Law Commons^™

Agora: Future Implications Of The Iraq Conflict Editors' Introduction, Lori Fisler Damrosh, Bernard H. Oxman

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No abstract provided.

Risk Management And Organizational Governance: The Case Of Enron, Robert Eli Rosen

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No abstract provided.

On The Theory Class's Theories Of Asbestos Litigation: The Disconnect Between Scholarship And Reality, Lester Brickman

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No abstract provided.

Distrust Quotations In Latin, Peter Goodrich

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Hegel’S Theory Of Measure, David G. Carlson

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The final segment in Hegel's analysis of "being" is measure - the unity of quality and quantity. At stake in these chapters is the difference between quantitative and qualitative change. A being or thing is indifferent to quantitative change, which comes from the outside. For instance, a legislature can increase the stringency of zoning regulations, and yet the legislation is still constitutional "zoning." But there comes a point at which quantitative change effects a qualitative change - zoning becomes an uncompensated "taking" of property. This paper analyzes how Hegel, in the "Science of Logic," derives measure from the categories of …

Minimizing The Jury Over-Valuation Concern (Visions Of Rationality In Evidence Law Symposium), Richard D. Friedman

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A great deal of the rhetoric of evidence discourse concerns the supposed cognitive inadequacies of the jury. In various contexts we are told that although an item of evidence is probative, it must be excluded because the jury will give it too much weight. I believe this approach has played far too great a role in evidentiary law, and that it is an interesting project to see whether we can construct a satisfactory body of law without relying at all on the cognitive inadequacy argument. I think that, at least to a large extent, we can. In some settings, where …

Preparing For Climatic Change: The Water, Salmon, And Forests Of The Pacific Northwest, Philip W. Mote, Edward A. Parson, Alan F. Hamlet, William S. Keeton, Dennis Lettenmaier, Nathan Mantua, Edward L. Miles, David W. Peterson, David L. Peterson, Richard Slaughter, Amy K. Snover

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The impacts of year-to-year and decade-to-decade climatic variations on some of the Pacific Northwest’s key natural resources can be quantified to estimate sensitivity to regional climatic changes expected as part of anthropogenic global climatic change. Warmer, drier years, often associated with El Niño events and/or the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, tend to be associated with below-average snowpack, streamflow, and flood risk, below-average salmon survival, below-average forest growth, and above-average risk of forest fire. During the 20th century, the region experienced a warming of 0.8 ◦C. Using output from eight climate models, we project a further warming of …

Legal Transitions, Rational Expectations, And Legal Progress, Kyle D. Logue

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In the literature on legal transitions, the term "transition policy" is generally understood to mean a rule or norm that influences policymakers' decisions concerning the extent to which legal change should be accompanied by transition relief, whether in the form of grandfathering or phase-ins or direct compensation. Legal change within this literature is defined broadly, and somewhat counter-intuitively, to include any resolution of the uncertainty regarding what the law will be in the future or how the law will be applied to future circumstances. Thus, a legal change would obviously include an unexpected repeal of a tax provision, such as …

Thayerian Deference To Congress And Supreme Court Supermajority Rules: Lessons From The Past (Symposium: Congressional Power In The Shadow Of The Rehnquist Court: Strategies For The Future), Evan H. Caminker

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Over the past eight years, the Supreme Court has been unusually aggressive in its exercise ofjudicial review over federal statutes challenged on federalism grounds. Eleven times the Court has invalidated provisions in federal statutes after determining that Congress exceeded the scope of its limited regulatory authority. In ten of the eleven cases, the vote was 5-4 with the identical five-Justice conservative majority (Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas) controlling the decision.

Weighing Poison Fruit, Yale Kamisar

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In the simplest cases involving the exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, the items the defense is trying to suppress, such as drugs found during the search of a suspect's pocket, are direct, or primary, in their relationship to the police action. Thus, if the police have acted unlawfully, the evidence must be excluded from trial.

