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Full-Text Articles in Law

Moral Discourse, Bioethics, And The Law, Carl E. Schneider Nov 1996

Moral Discourse, Bioethics, And The Law, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Dan Callahan follows a distinguished tradition when he uses the phrase "moral discourse" to describe the law's work. The frequency with which that image is deployed suggests its resonance and even rightness: When we think about the way society considers moral issues and develops moral positions, it can be useful to imagine the law as one of many social institutions that contribute to a social discussion. Nevertheless, this image is misleading. At least for our (graying and balding) genera- tions, the law is regarded as a worthy participant in American moral discourse preeminently because of its part in the civil …


Copyright Law And Electronic Access To Information, Jessica D. Litman Oct 1996

Copyright Law And Electronic Access To Information, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

At the same time as we have been discovering the Internet’s enormous potential to enhance access to information and revolutionize the ways libraries do business, the Internet’s high profile in popular media has made it the focus of a wide spectrum of fears about the future. This paper focuses on pending proposals to amend copyright law to enhance the control copyright owners wield over the appearance of their works on digital networks. These proposals would stifle libraries’ use of the Internet. Libraries and their supporters must participate in the copyright debate, and think creatively about new models for copyright. The …


Toward A Tax-Based Explanation Of The Liability Insurance Crisis, Kyle D. Logue Sep 1996

Toward A Tax-Based Explanation Of The Liability Insurance Crisis, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

The so-called liability insurance crisis of 1985 and 1986 transformed the way we think about tort law and about liability insurance markets. The crisis phenomena, which first appeared in late 1984 and lasted until mid-1986, consisted of enormous increases in liability insurance premiums and alarming reductions in the availability of certain types of liability coverage. In the two principal liability lines of insurance (Other Liability and Medical Malpractice), premiums increased by hundreds (in some cases thousands) of percentage points in a matter of months. At the same time, the availability of liability insurance contracted sharply. The liability policies that were …


Intellectual Property Issues In Genomics, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Aug 1996

Intellectual Property Issues In Genomics, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

Controversy over intellectual property rights in the results of large-scale cDNA sequencing raises intriguing questions about the roles of the public and private sectors in genomics research, and about who stands to benefit (and who stands to lose) from the private appropriation of genomic information. While the US Patent and Trademark Office has rejected patent applications on cDNA fragments of unknown function from the National Institutes of Health, private firms have pursued three distinct strategies for exploiting unpatented cDNA sequence information: exclusive licensing, non-exclusive licensing and dedication to the public domain.


Fundamental Justice And The Deflection Of Refugees From Canada, James C. Hathaway Jun 1996

Fundamental Justice And The Deflection Of Refugees From Canada, James C. Hathaway

Articles

Canada is preparing to implement a controversial provision of the Immigration Act that will deny asylum seekers the opportunity even to argue their need for protection from persecution. Under a policy labelled "deflection" by the authors, the claims of refugees who travel to Canada through countries deemed safe, likely the United States and eventually Europe, will be rejected without any hearing on the merits. Because deflection does not require substantive or procedural harmonization of refugee law among partner states, it will severely compromise the ability of genuine refugees to seek protection.


Capture And Counteraction: Self- Help By Environmental Zealots (Allen Chair Symposium 1996: The Future Of Environmental And Land-Use Regulation), James E. Krier Jan 1996

Capture And Counteraction: Self- Help By Environmental Zealots (Allen Chair Symposium 1996: The Future Of Environmental And Land-Use Regulation), James E. Krier

Articles

Self-help is a largely neglected topic in American legal studies.1 With the exception of a survey by a group of law students published a dozen years ago,2 there appears to be little, if anything, in our legal literature that confronts the subject in a systematic way.3 This is so, at least, if one defines self-help as I do. To me, the term refers to any act of bypassing the formal legal system in order to get what one wants.


The Uniform Probate Code Extends Antilapse-Type Protection To Poorly Drafted Trusts, Lawrence W. Waggoner Jan 1996

The Uniform Probate Code Extends Antilapse-Type Protection To Poorly Drafted Trusts, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

The Uniform Law Commission' promulgated a revised version of Article II of the Uniform Probate Code (UPC or Code) in 1990, and approved a set of technical amendments in 1993. As Director of Research and Chief Reporter for the Joint Editorial Board for the Uniform Probate Code (Board)2 and reporter for the UPC Article II drafting committee, I was privileged to serve as the principal drafter of these provisions. UPC Article II deals with the substantive rules governing donative transfers - intestacy; spouse's elective share; execution, revocation, and revival of wills; rules of construction for wills and other donative transfers; …


