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Full-Text Articles in Law

Perpetuity Reform, Lawrence W. Waggoner Aug 1983

Perpetuity Reform, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

After years of debate, perpetuity reform is still controversial. To be sure, there is agreement among virtually all of the commentators and experts in the field that the Rule Against Perpetuities is in need of reform. The disagreement, on the surface, centers on the methods of reform to be employed. At least three basic methods have been advanced: (1) specific statutory repair of discrete problem areas; (2) reformation; and (3) wait-and-see. Each method has its sponsors, and each has in one form or another been adopted as part of the law of a few states. These methods are not mutually …


The Recent Erosion Of The Secured Creditor's Rights Through Cases, Rules And Statutory Changes In Bankruptcy Law, James J. White Jan 1983

The Recent Erosion Of The Secured Creditor's Rights Through Cases, Rules And Statutory Changes In Bankruptcy Law, James J. White

Articles

One can view the law of creditors' rights as a series of cyclesin which alternatively the rights of the creditor and then those of the debtor are in ascendancy. Looking back through Americanlegislative history, one sees both the state legislatures and the Congress intervening on behalf of debtors in a variety of ways onmany occasions. An early example of such intervention was the enactment, particularly in the Midwest and West, of generous exemption laws that removed a variety of property beyond the reach of general creditors. A second example is the enactment of usury laws, which continue to be a …


The Emergence Of A General Reformation Doctrine For Wills, Lawrence W. Waggoner, John H. Langbein Jan 1983

The Emergence Of A General Reformation Doctrine For Wills, Lawrence W. Waggoner, John H. Langbein

Articles

In this article, which both summarizes and updates an extensively footnoted article published last year ("Reformation of Wills on the Ground of Mistake: Change of Direction in American Law?" 130 University of Pennsylvania Law Rmiew 521 (1982)), we report on this new case law and discuss the analytic framework that we think it suggests and requires.


The Coming Curtailment Of Compulsory Child Support, David L. Chambers Aug 1982

The Coming Curtailment Of Compulsory Child Support, David L. Chambers

Articles

Absent parents ought to contribute to the support of their minor children and states can appropriately invoke the force of law to compel them to do so. Stated so generally, even absent parents behind in their payments would probably agree. Since so many others agree as well, and since the numbers of single-parent children have mushroomed, systems of governmentally compelled support in this country have grown enormously. By the early part of the next century, if current laws remain in force and current population trends continue, most of America's children on any given day will be entitled to support from …


Reformation Of Wills On The Ground Of Mistake: Change Of Direction In American Law?, John H. Langbein, Lawrence W. Waggoner Jan 1982

Reformation Of Wills On The Ground Of Mistake: Change Of Direction In American Law?, John H. Langbein, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

Although it has been "axiomatic" that our courts do not entertain suits to reform wills on the ground of mistake, appellate courts in California, New Jersey, and New York have decided cases within the last five years that may presage the abandonment of the ancient "no-reformation" rule. The new cases do not purport to make this fundamental doctrinal change, although the California Court of Appeal in Estate of Taff and the New Jersey Supreme Court in Engle v. Siegel did expressly disclaim a related rule, sometimes called the "plain meaning" rule. That rule, which hereafter we will call the "no-extrinsic-evidence …


The Regulation Of Labor Unions, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 1982

The Regulation Of Labor Unions, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

This year completes exactly a half century in the federalization and codification of American labor law. Before that the regulation of both the internal affairs and external relations of labor organizations was left largely to the individual states, usually through the application of common or nonstatutory law by the courts. One major exception was the railroad industry, whose patent importance to interstate commerce made it an acceptable subject for federal legislation like the Railway Labor Act.


Closely Held Stocks—Deferral And Financing Of Estate Tax Costs Through Sections 303 And 6166, Douglas A. Kahn Jan 1982

Closely Held Stocks—Deferral And Financing Of Estate Tax Costs Through Sections 303 And 6166, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

The enactment of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (hereinafter referred to as "the 1981 Act") will reduce both the impact of federal wealth transfer taxes and the number of persons still subject to them. Nevertheless, even after the 1981 Act takes full effect, a category of persons remains for whom wealth transfer taxes will constitute a meaningful burden and whose estates face a liquidity problem in satisfying the estate tax liability. The focus of this article is on two statutory techniques: redemptions of stock pursuant to section 3031 and deferral of estate tax payments under section 6166.2 These …


National Labor Policy: Reflections And Distortions Of Social Justice, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 1980

National Labor Policy: Reflections And Distortions Of Social Justice, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

The impulse behind much of American labor law is profoundly moral. The sufferings and indignities inflicted on working men, women, and even children as the industrial revolution enveloped the western world during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led many thoughtful observers to focus their attention on what was commonly called the "social question." Certain issues have been treated almost as if they posed questions of good and evil, when all they actually presented were problems of finding a proper balance of power between labor and management. This article shall develop these themes in several specific contexts.


