Law Commons^™

Fighting Arbitration Clauses In Franchisor Contracts, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

Purporting to serve justice, efficiency, and freedom of contract, business interests are increasingly attempting to use binding arbitration clauses to secure unfair advantages over unknowing parties. Courts seemingly have been eager to enforce arbitration clauses that appear in franchise agreements. This article discusses courts’ enforcement of arbitration clauses, undermining protections to the franchisee, and how franchisees can create a more level playing field.

Is Binding Arbitration A Form Of Adr?: An Argument That The Term "Adr" Has Begun To Outlive Its Usefulness, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

Professor Frank Sander has, for many years, been one of the most prescient commentators on the alternative dispute resolution ("ADR") movement. His 1976 Pound Conference speech has been identified by many as marking the birth of the modern ADR phenomena. That speech, which compared some of the pros and cons of litigation and an array of other dispute resolution processes, has been summarized as proposing the concept of the "multi-door courthouse." In contrast, Professor Sander's more recent and very interesting review of the present and future of ADR makes little attempt to distinguish between mediation and binding arbitration, the two …

Book Note, Fatma E. Marouf

Scholarly Works

Tortured Confessions presents an innovative perspective on the relationship between torture and propaganda. Abrahamian’s persuasive account exposes the intrinsic limitations of arguments that try to explain torture as simply the result of a “traditional” regime, a desire for social discipline, or a search fro security information; he binds torture instead to ideological warfare and political mobilization, the fundamental goals of military propaganda.

Globalization Or Global Subordination? Latcrit Links The Global To The Local And The Local To Global, Sylvia R. Lazos

Scholarly Works

Professor Lazos introduces the fifth and final cluster of this LatCrit IV Symposium, International Linkages and Domestic Engagement, which includes five important contributions to LatCrit IV's focus on global issues by Professors Timothy Canova, Gil Gott, Tayyab Mahmud, Ediberto Roman, and Chantal Thomas. The introduction below sketches out, by way of illustration only, how some of the work already presented in this symposium cultivates the linkage between local racial formation and global market dynamics. The introduction then explores LatCrit's contribution to the critique of globalism.

Alwd Citation Manual: A Professional System Of Citation, Terrill Pollman, Leah A. Kane

Scholarly Works

The Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) has written a new citation manual that is easy to teach from and easy to use.

Although the ALWD Manual provides a very different teaching and learning experience, practitioners should experience few difficulties adjusting to the new manual.

Riddikulus!: Tenure-Track Legal Writing Faculty And The Boggart In The Wardrobe, Mary Beth Beazley

Scholarly Works

Professor Beazley compares myths to boggarts in this examination of the reasons schools cite when explaining their lack of tenure-track positions for legal writing faculty. These boggarts are the living myths that pop out and whisper in faculty ears whenever someone suggests that law schools should create tenure-track - or even permanent - faculty positions in legal writing. Although some faculties have defeated these boggarts, they are still out there, popping out not from under the bed or from behind the closet door, but at lunch in the faculty lounge, after the committee meeting, and during the conversation in the …

Beyond Cloning: Expanding Reproductive Options For Same-Sex Couples, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Third Party Payments To Criminal Defense Lawyers: Revisiting United States V. Hodge And Zweig, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Toward The Restorative Constitution: A Restorative Justice Critique Of Anti-Gang Public Nuisance Injunctions, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

Gang members from elsewhere congregated on lawns, on sidewalks, and in front of apartment complexes at all hours. They displayed a casual contempt for notions of law, order, and decency -- openly drinking, smoking dope, sniffing toluene, and even snorting cocaine laid out in neat lines on the hoods of residents' cars. San Jose prosecutors responded by obtaining and enforcing a broad injunction against the gangs and their members, based on the finding that the gangs' activities constituted a public nuisance. California prosecutors have sought such anti-gang public nuisance injunctions since 1987. Their constitutionality was in doubt for ten years …

