Law Commons^™

Bourdieu And American Legal Education: How Law Schools Reproduce Social Stratification And Class Hierarchy, Lucille A. Jewel

Scholarly Works

The American legal profession has long been organized along hierarchical lines, and in many instances, status inequalities between attorneys are based on perceived differences in attorneys' educational credentials. Relying upon the theories of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this essay will discuss how American legal educational institutions operate to reproduce the stratification within the legal profession and within society as a whole.

American law schools are not equalizing institutions that erase all class differences among students to create a profession that awards all of its members a monolithic class status. By allocating professional status based on a system of educational tiers, …

Queer Teens And Legislative Bullies: The Cruel And Invidious Discrimination Behind Heterosexist Statutory Rape Laws, Michael J. Higdon

Scholarly Works

Most states make an exception to their statutory rape laws for sexual acts involving an adolescent victim, who is below the age of consent, when the defendant is close in age to the victim (i.e., generally no older than three or four years). However, a few states explicitly limit such exceptions (commonly referred to as Romeo and Juliet exceptions) to only those situations involving teens who are of the opposite gender. Thus, adolescents in these states who have sex with someone below the age of consent, and who are also the same gender as the defendant, cannot avail themselves to …

Sense And Sensibility In Securitization: A Prudent Legal Structure And A Fanciful Critique, Thomas E. Plank

Scholarly Works

This article responds to a recent critique that the securitization of receivables is a legally shaky financial product that survives only because it is too big to fail. This critique argues that securitization's success in avoiding the costs that the Bankruptcy Code imposes on secured credit, including a bankruptcy trustee's ability to use the cash collateral from the receivables, is a type of fraud that hinders or delays the creditors of the originators of receivables. The critique, however, fails. The cases cited for the author's fraud analysis do not support its thesis. Further, the critique fails to demonstrate that securitization's …

The Return Of Reasonableness: Saving The Fourth Amendment From The Supreme Court, Melanie Wilson

Scholarly Works

The Supreme Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has been oft criticized. The criticism is not surprising or undeserved. After all, the express language of the Fourth Amendment requires that the government act reasonably whenever it intrudes on a person's privacy, liberty or dignity by conducting a search or seizure. But the Court's Fourth Amendment opinions have authorized conduct that looks anything but reasonable.

This Article contends that the unreasonableness of the Court's Fourth Amendment decisions is advanced by the Court's poor allocation of mixed issues - those asking someone to determine whether the historical facts in the case satisfy the constitutional …

Negotiating The Mega-Rebuilding Deal At The World Trade Center: An Introduction, Gregory M. Stein

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Congressional Roundtable On College Endowments - Restricted Gifts Testimony, Iris Goodwin

Scholarly Works

Restricted purpose gifts potentially bear upon that portion of the university's endowment that can be used toward undergraduate financial aid and other tuition relief. In these remarks, I describe what a restricted gift is, the requirement under state common law that such restrictions obtain in perpetuity, the grounds for relief under the common law, and the grounds for relief and other relevant provisions of UPMIFA. The provisions of UPMIFA that are applicable to restricted gifts were drafted against the background of the common law doctrine and under UPMIFA common law relief is still available.

Is There A Correlation Between Law Professor Publication Counts, Law Review Citation Counts, And Teaching Evaluations? An Empirical Study, Benjamin H. Barton

Scholarly Works

This empirical study attempts to answer an age-old debate in legal academia: whether scholarly productivity helps or hurts teaching. The study is of an unprecedented size and scope. It covers every tenured or tenure-track faculty member at 19 American law schools, a total of 623 professors. The study gathers four years of teaching evaluation data (calendar years 2000-03) and correlates these data against five different measures of research productivity/scholarly influence.

