Law Commons^™

The Common Comma: Part Ii, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This column shows how a comma, or the lack of one, can significantly change your meaning. It also addresses several comma issues raised by readers, but not fully resolved by my previous column on commas.

Professional Responsibility Law In Florida: The Year In Review, 1995, Timothy P. Chinaris

Law Faculty Scholarship

The past year saw a number of interesting and innovative developments in Florida's professional responsibility jurisprudence. This article reviews significant Florida court decisions, ethics rules, and advisory ethics opinions handed down during the year that are likely to affect Florida lawyers as they attempt to represent their clients zealously while complying with the letter, if not always the spirit, of the Florida Rules of Professional Conduct ("RPC"). Today's lawyer may act in many different capacities, at times assuming the role of advocate, advisor, counselor, fiduciary, intermediary, businessperson, or marketer. The lawyer must adhere to a host of sometimes-overlapping ethical obligations …

The Common Comma: Part I, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The comma is the most frequently used punctuation mark. Unfortunately, the comma is also the most frequently misused mark.

Review Of "Constitutional Torts" By Sheldon H. Nahmod, Michael L. Wells, Thomas A. Eaton, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The most interesting issues in the field of constitutional torts, involving the legal and moral bases for the government's responsibility for injuries it causes, are the most difficult ones for lawyers to explore. The question whether, as a moral or social policy matter, governments and government officials should enjoy immunities or other defenses not available to private individuals is rarely confronted directly in judicial opinions or in scholarship on constitutional torts, yet it lurks behind many of the doctrinal issues that come up in constitutional tort litigation.¹ A slight scratch on the surface of doctrines as disparate as official …

The Period And Its Pals, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Judges are more likely to rule against you if they cannot understand your points and if your arguments do not seem well-reasoned. In contrast, punctuation errors may be irritating, but they will rarely, if ever, cause you to lose the case.

A Wise Passiveness, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

"[W]e can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness" "Expostulation & Reply" by William Wordsworth As a general rule, our writing can be more forceful and concise if we search for the passive voice and eliminate it. However, the avoid-the-passive rule sometimes is taken to extremes. This article addresses five ways to use the passive voice as a positive communication tool.

Litigation In The U.S. And In The Civil Law System: What Can We Learn From Each Other?, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

Discusses the lack of American interest in learning about foreign civil procedure. Considers points where America might benefit from foreign experiences. Suggests significant differences in procedure can be attributed to emphasis on day-in-court thinking over reasoned decision thinking.

1.4, Yolanda Jones

E-lert

No abstract provided.

Problems With The Passive Voice, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Some of us recall when our grammar teachers admon- ished against using the passive voice. However, voice is a stylistic choice, not a rule of grammar. This column explains why the active voice generally is preferred. The next column will discuss when the passive voice may be the better choice (to be published in the May issue of The Colorado Lawyer). Once we understand the passive, we can make more informed decisions about its use.

1.3, Yolanda Jones

E-lert

No abstract provided.

1.2, Yolanda Jones

E-lert

No abstract provided.

Designing And Teaching Advanced Legal Research And Writing Courses, Lucia A. Silecchia

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Babies, Bathwater, And Law Reviews, Leo P. Martinez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Myth Of Meritocracy, And The Silencing Of Minority Voices: The Need For Diversity On America's Law Reviews, Mark A. Godsey

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Article is aimed primarily at guiding current law review members through a process that explores the real purposes of law reviews. Part II discusses the two primary responsibilities of law reviews and the effect that a lack of minority participation has on a review's ability to meet these responsibilities. Specifically, section IIA explores a law review's responsibility to serve as an advanced legal writing course for students. This section questions whether it is legitimate for law reviews to use selection procedure that consistently exclude certain races from this part of the curriculum. Section IIB discusses a law journal's responsibility …

Reflections Of Irac, Chris Iijima, Beth Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

The Authors discuss IRAC as a tool to help students provide structure to legal analysis. Students use this tool not only in writing objective and persuasive memos and briefs, but also in writing answers to examination questions. The Authors give their comments, highlighted by the “Point/Counterpoint,” which present a wide range of views on the efficacy of this tool.

Instilling An Appreciation Of Legal Ethics And Professional Responsibility In First-Year Legal Research And Writing Courses, Beth Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

The Author suggests that the First-year legal research and writing classes provide the logical forum to remind students of the importance of honesty and integrity both to their work and to the profession and to society as a whole. The Author believes that teachers would do well to take advantage of this unique opportunity to provide such lessons early and often and more importantly, as part of the regular legal research and writing curriculum.

The Top Fives: An Internet Pathfinder For Law Librarians, Yolanda Patrice Jones

Journal Publications

Many law librarians are currently beginning to explore the Internet as a source of legal information. One of the most frequently asked questions after one gets an Interet connection is "Where do I go from here?" The following pathfinder is a list of what I consider to be the most important resources which will lead the legal researcher to the widest possible amount of legal information on the Internet. This list is purely subjective, and certainly not complete. I tried to stick to the 'top five' format as much as possible, but every so often I couldn't help myself from …

Writing To Learn Business Law, Robert B. Bennett, William K. Templeton

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Robert Bennett and William Templeton's contribution to Journal of Legal Studies Education, vol. 13, 2.

