Law Commons^™

Only Words, David C. Dinielli

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Only Words by Catharine A. MacKinnon

No Pity: People With Disabilities Forging A New Civil Rights Movements, Cheryl A. Leighty

Michigan Law Review

A Review of No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement by Joseph P. Shapiro

Beyond The Reasons Stated In Judgments, Giorgio Gaja

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Legal Reasoning of the European Court of Justice: Towards a European Jurisprudence by Joxerramon Bengoetxea

Emerging From Emergency: Human Rights In South Africa, Etienne Mureinik

Michigan Law Review

A Review of In a Time of Trouble: Law and Liberty in South Africa's State of Emergency by Stephen Ellmann

The Uncitral Framework For Arbitration In Contemporary Perspective, Alyssa A. Grikscheit

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The UNCITRAL Framework for Arbitration in Contemporary Perspective by Isaak I. Dore

Objectivity In Legal Judgement, Heidi Li Feldman

Michigan Law Review

This essay unites the philosophical concern with blend concepts and the legal concern with objectivity. Comparing blend legal concepts with other kinds of blend concepts develops our resources for ascertaining the distinctive characteristics of blend concepts. Cultivating a more refined understanding of blend concepts sharpens our inquiry into objectivity. In Part I of this essay, I explicate the distinctive characteristics of blend concepts, demonstrating that some representative legal concepts, drawn from tort law, possess these characteristics. In Part II, I develop a conception of objectivity suitable for blend judgments - the blend conception of objectivity - and use this conception …

Taking The Fifth: Reconsidering The Origins Of The Constitutional Privilege Against Self-Incrimination, Eben Moglen

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this essay is to cast doubt on two basic elements of the received historical wisdom concerning the privilege as it applies to British North America and the early United States. First, early American criminal procedure reflected less tenderness toward the silence of the criminal accused than the received wisdom has claimed. The system could more reasonably be said to have depended on self-incrimination than to have eschewed it, and this dependence increased rather than decreased during the provincial period for reasons intimately connected with the economic and social context of the criminal trial in colonial America.

Second, …

The Historical Origins Of The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination At Common Law, John H. Langbein

Michigan Law Review

This essay explains that the true origins of the common law privilege are to be found not in the high politics of the English revolutions, but in the rise of adversary criminal procedure at the end of the eighteenth century. The privilege against self-incrimination at common law was the work of defense counsel.

Part I of this essay discusses the several attributes of early modem criminal procedure that combined, until the end of the eighteenth century, to prevent the development of the common law privilege. Part II explains how prior scholarship went astray in locating the common law privilege against …

Transcendental Deconstruction, Transcendent Justice, J. M. Balkin

Michigan Law Review

A meaningful encounter between two parties does not change only the weaker or the stronger party, but both at once. We should expect the same from any encounter between deconstruction and justice. It might be tempting for advocates of deconstruction to hope that deconstruction would offer new insights into problems of justice, or, more boldly, to assert that "the question of justice" can never be the same after the assimilation of deconstructive insights. But, as a deconstructionist myself, I am naturally skeptical of all such blanket pronouncements, even - or perhaps especially - pronouncements about the necessary utility and goodness …

The Public Policy Exclusion And Insurance For Intentional Employment Discrimination, Sean W. Gallagher

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that courts choosing to apply the public policy exclusion to insurance for intentional employment discrimination liability should nevertheless permit employers to enforce insurance covering negligent supervision liability and liability imputed to an employer as a result of the intentional discrimination committed by its employees. Part I establishes a framework for understanding the cases in which courts have invoked public policy to refuse enforcement of insurance contracts, arguing that the rationale behind the public policy exclusion is utilitarian and that courts refuse to enforce insurance for liability arising out of intentional wrongdoing on the grounds that such insurance …

Incommensurability And Valuation In Law, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

In this article I explore two claims and discuss their implications for law. The first claim is that human values are plural and diverse. By this I mean that we value things, events, and relationships in ways that are not reducible to some larger and more encompassing value. The second claim is that human goods are not commensurable. By this I mean that such goods are not assessed along a single metric. For reasons to be explored, the two claims, though related, are importantly different.

Incorporating The Suspension Clause: Is There A Constitutional Right To Federal Habeas Corpus For State Prisoners?, Jordan Steiker

Michigan Law Review

In the early 1960s, the Supreme Court adopted generous standards governing federal habeas petitions by state prisoners. At that time, the Court suggested, rather surprisingly, that its solicitude toward such petitions might be constitutionally mandated by the Suspension Clause, the only provision in the Constitution that explicitly refers to the "Writ of Habeas Corpus." Now, thirty years later, the Court has essentially overruled those expansive rulings, and Congress has considered, though not yet enacted, further limitations on the availability of the writ. Despite these significant assaults on the habeas forum, the constitutional argument appears to have been entirely abandoned. The …

Black Identity And Child Placement: The Best Interests Of Black And Biracial Children, Kim Forde-Mazrui

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this Note is to question whether racial matching by courts and child-placement agencies serves the best interests of Black children. The principle that guides this Note's analysis is that racial matching is justified only if such a policy better serves the interests of Black children than a policy in which race is not a factor in a child-placement determination. This Note also questions whether racial matching serves the interests of biracial children and those of Black people as a cultural group.

Are We Compatible?: Current European Community Law On The Compatibility Of Joint Ventures With The Common Market And Possibilities For Future Development, Alyssa A. Grikscheit

Michigan Law Review

The Commission and commentators note that the potential for reform in the procedural arena is quite great. The current literature discusses the difficulties would-be venturers have in determining if their proposed venture is concentrative or cooperative and the procedural differences between notifications under the two standards.

This Note argues, however, that the substantive differences between the two standards are even more problematic than the procedural ones. Reducing the substantive differences between the two compatibility standards, short of creating a single standard that is unresponsive to the tensions between concentrative and cooperative situations, will have a beneficial impact. Similar standards of …