The results are counter-intuitive: there is either no correlation or a slight positive correlation between teaching effectiveness and any of the five measures of research productivity. Given the breadth of …

Better Competition Advocacy, Maurice Stucke

Scholarly Works

Today's competition advocacy censures governmental restraints that diminish competition. But such advocacy glosses over four fundamental questions: First, what is competition? Second, what are the goals of a competition policy? Third, how does one achieve, if one can, the objectives of such desired competition? Fourth, how does one know if the economy is progressing toward these goals? This Article outlines the conventional wisdom underlying today's competition advocacy. It examines what is meant by competition, and what is being valued. It examines the goals of competition, as expressed by various governmental agencies, and the structural mechanisms that the government can provide …

Second Panel: Labor Markets, Income Inequality And Globalization, Fran Ansley

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Judges, Lawyers, And A Predictive Theory Of Legal Complexity, Benjamin H. Barton

Scholarly Works

This Article uses public choice theory and the new institutionalism to discuss the incentives, proclivities, and shared backgrounds of lawyers and judges. In America every law-making judge has a single unifying characteristic, each is a former lawyer. This shared background has powerful and unexplored effects on the shape and structure of American law. This Article argues that the shared characteristics, thought-processes, training, and incentives of Judges and lawyers lead inexorably to greater complexity in judge-made law. These same factors lead to the following prediction: judge-created law will be most complex in areas where a) elite lawyers regularly practice; b) judges …

Toward A Rfra That Works, Nicholas Nugent

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Girls In The Juvenile Justice System, Paula Schaefer

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Bills Of Sale In Tennessee: An Annotated Model Tennessee Bill Of Sale, Joan Macleod Heminway

Scholarly Works

The coauthors have constructed a model bill of sale for use in connection with acquisitions, annotated with footnotes on substantive law and legal drafting issues. This model is intended to serve as a research piece, teaching tool, and practitioner resource. This instrument is part of a series of acquisition agreements and related ancillary contracts and instruments published by Transactions: Tennessee Journal of Business Law beginning in 2003.

Judicial Campaign Oversight Committees' Complaint Handling In The 2006 Elections: Survey And Recommendations, Penny White

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

What Your Lender And Mortgage Broker Didn't Tell You: A Call For Disclosure Of Loss Of The Section 580b Anti-Deficiency Protection Upon Refinancing, George Kuney

Scholarly Works

California Code of Civil Procedure § 580b protects a California homeowner from a deficiency judgment when the homeowner’s purchase-money lender forecloses upon the home after default. In other words, if the price the lender realized at the foreclosure sale is less than the outstanding amount of the debt, the homeowner will not be liable for the deficiency. Section 580b was enacted to discourage the purchase money lenders from over-valuing real property by requiring a lender to look solely to the collateral’s value for recovery in the event of foreclosure, and to prevent the aggravation of an economic downturn caused by …

Answering Now What? How To Find And Interview For Your First Law Library Job, Nathan A. Preuss, Katherine Marsh

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No abstract provided.

Analysis Of The Republic Of Tajikistan's Draft Law 'About Freedom Of Conscience And Religious Unions', Robert C. Blitt

Scholarly Works

This article, prepared at the request of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), provides an article-by-article detailed legal analysis of key shortcomings in Tajikistan's draft law About Freedom of Conscience and Religious Unions.

Based on their analysis, the authors provide recommendations for amendments directed at ensuring that the final draft law complies with Tajikistan's international and domestic human rights obligations.

Gimme Fiction: Rev. Rul. 99-6, Don Leatherman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Successor Liability In Michigan, George Kuney

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Successor Liability In Illinois, George Kuney

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Teaching And Learning Negotiation In A Simulated Environment, Becky Jacobs

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

The essay, written by a raving ADR fanatic, discusses several points pertaining to participatory learning in law school negotiation courses.

The Year Of The Gun: Second Amendment Rights And The Supreme Court, Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Scholarly Works

This Essay looks at issues that the Supreme Court can duck - and those that it can't - in deciding the District of Columbia Second Amendment case, D.C. v. Heller. It also looks at political and institutional pressures placed on the Supreme Court by the Heller case.