Tax Transitions, Opportunistic Retroactivity, And The Benefits Of Government Precommitment, Kyle D. Logue Jan 1996

Tax Transitions, Opportunistic Retroactivity, And The Benefits Of Government Precommitment, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

What if the current federal income tax laws were repealed and replaced with a simple flat tax? What if the entire Internal Revenue Code (with its graduated rates and countless deductions, exclusions, and credits) were scuttled in favor of a broad-based consumption tax? Only a few years ago, such proposals would have seemed radical and extremely unlikely to be adopted. But times are changing. Calls for a drastic overhaul of the Internal Revenue Code have become commonplace, even at the highest levels in the tax-policy community. In addition, proposals that would replace the income tax with a flat-rate broad-based consumption …


Civil Forfeiture And The War On Drugs: Lessons From Economics And History, Donald J. Boudreaux, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 1996

Civil Forfeiture And The War On Drugs: Lessons From Economics And History, Donald J. Boudreaux, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

This Article uses economic analysis to show how civil forfeiture’s role in the war on drugs creates contrary incentives for law enforcement officials and encourages abuses. The Article then reviews the history of civil forfeiture and the Supreme Court’s forfeiture jurisprudence, which seems incoherent. The Authors warn that the judiciary should be skeptical of civil forfeiture and its importance to the war on drugs. The Article proposes a constitutional framework, grounded in economics and history, to limit forfeiture abuses.


Why I Write, James Boyd White Jan 1996

Why I Write, James Boyd White

Articles

It is a great honor for me to speak to you on this occasion, celebrating the publication of such an original and important book. It is a pleasure of a different kind as well, for Lash LaRue is an old and good friend, and I welcome the chance to join with others in congratulating him.


American Bar Association Section Of International Law And Practice Standing Committee On World Order Under Law Report To The House Of Delegates: International Monetary Fund And The World Bank Group, Michael A. Heller, H. Francis Shattuck Jr. Jan 1996

American Bar Association Section Of International Law And Practice Standing Committee On World Order Under Law Report To The House Of Delegates: International Monetary Fund And The World Bank Group, Michael A. Heller, H. Francis Shattuck Jr.

Articles

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group are the subjects of this report. The report, with its accompanying recommendation, is one of several reports on selected United Nations specialized agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The report has been developed by the Section of International Law and Practice, International Institutions Committee, through its Working Group on UN Specialized Agencies. This is a contribution to the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations in fulfillment of the American Bar Association's Goal VIII-to advance the rule of law in the world. The accompanying recommendation addresses issues of an enhanced …


Public Research And Private Development: Patents And Technology Transfer In Government-Sponsored Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 1996

Public Research And Private Development: Patents And Technology Transfer In Government-Sponsored Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

This article revisits the logical and empirical basis for current government patent policy in order to shed light on the competing interests at stake and to begin to assess how the system is operating in practice. Such an inquiry is justified in part by the significance of federally-sponsored research and development to the overall U.S. research effort. Although the share of national expenditures for research and development borne by the federal government has declined since 1980, federal funding in 1995 still accounted for approximately thirty-six percent of total national outlays for research and development' and nearly fifty-eight percent of outlays …


Rule 23: Challenges To The Rulemaking Process (Symposium: The Institute Of Judicial Administration Research Conference On Class Actions), Edward H. Cooper Jan 1996

Rule 23: Challenges To The Rulemaking Process (Symposium: The Institute Of Judicial Administration Research Conference On Class Actions), Edward H. Cooper

Articles

Three decades have elapsed since Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure last underwent revision. Taking a cue from proposed amendments prepared by the Civil Rules Advisory Committee, Professor Cooper asks whether now is the appropriate time to revise Rule 23. In this Articl e he identifis three potential "big changes" to the Rule. subsantially curtailing class actions; accommodating the needs of mass-tort actions; and recognizing the class as an entity, distinct from Its representatives. After outlining and critiquing the Advisory Committee's draf4 Professor Cooper raises a host of questions about many aspects of Rule 23 and suggests …


The Trouble With Hairdressers, Donald J. Herzog Jan 1996

The Trouble With Hairdressers, Donald J. Herzog

Articles

Why should hairdressers, of all unlikely candidates, have come to exemplify equality, to be a cultural obsession of sort? Suffice it to say that hairdressers happened to occupy a social position that made it possible to demonize them.


