Law Commons^™

Standards Of Medical Care Based On Consensus Rather Than Evidence: The Case Of Routine Bedrail Use For The Elderly, Howard S. Rubenstein, Frances H. Miller, Sholem Postel, Hilda B. Evans

Faculty Scholarship

“An 88-year-old male patient was found on his hands and knees on the floor beside his bed. The bedrails were up.”—From an indent report filed by a nurse at the Stillman Infirmary, University Health Services, Harvard University, in May 1980.

Finding elderly patients lying on the floor beside their beds despite the presence of elevated bedrails seems paradoxical: how can a patient fall out of bed when the bedrails are up? Surprisingly, this paradox constitutes one of the leading incidents plaguing hospitals in the United States today. It exemplifies a much larger problem created, we believe, by the uncritical adoption …

The Power Struggle Between Shareholders And Directors: The Demand Requirement In Derivative Suits, Tamar Frankel, Wayne M. Barsky

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the demand shareholders must make on a corporation's board of directors prior to bringing a derivative suit. ... Presented with the question of whether the court would give effect to a decision of a committee of disinterested directors to terminate a shareholder derivative suit alleging directors' breach of fiduciary duties, the court ruled that even if the special committee was truly disinterested and independent, "[t]he Court should determine, applying its own independent business judgment, whether the [corporation's] motion [to dismiss the derivative action] should be granted." ... A derivative suit is one of the means for conducting …

Interest Elements In Tax Planning, Daniel S. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses how interest has been and is being used in tax planning. The tax planning techniques using interest include charging too little interest or none at all, recalssifying interest as principal and allocating interest among time periods to optimize the tax consequences to the parties. The issues raised by these tax planning techniques go to the heart of the tax system. They suggest inadequacies in the development of the case law and in conventional tax thinking. The unifying principal is the divergence between the possible tax consequences and the clear economic consequences of each of the transactions. The …

An Economic Analysis Of Royalty Terms In Patent Licenses, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

Efficient exploitation of a patent often requires patentees to license users of their inventions. The courts, on the other hand, have proscribed many forms of license agreements and discouraged patent licensing in general, thereby diminishing the efficacy of the patent system as a stimulus to R & D. This negative attitude is attributable to fears that licensing will be used to protect invalid patents and secure illegitimate extensions of monopoly power. Part I of this Note reviews judicial treatment of certain royalty terms in patent licenses, describing the restraints the courts have imposed on the freedom of patentees to license …

Apartheid Baltimore Style: The Residential Segregation Ordinances Of 1910-1913, Garrett Power

Faculty Scholarship

On May 15, 1911, Baltimore Mayor J. Barry Mahool signed into law an ordinance for “preserving the peace, preventing conflict and ill feeling between the white and colored races in Baltimore City.” This ordinance provided for the use of separate blocks by African American and whites and was the first such law in the nation directly aimed at segregating black and white homeowners. This article considers the historical significance of Baltimore’s first housing segregation law.

Modern Unilateral Contracts, Mark Pettit

Faculty Scholarship

Why would anyone write about unilateral contracts today? After all, Karl Llewellyn argued convincingly more than forty years ago' that unilateral contracts are rare and unimportant and should be relegated to the "freak tent. ' 2 Academics, he said, created the "Great Dichotomy" between unilateral and bilateral contracts; lack of support for the unilateral contract idea in the cases required those academics to illustrate the concept with ridiculous hypotheticals about climbing greased flagpoles and crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. The drafters of the Second Restatement of Contracts thus considered it a step forward when they not only minimized the importance of …

Fiduciary Law, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

In the business realm, the fiduciary duties of partners, corporate directors, and officers originated with the formation of partnerships and corporations, but majority shareholders were not subjected to fiduciary duties until this century. ... As in a status relation, one party to a fiduciary relation (the entrustor) is dependent on the other (the fiduciary). ... For example, a trust is defined as a fiduciary relation in which property is transferred to the trustee. ... A trustee is chosen by the trustor, and must be able to manage the trust assets independently of the beneficiary's control. ... It further shows that …

From Risk-Utility To Consumer Expectations: Enhancing The Role Of Judicial Screening In Product Liability Litigation, Aaron Twerski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Elimination Of Automatic Judgment Liens In Missouri, William H. Henning

Faculty Scholarship

The traditional automatic judgment lien on real property following rendition of a money judgment has been statutorily eliminated. Judgment liens are now dependent upon the filing of an abstract of the judgment by the court clerk, but the implementing legislation contains ambiguities that raise issues regarding the scope of such liens.

