Law Commons^™

Professor Milton Handler, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

Milton Handler taught his first class at Columbia four years before I was born. Because of my parents' tardiness, he was beginning his twenty-sixth year on the Faculty by the time I was old enough to register for his course in Trade Regulation in the fall of 1953. I have been an admirer of Milton Handler ever since.

It has been my good fortune to know him in many ways. As a teacher, he was truly extraordinary – a penetrating analyst, a builder of grand syntheses, a master of the Socratic method. Though his courses were usually electives, most of …

Taxation Of Unrealized Gains At Death – An Evaluation Of The Current Proposals, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

The failure to tax the appreciation of capital assets transferred at death has been described as the major shortcoming of existing federal income tax laws. From time to time since 1942, the Department of the Treasury and others have urged alteration of the rule which underlies this failure. Recently the House Ways and Means Committee held panel discussions and public hearings on the subject of tax reform during which consideration was given to the possibility of changing the laws dealing with taxation of appreciated property at death. In its recommendations to the Committee, the Treasury Department did not push for …

Julius Goebel, Jr.: In Fond Recollection, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

Memorable teachers, like great delicacies, are not to everybody's taste. Most of us endured nineteen years of formal education, encountering perhaps 100 teachers along the way. Many were journeymen, imparting whatever information their particular slice of the curriculum warranted. A few, a very few, truly moved our minds. And, not uncommonly, the genius who made me see left others in the dark, while my friend's cicerone left me hopelessly lost. The teacher who dares to inspire will not inspire many, but if in every class a few are enabled to think in a way they could not think before, that …

Exchange Control, Liberalization, And Economic Development, Jagdish N. Bhagwati, Anne O. Krueger

Faculty Scholarship

This paper highlights results of the National Bureau of Economic Research's (NBER) research project on exchange control, liberalization and economic development from 1970-1973. Initial adoption of exchange controls was generally an ad hoc response to external events. The optimal resource allocation dictum – that the marginal cost of earning foreign exchange should be equated with the marginal cost of saving foreign exchange – was generally abandoned in favor of saving foreign exchange at all costs. An export-oriented development strategy generally entails relatively greater use of indirect, rather than direct, interventions. There is considerable evidence from the individual country studies that …

General Equilibrium Theory And International Trade, Jagdish N. Bhagwati

Faculty Scholarship

This volume of Takashi Negishi's excellent essays in the theory of international trade underlines two major phenomena in this field: i) the displacement of the MarshalJian partialequilibriμm tools of analysis (now to be found only in the old-fashioned textbooks) by the general-equilibrium analysis of Mill, Marshan and Edgeworth which culminated in the major work of Meade and others; and ii) the emergence of a creative and ingenious school of Japanese international trade theorists in the last decade (of which Negishi is one of the more eminent members) which has virtually shifted the center of gravity in trade-theoretic research from England …

The Espionage Statutes And Publication Of Defense Information, Harold Edgar, Benno C. Schmidt Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

We began this lengthy study of the espionage statutes with grand designs. Our original goal, suggested by the Pentagon Papers litigation, was to elaborate the extent to which constitutional principles limit official power to prevent or punish public disclosure of national defense secrets. But this plan was short-lived. The more we considered the problem, the more convinced we became that the central issues are legislative. The first amendment provides restraints against grossly sweeping prohibitions, but it does not, we believe, deprive Congress of considerable latitude in reconciling the conflict between basic values of speech and security.

Militants, Moderates, And Social Change, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

The thesis of this paper is a simple generalization: To the extent that social protest draws attention to its form rather than to the grievance it seeks to redress, it is likely to be unproductive. I add a quick qualification. In offering this generalization, I am assuming that the protester is genuine in seeking to redress one or more grievances and that he is not using the grievance as a subterfuge to pick a fight. If the purpose of the protest is in fact to provoke a repressive response, then, of course, my generalization is inapplicable.

