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Full-Text Articles in Law
Introduction: "Plus Ça Change …?", Stephen B. Burbank
Introduction: "Plus Ça Change …?", Stephen B. Burbank
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This is a time of self-conscious attention to legal scholarship that, although hardly unprecedented, must seem remarkable to many in the profession. We hear of "malaise" in the academy, of the decline of doctrinal scholarship, and more generally, of the decline of law as an autonomous discipline. For some who believe it, the news may be profoundly disturbing, tolling the thirteenth hour on entire careers. For others, bearing the news-and having it believed-may be essential to launching or sustaining careers.
Most of us, I suspect, are inclined to suspend judgment, inured more than most mortals to the harsh reality that …
Reflections On Fuller And Perdue's The Reliance Interest In Contract Damages: A Positive Economic Framework, Avery Katz
Reflections On Fuller And Perdue's The Reliance Interest In Contract Damages: A Positive Economic Framework, Avery Katz
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Fuller and Perdue's classic article, The Reliance Interest in Contract Damages, is regarded by many contemporary contracts scholars as the single most influential law review article in the field. For those of us who teach and think about contracts from the perspective of law and economics, the consensus would probably be close to unanimous. The article displays an approach highly congenial to an economic perspective. The connection goes beyond Fuller and Perdue's explicitly functional approach to law (which law and economics shares with other schools of thought descended from the legal realists) and beyond Fuller and Perdue's focus on …
Derek Bok And The Merger Of Law And Economics, Herbert Hovenkamp
Derek Bok And The Merger Of Law And Economics, Herbert Hovenkamp
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Both the novelty and the uniqueness of the "law and economics" movement of the last fifteen years have been greatly exaggerated. Law and economics has been with us for at least a half century, in nearly every area of private and public law. The most outspoken protagonists of law and economics admit that economics had a presence in antitrust and regulatory policy long before the work of Ronald Coase, Lester Telser, and others inspired its expanded use in areas of private law, such as tort and contract. But even then, some of those who would make such an admission would …
Public Law Litigation And Legal Scholarship, Richard L. Marcus
Public Law Litigation And Legal Scholarship, Richard L. Marcus
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
It is hard to turn around nowadays without hearing about the malaise in legal scholarship. For example, Richard Posner, a former president of the Harvard Law Review, announced in that periodical's centenary issue that the Review "may have reached the peak of its influence-may, indeed, have started its journey down the mountain." If even the august Harvard Law Review is sliding, one does sense an ancien regime aroma of decay. But Posner's main message was that scholarship has become more diverse, and that the hegemony of traditional doctrinal analysis has been broken. More generally, the malaise is attributed to …
Neutral Principles In The 1950'S, Gary Peller
Neutral Principles In The 1950'S, Gary Peller
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In this Essay, I explore the intellectual setting within which Wechsler believed that defending freedom also required defending the legality of racial domination. I argue that the key to understanding this apparent paradox is to grasp the ideological/ cultural complex of the 1950's within which mainstream American intellectuals in law and in other disciplines came to terms with the disintegration of the traditional, "old order" paradigms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by means of an intense and overriding distinction between controversial issues of values and noncontroversial questions of framework and structure within which substantive conflict would take …
Appellate Justice Bureaucracy And Scholarship, William M. Richman, William L. Reynolds
Appellate Justice Bureaucracy And Scholarship, William M. Richman, William L. Reynolds
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Many of the other Articles in this Symposium demonstrate that a single great piece of legal scholarship can have an enormous impact on the development of legal doctrine. This Article differs in two respects. First, it focuses not on a single seminal work, but rather on a developing literature authored by a large group of scholars. Second, it attempts to assess the impact of that literature not on the growth of legal theory, but on the development of a single legal institution-the United States Courts of Appeals.
Law Review Articles That Backfire, Gerald L. Neuman
Law Review Articles That Backfire, Gerald L. Neuman
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Other articles in this Symposium have chronicled the real-world triumphs of legal scholarship. I have sadder tales to tell. I would like to discuss law review articles that have had an apparent influence on the course of legal development, but not in the manner that the author intended.
Many of the readers of this Symposium may have their favorite examples of this phenomenon. Such misfortunes can befall anyone; both of the instances I will describe involve a highly respected constitutional scholar, Professor Henry Paul Monaghan of Columbia Law School. They illustrate two mechanisms by which good scholarship can lead …