on one of Kevin's many triumphant days during law school. Kevin, then a second year student, had advanced to the final round of the Campbell Competition, the moot court competition in which students brief and argue a case as if before the United States Supreme Court. I was one of the five "justices" who heard the case. The others were the dean and three distinguished appellate judges. Four students presented oral arguments and all were fine, but, Kevin's, the "Justices" agreed, was simply of a different order. Archibald Cox, when Solicitor General of the United States, …

Surrogate Motherhood From The Perspective Of Family Law, Carl E. Schneider

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One of the things that I find most puzzling about the question of surrogate motherhood is how easily many people answer it. One of the things that I have most admired about today's comments is their tone of constraint and their sense of complexity. I myself am sympathetic to the argument that the unhappiness of infertile couples is profound and that surrogacy contracts offer them the hope of an equally profound happiness. And I am prepared to believe that many surrogate mothers perform their part of the bargain without grief and even with gratification. Yet these benefits of surrogacy are …

Patenting The Human Genome, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

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The increasing promise of federal funding for mapping and sequencing the human genome has brought with it renewed attention in the research science community to issues of intellectual property protection for products of biotechnology research. Echoing concerns raised a decade ago in the debate over commercialization of academic biomedical research, scientists have called for the free availability of all information generated through the Human Genome Project and have argued against allowing private intellectual property rights in such knowledge. Meanwhile, private parties have quietly been obtaining patents on bits and pieces of the human genome from the Patent and Trademark Office …

The Uniform Statutory Rule Against Perpetuities: The Rationale Of The 90-Year Waiting Period, Lawrence W. Waggoner

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The Uniform Law Commissioners promulgated the Uniform Statutory Rule Against Perpetuities in 1986. The perpetuity-reform efforts of the American Law Institute in the Restatement (Second) inspired the Uniform Act. The Restatement and the Uniform Act employ the so-called wait-and-see approach to perpetuity reform. Wait-and-see is a two-step strategy. Step One preserves the validating side of the common-law Rule Against Perpetuities (the common-law Rule): By satisfying the common-law Rule, a nonvested future interest in property is valid at the moment of its creation. Step Two is a salvage strategy for future interests that would have been invalid at common law: Rather …

The Uniform Statutory Rule Against Perpetuities: Oregon Joins Up, Lawrence W. Waggoner

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Uniform perpetuity reform is on the march, and Oregon has joined the parade. On January 1, 1990, the Uniform Statutory Rule Against Perpetuities (Uniform Act) became effective in Oregon. Although promulgated only three years ago, the Uniform Act has been enacted in over twenty percent of the states and appears to be on its way toward enactment in several others. Prior to the adoption of the Uniform Act, Oregon followed the common-law Rule Against Perpetuities (common-law Rule). Noted for its unjust consequences, the common-law Rule disregards actual events and invalidates a contingent (nonvested) future interest merely on the grounds of …

Goldstein's Curse, James J. White

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ON April 16, 1980, a man using the name Marvin Goldstein opened a bank account at a Baltimore branch of Union Trust Company. He deposited $15,000 in cash. He told the branch manager that he planned to establish a Baltimore office of his father's New York business, "Goldstein's Precious Metals and Stones." Goldstein identified himself with a New Jersey driver's license and gave a bank reference from New York. On May 6, Goldstein deposited a check for $880,000 at another Union Trust branch near the branch where he had opened the account. Words on this check indicated that it was …

Bart Bartosic: What You See Is Not What You Get, Theodore J. St. Antoine

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With "Bart" Bartosic, what you see is not necessarily what you get. Anyone even vaguely acquainted with him knows I am not talking about duplicity; on occasion, Bart can be almost painfully forthright. Nonetheless, on first meeting, most persons are likely to view him as the very soul of politesse - perhaps actually too deferential and accommodating. Yet behind that beguiling exterior can be found a backbone of cast iron, a mind like a steel trap, and (to extend the metallic figure) a willingness, when the situation demands, to be as hard as nails in dealing with either ideas or …

