Law Commons^™

Generalization In Interpretive Theory, Joseph Vining

Book Chapters

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 …

Whither Arbitration?—Comments, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Book Chapters

Exactly 30 years ago this month the Michigan Law Review published an article that evoked in me an emotion I must confess is the surest sign that I am in the presence of excellence-envy! The piece was entitled, "Past Practice and the Administration of Collective Bargaining Agreements." It was authored by the esteemed principal speaker at this session, and it came as close as anything I have ever read to deserving that much-overworked appellation, "definitive." It is always hazardous to try to predict the ultimate rating of a brand new vintage, but my first tasting of Dick Mittenthal's latest product …

Final Frontier: Life, Death And Law, Yale Kamisar

Book Chapters

[T]o call Nancy Cruzan's case a matter of the right to die seems strained, if not contrived. The situation is a tragic one. Cruzan has been in a persistent vegetative state since 1983, when, at the age of 25, she was in a severe car accident. Although she is able to breathe on her own, she receives all her nutrition and fluids through a feeding tube inserted into her stomach. When her parents sought to halt this life support, they were rebuffed, first by officials of the Missouri state hospital where Cruzan is a patient and ultimately by the Missouri …

Making Sense Of Criminal Law, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

When a student comes to law school, he leaves behind a world he knows and understands and turns to another world, that of the law, which at the beginning he cannot comprehend. He is immersed in a body of literature that is at once assertive and confusing; he attends a series of classes in which his teacher seems to make the unsettling assumption that he already knows what he came to learn. One question he will naturally ask himself of all this - his experience of the law - is whether it makes any sense to him. And for a …

The Moral Responsibilities Of Universities, Terrance Sandalow

Book Chapters

IN THE YEARS SINCE the Second World War, "higher education" has emerged as one of the major influences in American life. Well over 50 percent of the age cohort now in its teens or early twenties will attend a college or university, more than a five-fold increase from the prewar period. Moreover, colleges and universities now engage in so broad a range of activities that the appellation "higher education" no longer seems entirely appropriate to describe the institutions. Community colleges, but also four-year colleges and universities, play a major role in training individuals for skilled and semiskilled occupations. Universities are …

Automatic Generation Of A Legal Expert System, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon

Book Chapters

The use of the AUTOPROLOG system to generate automatically a legal expert system is described in this chapter. The interpretation of a statutory or other legal rule by one expert (or by the consensus of a group of experts) expressed in a normalized form is the only input needed by the AUTOPROLOG system (which includes Turbo Prolog, the AUTOPRO program, and some data files) to produce automatically a computer program that is an expert system for that legal rule. The process for producing a legal expert system for Section 213.1 of the Modal Penal Code, which deals with rape and …

Drafting The Dispute Resolution Clause, Whitmore Gray

Book Chapters

Providing in a contract for ways to resolve disputes that may arise presents a substantial challenge to the lawyer. In one sense, this is what a lawyer regularly does in contract drafting-anticipating misunderstandings or problems that experience has indicated are likely to arise, and trying to provide clear solutions in advance. When it comes to drafting a specific clause for the resolution of further disputes that may arise, however, many lawyers are at a substantial disadvantage. The task comes at the end of the substantive negotiations. The client does not want to focus on, or draw the other party's attention …

The Fourth Amendment: The Right Of The People To Be Secure In Their Persons, Homes, Papers, And Effects, Yale Kamisar

Book Chapters

Three quarters of a century ago, the Supreme Court expressed some thoughts on constitutional interpretation that bear repeating today (Weems v. United States):

Time works changes, brings into existence new conditions and purposes. Therefore, a principle to be vital must be capable of wider application than the mischief which gave it birth. This is particularly true of constitutions .... [In interpreting] a constitution, therefore, our contemplation cannot be only of what has been but what may be. Under any other rule a constitution would indeed be as easyof application as it would be deficient in efficacy and power.

The Fourth …

Feminist Jurisprudence, Christina B. Whitman

Book Chapters

In the 1970s feminist legal theory furthered feminist legal practice. Feminist lawyers saw themselves as advocates of ''women's rights," interested in winning legal victories in particular cases. Because their attention was focused on reform through legislation or litigation, the theory they developed was deliberately, if uncritically, grounded in what would be persuasive to those who held power in government institutions. They built directly upon the precedent made in race cases, precedent which assumed that the appropriate goal for social change was equality and defined equality as the similar treatment of similarly situated individuals. The key to the early legal victories …