Law Commons^™

Judicial Credibility, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

Do people believe a federal court when it rules against the government? And does such judicial credibility depend on the perceived political affiliation of the judge? This study presents a survey experiment addressing these questions, based on a set of recent cases in which both a judge appointed by President George W. Bush and a judge appointed by President Bill Clinton declared the same Trump Administration action to be unlawful. The findings offer evidence that, in a politically salient case, the partisan identification of the judge – here, as a “Bush judge” or “Clinton judge” – can influence the credibility …

Legal Determinacy And Moral Justification, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

Since this is a conference on law and morality, and the topic of this panel is theories of contract law, I thought it particularly appropriate to ask how a theory of contract law can provide a moral justification for contract law. That question can be answered only by providing a more general account of how a legal theory can provide a moral justification for any area of the private law. In this preliminary Essay, I argue that in order morally to justify the private law, a theory of the private law must derive reasons from a normative political theory that …

The Morality Of Property, Thomas W. Merrill, Henry E. Smith

Faculty Scholarship

The relationship between property and morality has been obscured by three elements in our intellectual tradition. First is the assumption, which can be traced to Bentham, that property is a pure creature of law. An institution assumed to be wholly dependent on law for its existence is unlikely to be infused with strong moral content. Second is the related tradition, also Benthamite, of examining questions about property law from a utilitarian perspective. Utilitarianism is, of course, a moral theory. But in its modern applications, based on price theory and cost-benefit analysis, it adopts a framework largely indifferent to questions of …

Solving Problems Vs. Claiming Rights: The Pragmatist Challenge To Legal Liberalism, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Recent developments in both theory and practice have inspired a new understanding of public interest lawyering. The theoretical development is an intensified interest in Pragmatism. The practical development is the emergence of a style of social reform that seeks to institutionalize the Pragmatist vision of democratic governance as learning and experimentation. This style is reflected in a variety of innovative responses to social problems, including drug courts, ecosystem management, and "new accountability" educational reform. The new understanding represents a significant challenge to an influential view of law among politically liberal lawyers over the past fifty years. That view, Legal Liberalism, …

Comment On Moliterno, Legal Education, Experiential Education, And Professional Responsibility, Lance Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

In attempting to predict and prescribe the future, my vision of the recent history of legal education differs from Professor Moliterno's in certain relevant ways.

I graduated from Law School in 1967. I learned largely through doctrinal courses that delivered steady training in thinking like a lawyer and information about areas of law. These courses exposed me and my classmates to legal lingo and to the standard types of legal arguments. We learned, largely by hearing the teacher and our fellow students, to make verbal moves and to see the strengths and limitations of others' argumentation skills and techniques. We …

Should Lawyers Obey The Law?, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

At the same time that it denies authority to nonlegal norms, the dominant view of legal ethics (the "Dominant View") insists on deference to legal ones. "Zealous advocacy" stops at the "bounds of the law."

By and large, critics of the Dominant View have not challenged this categorical duty of obedience to law. They typically want to add further public-regarding duties, but they are as insistent on this one as the Dominant View.

Now the idea that lawyers should obey the law seems so obvious that it is rarely examined within the profession. In fact, however, once you start to …

Chaos Theory And The Justice Paradox, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

"[T]he laws have mistakes, and you can't go writing up a law for everything that you can imagine."

"When you reach an equilibrium in biology you're dead."

As we approach the Twenty-First Century, the signs of social disarray are everywhere. Social critics observe the breakdown of core structures – the nuclear family, schools, neighborhoods, and political groups. As these traditional social institutions have disintegrated, the law has expanded to fill the void. There are more laws, more lawyers, and more use of legal mechanisms to accomplish social goals than at any other time in history. The custodians and interpreters of …

The Committee On The Constitutional System Proposals: Coherence And Dominance, Philip Chase Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

I have been a fellow traveler of the Committee on the Constitutional System virtually since its inception; indeed, I believe I was present when Mr. Cutler first made the speech at the University of Texas that became, "To Form a Government." During all this time I have never been able to quite free myself from the conviction that his concerns were absolutely right and fundamental to our era. Nor have I been able to persuade myself that the reforms that he recommends justify a departure from the framers' conception. I suppose this is why I was selected to give a …

Resale Price Maintenance And The Ftc: The Magnavox Investigation, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Franchise agreements between a manufacturer and a distributor or retail dealer of the manufacturer's products often impose conditions on the dealer regarding items such as price, dealer location, service, and advertising. These vertical restrictions, whether price or nonprice, may violate the Sherman Act, which prohibits every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of trade. Whereas vertical price restrictions historically have been held per se invalid, nonprice vertical restrictions have been permitted, subject to a rule of reason. In United States v. Arnold, Schwinn & Co., however, the Supreme Court articulated a per se rule of illegality for nonprice vertical restrictions, …

Abusive Debt Collection – A Model Statute For Virginia, Robert E. Scott, Diane M. Strickland

Faculty Scholarship

Among the many by-products of the phenomenal growth of consumer credit in the last two decades has been the attempt on the part of existing legal institutions to grapple with the problem of coercive debt collection. The existence of the problem is no longer disputed, and the nature and extent of the abuse surrounding debt collection practices has been the subject of voluminous commentary. Given the dynamics of the competing interests involved when a creditor attempts to collect a just debt which the debtor is unable to pay, an essential conflict requiring regulated resolution becomes apparent. Unfortunately, the problem is …

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 …

The Regulation And Administration Of The Welfare Hearing Process – The Need For Administrative Responsibility, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, the concept of public welfare has undergone substantial conceptual changes, the primary being a shift from the older concept of gratuity to one of statutory entitlement pursuant to the Social Security Act. This paper seeks to examine and analyze the administrative "fair hearing" as a means of effective regulation of administrative discretion and enforcement of the entitlement provisions of the federal act. Primary emphasis is placed on a comparative treatment of state hearing procedures and federal hearing regulations to determine whether the fair hearing is, at present, a viable means of insuring due process in welfare administration.

Compensation For Victims Of Violent Crimes: An Analysis, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Spurred by the implementation of plans in Great Britain, New Zealand, and California; and by various other federal and state proposals, the concept of state compensation to victims of violent crimes has recently become the subject of wide public interest and intensive legal debate. In essence, the concept envisages some scheme by which the victims of crimes of violence can be compensated for any losses resulting from their criminally inflicted injuries.

Before any proposals based on this conception are adopted they should be shown to have a valid theoretical framework, supported by sound legal principles, with an effective and efficient …