Law Commons^™

Feedback Loops: Feedback Fundamentals, Patrick Barry

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Learning how to give and receive feedback is fundamental to the development of every student and professional. Yet few of us are ever taught anything like “feedback skills.”

This book, which is the first in the Feedback Loops series, is designed to change that. Here is what students who have taken the University of Michigan Law School course on which the series is based have said about it:

“One of the most memorable and useful classes I have taken in law school!”

“Excellent, full stop.”

“This class was always a fun highlight of my week.”

Editing And Advocacy, Patrick Barry

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Good editors don’t just see the sentence that was written. They see the sentence that might have been written. They know how to spot words that shouldn’t be included and summon up ones that haven’t yet appeared. Their value comes not just from preventing mistakes but from discovering new ways to improve a piece of writing’s style, structure, and overall impact.

This book— which is based on a popular course taught at the University of Chicago Law School, the University of Michigan Law School, and the UCLA School of Law— is designed to help you become one of those editors. …

Notes On Nuance: Volume 1, Patrick Barry

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To succeed in law, business, education, government, health care, and many other fields, it is becoming increasingly important to distinguish yourself as a savvy communicator. Social media has only accelerated the ways in which we all must learn to use our words to connect, compete, and create. There are features of the English language, however, that many of us haven’t taken full advantage of yet. Notes on Nuance is designed to help change that.

Drawing on a diverse collection of authors—from novelists to physicists, from ancient Greek historians to modern-day CEOs—it reveals the hidden mechanics that skilled writers use to …

Good With Words: Speaking And Presenting, Patrick Barry

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Suppose you were good with words. Suppose when you decided to speak, the message you delivered—and the way you delivered it—successfully connected with your intended audience. What would that mean for your career prospects? What would that mean for your comfort level in social situations? And perhaps most importantly, what would that mean for your satisfaction with the personal relationships you value the most?

This book is designed to help you find out. Based on an award-winning course and workshop series at the University of Michigan taken by students training to enter a wide range of fields—law, business, medicine, social …

Children's Justice: How To Improve Legal Representation Of Children In The Child Welfare System, Don Duquette, Britany Orlebeke, Andrew Zinn, Robbin Pott, Ada Skyles, Xiaomeng Zhou

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From 2009 to 2016 the University of Michigan Law School served as the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System (QIC-ChildRep). This seven-year, multimillion dollar project, directed by Clinical Professor Don Duquette, conducted a national needs assessment that identified a substantial consensus on the role and duties of the child’s lawyer. The needs assessment led to the QIC-ChildRep Best Practice Model, an update and expansion of the 1996 ABA Standards for Lawyers Representing Children in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases.

Released in 2016 as a300-page softcover book, CHILDREN'S JUSTICE is the final report …

Michigan Guidelines On The International Protection Of Refugees, James C. Hathaway

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The Michigan Guidelines on the International Protection of Refugees are the result of a collective endeavor of hundreds of scholars, advocates, judges, and international officials to tackle some of the most important and challenging questions in international refugee law. This volume presents 20 years of the Guidelines — the consensus work of senior Michigan Law students and experts from around the world on cutting-edge refugee law concerns — in five languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian).

The Guidelines address five of the most difficult issues of refugee status: what is the meaning of a “well-founded fear”; when may refugee …

The End Of Ownership: Personal Property In The Digital Economy, Aaron Perzanowski, Jason Schultz

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An argument for retaining the notion of personal property in the products we “buy” in the digital marketplace.

The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.

If you buy a book at the bookstore, you own it. You can take it home, scribble in the margins, put in on the shelf, lend it to a friend, sell it at a garage sale. But is the same thing true for the ebooks or other digital goods you buy? Retailers and copyright holders argue that …

A Nation Of Widening Opportunities: The Civil Rights Act At 50, Ellen D. Katz, Samuel R. Bagenstos

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an extraordinary achievement of law, politics, and human rights. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Act's passage, it is appropriate to reflect on the successes and failures of the civil rights project reflected in the statute, as well as on its future directions. This volume represents an attempt to assess the Civil Rights Act's legacy.