Virtual Taxation: Source-Based Taxation In The Age Of Derivatives, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 1996

Virtual Taxation: Source-Based Taxation In The Age Of Derivatives, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

What are the implications of the explosive growth in the market for derivative financial instruments for international taxation? As Rosenbloom (1996) has pointed out, derivatives do not pose a particular international tax problem as long as one focuses on residence-based taxation. In that context, the issues raised by derivatives are the same as in a purely domestic context, which have been discussed extensively elsewhere (e.g., Warren, 1993). However, when the focus is on source-based taxation, and in particular source-based taxation of passive income (i.e., withholding taxes), the rise of derivatives has far-reaching implications. In 1994, then U.S. International Tax Counsel …


The Risks Of Death: Why Erroneous Convictions Are Common In Capital Cases (Symposium: The New York Death Penalty In Context), Samuel R. Gross Jan 1996

The Risks Of Death: Why Erroneous Convictions Are Common In Capital Cases (Symposium: The New York Death Penalty In Context), Samuel R. Gross

Articles

As the Supreme Court has said, time and again, death is different: It is "different in kind from any other punishment imposed under our system of criminal justice;"1 it "differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year sentence differs from one of only a year or two;"' 2 and so forth. Traditionally, this observation has justified special procedural protections for capital defendants. Justice Harlan put it nicely nearly forty years ago: "I do not concede that whatever process is 'due' an offender faced with a fine or a prison sentence necessarily satisfies the requirements of the Constitution in a capital …


Reply To Daniel Polsby (Symposium: The New York Death Penalty In Context), Samuel R. Gross Jan 1996

Reply To Daniel Polsby (Symposium: The New York Death Penalty In Context), Samuel R. Gross

Articles

I'd like to offer a few words in response to Professor Polsby's articulate, forceful and amusing essay in favor of capital punishment.


Excessive Criminal Justice Caseloads: Challenging The Conventional Wisdom, Jerold H. Israel Jan 1996

Excessive Criminal Justice Caseloads: Challenging The Conventional Wisdom, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

Since the mid-1960s, no element of the criminal justice environment has received more attention and been accorded greater importance, in both popular and professional commentary, than has the pressure of heavy caseloads. The lack of sufficient resources to deal with overbearing caseloads has been widely characterized as the most pervasive and most critical administrative challenge faced by police, prosecutors, public defenders, and courts.' National commissions have regularly complained that the criminal justice system is "overcrowded, overworked, [and] undermanned," and must be given "substantially more money" to cure those ills if it is ever to perform all of the tasks assigned …


Rights Of Subrogation In Letters Of Credit Transactions, James J. White Jan 1996

Rights Of Subrogation In Letters Of Credit Transactions, James J. White

Articles

The past twenty years have seen more than a dozen cases, in which parties to letter of credit transactions have sought subrogation to the rights of the person they have paid or to the rights of the persons on behalf of whom, they have acted.' The most obvious case arises when the issuer of a standby letter of credit pays a beneficiary on a debt that is owed to the beneficiary by a bankrupt applicant. Having failed to take 'collateral from the applicant, the issuer seeks to be subrogated to the security interest of the beneficiary. Failing subrogation, the issuer …


On Becoming A Law Professor, Terrance Sandalow Jan 1996

On Becoming A Law Professor, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

Thirty-five years ago, when I first joined a law faculty, only one job description existed for law professors, that for the conventional classroom teacher. In the years since, the opportunities available to lawyers interested in teaching have become a bit more varied. In addition to conventional classroom teachers, a growing number of law teachers are employed by law schools to provide what I shall somewhat misleadingly call clinical instruction.1 Although these comments are addressed mainly to men and women interested in classroom teaching, a few lines about clinical teaching may be in order because the initial question for anyone considering …


Don't Try: Civil Jury Verdicts In A System Geared To Settlement, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud Jan 1996

Don't Try: Civil Jury Verdicts In A System Geared To Settlement, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

Articles

If it is true, as we often hear, that we are one of the most litigious societies on earth, it is because of our propensity to sue, not our affinity for trials. Of the hundreds of thousands of civil lawsuits that are filed each year in America, the great majority are settled; of those that are not settled, most are ultimately dismissed by the plaintiffs or by the courts; only a few percent are tried to a jury or a judge. This is no accident. We prefer settlements and have designed a system of civil justice that embodies and expresses …


The Cosmological Question: A Response To Milner S. Ball's 'All The Company Of Heaven', Joseph Vining Jan 1996

The Cosmological Question: A Response To Milner S. Ball's 'All The Company Of Heaven', Joseph Vining

