Law Commons^™

Having It All: Pleading Guilty Without Forfeiting The Right To Appeal, Gerald S. Reamey

Faculty Articles

Pleading guilty and moving for an appeal of a pretrial suppression ruling has not been viewed as an efficient allocation of judicial resources. However, it is terribly inefficient to force the State to trial solely to preserve appeal rights on a pretrial objection. Attempts by courts and the legislature to balance these competing interests have produced a confusing and dangerous mix of contradictory rules.

Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure (TRAP) 25.2 is the latest iteration of such rules. Appeals may be taken following a negotiated guilty plea or nolo contendere plea, if “the substance of the appeal was raised by …

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same: Implications Of Pfaff V. Wells Electronics, Inc. And The Quest For Predictability In The On-Sale Bar, Timothy R. Holbrook

Faculty Articles

This Article posits a two prong approach to the on-sale bar. First, for the anticipatory version, the courts should expressly incorporate the law of enablement under 35 U.S.C. § 112 and of utility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 into the on-sale bar, thus providing a well-known body of law to promote predictability. Procedurally, the courts should establish a hierarchy of evidence, similar to the approach used in claim construction, that considers certain, more readily available information as the most pertinent while eschewing the use of expert testimony and other litigation based evidence. Second, for the obviousness version of the on-sale …

Interstate Establishment, Enforcement, And Modification Of Child Support Orders, Patricia W. Moore

Faculty Articles

Intended to improve the collection of child support across state lines, the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act has now been in effect in all fifty states for approximately three years. This Article examines the history and operation of this statute and its companion federal statute, the Full Faith and Credit For Child Support Orders Act. Following UIFSA's structure, the Article details the provisions governing the establishment, enforcement, and modification of child support orders in the interstate context and explains which federally-promulgated forms to use in each situation. Analyzing the abundant case law already decided under these statutes, the article concludes …

A Symposium Tribute To Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.: The Mentor And His Message, Margaret Chon

Faculty Articles

The articles in this Symposium tribute to Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. emphasize his mentoring as well as his message. This demonstrates that one of the Judge's most important legacies was his "people legacy"—his continual training of the next generation of leaders in ways that would keep alive the more than four-hundred-year-long struggle of American racial justice. The Judge also had a distinct vison of American law, the vision of "we the people” of self-evident truths that "all men are created equal." His second vision was that of "we the people of color," the one that is symbolized by the …

Home From The Islands: Domestic Asset Protection Trust Alternatives Impact Traditional Estate And Gift Tax Planning Considerations, John K. Eason

Faculty Articles

As the US becomes increasingly litigious, US citizens are more frequently sheltering their wealth in offshore asset protection trusts, or OAPTs. This article provides a thorough overview of the topic, discussing a variety of pertinent legal information.

A Call For Comment: Restyling And Amending The Federal Rules Of Criminal Procedure, David A. Schlueter

Faculty Articles

In August 2000, the Judicial Conference’s Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure published—for public comment—proposed amendments to the entire set of Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The proposals mark the culmination of a two-year project to “restyle” the rules—to modernize and reorganize and to make them internally consistent in format and style. Not since the rules were first promulgated in 1946 has there been such a significant change in the structure, format, and substance. This article first addresses the rule-making process for the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and then examines the restyling process. Finally, it notes several of …

Substantive Editing Versus Technical Editing: How Law Review Editors Do Their Job, Anne Enquist

Faculty Articles

Law review editors often have a hard time adjusting to their new role of evaluating and critiquing the work of professors and established legal scholars, resulting in entire editorial boards missing fundamental problems in a particular article. The author provides a solution to this problem by recommending the adoption of two separate phases of editing - a substantive editing phase, which addresses what the article actually communicates, and a technical editing phase, which addresses the form the author uses to communicate. As examples for any law review to follow, the author provides two substantive edits of two different author submissions …

Why Should The Prosecutor Get The Last Word?, John B. Mitchell

Faculty Articles

This article examines reasons the prosecutor should make the closing arguments in the United States. It also examines the importance of closing arguments; the advantages of going first and the scientific bases of primacy; and the advantages of rebuttal.