Accelerated Depreciation—Tax Expenditure Or Proper Allowance For Measuring Net Income?, Douglas A. Kahn Jan 1979

Accelerated Depreciation—Tax Expenditure Or Proper Allowance For Measuring Net Income?, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

Since the 1950s, it has become fashionable to attack various provisions of the Internal Revenue Code by calling them "subsidies" rather than "proper" means of measuring taxable income. These "subsidies" through Code provisions have come to be referred to as "tax expenditures," a term coined by Professor Stanley Surrey in a speech he made as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy on November 15, 1967. In that speech, Professor Surrey stated that our tax system often deliberately departs "from accepted concepts of net income," so that by granting exemptions, deductions, and credits that are not appropriate to an …


Evaluating Article 2 Of The Uniform Commercial Code: A Preliminary Empirical Expedition, James J. White May 1977

Evaluating Article 2 Of The Uniform Commercial Code: A Preliminary Empirical Expedition, James J. White

Articles

A proponent of commercial law codification, Mr. Eaton was one of the first American lawyers to perceive that mere codification of the law did not necessarily produce certainty and lack of discord in the law of commercial transactions. Indeed, in the same article Eaton reveals that of the 1,091 cases that had arisen under the Negotiable Instruments Law, only 704 cited the Act and in the other 387 "the Negotiable Instruments Law [was] ignored by the courts in the decisions, and (so far as the reports show) by the counsel in these cases...." Unlike Bentham, Carter, and Field, each of …


Juvenile Obscenity Statutes: A Proposal And Analysis, Jerold H. Israel, Rita Ann Burns Jan 1976

Juvenile Obscenity Statutes: A Proposal And Analysis, Jerold H. Israel, Rita Ann Burns

Articles

The article that follows is based largely upon a Study Report on juvenile obscenity statutes prepared for the Michigan Law Revision Commission. The objectives of the Report were (1) to analyze the various issues presented in drafting a juvenile obscenity provision, (2) to survey the treatment of those issues in statutes adopted by various states and statutes proposed by several distinguished commissions, and (3) to propose a comprehensive model statute that offers a choice of alternative provisions on key areas of controversy. Certain limitations placed upon the scope of the Report (and this article) should be noted. First, we were …


Affirmative Action: Hypocritical Euphemism Or Noble Mandate?, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 1976

Affirmative Action: Hypocritical Euphemism Or Noble Mandate?, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was adopted in an atmosphere of monumental naivete. Congress apparently believed that equal employment opportunity could be achieved simply by forbidding employers or unions to "discriminate" on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin," and expressly disavowed any intention to require "preferential treatment." Perhaps animated by the Supreme Court's stirring desegregation decisions of the 1950's, the proponents of civil rights legislation made "color-blindness" the rallying cry of the hour. Today we know better. The dreary statistics, so familiar to anyone who works in this field, tell the story. …


Connell: Antitrust Law At The Expense Of Labor Law, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 1976

Connell: Antitrust Law At The Expense Of Labor Law, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

From the outset, the difficulty in applying the antitrust concept to organized labor has been that the two are intrinsically incompatible. The antitrust laws are designed to promote competition, and unions, avowedly and unabashedly, are designed to limit it. According to classical trade union theory, the objective is the elimination of wage competition among all employees doing the same job in the same industry. Logically extended, the policy against restraint of trade must condemn the very existence of labor organizations, since their minimum aim has always been the suppression of any inclination on the part of working people to offer …


A Definition Of "Liabilities" In Code Sections 357 And 358(D), Douglas A. Kahn, Dale A. Oesterle Jan 1975

A Definition Of "Liabilities" In Code Sections 357 And 358(D), Douglas A. Kahn, Dale A. Oesterle

Articles

Internal Revenue Code section 351(a) provides that no gain or loss shall be recognized if property is transferred to a corporation solely in exchange for its stock or securities and the transferors control the corporation immediately after the exchange. If, in addition to receiving stock or securities in an exchange that would otherwise qualify for section 351 treatment, a transferor receives other property or money -- "boot" -- any realized gain is recognized up to the amount of the money and the fair market value of the other property received. The transferee corporation's assumption of the transferor's liabilities or its …


Racial Preferences In Higher Education: Political Responsibility And The Judicial Role, Terrance Sandalow Jan 1975

Racial Preferences In Higher Education: Political Responsibility And The Judicial Role, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

Controversy continues unabated over the question left unresolved by DeFunis v. Odegaard: whether in its admissions process a state law school may accord preferential treatment to certain racial and ethnic minorities. In the pages of two journals published by the University of Chicago, Professors John Hart Ely and Richard Posner have established diametrically opposed positions in the debate. Their contributions are of special interest because each undertakes to answer the question within the framework of a theory concerning the proper distribution of authority between the judiciary and the other institutions of government. Neither position, in my judgment, adequately confronts the …