Many times, however, evidence is derivative, or secondary, in character. For example, an illegal search may turn up a key to an airport locker where the proceeds of a bank robbery are being kept. Or a coerced confession may reveal the place where a suspect …

Why We Need The Independent Sector: The Behavior, Law, And Ethics Of Not-For-Profit Hospitals, Jill R. Horwitz

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Among the major forms of corporate ownership, the not-for-profit ownership form is distinct in its behavior, legal constraints, and moral obligations. A new empirical analysis of the American hospital industry, using eleven years of data for all urban general hospitals in the country, shows that corporate form accounts for large differences in the provision of specific medical services. Not-for-profit hospitals systematically provide both private and public goods that are in the public interest, and that other forms fail to provide. Two hypotheses are proposed to account for the findings, one legal and one moral. While no causal claims are made, …

Self-Regulation And Securities Markets, Adam C. Pritchard

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Enron, Arthur Andersen, Tyco, ImClone, WorldCom, Adelphia - as American investors reel from accounting scandals and self-dealing by corporate insiders, the question of trust in the securities markets has taken on a new urgency. Securities markets cannot operate without trust. Markets known for fraud, insider trading, and manipulation risk a downward spiral as investors depart in search of safer investments. Today, many investors are rethinking the wisdom of entrusting their financial futures to the stock market. Absent trust in the integrity of the securities markets, individuals will hoard their money under the proverbial mattress.

Do World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Reports Affect The Obligations Of Non-Parties? -- Response To Mcnelis, Donald H. Regan

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In the June 2003 issue of this Journal, Natalie McNelis argued that when a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute is settled by a Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) report, even Members who are not parties to the dispute have an obligation to conform their behaviour to legal principles laid down in the report. 1 Although I am generally sympathetic to McNeis's conclusion-and although I think she does a great service by directing our attention to the question of how Members, as opposed to later tribunals, should respond to DSB reports-I think her argument cannot stand as she presents it. After explaining …

How To Be A Moorean, Donald H. Regan

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G. E. Moore’s position in the moral philosophy canon is paradoxical. On the one hand, he is widely regarded as the most influential moral philosopher of the twentieth century. On the other hand, his most characteristic doctrines are now more often ridiculed than defended or even discussed seriously. I shall discuss briefly a number of Moorean topics—the nonnaturalness of “good,” the open question argument, the relation of the right and the good, whether fundamental value is intrinsic, and the role of beauty—hoping to explain how a philosophically informed person could actually be a Moorean even today.1

What They Say At The End: Capital Victims' Families And The Press, Samuel R. Gross, Daniel J. Matheson

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Perhaps the most common complaint by American crime victims and their families is that they are ignored-by the police, by the prosecutors, by the courts and by the press. However true that may be for capital cases in general, there is at least one consistent exception: the great majority of newspaper accounts of executions include at least some description of the reactions of the victims' families and of any surviving victims. It seems to have become an item on the checklist, part of the "who, what, where, when, why, and how" of execution stories. When no family members are available, …

The Genie And The Bottle: Collateral Sources Under The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, Kenneth S. Abraham, Kyle D. Logue

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The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 (the Fund) was part of legislation enacted just eleven days after the terrorist attacks of September 11th in the wake of extraordinary national loss. It is possible, therefore, that the Fund will always be considered an urgent and unique response to the unprecedented events of September 11th. On that view, the character of the Fund will have little longterm policy significance. It is equally possible, however, that the enactment of the Fund will prove to be a seminal moment in the history of tort and compensation law. The Fund adopts a new …

David E. Feller: The Happy Warrior, Theodore J. St. Antoine

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Dave Feller and I first became acquainted when we were both union lawyers in Washington, D.C. Dave was the ultimate happy warrior. He went joyous into combat, and years later he could recount, joyously, objectively, and without rancor toward old foes, the exact details of the many triumphs and the few defeats. A favorite story came from his Supreme Court clerkship. Dave was already seven years out of Harvard Law School, with experience in university teaching, Army intelligence, and the Justice Department, and he didn't hesitate to tell Chief Justice Vinson he should vote for certiorari in a case close …

A Resident Of Evidenceland Defends His Turf, Richard D. Friedman

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A few years ago, I wrote an essay welcoming Judge Richard Posner down from a star to Evidenceland, the sometimes obscure province occupied by evidence scholars.1 Although I criticized one of the points of his article on the economics of evidence law, I expressed the hope that he would remain in Evidenceland for an extended stay.2 I should have known that if he did so he would tell us long-term inhabitants what we have been doing wrong.