Race, Reason And Representation, Tayyab Mahmud

Faculty Articles

This is a review essay based on Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1999). It evaluates the entanglement of liberalism with colonialism to highlight many fundamental contradictions inherent in projects of modernity and the way universal claims are often bound by particularistic imperatives. Liberalism could reconcile its agenda of liberty and representation with colonial subjugation only by positing race as the grounds for eligibility to rights. With the project of neo-liberal restructuring of the world underway, it is useful to recall the disjunction between the theory and …

Health Care Reform In The Year 2000: The View From The Front Of The Classroom, Ken Wing

Faculty Articles

This article looks at the implications of the evolution of health care reform from the perspectives of teaching health law in the United States. U.S. on Congress' adoption of important limits on federal welfare programs, the direct role of government in financing health care, and the practical and theoretical problems in attempting to move forward to a more government controlled health care systems.

The Marketplace Of Ideas In Cyberspace, Margaret Chon

Faculty Articles

In the Panel Discussion on The Marketplace Of Ideas In Cyberspace at the 1999-2000 Oliver Wendell Holmes Symposium And Lectureship At Mercer University, Professor Margaret Chon discusses censorship and hate speech on the internet. Professor Chon questions the exporting of our First Amendment jurisprudence in this particular area, since we are the only democratic country to speak of, that protects what we've been referring to as hate speech.

Opening The Door To Business Methods: State Street Bank & Trust Co. V. Signature Financial Group, Inc. (Note), Colin P. Marks

Faculty Articles

Business method patents require further litigation to answer many lingering questions. The decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc. eliminated the "business method" exception. The business method exception used a skeptical approach asking "why should a patent be granted." The skepticism inherent in this approach may explain why the doctrine was recognized for so many years.

Since the time of Hotel Security Checking Co. v. Lorraine Co., advances in the field of science and the advent of computers have forced courts to constantly …

Bitter Medicine: A Critical Look At The Mental Health Care Provider’S Duty To Warn In Texas, Charles E. Cantú, Margaret H. Jones Hopson

Faculty Articles

A quarter of a century has passed since Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California first imposed a duty of care upon mental health care professions for third parties. In Tarasoff, the California Supreme Court held that once a therapist determines, or reasonably should have determined, a patient poses a significant danger of violence to others, the therapist bears a duty to exercise reasonable care to protect the foreseeable victim from that danger.

Tarasoff has since been widely accepted by both legislatures and courts as the basis for imposing the duty of reasonable care upon mental health care professionals …

The Virtues And Limits Of Codes In Legal Ethics, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

In the absence of codified standards of ethics, the ethical quality of law practice would degenerate into inconsistency and unpredictability. The presence of an ethics code can unduly burden and limit the practice of law. However, ethics codes should not be thought of as tools to ensure the law is practiced humanely. Instead, they should be viewed as attempts to ameliorate the impediments to a humane practice and to call lawyers to that goal.

Tom Schaffer, a scholar and professor of Ethics at Notre Dame, lamented the fact that the codification of standards of attorney conduct could induce lawyers to …

Out-Lawing God The Daughter, Emily A. Hartigan

Faculty Articles

The traditionally forbidding visage of law mimics the constructed face of the “God of our Fathers.” The punitive ‘Father God’ and the harsh letter of the law are connected in both their errors and their promises for transformation. Both the ‘Father’ and ‘His Law’ primarily impose their wills through “authority” and “force.”

Jewish feminist theologian Judith Plaskow questions whether the law is a female form. Plaskow contrasts the law’s constrictions and abstraction with traditional femeie characteristics of openness and fluidity. Plaskow hopes to redeem her tradition through a God of relationship and love, affirming both law and a new feminine …

Insurance Contracts And Judicial Decisions Over Whether Insurers Must Defend Insureds That Violate Constitutional And Civil Rights: An Historical And Empirical Review Of Federal And State Court Declaratory Judgments 1900-2000, Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

Empirical findings suggest that extralegal factors, such as geographic location, ethnicity, gender, disability, perceived sexual orientation, and age of third-party victims, influence judicial decisions as to whether liability carriers must defend or reimburse the costs of defending various lawsuits. After the introduction, Part II of this article presents a brief discussion of state and federal declaratory judgment statutes and of the public policy behind liability and indemnification insurance contracts. Part III examines the origin and scope of insurers’ duty to defend, duty to pay legal expenses, and duty to reimburse litigation costs when third-party victims sue policyholders. Part IV argues …

Secured Transactions History: The Northern Struggle To Defeat The Judgment Lien In The Pre-Chattel Mortgage Act Era, George Lee Flint Jr