Legislative Regulation Of Searches And Seizures: The Michigan Proposals, Jerold H. Israel Dec 1974

Legislative Regulation Of Searches And Seizures: The Michigan Proposals, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

IN March 1971, the Michigan Bar Commissioners appointed a twenty-five-member committee with a directive "to promulgate a recommended revision of the Code of Criminal Procedure codifying existing statutory and case law provisions which, in the judgment of the Committee, should be retained and adding thereto such provisions as the Committee, in its judgment, deems warranted; and to incorporate such recommendations into proposed legislation for submission to the Legislature."' The committee membership included judges, prosecutors, legislators, criminal defense lawyers, law school professors, and representatives of Michigan police and corrections agencies.2 Judge Horace Gilmore served as Chairman, and I served as Reporter.


State Law Of Patent Exploitation, Edward H. Cooper Jan 1972

State Law Of Patent Exploitation, Edward H. Cooper

Articles

The main purpose of the present inquiry is to determine whether second thoughts support or undermine the instinctive supposition that the doctrines surrounding cooperative use of patents should be federal. The original creator of a patented invention is seldom in a position to exploit its commercial potential alone; even if the invention is created by the employee of a vast enterprise, it is almost inevitable that the patent will be assigned to his employer. Patent licensing plays a vitally important role in the development of many inventions. The contract doctrines surrounding such transactions, and various other consensual undertakings relating to …


Alternatives To Civil Commitment Of The Mentally Ill: Practical Guides And Constitutional Imperatives, David L. Chambers Jan 1972

Alternatives To Civil Commitment Of The Mentally Ill: Practical Guides And Constitutional Imperatives, David L. Chambers

Articles

In 1930, Ford sold Fords only in black and states offered treatment for mental illness only in public mental hospitals. Today, new views of mental health care and mental health problems have begotten a galaxy of new treatment settings. Few cities can boast community-based programs sufficient to meet their needs, but almost all cities of any size rely increasingly on outpatient programs. The large public mental hospitals still stand, of course. Indeed, every year more people enter public hospitals than entered the year before. Over 400,000 Americans were admitted as inpatients to state and county mental hospitals last year.1 Partly …


Direct Judicial Review And The Doctrine Of Ripeness In Administrative Law, Joseph Vining Aug 1971

Direct Judicial Review And The Doctrine Of Ripeness In Administrative Law, Joseph Vining

Articles

There has been recent interest in rationalizing and codifying the opportunities for judicial review of federal administrative determinations outside an enforcement context or special proceedings designated by statute. Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner culminated the development of a strong judicial presumption in favor of such review, founded in general considerations and justified by the broad language of the Administrative Procedure Act (AP A or Act). Since the petitioners in Abbott had theoretical rights to later review of the agency position in enforcement proceedings, the Court called the procedure "pre-enforcement" review. But similar opportunities for immediate and direct review of agency positions …


Secondary Boycott: From Antitrust To Labor Relations, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 1971

Secondary Boycott: From Antitrust To Labor Relations, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

The ethos of the labor movement cuts against the American grain at several points. Our national instinct, reflected in many statutes and much judge-made law, is to exalt the rugged individualist over the anonymous group, to favor wide-open competition rather than a controlled market, and to prize the right of each person to remain aloof from the quarrels and concerns of his neighbors. It is not for nothing that our most universal folk hero is the frontiersman, who proudly stands alone and self-sufficient. Yet the ordinary workingman does not have the capacity to assume that heroic stance. For him strength …


A Guide To The Estate And Gift Tax Amendments Of 1970, Douglas A. Kahn Jan 1971

A Guide To The Estate And Gift Tax Amendments Of 1970, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

The Excise, Estate, and Gift Tax Adjustment Act of 1970 [Pub. L. No. 91-614 (Dec. 31, 1970) made a number of amendments to the federal estate and gift tax laws. The estate tax laws were amended to shorten the period of time for filing estate tax returns and for the alternate valuation date and for several related items. In addition, for income tax purposes, the holding period of property that was included in a decedent's gross estate and that was acquired from the decedent was altered; and fiduciaries were granted additional means of obtaining a discharge of their personal liability …


Transactions Subject To The Federal Gift Tax, Douglas A. Kahn Jan 1970

Transactions Subject To The Federal Gift Tax, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

The federal gift tax was first enacted in 1924, approximately eight years after the adoption of the estate tax. As originally enacted, the tax was largely ineffective because it was computed on an annual basis without regard to gifts made in prior years.