Nietzsche And Aretaic Legal Theory, Kyron Huigens

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No abstract provided.

Hate Speech In Constitutional Jurisprudence: A Comparative Analysis, Michel Rosenfeld

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The United States protects much hate speech that is banned in other Western constitutional democracies and under international human rights covenants and conventions. In the United States, only hate speech that leads to "incitement to violence" can be constitutionally restricted, while under the alternative approach found elsewhere, bans properly extend to hate speech leading to "incitement to hatred." The article undertakes a comparative analysis in light of changes brought by new technologies, such as the internet, which allow for worldwide spread of protected hate speech originating in the United States. After evaluating the respective doctrines, arguments and values involved, the …

A Progressive Consumption Tax For Individuals: An Alternative Hybrid Approach, Mitchell L. Engler

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Dissatisfaction with the existing income tax has increased in recent years. Practical problems with the income tax base create numerous loopholes, increasingly exploited by well-advised taxpayers. For the most part, these gaps are attributable to the income tax's "realization" requirement, under which taxpayers report gains and losses as "realized" through market transactions. A consumption tax appeals as a response to these significant current loopholes since "realization" loses its significance under a consumption-based tax. The consumption tax's appeal has been further enhanced by the recent and growing recognition of the narrow difference between income and consumption taxes, assuming away practical problems. …

Partnerships And Facilitation: Mediators Develop New Skills For Complex Cases, Lela P. Love

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Retrenchment On Entrenchment, Stewart E. Sterk

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Democracy Realized One Classroom At A Time, Peter Goodrich

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The Market For Contingent Fee-Financed Tort Litigation: Is It Price Competitive?, Lester Brickman

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Tort liability has undergone an enormous expansion in the past 40 years. So too has the effective hourly rate obtained by plaintiff lawyers which has increased well over 1000% in that time frame (adjusted for inflation). That the enormous increases in effective hourly rates parallel the enormous expansion in tort liability raises a number of issues. In this article, I examine one of them: whether the market for contingent fee-financing of tort litigation is price competitive. To do so, I examine certain indicia of a noncompetitive market including the fact of uniform pricing, the absence of economic justification for uniform …

The Traumatic Dimension In Law, David G. Carlson

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This paper applies Jacques Lacan's theory of retrospective cause to the jurisprudence of H.L.A. Hart and his followers. The thesis is that "effect" (judicial decision) precedes "cause" (law). The proper tense for legal discourse is, therefore, future anterior. The following points follow from this: (1) Positivism asserts that law is not necessarily connected to morality, but this is a priori wrong. Law wishes to be separate from morality, but it necessarily fails. (2) The theory vindicates Dworkin's notorious "right answers" theory, but makes the additional point that there is only one answer: you are guilty; you failed to conform to …

Law Without Authority: Sources Of The Welfare State In Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Arthur J. Jacobson

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In his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), Spinoza mounts an attack on authority in all its forms, including the authority of law and the state. Because authority in all its forms is a product of the imagination, obligation can never be justified. The subjects of Spinoza's commonwealth have no duties, only rights. Spinoza replaces the authority of the commonwealth with the welfare of subjects as the sign and the source of the commonwealth's flourishing. Spinoza was thus the first to propose that the only way for commonwealths to maintain the illusion of authority is by attending to the welfare of their citizens.

A Theory Of Presumptions, Charles M. Yablon

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This paper deals with presumptions that shift the burden of persuasion on some issue in a civil case and attempts to explain why lawyers and judges treat these rules as having great importance. If the persuasion burden applied is 'more probable than not', such rules should affect outcomes only in those rare cases when the evidence is in equipoise. Yet in practice, these rules form an important and vigorously contested part of doctrinal law. The paper attempts to account for the prominence of these rules by considering them from the perspective of behavioral theory, particularly studies of anchoring and adjustment …

Introduction To The Conference On Fundamentalisms, Equalities, And The Challenge To Tolerance In A Post-9/11 Environment, Richard H. Weisberg

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No abstract provided.

Rulemaking, Michael Herz

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No abstract provided.