Faculty Articles

Nonpossessory secured transactions evolved as a competitor to collusive judgments as a means to protect creditors from the loss of their investments in colonial America. A collusive judgment involved the debtor recognizing his debt before the court, while the creditor held equitable title to the debtor’s personalty as collateral while the debtor retained possession. The 1677 Statute of Frauds destroyed the priority of the collusive judgment presenting opportunities for other parties to seek the debtor’s collateral. The chattel mortgage, predecessor of the secured transaction, developed from the standard shipping practices during colonial times. The shipping industries extended lines of credit …

Markets, Myths, And A Man On The Moon: Aiding And Abetting America’S Flight From Health Insurance, Andre Hampton

Faculty Articles

The United States health care system is a tragic product of blind distrust of government and unquestioning faith in markets—the belief that the market will always do a more efficient job of allocating resources better than the government. However, health care is a peculiar commodity that differs from other goods and services that are distributed in the market. There is a real question about whether it is appropriate to provide health coverage pursuant to an insurance model, let alone provide it through an insurance model in the market. While the pooling of risks guarantees a greater number of people will …

Arrests In Texas’S “Suspicious Places”: A Rule In Search Of Reason, Gerald S. Reamey

Faculty Articles

When article 14.03(a)(1) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure first appeared in Texas law, landmark decisions like Terry v. Ohio and Miranda v. Arizona were more than a century in the future. Nevertheless, a current exception to Texas's arrest warrant requirement can be traced directly to a virtually identical statute from those pre-Civil War days.

It is a small wonder that today's courts find this statute confusing; and confusion, whether advertent or inadvertent, invites result-oriented, illogical, or unpersuasive judicial decisions. Courts' attempts to make sense of article 14.03(a)(1) arguably have failed in each of these ways over the statute's …

Preslar V. Commissioner: Debt-Discharge Income And Its Rationale, Chad J. Pomeroy

Faculty Articles

In Preslar v. Commissioner, the Tenth Circuit examined the “disputed debt” exception and concluded that the result was at odds with similar holdings from the Third Circuit. The Third and Tenth Circuits interpret the underlying logic of debt discharge income differently. The Third Circuit invokes the disputed-debt exception when the original debt is either unenforceable or unliquidated, while the Tenth Circuit invokes the exception only when the original amount is unliquidated.

The Tenth Circuit stated that the exception “rests on the premise that if a taxpayer disputes the original amount of a debt . . ., a subsequent settlement of …

Introduction: Performing Latcrit, Robert S. Chang, Natasha Fuller

Faculty Articles

This introduction examines the four articles in this cluster on LatCrit praxis. The four articles can be seen as case studies that explore different aspects of LatCrit praxis. Pedro Malavet examines the role literature and the arts can play as a form of antisubordinationist practice. Nicholas Gunia focuses on Jamaican music as a particular site of antisubordinationist practice, showing us that resistance comes in many forms and that LatCrit practitioners must have a broad theory for social change that is not limited to legislatures, courtrooms, classrooms, and law reviews. Alfredo Mirande Gonzalez employs personal narrative to tell us how he …

Silencing Culture And Culturing Silence: A Comparative Experience Of Centrifugal Forces In The Ethnic Studies Curriculum, Steven W. Bender

Faculty Articles

Using the metaphor of silencing, Professor Margaret Montoya documents the irrelevance of race, gender, and socio-historical perspectives both in legal education and, more broadly, in legal discourse. Although others have invoked this metaphor, Professor Montoya's charting of the physical, rather than merely metaphorical, space of silence moves beyond this legal literature in several respects. Viewing silence not just as dead space, Professor Montoya enlivens and colors silence and other nonverbal aspects of communication as positive cultural traits. She demonstrates how silence can be used as a pedagogical tool (a centrifugal force) in the classroom and in client interviews to bring …

Hegemony, Coercion And Teeth Gritting Harmony: A Commentary On Law, Power And Culture In Franco’S Spain, Tayyab Mahmud, Ratna Kapur

Faculty Articles

Co-authored with Ratna Kapur, this commentary engages the interrelationship of hegemony and coercion in legal regimes of the modern state. Against the backdrop of regulation of sexuality in fascist Spain, we posit a model of modern state power that draws upon the work of Gramsci, Althusser, and Foucault. It is argued that ideology is the velvet glove that encases the iron fist of coercion, and law always combines coercion and ideology by its very structure and operation. A bridge between critical race theory and queer theory is located in the concept of racing seen as the modern technology of power …