On October 11, 2013, a diverse group of civil rights scholars met at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor to assess the interpretation, development, and administration of civil rights law in the five decades since …

The Ideal Deal: How Local Governments Can Get More For Their Economic Development Dollar, Rachel Weber, David Santacroce

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This handbook is designed to provide local economic development practitioners with an important tool. It takes the reader step-by-step through the different elements of contracts that treat public incentive packages as a quid pro quo for public benefits. Each section discusses a different element of the ideal deal: valuation of public costs and benefits, performance standards, disclosure and oversight, and enforcement. In each section we provide detailed examples of model provisions used by local governments in their incentive legislation, ordinances, and contracts -- information that has not before been obtained or recorded in any systematic way. These examples are meant …

William W. Cook: Articles From Law Quad Notes About William W. Cook, Margaret A. Leary

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This collection of articles published from 2002-2004 is the embryo of a biography I hope to complete so that full information about the life and times of William W. Cook (1858- 1930) is accessible. Cook was important to the University of Michigan and its Law School because he gave virtually all of his considerable fortune to the Law School, and was the first individual to give so much.

Digital Copyright, Jessica D. Litman

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In 1998, copyright lobbyists succeeded in persuading Congress to enact laws greatly expanding copyright owners' control over individuals' private uses of their works. The efforts to enforce these new rights have resulted in highly publicized legal battles between established media and new upstarts.

In this book, law professor Jessica Litman questions whether copyright laws crafted by lawyers and their lobbyists really make sense for the vast majority of us. Should every interaction between ordinary consumers and copyright-protected works be restricted by law? Is it practical to enforce such laws, or expect consumers to obey them? What are the effects of …

The Song Sparrow And The Child: Claims Of Science And Humanity, Joseph Vining

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For centuries public claims on behalf of science have been made about our nature and the nature of the world as a whole. Over the twentieth century such claims on behalf of science have grown deeper and stronger. More and more they are total claims, cosmological in the largest sense, and they have evoked opposition equally deep and strong.

There is the scientist in all of us. There is, too, the lawyer and law in all of us, which we realize the moment we serve as a witness or citizen juror. This book explores what the legal mind and ear …

Professional Responsibility, Nicholas Rine, Ly U. Meng

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The study of professional responsibility is, of course, critical to those who wish to practice as lawyers. Without a clear understanding of the expectations of the profession, no lawyer will function effectively. Beyond that simple practical need, however, new lawyers need to have a realistic perspective on the competence and the limitations of their profession.

But the study of legal ethics is a valuable undertaking even for those who have no intention of becoming lawyers. Many people see the legal system as a mysterious set of rituals which make little sense. (And that perspective is not completely unrealistic.) For any …

The Attorney-Client Privilege And The Work-Product Doctrine In Michigan, D. A. Celphane, Barbara Mcquade, Leonard Niehoff, Daniel P. Malone

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In Upjohn Co v. United States, the United States Supreme Court acknowledged that the attorney-client privilege - the "oldest of the privileges for confidential communications known to the common law" - has the crucial purpose of "encourag[ing] full and frank communication between attorneys and their clients and thereby promote[s] broader public interests in the observance of law and administration of justice." Similarly, in Hickman v Taylor, the Court stressed the importance of the work-product doctrine, noting that "[n]ot even the most liberal of discovery theories can justify unwarranted inquiries into the files and the mental impressions of an attorney." …

Debts, Job Choices, And Financial Burden: Educational Debts At Nine American Law Schools, David L. Chambers