Great (And Reasonable) Expectations: Fourth Amendment Protection For Attorney-Client Communications, Teri Baxter

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

The attorney-client privilege is recognized in every state and in the federal judicial system. Yet despite its ubiquity, the scope of protection provided by the privilege varies widely among the various jurisdictions. Moreover, the privilege is generally considered to be a mere rule of evidence or state law and not a constitutional right. This Article argues that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution applies to and protects attorney-client privileged communications. Since clients have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their communications with their attorneys and society is prepared to recognize that expectation as reasonable, such communications are protected …

Pareto Negativity: The Enemy Of My Enemy Is Not Necessarily My Friend - Latin Leadership, Coalition Building, And Predatory Globalization, Becky Jacobs

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

This piece reflects upon the significant role of Latin civil society organizations (“CSOs”) not only in that region’s political, social and economic development, but also in the historical trajectory of the U.S. It also questions why there are so few Latino and Latina leaders in transnational CSOs and in the so-called “global civil society” movement (“GCS”), particularly in the movement to resist the predatory effects of globalization. Consider, for example, the citizen-led groups in Latin America such as the cocaleros and campesinos who fought the Bolivian Water and Gas Wars and then elected cocalero Juan Evo Morales Ayma as that …

'Babushka Said Two Things - It Will Either Rain Or Snow; It Either Will Or Will Not': An Analysis Of The Provisions And Human Rights Implications Of Russia's New Law On Nongovernmental Organizations As Told Through Eleven Russian Proverbs, Robert C. Blitt

Scholarly Works

Longtime observers of Russia increasingly have called attention to and expressed profound concern for the direction the Russian Federation has taken in recent years. In advancing President Putin's vision of "dictatorship of law" and "managed democracy," the Russian government has retreated from key democratic reforms, undermining the transition away from Soviet rule and imperiling significant gains in fundamental human rights.

It is against this backdrop that, in January 2006, President Putin ratified major amendments to the 1996 Law on Nonprofit Organizations, which regulates the creation, reorganization, activity, and liquidation of NGOs in Russia. Putin has claimed that the amendments to …

When Informal Adoption Meets Intestate Succession: The Cultural Myopia Of The Equitable Adoption Doctrine, Michael J. Higdon

Scholarly Works

In certain circumstances, the equitable adoption doctrine allows a person to inherit as the child of a testator even when the testator was neither that person's biological or adoptive parent. Although this doctrine, at first blush, might appear to be a move toward a more inclusive system of intestate succession, as many scholars have noted, the restrictive tests that the various courts have designed to determine who qualifies as an equitably adopted child have only served to greatly undermine the utility of the doctrine and, in numerous cases, have led to the denial of rather compelling claims.

While agreeing with …

"The Appeal" To The Masses, Penny White

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Prosecutors "Doing Justice" Through Osmosis - Reminders To Encourage A Culture Of Cooperation, Melanie Wilson

Scholarly Works

Scholars have often criticized the government for relying on "cooperating" defendant/witnesses in obtaining convictions of other persons. Such scholars contend that cooperating witnesses are powerfully motivated to parrot information a prosecutor wants to hear and that as naturally biased advocates, prosecutors overlook and ignore signs that cooperating defendants are lying.

This article asserts that defendants who "cooperate" with the government by substantially assisting in the prosecution of other crimes and criminals in exchange for a hope of receiving a more lenient sentence are invaluable crime prevention tools and should be encouraged. Nevertheless, the article recognizes the inconsistent manner in which …

Queer Teens And Legislative Bullies: The Cruel And Invidious Discrimination Behind Heterosexist Statutory Rape Laws, Michael Higdon

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

Most states make an exception to their statutory rape laws for sexual acts involving an adolescent victim, who is below the age of consent, when the defendant is close in age to the victim (i.e., generally no older than three or four years). However, a few states explicitly limit such exceptions (commonly referred to as Romeo and Juliet exceptions) to only those situations involving teens who are of the opposite gender. Thus, adolescents in these states who have sex with someone below the age of consent, and who are also the same gender as the defendant, cannot avail themselves to …

Welfare Reform, Privatization And Power: Reconfiguring Administrative Law Structures From The Ground Up, Wendy A. Bach

Scholarly Works

Since welfare reform in 1996, privatization has led to a radical reconfiguration in the dominant mode of governance in public benefits programs. The United States has largely moved from systems controlled through law and regulation to systems controlled through contracts. With this shift has come a significant diminishment in public accountability in general and, more specifically, a diminishment in the ability of poor communities and their advocates to intervene in the making of welfare policy. At the same time, privatization has proven to be an extraordinarily effective mechanism for imposing highly punitive welfare programs on poor communities. Building upon the …