Law Commons^™

A Call For An Overhaul Of The U.S. Federal Court System, Huhnkie Lee

Huhnkie Lee

No abstract provided.

The Family Responsibilities Convention Reconsidered: The Work-Family Intersection In International Law Thirty Years On, Lee Adams

Lee Adams

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Workers with Family Responsibilities Convention, 1981, No. 156 coming into force. Family responsibilities in the context of paid work and its implications for gender equality have been the subject of international regulation most specifically in ILO 156, although it remains a marginalized convention. Since then, the interaction of work and family and the conflict between them have exploded as a subject of scholarly importance. This article examines ILO 156 in the context of chronological development of other major international legal instruments which address the intersection of work and …

Marriage And Law Reform: Lessons From The Nineteenth Century Michigan Married Women’S Property Acts, Ellen Dannin

Ellen Dannin

If law reform had the neat trajectory of a bullet from a smoking gun, life and law would be neater – but less interesting. This article began as a simple empirical study to test whether Michigan’s 1844 Married Women’s Property Act affected conveyancing.

When the results showed that it had no effect – that married women were included as grantors even before the MWPA made it legal for them to own property – the study expanded into a quest to identify the processes that led to its enactment and explained its operation on the family, a fundamental social institution. In …

New Fraud And Identity-Related Crimes In New South Wales, Alex Steel

Alex Steel

The Crimes Amendment (Fraud, Identity and Forgery Offences) Act 2009 commenced on 22 February 2010. It represents a significant change to fraud offences in New South Wales. The Act codifies dishonesty in line with the Ghosh test, replaces over 30 fraud offences with one main offence based on deceptively obtaining financial advantage, rewords the forgery offences and introduces a suite of identity crime offences. The Act continues to move away from offences based on common law larceny and interference with property rights toward general offences based on a statutory defined concept of dishonesty. However, larceny and related offences have been …

The Tort Of Betrayal Of Trust, Caroline Forell, Anna Sortun

Caroline A Forell

Fiduciary betrayal is a serious harm. When the fiduciary is a doctor or a lawyer, and the entrustor is a patient or client, this harm frequently goes unremedied. Betrayals arise out of disloyalty and conflicts of interest where the lawyer or doctor puts his or her interest above that of his or her client or patient. It causes dignitary harm that is different from the harm flowing from negligent malpractice. Nevertheless, courts, concerned with overdeterrence, have for the most part refused to allow a separate claim for betrayal. In this Article, we suggest that betrayal deserves a remedy and propose …

Pro Bono Publico As A Conscience Good, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Deborah Schmedemann

Pro bono work performed by American lawyers serves a critical role in the American civil justice system. This paper seeks to explain pro bono through the lens of social science research into volunteering, in particular the economic concept of a conscience good. The paper presents the results of an empirical study involving over 1,100 law students and lawyers. The results include data on lawyers’ motivations to perform pro bono, the impact of various pro bono rules and invitations to perform pro bono, the satisfactions of pro bono work, emotions triggered by pro bono work and pro bono clients, and the …

Pro Bono Publico As A Conscience Good, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Deborah Schmedemann

Pro bono work performed by American lawyers serves a critical role in the American civil justice system. This paper seeks to explain pro bono through the lens of social science research into volunteering, in particular the economic concept of a conscience good. The paper presents the results of an empirical study involving over 1,100 law students and lawyers. The results include data on lawyers’ motivations to perform pro bono, the impact of various pro bono rules and invitations to perform pro bono, the satisfactions of pro bono work, emotions triggered by pro bono work and pro bono clients, and the …

The Albanian Customary Law And The Canon Of Leke Dukagjini: A Clash Or Synergy With Modern Law, Genc H. Trnavci

Genc H Trnavci

Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit (The Canon of Lekë Dukagjini) is the most widely known comprehensive summary of traditional Albanian law ever published in Albanian language. For centuries, the Canon of Lekë Dukagjini has strictly governed all important aspects of social life in Kosova and in the secluded and sometimes practically ex-lex regions of Northern Albania. Customary law is however not only characteristic of Albanian culture. In general, customary law endured among all Balkan peoples, particularly in rural environments, until the present day. The Franciscan, Shtiefën Gjeçovi from Janjevo of Kosova (1874 - 1929), carefully collected and formulated Kanuni. This compilation …

Strategic Planning For Combating Terrorism: A Critical Examination, Arsalan Suleman

Arsalan Suleman

This article engages in a thorough assessment of the Bush Administration's main security strategy documents related to combating terrorism, namely the 2002 and 2006 National Security Strategy documents, the 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, and the 2006 National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism. First, the article assesses the value and importance of strategy documents and the utility in analyzing them. Second, the strategies are analyzed based on the process by which they were authored, the structural elements of the strategy, and the strategy's content. Third, the article discusses the overall content of counter-terrorism strategy and makes …

A New Paternity Law For The Twenty-First Century: Of Biology, Social Function, Children's Interests And Betrayal, Leslie J. Harris

Leslie J. Harris

In 2007 an Oregon law reform commission charged a large work group of more than 20 attorneys, child support and child welfare agency administrators, judges, and lobbyists with proposing a comprehensive revision of the state’s paternity laws, the first in more than 30 years. The group began with the 2002 Uniform Parentage Act as a model but quickly abandoned it, finally settling on a proposal that was enacted into law with few revisions. This article describes the issues and compromises that underlie the law, particularly clashing visions of the appropriate criteria for legal fatherhood, tensions between the interests of adults …

Indefinite, Inhumane And Inequitable - The Principle Of Equal Application Of The Law And The Natural Life Sentence: A Reform Agenda, John L. Anderson

John L Anderson

In this article, it will be argued that not only is the indefinite nature of the sentence of life imprisonment inhumane, but the available evidence graphically demonstrates an eclectic approach by the judiciary to the practical application of

the natural life sentence resulting in a clearly inequitable distribution of this ultimate form of punishment. This is contrary to one of the most basic tenets of the common law legal system, that the law should be applied equally to all

persons. In an era of 'law and order' politics with the emphasis on a retributive and incapacitative policy approach to sentencing, …