We obviously have a …

Constitutional Adjucation: The Who And When, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

When the newly appointed Justices of the Supreme Court assembled in the Royal Exchange Building in New York for their first session on February 2, 1790, the most farsighted individual could not have foreseen what the future held for this tribunal. Now less than a generation short of its 200th anniversary, the Court is universally acknowledged to be the final and authoritative expositor of the Constitution. Yet after almost two centuries, questions concerning this power of the Court to interpret the Constitution remain. The first set of questions centers on the substantive standards for constitutional adjudication. The second, with which …

The Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem In The Multi-Commodity Case, Jagdish N. Bhagwati

Faculty Scholarship

Ronald Jones, in his seminal paper (1957) on Heckscher-Ohlin theory, has argued that, for the case of two countries, two factors, and several commodities, the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem would remain valid in the following weak sense: "Ordering the commodities with respect to the capital-labor ratios employed in production is to rank them in order of comparative advantage. Demand conditions merely determine the dividing line between exports and imports; it is not possible to break the chain of comparative advantage by exporting, say, the third and fifth commodities and importing the fourth when they are ranked by factor intensity" (p. 85).

It …

The Reality Of Procedural Due Process – A Study Of The Implementation Of Fair Hearing Requirements By The Welfare Caseworker, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The constitutional mandates of procedural due process have been more sharply defined in recent years as a result of the decision of the Supreme Court in Goldberg v. Kelly. Although the full extent of the doctrine has not yet been delimited, the core proposition seems well established that in the absence of an overriding governmental interest, procedural -due process requires that an individual be accorded notice and a hearing prior to an administrative decision that would adversely affect his ability to subsist by contemporary standards. In applying this principle to the termination of public assistance payments, the Court in …

Reflections On The Tax Legislative Process: Prelude To Reform, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

Tax reform is one of those motherhood issues-everybody's for it. Election year 1972 generated many far-reaching tax reform proposals which, if enacted, would have a profound impact on virtually every segment of American society. Senator McGovern recommended taxing capital gains at the same rates as ordinary income, eliminating almost $7 billion granted to businesses by reducing the investment tax credit and depreciation allowances, and offering state and local governments a 50 percent interest subsidy to encourage them to issue taxable, rather than tax-exempt, bonds. In addition, he proposed eliminating the percentage depletion allowance and the deduction for intangible drilling expenses …

Legal Principles And The Limits Of Law, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Most people tend unreflectively to assume that laws belong to legal systems. "Most educated people," writes H. L. A. Hart, "have the idea that the laws in England form some sort of system, and that in France or the United States or Soviet Russia and, indeed, in almost every part of the world which is thought of as a separate 'country' there are legal systems which are broadly similar in structure in spite of important differences." This includes for most people the assumption that laws differ from non-legal rules and principles. There are, for example, moral rules and principles, social …

The Relationship Between Promise And Performance In State Intervention In Family Life, Peter L. Strauss, Millard L. Midonick, Nanette Dembitz, Harriet F. Pilpel, David J. Rothman

Faculty Scholarship

JUDGE MIDONICK: We have a fantastic representation of our alumni here and we've overdone our 10:00 starting time and we're supposed to stop at 12:00 promptly in order for us to go to the Low Memorial Library for lunch, for those who are having lunch with us. In order to be on time for this afternoon's extravaganza we really ought to begin now. You must understand this program is entirely unrehearsed and therefore will be more interesting. We have with us today a panel of four whom I will introduce as they are to speak. The first speaker will speak …

Professor Paul R. Hays, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

When I learned that the Editors of the Columbia Law Review were planning to dedicate this issue to Paul Hays, I took an extraordinary step. I volunteered. It seemed to me that the occasion should not pass without a formal expression of thanks from the Dean of the School of Law and an informal acknowledgment of the personal debt I owe to Paul Hays.

