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Class Of 2003 Incoming Il Law Students, St. Mary's University School Of Law, St. Mary's University School Of Law

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Photographs of incoming law students for the St. Mary’s University School of Law, class of 2003

Having It All: Pleading Guilty Without Forfeiting The Right To Appeal, Gerald S. Reamey

Faculty Articles

Pleading guilty and moving for an appeal of a pretrial suppression ruling has not been viewed as an efficient allocation of judicial resources. However, it is terribly inefficient to force the State to trial solely to preserve appeal rights on a pretrial objection. Attempts by courts and the legislature to balance these competing interests have produced a confusing and dangerous mix of contradictory rules.

Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure (TRAP) 25.2 is the latest iteration of such rules. Appeals may be taken following a negotiated guilty plea or nolo contendere plea, if “the substance of the appeal was raised by …

Interstate Establishment, Enforcement, And Modification Of Child Support Orders, Patricia W. Moore

Faculty Articles

Intended to improve the collection of child support across state lines, the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act has now been in effect in all fifty states for approximately three years. This Article examines the history and operation of this statute and its companion federal statute, the Full Faith and Credit For Child Support Orders Act. Following UIFSA's structure, the Article details the provisions governing the establishment, enforcement, and modification of child support orders in the interstate context and explains which federally-promulgated forms to use in each situation. Analyzing the abundant case law already decided under these statutes, the article concludes …

A Call For Comment: Restyling And Amending The Federal Rules Of Criminal Procedure, David A. Schlueter

Faculty Articles

In August 2000, the Judicial Conference’s Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure published—for public comment—proposed amendments to the entire set of Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The proposals mark the culmination of a two-year project to “restyle” the rules—to modernize and reorganize and to make them internally consistent in format and style. Not since the rules were first promulgated in 1946 has there been such a significant change in the structure, format, and substance. This article first addresses the rule-making process for the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and then examines the restyling process. Finally, it notes several of …

Opening The Door To Business Methods: State Street Bank & Trust Co. V. Signature Financial Group, Inc. (Note), Colin P. Marks

Faculty Articles

Business method patents require further litigation to answer many lingering questions. The decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc. eliminated the "business method" exception. The business method exception used a skeptical approach asking "why should a patent be granted." The skepticism inherent in this approach may explain why the doctrine was recognized for so many years.

Since the time of Hotel Security Checking Co. v. Lorraine Co., advances in the field of science and the advent of computers have forced courts to constantly …

Preslar V. Commissioner: Debt-Discharge Income And Its Rationale, Chad J. Pomeroy

Faculty Articles

In Preslar v. Commissioner, the Tenth Circuit examined the “disputed debt” exception and concluded that the result was at odds with similar holdings from the Third Circuit. The Third and Tenth Circuits interpret the underlying logic of debt discharge income differently. The Third Circuit invokes the disputed-debt exception when the original debt is either unenforceable or unliquidated, while the Tenth Circuit invokes the exception only when the original amount is unliquidated.

The Tenth Circuit stated that the exception “rests on the premise that if a taxpayer disputes the original amount of a debt . . ., a subsequent settlement of …

Bitter Medicine: A Critical Look At The Mental Health Care Provider’S Duty To Warn In Texas, Charles E. Cantú, Margaret H. Jones Hopson

Faculty Articles

A quarter of a century has passed since Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California first imposed a duty of care upon mental health care professions for third parties. In Tarasoff, the California Supreme Court held that once a therapist determines, or reasonably should have determined, a patient poses a significant danger of violence to others, the therapist bears a duty to exercise reasonable care to protect the foreseeable victim from that danger.

Tarasoff has since been widely accepted by both legislatures and courts as the basis for imposing the duty of reasonable care upon mental health care professionals …

The Virtues And Limits Of Codes In Legal Ethics, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

In the absence of codified standards of ethics, the ethical quality of law practice would degenerate into inconsistency and unpredictability. The presence of an ethics code can unduly burden and limit the practice of law. However, ethics codes should not be thought of as tools to ensure the law is practiced humanely. Instead, they should be viewed as attempts to ameliorate the impediments to a humane practice and to call lawyers to that goal.

Tom Schaffer, a scholar and professor of Ethics at Notre Dame, lamented the fact that the codification of standards of attorney conduct could induce lawyers to …

Out-Lawing God The Daughter, Emily A. Hartigan

Faculty Articles

The traditionally forbidding visage of law mimics the constructed face of the “God of our Fathers.” The punitive ‘Father God’ and the harsh letter of the law are connected in both their errors and their promises for transformation. Both the ‘Father’ and ‘His Law’ primarily impose their wills through “authority” and “force.”

Jewish feminist theologian Judith Plaskow questions whether the law is a female form. Plaskow contrasts the law’s constrictions and abstraction with traditional femeie characteristics of openness and fluidity. Plaskow hopes to redeem her tradition through a God of relationship and love, affirming both law and a new feminine …

Insurance Contracts And Judicial Decisions Over Whether Insurers Must Defend Insureds That Violate Constitutional And Civil Rights: An Historical And Empirical Review Of Federal And State Court Declaratory Judgments 1900-2000, Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

Empirical findings suggest that extralegal factors, such as geographic location, ethnicity, gender, disability, perceived sexual orientation, and age of third-party victims, influence judicial decisions as to whether liability carriers must defend or reimburse the costs of defending various lawsuits. After the introduction, Part II of this article presents a brief discussion of state and federal declaratory judgment statutes and of the public policy behind liability and indemnification insurance contracts. Part III examines the origin and scope of insurers’ duty to defend, duty to pay legal expenses, and duty to reimburse litigation costs when third-party victims sue policyholders. Part IV argues …

Arrests In Texas’S “Suspicious Places”: A Rule In Search Of Reason, Gerald S. Reamey

Faculty Articles

When article 14.03(a)(1) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure first appeared in Texas law, landmark decisions like Terry v. Ohio and Miranda v. Arizona were more than a century in the future. Nevertheless, a current exception to Texas's arrest warrant requirement can be traced directly to a virtually identical statute from those pre-Civil War days.

It is a small wonder that today's courts find this statute confusing; and confusion, whether advertent or inadvertent, invites result-oriented, illogical, or unpersuasive judicial decisions. Courts' attempts to make sense of article 14.03(a)(1) arguably have failed in each of these ways over the statute's …

Secured Transactions History: The Northern Struggle To Defeat The Judgment Lien In The Pre-Chattel Mortgage Act Era, George Lee Flint Jr

Faculty Articles

Nonpossessory secured transactions evolved as a competitor to collusive judgments as a means to protect creditors from the loss of their investments in colonial America. A collusive judgment involved the debtor recognizing his debt before the court, while the creditor held equitable title to the debtor’s personalty as collateral while the debtor retained possession. The 1677 Statute of Frauds destroyed the priority of the collusive judgment presenting opportunities for other parties to seek the debtor’s collateral. The chattel mortgage, predecessor of the secured transaction, developed from the standard shipping practices during colonial times. The shipping industries extended lines of credit …

Markets, Myths, And A Man On The Moon: Aiding And Abetting America’S Flight From Health Insurance, Andre Hampton

Faculty Articles

The United States health care system is a tragic product of blind distrust of government and unquestioning faith in markets—the belief that the market will always do a more efficient job of allocating resources better than the government. However, health care is a peculiar commodity that differs from other goods and services that are distributed in the market. There is a real question about whether it is appropriate to provide health coverage pursuant to an insurance model, let alone provide it through an insurance model in the market. While the pooling of risks guarantees a greater number of people will …