Proper Words In Proper Places, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Most experts agree that written communication is achieved through a combination of word choice and word placement.' Although, word placement within a sentence has long been recognized as significant, word choice often is considered the predominant vehicle for communication. Some recent commentators, however, contend that reader expectations about word placement play a dominant role in communication. This column addresses how to enhance communication by placing words that you want to emphasize at the end of your sentences.

Reflections Of Irac, Beth Cohen, Chris Iijima

Media Presence

The authors agree that IRAC provides a good starting point to explain the components of legal argument. It requires students to present a good, clear statement of law, a clear and affirmative statement of the issue, an articulation of applicable rules, an analysis and an application of facts to rules of law, and a statement of the ultimate conclusion or prediction. These elements are essential components of good legal writing that should be contained in all good and thorough legal writing from inter-office memoranda and persuasive court briefs to law school exams.

Manuscript Selection Anti-Manifesto, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Joining a conversation begun by James Lindgren, An Author's Manifesto, 61 U. Chi. L. Rev. 527 (1994), Prof. Tobias discusses the process of submission, review, and editorial work on articles published in student-edited law reviews.

An Author's Manifesto (Manifesto) constructively criticizes the amazingly arcane process of law review publication and affords salient suggestions for its improvement. The essay treats two aspects of this process-the selection of manuscripts and the editing of articles which sustain that venerable institution: student-edited law journals. Manifesto regales readers with many terrible tales of travesties which involve article editing but recounts comparatively few sordid stories that …

Requests For Admission In Wisconsin Procedure: Civil Litigation's Double-Edged Sword, Jeffrey S. Kinsler

Law Faculty Scholarship

Requests for admission are the most effective, but least utilized, form of discovery. Interrogatories, document production requests and depositions are routinely used in civil litigation, but as few as ten percent of attorneys use requests for admission. Admissions have the potential to simplify legal and factual issues, expedite civil litigation, and reduce costs for clients, lawyers and taxpayers. Requests for admission have proven to be an effective discovery device in many types of civil actions,and nothing expedites discovery and brings the litigation to a head faster than requests for admission. Despite such enormous potential, Wisconsin trial lawyers have been extremely …

Politically Incorrect, Jeffrey S. Kinsler

Law Faculty Scholarship

Review of Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, James Finn Garner. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company. 1994. 79 pp. $8.95.

Learning By Doing - Preparing Law Students For The Practice Of Law: The Legal Practicum, John O. Sonsteng, Roger S. Haydock

Faculty Scholarship

The MacCrate Report outlined ten skills that are essential for every practicing attorney and should ideally be taught in every law school. The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) concluded that these ten skills cannot be effectively obtained through every law school curriculum because of each school's individual, economic limitations. This article demonstrates how one law school—William Mitchell College of Law, in St. Paul, Minnesota—has , since 1984, incorporated a cost effective Legal Practicum course into its curriculum to help meet the MacCrate Report goal of providing the law student with the opportunity to learn and apply fundamental lawyering skills. …

What's An Opinion For? (Special Issue: Judicial Opinion Writing), James Boyd White

Articles

The question the papers in this Special Issue address is whether it matters how judicial opinions are written, and if so why. My hope here is to suggest a way of elaborating the ques­tion that may provide the reader with a useful point of departure for reading the more extensive papers that follow.

Migration: A Natural Growth Process For Libraries (Part One Of Two), Georgia Briscoe

Publications

No abstract provided.

Why Not A Shared Database For Legal Serial Patterns?, Georgia K. Briscoe

Publications

Just as bibliographic records are shared by law libraries through a national database, serial publication pattern data could also be shared. The author presents a history of the movement toward such a database and offers a specific proposal for its creation.

Law And Linguistics: Is There Common Ground?, William D. Popkin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Migration: A Natural Growth Process For Libraries (Part Two Of Two), Georgia Briscoe

Publications

No abstract provided.

Reflections On From Slaves To Citizens Bondage, Freedom And The Constitution: The New Slavery Scholarship And Its Impact On Law And Legal Historiography, Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

The thesis of Professor Donald Nieman's paper, "From Slaves to Citizens: African-Americans, Rights Consciousness, and Reconstruction," is that the nation experienced a revolution in the United States Constitution and in the consciousness of African Americans. According to Professor Nieman, the Reconstruction Amendments represented "a dramatic departure from antebellum constitutional principles,"' because the Thirteenth Amendment reversed the pre-Civil War constitutional guarantee of slavery and "abolish[ed] slavery by federal authority." The Fourteenth Amendment rejected the Supreme Court's "racially-based definition of citizenship [in Dred Scott v. Sandford4], clearly establishing a color-blind citizenship” and the Fifteenth Amendment "wrote the principle of equality into the …