Psychotherapeutic Practice As A Model For Postmodern Legal Theory, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Critical legal theory is in need of reconstruction and rehabilitation. By most accounts, the goal of critical legal theory is to reveal the deep structure of the legal system that remains unrecognized in, and even obscured by, the self-understanding of legal actors. Scholars traditionally moved beyond the superficial level of legal doctrine either by adopting a rationalistic orientation and analyzing legal concepts or by adopting an empiricist orientation and analyzing the economic and sociological features of legal institutions. However, during the past thirty years there has been a tremendous diversification in these critical approaches. For example, the critical legal studies …

The Quest To Reprogram Cultural Software: A Hermeneutical Response To Jack Balkin's Theory Of Ideology And Critique, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Critical theory has lost the self-assurance that defined the heady days of Marxist economics and Freudian psychoanalysis. In his famous debate with Hans-Georg Gadamer thirty years ago, Jürgen Habermas argued that critical theory was a necessary corrective to the quiescence and conventionalism that followed from Gadamer's hermeneutic perspective. As the 1960s unfolded, the second generation of the Frankfurt School appeared poised to bring sophisticated techniques of social criticism to bear on the emerging postindustrialist system of global capitalism. But the promise of critical theory failed to materialize. Today, Habermas plays the role of the aging lion who refuses to accept …

Foreward, Symposium: Philosophical Hermeneutics And Critical Legal Theory, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

This Symposium brings the considerable talents of a diverse group of scholars to bear on a pressing problem in legal theory: Whether critical theory is possible after the hermeneutical turn. All too often, this problem is framed to invite an “either-or” response. Either we reject the hermeneutical turn and hew to a traditional account of critique anchored by an unimpeachable standard (whether economic, historical, conceptual, cognitive, or otherwise), or we take the hermeneutical turn by embracing radical historical contingency and fluidity, thereby forsaking the possibility of critique and surrendering to conservative conventionalism or inviting postmodern chaos. This Symposium challenges this …

Dressed For Excess: How Hollywood Affects The Professional Behavior Of Lawyers, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This article discusses two related points: first, that the way in which movies portray lawyers shapes how clients view effective/ineffective lawyer behavior, and second, that the portrayal also helps lawyers to forget appropriate professional behavior.

Going From "Us" To "Them" In Sixty Seconds, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

Observations by a professor who has decided to become an Associate Dean.

¡Viva La Evolución!: Recognizing Unconscious Motive In Title Vii, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

This article analyzes the different proof mechanisms developed under Title VII discriminatory treatment doctrine, demonstrating their ability to identify unconscious, as well as conscious, discriminatory behavior. It demonstrates that soon after its enactment Title VII began to evolve, expanding its reach to unconscious discrimination. Although in many instances courts were unaware of this expansion, courts appear to have followed their intuition to further the broad remedial and preventive purposes of the statute. In response to the evolution and to the courts' failure to articulate a justification for their decisions, a counter-evolution is currently occurring, with many courts attempting rigidly to …

Identifying Real Dichotomies Underlying The False Dichotomy: Twenty-First Century Mediation In An Eclectic Regime, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Some people (lawyers, scholars, judges, dispute resolvers, policymakers) are more concerned about fidelity to procedural protocols while others are more concerned with the substantive rules governing disputes and substantive outcomes. Those in the dispute resolution community preferring facilitation tend to be proceduralists. For them, the observance of proper procedure is a high goal, perhaps the dominant goal. They reason, often implicitly, that adherence to the rules of procedure is the essence of neutrality, fairness, and the proper role of a dispute resolving apparatus. At some level, usually subconscious, there is a post-modern philosophical aspect of this preference. Because humans cannot …

The Inevitability Of The Eclectic: Liberating Adr From Ideology, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The problem with viewing facilitation as the only legitimate form of mediation, of course, is that it borders on tautology: mediation is nonevaluative, therefore any evaluation in mediation must be impermissible. Although this view remains strongly held in many quarters, it appears to be in retreat, both within the mediation community and in the legal community at large. Courts and commentators have shown increasing favor toward some evaluative or advising component of mediation. More important, the eclectic style appears to be what takes place in the metaphorical trenches of mediation practice (although sound empirical data is necessarily hard to obtain …

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Recent case developments in Insurance Law in the years 1999 and 2000.