The formal thanks, richly deserved, can be simply stated. A valued colleague, a brilliant scholar, an inspiring teacher – Paul Hays is all of these and the School he served for more than three decades is …

Privacy Versus Parens Patriae The Role Of Police Records In The Sentencing And Surveillance Of Juveniles, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this article is to examine juvenile record systems maintained by police authorities. A primary thesis is that current procedures governing the creation and dissemination of such records are so severely misguided by underlying parens patriae concepts that they often result in the purposeless stigmatization of a far greater range of youths than the juvenile justice system has any justification in attempting to deal with. Indeed, increasing evidence suggests that the net effect of such record keeping is to ensure that many of the subject juveniles will mature into confirmed delinquents.

Fairness And Utility In Tort Theory, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Fletcher challenges the traditional account of the development of tort doctrine as a shift from an unmoral standard of strict liability for directly causing harm to a moral standard based on fault. He then sets out two paradigms of liability to serve as constructs for understanding competing ideological viewpoints about the proper role of tort sanctions. He asserts that the paradigm of reciprocity, which looks only to the degree of risk imposed by the parties to a lawsuit on each other, and to the existence of possible excusing conditions, provides greater protection of individual interests than the paradigm of …

The Theory Of Criminal Negligence: A Comparative Analysis, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Negligence is a problematic ground for criminal liability. Every major Western legal system punishes negligent as well as intentional violations of protected interests; but theorists both here and abroad feel uneasy about the practice Negligent motoring and negligent manufacturing significantly threaten the public interest; yet Western judges seem more comfortable punishing counterfeiters and prostitutes than imposing sanctions against those who inadvertently take unreasonable risks. Negligence appears indeed to be an inferior, almost aberrant ground for criminal liability. Every interest protected by the criminal law is protected against intentional violations; but only a few-life, bodily integrity, and sometimes property-are secured against …

Dean William C. Warren, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

It would be virtually impossible, even if I were to preempt this entire issue of the Columbia Law Review for the purpose, to document fully the monumental contributions William C. Warren made to the Law School during the seventeen years of his deanship. I can hope only to touch lightly upon them, leaving the reader to admire the foresight, the energy, the generosity of spirit, and the long hours of dedicated effort which enabled him to accomplish so much.

Chief Judge Stanley H. Fuld, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

There were Whiz Kids before McNamara, and never more than during the tenure of the late Thomas E. Dewey as District Attorney of New York County. Only thirty-three years old when he became special prosecutor for the investigation of organized crime in New York and thirty-five when he took office as District Attorney in 1937, Dewey surrounded himself with a remarkably talented group of young lawyers. Frank Hogan, for example, was thirty-five in 1937, Charles Breitel all of twenty-eight. Stanley Howells Fuld, who had graduated from the Columbia Law School one year after the District Attorney, was thirty-four. Nine years …

Bringing The Vagueness Doctrine On Campus, George A. Bermann, Ballard Jamieson Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Although students have traditionally paid little attention to university disciplinary codes, recent campus disturbances have given these codes unprecedented significance. Those subjected to disciplinary proceedings have charged, among other things, that the provisions which regulate their behavior are too vague to inform them of what they may and may not do. Arguing that a broadly-worded code of conduct is necessary to govern, university administrators, however, have refused to make their regulations more precise.

All Or Nothing At All: The Defeat Of Selective Conscientious Objection, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

The generosity of the United States Supreme Court to conscientious objectors whom Congress has declined to exempt from military service has apparently ended. In Gillette v. United States, decided with Negre v. Larsen, the Court decisively closed the door on claims that those conscientiously opposed to participation in particular wars are entitled by statute or constitutional right to an exemption from military service. Mr. Justice Marshall's majority opinion first disposes of the statutory claim. According to the opinion, the relevant language of § 6(j) of the Military Selective Service Act of 1967," conscientiously opposed to participation in war …

Criminal Law And Population Control, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Several important questions can be asked about criminal law and the population problem. One is how greatly overpopulation, with its contribution to poverty and urban crowding, is a cause of crime, and, obversely, the extent to which population control would be a form of crime control. Another question is how much population growth increases the range of behavior that is and should be covered by criminal sanctions. Although these and other questions deserve attention, the purpose of this article is more modest – to consider possible changes in criminal law that could help ease the population problem.