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American law students are borrowing large sums of money. For graduates at many schools, cumulative debts of $35,000 from college and law school have become the norm and debts of $40,000, $50,000 and even more are common. The sums students are borrowing are much larger today than they were ten years ago, even after adjusting for increases in the cost of living. They have risen at a vastly faster pace than the initial salaries at small law firms and government agencies. They have even risen at a faster pace than the initial salaries in many large firms. The new pattern …

Verdict According To Conscience: Perspectives On The English Criminal Trial Jury 1200-1800, Thomas A. Green

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This book treats the history of the English criminal trial jury from its origins to the eve of the Victorian reforms in the criminal law. It consists of eight free-standing essays on important aspects of that history and a conclusion. Each chapter addresses the phenomenon that has come to be known as "jury nullification," the exercise of jury discretion in favor of a defendant whom the jury nonetheless believes to have committed the act with which he is charged. Historically, some instances of nullification reflect the jury's view that the act in question is not unlawful, while in other cases …

Current Studies In Japanese Law, Whitmore Gray, Kazuo Sugeno, Walter L. Ames, Ronald G. Brown, Richard O. Briggs

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Over the past fifteen years there has been a remarkable growth in the study of Japanese law in the United States. The foundation was laid during the late 1950's when the Harvard-Michigan-Stanford program brought together Japanese legal specialists and their American counterparts for study and research. At the end of this program a major conference was held, and the resulting publication, Law in Japan, continues to serve as a point of departure in descriptive studies of Japanese law.

During the 1960's interest in Japan continued to develop among law faculty members, but an even more important development was the increase …

The Oracles Of The Law, John P. Dawson

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Based on the lectures delivered at The University of Michigan March 12, 13, 16, 17, and 18, 1959, on The Thomas M. Cooley Lectureship, under the title "Judges: Oracles of the Law."

This study will examine the nature and extent of the contribution that case law has made to the legal systems of England, Rome, France, and Germany. The emphasis will be historical, but the object will be to show the lasting effects of historical experience on modern usage and attitudes.

Civil Code Of The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic: An English Translation, Whitmore Gray, Raymond Stults

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This book is an English translation of the Soviet Civil Code as published in Sovetskaia Iustitsiia in 1964. This book also includes the Russian original.

British Statutes In American Law, 1776-1836, Elizabeth Gaspar Brown

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When a dependency severs its formal connection with the mother country - irrespective of the century in which such severance occurs - the act of independence can neither eradicate the past nor solve all problems of the future. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the United States of America discovered that independence from Great Britain in itself did not abolish the need for rules and regulations by which men could anticipate with some degree of certainty the consequences of particular actions. Wholesale adoption of such English statutes as were suited to their condition offered a solution to the …

Atoms And The Law, E. Blythe Stason, Samuel D. Estep, William J. Pierce

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Early in 1951 a group of interested members of the faculty of The University of Michigan Law School conceived the idea of a research project, the purpose of which would be to investigate the principal unique legal problems being created and likely to be created in the future by peaceful uses of atomic energy. The group planned the preparation and publication of a series of manuscripts which might ultimately emerge as one or more printed volumes dealing with the legal problems affecting this new form of energy. Many phases of the subject were scrutinized, including the rule-making and licensing powers …

Legal Education At Michigan, 1859-1959, Elizabeth G. Brown

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First opening its doors in 1859, the University of Michigan Law School has now accumulated a full century of experience in educating young men and young women for the practice of law. Two years ago, the law faculty, taking note of the approach of the Centennial year, established a research project under the financial auspices of the William W. Cook Endowment Fund, in order to engage in a serious study of all aspects of the school's activities down the years, and to prepare a complete and definitive report on this first century of history. In charge of the project and …

Cases On Principal And Agent And Master And Servant Selected From Decisions Of English And American Courts, Edwin C. Goddard

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“In the first edition of this work no effort was made to cover the subject of Master and Servant. The exigencies of the law school curriculum, if not the unity of the subjects, seem to require that Principal and Agent and Master and Servant be treated in a single course. Historically the subject of Agency grew out of the much earlier developed subject of Master and Servant. Blackstone did not use the term ‘agent’ in reference to the agency relation, nor does he recognize the subject of Agency apart from that of Master and Servant, and there only in a …

A Selection Of Cases And Other Authorities On The Law Of Admiralty, Pt.2: The Maritime Law, Edwin D. Dickinson

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“The following collection of cases and other authorities on the Law of Admiralty requires prefatory comment in at least two particulars.