Articles

We do not disagree, and I do not doubt, that legal processes are sources of injustice, violent oppression, crushing of the spirit, destruction of lives, actual death. I have only to look at The Trial1 again. Nor do we disagree that there are strings of words, statements, put out by officials, lawyers, and lawyer-academics, often called "rules," that cannot be taken into oneself and that by their very nature evoke manipulation in response, avoidance if they cannot be ignored. In their name violent imposition of pure will occurs all the time, and power is exercised by those who can secure …


Theorists' Belief: A Comment On The Moral Tradition Of American Constitutionalism, Jospeh Vining Jan 1996

Theorists' Belief: A Comment On The Moral Tradition Of American Constitutionalism, Jospeh Vining

Articles

The Moral Tradition of American Constitutionalism is one of those rare works that leads us to face, at the center of law and legal thought, the largest questions about human life and human purpose. There is a special reader's shudder, a certain gestural shift in the chair, reserved for that moment of realizing where one is being led-not to the edge, but to the center, so that the questions become insistent, and whatever we and others say and do in the face of them becomes our response to them.


Globalisation Of Contract Law: Rules For Commercial Contracts In The 21st Century, Whitmore Gray Jan 1996

Globalisation Of Contract Law: Rules For Commercial Contracts In The 21st Century, Whitmore Gray

Articles

This is a paper given at the Asia-Pacific Lawyers Association meeting held in Bangkok in November 1995. The author describes the principles of international commercial contracts published in 1994 by the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law. Professor Gray sees a new era of harmonisation of contract law. An appendix gives an abstract of a contract law decision given by an Austrian Court in 1994.


The Structure Of International Taxation: A Proposal For Simplification, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 1996

The Structure Of International Taxation: A Proposal For Simplification, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The article explains the structure of the international tax regime and offers suggestions for improvement.


Intellectual Property At The Public-Private Divide: The Case Of Large-Scale Cdna Sequencing, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 1996

Intellectual Property At The Public-Private Divide: The Case Of Large-Scale Cdna Sequencing, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

The Human Genome Project provides fertile ground for studying the role of intellectual property at the wavering boundary between public and private research science. It involves a major commitment of both public and private research funds in an area that is of significant interest both to research scientists working in university and government laboratories and to commercial firms. It thus provides a wealth of new scientific discoveries that are simultaneously potential candidates for commercial development and inputs into further research. Its obvious implications for human health raise the stakes of getting the balance between private property and public access right, …


Walter Trinkaus, Grace C. Tonner Jan 1996

Walter Trinkaus, Grace C. Tonner

Articles

I first met Walter Trinkaus as a third-year law student in his Remedies II class at Loyola. We quickly learned that Walter's class was not simply a study of cases but a series of stories taken from his many experiences as a lawyer. Walter's stories revealed much more than the law of remedies; they showed us how to effectively represent clients, how to properly treat each other, and how to practice law ethically. Walter also helped us put our first two years of law school in perspective because he placed a human face on the hypothetical problems of the classroom. …


Telling The Story Of The Hughes Court, Richard D. Friedman Jan 1996

Telling The Story Of The Hughes Court, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

When Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., died in 1935, he left the bulk of his estate to the United States Government. This gift, known as the Oliver Wendell Hnlmes Devise, sat in the Treasury for about twenty years, until Congress set up a Presidential Commission to determine what to do with it. The principal use of the money has been to fund a multivolume History of the United States Supreme Court. The history of the project itself has not always been a happy one, for some of the authors have been unable to complete their volumes. Among them was one …


Physician Assisted Suicide: A Bad Idea, Yale Kamisar Jan 1996

Physician Assisted Suicide: A Bad Idea, Yale Kamisar

Articles

It would be hard to deny that there is a great deal of support in this country - and ever-growing support - for legalizing physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Why is this so? I believe there are a considerable number of reasons. I shall discuss five common reasons - and explain why I do not find any of them convincing.


Class Action Rule Changes: A Midpoint Report, Edward H. Cooper Jan 1996

Class Action Rule Changes: A Midpoint Report, Edward H. Cooper

Articles

This a midpoint progress report of the Reporter on current proposals to amend the class action rule, Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In part, it is one of many calls for help. The proposed amendments have been published for comment. It is important that the rulemakers hear from as many interested observers as possible. One of the pitfalls of the comment process - at least one of the pitfalls that the rulemakers like to believe in - is that there are many observers who believe that the rulemakers have got it right, and do not need …