Marginal Cost Pricing, Investment Theory And Catv, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

In his article, Marginal Cost Pricing, Investment Theory and CATV, James Ohls makes a number of erroneous assertions concerning the optimum pricing of CATV. Most of his problems stem from a failure to properly define the environment in which the optimum price is to be set and the role that an optimum price should play. If one alters Ohls' implicit (and sometimes contradictory) assumptions and if one keeps in mind the purpose prices should serve in an economic system, a number of Ohls' conclusions are altered.

The Identity Of Legal Systems, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Laws are part of legal systems; a particular law is a law only if it is part of American law or French law or some other legal system. Legal philosophers have persistently attempted to explain why we think of laws as forming legal systems, to evaluate the merits of this way of thinking about the law and to make it more precise by explicating the features that account for the unity of legal systems. Various theories have been suggested but none has been accepted as completely satisfactory, and the continuing debate owes much to the intricacy of the problems involved. …

Public Support And The Sectarian University, Walter Gellhorn, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In mid-1968 we undertook to advise Fordham University concerning steps that might be appropriate to establish its eligibility for public assistance. As part of that task we tried to determine the extent to which present law requires official differentiation between Church-related and other institutions of higher learning. Since the University sought a wholly detached consideration of its legal posture, our conclusions in this article represent our best judgment of the present state of the law and its probable development. We have avoided indicating our own personal position on debatable legal and ethical issues.

First Amendment "Due Process", Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

A number of recent Supreme Court opinions, primarily in the obscenity area, have fastened strict procedural requirements on governmental action aimed at controlling the exercise of first amendment rights. Professor Monaghan believes that there are two basic principles that can be distilled from these cases: that a judicial body, following an adversary hearing, must decide on the protected character of the speech, and that the judicial determination must either precede or immediately follow any governmental action which restricts speech. The author argues that these two broad principles should limit any governmental activity which affects freedom of speech, no matter how …

A Contextual Approach To Disobedience, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Edmund Burke once noted that the rebelliousness of colonial America was largely a consequence of the size and prominence of the legal profession, under whose influence the people "snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze." Today, however, most members of the legal profession take a much dimmer view of civil disobedience, although some do acknowledge its justification in special circumstances. Few who write on the subject recognize that in making judgments about the morality of disobedient acts the lawyer's perspective is limited.

Disputes over whether an illegal action is morally justified in a particular instance can be conceptually …

On Lawful Governments, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

What is the meaning of sentences of the form 'X is the lawful government of the country Y,' and what kinds of statements are normally -made by using them? Most answers to these questions can be classified as legalistic, moralistic, or compromise solutions. The gist of the legalistic approach is that the lawful government is that authorized by the positive law of the land. Critics of the legalistic approach point out that disagreement about the lawful government is not always solved when agreement is reached about the positive law of the land. For example, two people may disagree as to …

Decision Trees, Peter L. Strauss, Michael R. Topping

Faculty Scholarship

The object of this paper is to inform those concerned with the administration of justice in Ethiopia – particularly, criminal justice – about a new and simple procedure which may assist in procuring uniform interpretation and application of laws and regulations. The problem of uniform interpretation and application is particularly severe where, as in Ethiopia, new laws must be interpreted and applied by persons who have not yet had the opportunity of formal legal education. For these persons the discovery of the relevant code articles and the understanding of their interrelationships and application must be very difficult indeed. One possible …

Presidential War-Making, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

The Vietnam "war" has convinced many persons that the president of the United States claims apparently unlimited power to commit this country to war. Not surprisingly, therefore, considerable interest has focused on the powers that inhere in the presidency. And many critics of the war – those who in other times and in other contexts might have been sympathetic to a spacious conception of presidential power – have concluded that the Vietnam conflict is not only a tragic error, but is the direct result of unconstitutional conduct by the president. I cannot accept this view; at bottom, it seems to …