In the first place, the collection is incomplete. It has been necessary to keep within rather definite limits of space. Within those limits it has seemed better to develop selected topics somewhat fully, leaving out others altogether, rather than to spread the collection out over as much of the field as one would like to include….

In the second place, the collection is tentative. There are no footnotes and such materials as are usually thus included must be supplied …

Cases On Procedure Annotated. Trial And Appellate Practice, Edson R. Sunderland

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“A dozen years ago the present editor published a case-book for law school use on Trial Practice. It was then a subject unknown in the law school curriculum. But in the years that have passed the teaching of trial practice has become a common feature in American legal education….

The editor’s earlier volume on Trial Practice has not been incorporated in the present book, but that subject has been entirely reorganized and rewritten. Legal Ethics in connection with trial work has been treated more adequately, new sections on the Verdict and Judgment have been added, certain topics, such as Instructing …

A Selection Of Cases And Other Authorities On The Law Of Admiralty, Pt.1: The Jurisdiction Of Admiralty Courts, Edwin D. Dickinson

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“The following collection of cases and other authorities on the Law of Admiralty requires prefatory comment in at least two particulars.

In the first place, the collection is incomplete. It has been necessary to keep within rather definite limits of space. Within those limits it has seemed better to develop selected topics somewhat fully, leaving out others altogether, rather than to spread the collection out over as much of the field as one would like to include….

In the second place, the collection is tentative. There are no footnotes and such materials as are usually thus included must be supplied …

A Selection Of Cases And Other Authorities On The Law Of Admiralty, Pt.3: The Reception And Modification Of Maritime Law, Edwin D. Dickinson

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“The following collection of cases and other authorities on the Law of Admiralty requires prefatory comment in at least two particulars.

In the first place, the collection is incomplete. It has been necessary to keep within rather definite limits of space. Within those limits it has seemed better to develop selected topics somewhat fully, leaving out others altogether, rather than to spread the collection out over as much of the field as one would like to include….

In the second place, the collection is tentative. There are no footnotes and such materials as are usually thus included must be supplied …

The Law Of Sales, John Barker Waite

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I conceive law to be the aggregation of rules which courts of justice feel themselves more or less obligated to follow in deciding controversies. To some extent these rules are formulated and declared by legislative authority. Most of them, however, have been evolved by judges themselves. These latter rules are not always easy to formulate; if they were, there would be no need for real text-books. Even the precise utterances of various judges can not always be accepted as rules. I believe that no judge has power, either practically or theoretically, to bind other judges by any declaration of rule …

The Equality Of States In International Law, Edwin Dewitt Dickinson

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The author has attempted in this volume to present the equality of states as it appears in the theory of international law and also as it is affected by common usage. Theoretical aspects of the subject are considered in chapters dealing with the sources of the principle, its origin, and its significance in the writings of modem publicists and in illustrative documents. The opinion that Grotius first established the principle in international law is examined and evidence is adduced which indicates that the opinion is erroneous. The equality of states as affected by common usage is really their inequality or …

Patent Law, John Barker Waite

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The comparatively small size of the book is not due to any conscious superficiality of treatment nor omission of pertinent subject matter. It purports to cover only the substantive law of patents, their nature, validity, effect, and their characteristics as property. Matters of procedure in securing patents or suing on them, and the difficult subject of the amount of compensation recoverable by suit, would require a volume for themselves and are not included here. But of the matter which is included, it has been my desire to present every issue which has come before the courts....

This book is intended …