No Light At The End Of The Pipeline: Confusion Surrounds Legislative Courts, Maryellen Fullerton

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Institutional Litigation In The Post-Chapman World, Susan Herman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mobile Homes?--Public And Private Controls, Robert L. Schwartz

Faculty Scholarship

The mobile home of today is a far different creature than that from which it was bred. Changes in size, appearance, safety, convenience, and desirability as a place to live have caused the modem mobile home to bear little resemblance to its ancestors. Functioning as a permanently emplaced dwelling, the mobile home has come to be recognized as undeserving of the label "mobile." Other than by place of manufacture, mobile homes have become increasingly indistinguishable from conventional single family dwellings, raising the question of whether mobile homes can reasonably be restricted from areas reserved for single family dwellings. Land controls, …

Equal Divisions In The Supreme Court: History, Problems, And Proposals, William L. Reynolds, Gordon G. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Clinical Education In The Seventies: An Appraisal Of The Decade, Robert J. Condlin

Faculty Scholarship

Presentation to the Clinical Section of the Association of American Law Schools.

The Origins Of Freedom Of Speech And Press, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Speech And Law In A Free Society, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Moral Failure Of Clinical Legal Education, Robert J. Condlin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Meaningful Reform Of Plea Bargaining: The Control Of Prosecutorial Discretion, Donald G. Gifford

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Minnesota Commitment Act Of 1982 Summary And Analysis, Eric S. Janus, Richard M. Wolfson

Faculty Scholarship

Minnesota law governing commitments has been substantially

revised and recodified in the Minnesota Commitment Act of 1982.

The prior law is repealed and the new law is substituted for it effective

August 1, 1982.

This article has three purposes. First, the significant changes in

the civil commitment law are identified and their implications explored.

Second, where appropriate, the legal background underlying

the changes is explored in order to place the changes in context.

Third, the article identifies ambiguities and inconsistencies in the

Act, posits resolutions, and suggests areas for legislative attention.

Constitutional Politics: A Rejoinder, Walter E. Dellinger Iii

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reference Theory And The Future Of Legal Reference Service, Richard A. Danner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Clark C. Havighurst

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Current Issues In Tender Offer Regulation: Lessons From The British, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

The recent submission to Congress of several proposed amendments to the Williams Act has again made tender offer regulation a controversial subject. Professor DeMott believes that the debate about regulatory reform can benefit from a comparative study of Britih and American tender offer rcgulation. She finds the British system instructive in three important respects. First, the British system specifically indentifies different kinds of transactions that resemble tender offers and regulates those transactions according to the hazards they create for investors. Unlike the American system, which imposes a single set of highly complex regulations only if a transaction qualifies as a …

In Defense Of Equality: A Reply To Professor Westen, Erwin Chemerinsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Management Of Multiparty Toxic Tort Litigation: Case Law And Trends Affecting Case Management, Francis Mcgovern

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Richard L. Schmalbeck

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Binding Force Of International Arbitral Awards, William W. Park, Jan Paulsson

Faculty Scholarship

A party that submits a controversy to arbitration may later regret having abandoned recourse to the courts. Once the award is rendered, the chosen arbitrator may no longer seem so wise to the losing party, who may refuse to comply with his decision. A legal system must therefore legitimize the arbitrator's authority if the award is to be more than an unenforceable attempt at conciliation.

The Legitimacy Of Constitutional Change: Rethinking The Amendment Process, Walter E. Dellinger Iii

Faculty Scholarship

The conventional view of article V is that it leaves the task of resolving amendment process issues entirely to Congress. In this Article, Professor Dellinger contends that judicial abstentation from involvement in amendment process disputes is dictated neither by the text of article V nor by actual congressional practice nor by the weight of relevent precedent and that it is subversive of the clarity and regularity essential to legitimate constitutional change. Professor Dellinger develops a model of judicial review of amendment process issues as an alternative to the orthodox vision and applies this model to several contemporary amendment process controversies.

Interpreting This Constitution: The Unhelpful Contributions Of Special Theories Of Judicial Review, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

The United States has an aged Constitution.

Private Credentialing Of Health Care Personnel: An Antitrust Perspective, Part 1, Clark C. Havighurst, Nancy M. P. King

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the antitrust and other implications of private credentialing and accrediting programs in the health care industry. Although such programs are usually sponsored by powerful competitor groups, they serve the procompetitive purpose of providing useful information and authoritative advice to independent decision makers. Part One examines the risk that credentialing will sometimes be unfair to competitors and deceive consumers. Its survey of common-law, antitrust, and regulatory interventions to correct such unfairness and deception seeks to determine the degree of oversight to which credentialing and similar activities have been and should be subjected. In recommending that judicial or regulatory …