Law Commons^™

Are Law Firm Partners Islands Unto Themselves? An Empirical Study Of Law Firm Peer Review And Culture, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines how attitude and law firm culture affect peer review and principal accountability by using empirical data obtained from a survey of Texas law firms. Part I briefly describes the research design and the general profiles of respondents of the survey. Part II discusses the peer review measures used by the firms surveyed for this article. Part III analyzes attitudes about peer review. Part IV focuses on the obstacles to peer review. Part V considers the connection between firm culture and the implementation of peer review measures. Finally, the conclusion explains how firm managers can reshape attitudes to …

Funding Fairness: Public Investment, Proprietary Rights And Access To Health Care Technology, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

In her accompanying Article, "Public Research and Private Development: Patents and Technology Transfer in Government-Sponsored Research," Professor Rebecca Eisenberg suggests that federal technology transfer policies should be reexamined in light of actual experience with patented technologies. Indeed, the relationship among federal research funding, patent law, and medical innovation has become more complicated in the years since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act. Rising health care spending despite slowing overall economic growth has fostered the development of private sector managed care, has led to cutbacks in government support for both research and clinical services, and has increased the percentage of uninsured …

The Times They Are A Changin' - Or Are They? An Update On Rule 114, Barbara Mcadoo, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

When Rule 114 of the General Rules of Civil Practice arrived on the Minnesota legal scene in July 1994, it took many attorneys by complete surprise. Even in Hennepin County, which has had a nonbinding arbitration program since 1984, some attorneys asked, "ADR? Is that short for Another Darn Requirement'?" Nearly two years later, now that most attorneys know that ADR is the acronym for "Alternative Dispute Resolution," it is time to take stock of Rule 114, to evaluate its influence on the practice of law and its impact on the courts.

This review is timely for another, very important …

The Asil As An Epistemic Community, Charlotte Ku

Faculty Scholarship

Three comments, on the program of this Annual Meeting. We have answered the theme question in various ways, and we have done some things less well, others better. The focus of a political scientist differs from that of an international lawyer, dealing more with process than with outcome. We have taken a relatively simplistic look at outcomes-that is, we have often looked at whether international institutions have done what they said they were going to do; we have not looked nearly so much at whether they fixed the problems they were trying to fix. The second point that emerges very …

Lotus V. Borland: Copyright And Computer Programs, Glynn S. Lunney Jr

Faculty Scholarship

Since Congress's express acknowledgment of copyright protection for computer programs in 1980, courts have faced the sometimes difficult task of deciding whether the admitted copying of some element from a copyright program constitutes infringement. In Lotus v. Borland, for example, the question was whether the admitted copying by Borland of the Lotus 1-2-3 menu structure constituted infringement. The district court held that it did; the First Circuit held that it did not; and the Supreme Court was unable to decide. This Essay suggests that the First Circuit's resolution is the correct one, but that the reasons the First Circuit …

Reexamining Copyright's Incentives--Access Paradigm, Glynn S. Lunney Jr

Faculty Scholarship

To suggest a more appropriate approach for determining the proper scope of copyright, this Article critically reexamines the economic justification for copyright and identifies allocative efficiency, rather than the incentives-access balance, as the appropriate guide. From an allocative-efficiency perspective, copyright provides the proper degree of protection when it ensures that individuals will produce works of authorship if, and only if, such production would represent the most highly valued use of their resources. In a world of finite resources, more works of authorship must mean less of something else. Unless the production of an additional work of authorship is inherently more …

Isn't It A Crime: Feminist Perspectives On Spousal Immunity And Spousal Violence, Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

Much has been written about the reluctance of police to arrest in domestic violence cases and the reluctance of the state to prosecute such cases. Part of that reluctance may be caused by prevalent societal attitudes that diminish the importance of spousal violence. In a number of jurisdictions, the reluctance to pursue criminal sanctions against married abusers is caused by the difficulty of procuring the battered spouses' testimony.5 In those jurisdictions, the prosecutor cannot compel a reluctant spouse's testimony because of the spousal privilege not to testify against a defendant spouse. Even in jurisdictions that have some exceptions to the …

Fast Dancing, James Hambleton

Faculty Scholarship

A breezy summer night, a great dance band, cliffs over the Mississippi River, and too much champagne ... those are the memories I have of my first Annual Meeting. The night of the closing banquet had a profound effect on my career in law librarianship, but let me start nearer the beginning.

Bad Data, Bad Economics, And Bad Policy: Time To Fire Wrongful Discharge Law, Andrew P. Morriss

Faculty Scholarship

One of the many effects of the combination of technological change, globalization of labor, capital, and product markets, and changes in labor force composition in recent years is the disruption of traditional employment patterns based on Fordist production techniques. Of all the branches of government, the judiciary is the least capable of responding to these massive economic and social changes in a productive manner. It has the least capacity for collecting and analyzing data, the least ability to control its own agenda, and the least democratic accountability.

There are a number of possible solutions to the problem of economic insecurity …