Law Commons^™

Questioning Broadcast Regulation,, Jonathan Weinberg

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

What Is Bayesianism? A Guide For The Perplexed, David H. Kaye

Journal Articles

Bayes' Theorem, Bayesian statistics and Bayesian inference have been the subject of sharp dispute in various writings about legal rules of evidence and proof. This article disentangles the many meanings of "Bayesianism." It sketches several competing interpretations of probability, some leading schools of statistical inference, and the elements of Bayesian decision theory. In the process, it notes the aspects of Bayesian theory that have been applied in studies of forensic proof.

Plemel As A Primer On Proving Paternity, David H. Kaye

Journal Articles

Although in the past courts only permitted genetic evidence in paternity suits to prove that an accused man was not the father, with the advent of new genetic tests, which easily can exclude ninety to nitey-five percent of the population in most cases, the supreme courts of Massachusetts, Oregon, and Utah have held that various genetic tests may be used to prove paternity. While a positive move, the admissibility of genetic proof of paternity raises serious questions as to the manner in which this evidence should be presented in court. In the interests of efficiency, some jurisdictions seem to dispense …

Biotechnology And The Law: Social Responsibility V. Freedom Of Scientific Inquiry?, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

At American University in Washington, D.C., on November 20, 1973, Julius Stone presented the tenth annual Mooers Lecture, entitled, "Knowledge, Survival, and the Duties of Science."' The central question and thesis that he propounded could and, indeed, should be raised anew today; they form the very core of the province and function of law, science, and medicine. In our brave new world they point to the leeways of choice and patterns of discourse that exist in grappling with the central issue of social responsibility in scientific inquiry. Perhaps they will assist in forging a consensus opinion for a subsequent course …

The New Reproductive Technologies And The Law: A Roman Catholic Perspective, William J. Wagner

Scholarly Articles

In the next several years, the new reproductive technologies will, for better or worse, affect the civil law governing society's most basic relationships and the rights and duties that accompany them. As lawmakers deliberate over the social choices required by technological developments in human reproduction, the soundness of their decisions will depend on their understanding of the good that is at risk, and on their commitment to the law's role in defending it. In view of the fundamental nature of the societal relationships implicated, who will deny that much currently depends on the quality of lawmakers' decisions?

This article draws …

Performer's Rights And Digital Sampling Under U.S. And Japanese Law, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

A year or two ago, one of my copyright students called to my attention a problem that seemed to him to pose unique difficulties for the copyright statute. The problem arises because of a technology called digital sampling.' Digital sampling is a new threat to performers' rights that has grown out of the combination of digital recording technology with music synthesizer technology. This threat is a very recent one. Indeed, the digital sampling problem is so new that copyright lawyers haven't yet figured out how to think about it.

Baby M: The Contractual Legitimation Of Misogyny, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The emergence of what have become known as the "new reproductive technologies" is a phenomenon which is neither essentially good nor essentially bad. On the one hand, such developments provide opportunities for social choice, family planning and procreative autonomy which, until recently, were impossible. This expansion of horizons is clearly a "good". However, on the darker side, as a community, we must be concerned about the directions which such opportunities might take. There are very real dangers involved, including excessive genetic engineering, raised expectations of perfect "products" with the correlative dissatisfaction with the "imperfect", inequality of access to these new …

Exploring Computer Aided Generation Of Questions For Normalizing Legal Rules, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon

Book Chapters

The process of normalizing a legal rule requires a drafter to indicate where the intent is to be precise and where it is to be imprecise in expressing both the between-sentence and within-sentence logical structure of that rule. Three different versions of a legal rule are constructed in the process of normalizing it: (1) the logical structure of the present version, (2) the detailed marker version, and (3) the logical structure of the normalized version. In order to construct the third version the analyst must formulate and answer specific questions about the terms that are used to express the logical …

Academic Freedom And Academic Values In Sponsored Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

In this Article I examine the traditional American conception of academic freedom and analyze its implications for universities formulating policies on the acceptance of sponsored research. I begin by reviewing the basic policy statements of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) on academic freedom to identify both the academic values implicit in those statements and the assumptions about institutional relationships and individual incentives underlying their prescriptions for advancing those values. I then evaluate the validity of those underlying assumptions in contemporary sponsored research and argue that academic freedom as traditionally conceived might no longer effectively advance academic values in …