Protecting Franchisees From Abusive Arbitration Clauses, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

This article sets out a number of legal arguments that franchisees can potentially use to defeat arbitration clauses that seek to accomplish ends that would not be permissible in litigation. Drawing from decisions protecting consumers and employees from unfair arbitration clauses, as well as from opinions in the franchise context, this article analyzes arguments that can be based on the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, state statutes, and common law. By way of this analysis, it suggests that some courts are misapplying arbitration precedents and preemption arguments to support decisions that allow franchisors to effectively exempt themselves from legislation and even …

As Mandatory Binding Arbitration Meets The Class Action, Will The Class Action Survive?, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

Assuming that the traditional prerequisites for a class action have been met, courts have four choices: (1) order the dispute to be resolved in an individualized arbitration, thereby denying plaintiffs either a litigation or arbitration venue for their class claims; (2) refuse to mandate arbitration, and instead allow plaintiffs to litigate their class claims; (3) order that the dispute be resolved through an arbitral class action, also known as classwide arbitration; or (4) order the dispute to arbitration but allow the arbitrators to make the determination as to whether the dispute should be resolved individually or on a class basis. …

Remarks, Golden Pen Award, Mary Beth Beazley

Scholarly Works

Professor Beazley, then President of the Legal Writing Institute, joins her colleagues in presenting the inaugural Golden Pen Award to Arthur Levitt, Chairman of the United States Securities Exchange Commission, for his leadership in requiring plain language in financial disclosure documents, in this transcript of the presentation of the award at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

Medical Malpractice: Treating The Causes Instead Of The Symptoms, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Implementation Of Oregon’S Death With Dignity Act: Reassuring, But More Data Are Needed, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

Undoubtedly, empirical data from Oregon will play a key role for academics, legislators, judges, and the public as debate over the legalization of physician-assisted suicide continues. A central issue in the debate is whether a right to assisted suicide can be limited to only the truly compelling cases, or whether it will in practice be provided to patients who choose it out of depression, coercion, or misunderstanding. Empirical research can provide critical insights into this question.

Women Defenders On Television: Representing Suspects And The Racial Politics Of Retribution, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

This Essay is about Ellenor Frutt, Annie Dornell, Joyce Davenport, and other women criminal defense attorneys of prime time television. It examines how high-stakes network television presents sympathetic stories about women working as criminal defense attorneys while simultaneously supporting the popular thirst for the harshest criminal penalties. Real women who choose to represent criminal defendants are fundamentally out of step with angry and unforgiving attitudes toward crime and criminals. Indeed, women defenders have chosen work that puts them in direct opposition to the widespread public willingness to incarcerate record numbers of Americans, often young African-American and Latino men, for longer …

The Creditor In Possession Under The Bankruptcy Code: History, Text, And Policy, Thomas E. Plank

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Proper Scope Of The Copyright And Patent Power, Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Scholarly Works

As an increasing amount of society's wealth is tied up in intangible assets, strong, clear property rights can make a good deal of sense. But it is also possible to have too much of a good thing, and our society is in danger of reaching that point. Recent scholarship suggests as much: a growing body of literature details the expansion of particular doctrines, the rising burden of IP-related transaction costs, or the pressing need for collective *46 institutions to mediate between individual firms and the mushrooming pile of IP rights they must traverse to do business.

In this Essay, we …

Who Gets The Takings Claim? Changes In The Land Use Law, Pre-Enactment Owners, And Post-Enactment Buyers, Gregory M. Stein

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Review Essay: Of Dissent And Discretion, Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Scholarly Works

A review essay centering around Clay S. Conrad's Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine, and focusing on the largely unexamined - and not always positive - role of prosecutorial discretion. Plus, some suggestions on how to ensure that such discretion is better supervised in the future.

Newly Available, Not Newly Discovered, Penny White

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Recognizing Race In The American Legal Canon, Fran Ansley

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.