Clinical Realism: Simulated Hearings Based On Actual Events In Students' Lives, Samuel R. Gross

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This essay describes a novel clinical format, a simulation course that is based on students' testimony about actual events in their own lives. The two main purposes of the course, however, are not novel. First, I aim to teach the students to be effective trial lawyers by instructing them in the techniques of direct examination and cross-examination and by making them sensitive to the roles of the other courtroom players: the witness, the judge, and the jury. Second, I hope to encourage the students to think about the social and ethical consequences of our method of trying lawsuits.

Kevin E. Kennedy, David L. Chambers

Articles

Our first encounter was on one of Kevin's many triumphant days during law school. Kevin, then a second year student, had advanced to the final round of the Campbell Competition, the moot court competition in which students brief and argue a case as if before the United States Supreme Court. I was one of the five "justices" who heard the case. The others were the dean and three distinguished appellate judges. Four students presented oral arguments and all were fine, but, Kevin's, the "Justices" agreed, was simply of a different order.

The Public Domain, Jessica D. Litman

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This article examines the public domain by looking at the gulf between what authors really do and the way the law perceives them. Part I outlines the basics of copyright as a species of property and introduces the public domain's place within the copyright scheme. Copyright grants authors" ' rights modeled on real property in order to encourage authorship by providing authors with markets in which they can seek compensation for their creations. Because parcels of authorship are intangible, however, the law faces *problems in determining the ownership and boundaries of its property grants. In particular, the concept of "originality," …

Gideon V. Wainwright A Quarter-Century Later, Yale Kamisar

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In a brief working paper sent to all conference participants, Professor Burt Neuborne suggested that we might consider several themes, among them "Gideon Celebrated," "Gideon Fulfilled," and "Gideon Betrayed." I think these are useful headings.

Reasons, Authority, And The Meaning Of 'Obey': Further Thoughts On Raz And Obedience To Law, Donald H. Regan

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I recently published a long article' discussing a variety of topics from Joseph Raz's The Morality of Freedom.2 The article was part of a symposium on Raz's work in the Southern California Law Review. Raz responded' to the articles in that symposium, including my own. From a perspective which surveys the whole range of views on political philosophy, Raz's view and mine look very similar. Even so, we find many things to disagree about, which neither of us would regard as merely matters of detail. For the most part, we at least share a common understanding of our disagreements. But …

Afterword To Chicago-Kent Law Review, Theodore J. St. Antoine

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A unifying theme of this Symposium is as old and enduring as the common law: when and how can a well-established, successful adjudicative institution be adapted to meet the demands of new and substantially different situations? There have been splendid triumphs of transference, such as Lord Mansfield's appropriation of the law merchant in the eighteenth century as a major building block of modem commercial law. There have also been embarrassing failures, like the abortive effort to transport American labor law concepts en masse into the alien British environment of the early 1970s. The common question confronting the participants in this …

Risk And Design, James E. Krier

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Risk springs from uncertainty,' uncertainty invites error, and, since error can be costly, we would prefer to avoid it (provided, of course, that avoidance is not more costly yet). While there is much in the Noll and Krier article2 about judgmental error under conditions of risk and uncertainty, there is little about ways to avoid it. So avoidance-more accurately, minimization-of error costs is the topic I want to address very briefly and partially here.

Risk, Courts, And Agencies, Clayton P. Gillette, James E. Krier

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Public risks are precisely the risks that have recently captured the attention of the legal community and the world at large, in no small part because they give rise to such novel problems for lawyers and such grave apprehensions among lay people. Public risks have moved the legal system to relax doctrines--regarding, for example, standards of causation and culpability, burdens of proof, sharing of liability--that were designed to deal with the private risks that once dominated the landscape. And public risks have moved lay people to intensify their demands for risk control measures. These developments suggest that public risks are …