Restoration Affecting Native Resources: The Place Of Native Ecological Science, Catherine O'Neill

Faculty Articles

This article begins by noting that non-Native society—the dominant society in the United States—has often discounted Native expertise and denied a place for Native environmental managers. Part II catalogues the various forms that denigration and denial of Native ecological science have taken. Part III marks the historical antecedents of such efforts to deny Native knowledge and to downplay the role of Native peoples as environmental managers. It then identifies particular features of the approaches favored by non-Native environmental managers that likely work to exclude, devalue, or discriminate against Native science, with the intention of encouraging further work to locate and …

Equity And Efficacy In Washington State's Gma Affordable Housing Goal, Henry Mcgee

Faculty Articles

This essay considers the basis for the Washington State's Growth Management Act’s (GMA) affordable housing goal, considers the relationship between its achievement and the reduction of urban sprawl. It also links the GMA's goal of an equitable distribution of housing resources to a fundamental social aspiration described by the United States Congress as a "decent home and living environment for all Americans." Indeed, it will be argued that the economic disparity and inequity directly linked to urban sprawl-both a cause as well as an effect-are locked ineluctably to a pathological social process in which they feed upon each other. Continued …

Beyond Communication: Writing As A Means Of Learning, Laurel Oates

Faculty Articles

In this article, Professor Oates examines the belief that writing facilitates learning from several perspectives. Part I describes the writing-to-learn movement, beginning with James N. Britton's and Janet Emig's assertions that writing is a unique method of learning and ending with John M. Ackerman's claim that writing is no better and, is sometimes worse, than other modes of learning. Building on the evidence described in Part I, Part II discusses writing to learn in light of four theories: behaviorism, Linda S. Flower and John Hayes's models of the composing process, Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia's models of knowledge telling and …

Issues In Law Library Acquisitions: An Analysis, Kent Milunovich

Faculty Articles

Although journals in the field of librarianship often include articles pertaining to acquisitions, they usually are geared to a broad audience and rarely tailored specifically to law libraries. Some of these articles, however, provide information that is germane to law librarians who work in acquisitions. The purpose of this article is to consider the best of recent writing about acquisitions against the context of law libraries. Where appropriate, distinctions are drawn between acquisitions in academic and nonacademic law libraries. The topics discussed include shrinking acquisitions resources, changes in legal publishing, building and managing an acquisitions program, preservation, outsourcing, gifts, and …

Confronting The Limits Of Gay Hate Crimes Activism: A Radical Critique, Dean Spade, Craig Willse

Faculty Articles

Questioning the emancipatory potential of hate crimes activism for sexual and gender non-normative people, this paper outlines the limits of criminal justice remedies to problems of gender, race, economic and sexual subordination. The first section considers some of the positive impacts of hate crimes activism, focusing on the benefits of legal "naming" for disenfranchised constituencies seeking political recognition. In the next section the authors outline the political shortcomings and troubling consequences of hate crimes activism. First, they examine how hate crimes activism is situated within a "mainstream gay agenda," a term they use to designate the set of projects prioritized …

Foreword: Re-Orienting Law And Sexuality, Tayyab Mahmud, Ratna Kapur

Faculty Articles

This forward to a symposium issue of the law review maps the terrain of legal regulation of sexuality. It locates sexuality within a matrix of power, knowledge, and resistance and the question of regulation of sexuality is approached from the perspective of the sexually marginalized subject -- the sexual subaltern. It briefly reviews the contributions to the symposium and forwards a research agenda about questions of theory and praxis related to the production and regulation of sexual subjects.

Delaware Corporation Law And Transaction Cost Engineering, Charles O'Kelley

Faculty Articles

Professor O’Kelley believes that a very good way to teach Corporations is to structure the course around a core goal – to teach Delaware corporate law systematically – not just bits and pieces of it, but the entire system, much the way the teaching of constitutional law is approached. This essay is an elaboration of his reasoning and strategies, organized as a presentation and discussion of the core rationales for organizing the course in this way. The first justification flows axiomatically from the following proposition: we create value for many of our students, and harm none, by giving them an …