Better Organization Of Legal Knowledge, Layman E. Allen, Tomoyuki Ohta Jan 1969

Better Organization Of Legal Knowledge, Layman E. Allen, Tomoyuki Ohta

Articles

The increasing need of legislatures to draft complicated statutes, e.g., the Internal Revenue Code, requires the development of new techniques for defining and communicating complicated policies both accurately and understandably. At present, these complicated statutes are expressed in long, convoluted sentences with frequent uses of exceptions and limitations. Current drafting technique, with its inadequacies, often hinders a comprehensive understanding of the policy being communicated and often fails to communicate the policy accurately. Moreover, with the voluminous increase of legal literature in recent times, legal researchers experience increasing difficulty in attempting to retrieve relevant judicial and administrative interpretations. The authors propose …


Judicial Valour And The Warren Court's Labor Decisions, Theodore J. St. Antoine Dec 1968

Judicial Valour And The Warren Court's Labor Decisions, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Lawyers who practice regularly before the Supreme Court are likely to prepare their arguments with a specific Justice in mind. The choice does not necessarily turn on who might be the swing vote in a given case. Often it is just a matter of which Justice can be relied upon, because of his particular interests and his insight, to search out the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing positions, and to see that all the hard questions are asked. In a labor case during the early years of the Warren Court, that would usually have meant Justice Frankfurter. Later on, …


A Touchstone For Labor Board Remedies, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 1968

A Touchstone For Labor Board Remedies, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Fashion dictates what lawyers argue about, and law professors write about, more than we may care to admit. In labor law, especially, the styles change with a rapidity that would impress a Paris couturier. During the past decade the spotlight has moved from union democracy to labor contract enforcement to the union organizing campaign. Today the "in" topic is National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) remedies. Yet if any subject deserves immunity from the vagaries of fashion, this is the one; for all rights acquire substance only insofar as they are backed by effective remedies. Coke said it long ago: "[W]ant …


The Process Of Penal Law Reform—A Look At The Proposed Michigan Revised Criminal Code, Jerold H. Israel Jan 1968

The Process Of Penal Law Reform—A Look At The Proposed Michigan Revised Criminal Code, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

T HE subject of this symposium, the proposed Michigan Revised Criminal Code (Proposed Code),' is the product of a three-year study by a Joint Committee of the State Bar. The study was undertaken pursuant to a 1964 resolution of the State Bar Commissioners calling for a "complete revision of the criminal code to redefine crimes and penalties."'2 The Joint Committee is an extraordinarily large group, being composed of members of both the standing Criminal Jurisprudence Committee and the Special Code Revision Committee.' Its membership reflects great diversity in viewpoint and professional interests, including not only prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges, …


Some Petty Complaints About Article Three, James J. White Jan 1967

Some Petty Complaints About Article Three, James J. White

Articles

IN many ways Article Three of the Uniform Commercial Code (Code) is like a huge machine assembled by a mad inventor and comprised of assorted sprockets, gears, levers, pulleys, and belts. Few thoroughly understand all of the jobs which this machine is to perform; and a search through the reported cases suggests that the machine is either performing so efficiently that it commits no mistakes worth litigating or it is not performing at all. In their study of the intricacies of Article Three, law students resemble persons climbing about on the machine-pulling its levers, testing its belts and pulleys, and …


Soviet Tort Law: The New Principles Annotated, Whitmore Gray Jan 1964

Soviet Tort Law: The New Principles Annotated, Whitmore Gray

Articles

In 1961, the federal legislature, the USSR Supreme Soviet, finally adopted a skeleton code of fundamental principles of civil law.10 This recodification, which incorporates 40 years of case law and doctrinal development as well as some major innovations, will be the basis for individual civil codes to be adopted in each of the 15 union republics. While there may be some slight modifications, and certainly some variety in the degree of additional detail included in the individual codes by each republic,11 these Principles present already a fairly comprehensive picture of the shape of the future law. They are about as …


Code Making In Early Oregon, Arthur S. Beardsley Jan 1943

Code Making In Early Oregon, Arthur S. Beardsley

Articles

This article was originally printed in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly, vol. 27 (Jan. 1936), 3-33. For the purpose of reprinting, the author has revised and expanded it, and in doing so has had the benefit of certain valuable suggestions from Mr. J. Nielson Barry of Portland, Oregon.


Change In The Meaning Of Consortium, Evans Holbrook Jan 1923

Change In The Meaning Of Consortium, Evans Holbrook

Articles

LAWYERS have long boasted of the flexibility of the common law, of its ability to adapt itself to the needs of changing conditions of society, of its responsiveness to sociological progress. And while eager reformers have often-and with much reason complained that the law is laggard in its response to the needs of the people, yet it is clear that sooner or later the courts generally bring themselves into accord with "what is sanctioned by usage, or held by the prevailing morality or strong and preponderant public 'opinion to be greatly and immediately necessary to the public welfare." This responsiveness …