Law Commons^™

The European Magnet And The U.S. Centrifuge: Ten Selected Private International Law Developments Of 2008, Ronald A. Brand

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This article considers ten developments in private international law that occurred in 2008. In doing so, it focuses on the way in which these developments demonstrate a parallel convergence of power for private international in the institutions of the European Community and dispersal of power for private international law in the United States. This process carries with it important implications for the future roles of both the European Union and the United States in the multilateral development of rules of private international law, with the EU moving toward an enhanced leadership role and the United States restricting its own ability …

10 Tips For Getting Jurors To Talk, Maureen A. Howard

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“Jury selection” is a misnomer because lawyers don’t actually get to “select” ideal jurors; they get a limited opportunity to “deselect” the worst prospective jurors. The goal of voir dire is to identify these jurors by uncovering their attitudes, beliefs, opinions, preconceptions, biases, and prejudices. To accomplish this, a lawyer has a difficult task: she must foster an honest, intimate conversation among strangers in a very public, formal environment.

Even honest jurors may give misleading answers during voir dire due to nervousness, inattention, faulty memory, or misunderstanding. The formal courtroom atmosphere can have a chilling effect at odds with the …

Secondary Liability And The Fragmentation Of Digital Copyright Law, Jacqueline D. Lipton

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The digital age brought many challenges for copyright law. While offering enticing new formats for the production and dissemination of copyright content, it also raised the specter of large scale digital piracy. Since the end of the 20th century, content industries have reeled to keep up with technological developments that offer significant promise as well as threats of large scale piracy. There has always been some tension between promoting innovation in content creation and promoting innovation in technologies that enable the enjoyment of copyright works, such as photocopiers, audio tape recorders, video tape recorders, and peer-to-peer file sharing systems. The …

How Should We Study District Judge Decision-Making?, Pauline T. Kim, Margo Schlanger, Christina L. Boyd, Andrew D. Martin

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Understanding judicial decision-making requires attention to the specific institutional settings in which judges operate. The choices available to judges are determined not only by the law and facts of the case but also by procedural context. The incentives and constraints shaping judges’ decision-making will vary depending on, for example, whether they have a life-appointment or are elected; whether they hear cases alone or with colleagues; and whether and under what circumstances their decisions might be altered, overturned, or undone by the actions of others. The basic insight that the institutional context matters has led to increasingly sophisticated studies of how …

Another Voice For The 'Dialogue': Federal Courts As A Litigation Course, Arthur D. Hellman

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The traditional course in "Federal Courts" - built on the model established by the great Hart and Wechsler casebook - focuses on issues of federalism, separation of powers, and institutional competence. That focus provides a powerful intellectual model for organizing the materials that make up the field of study, and it is hard to imagine anyone teaching a Federal Courts course today without drawing heavily on that model. But the traditional model is deficient in one important respect. Most of the students who take a Federal Courts course do so because they think it will help them to practice law …

The Screening Effect Of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi, Karen K. Nelson

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Prior research shows that the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) increased the significance of merit-related factors in determining the incidence and outcomes of securities fraud class actions (Johnson et al. 2007). We examine two possible explanations for this finding: the PSLRA may have reduced the incidence of nonmeritorious litigation, or it may have changed the definition of merit, effectively precluding claims that would have survived and produced a settlement pre-PSLRA. We find no evidence that pre-PSLRA claims that settled for nuisance value would be less likely to be filed under the PSLRA regime. There is evidence, however, that pre-PSLRA …

'Race Salience' In Juror Decision-Making: Misconceptions, Clarifications, And Unanswered Questions, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

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In two frequently cited articles, Sommers and Ellsworth (2000, 2001) concluded that the influence of a defendant’s race on White mock jurors is more pronounced in interracial trials in which race remains a silent background issue than in trials involving racially charged incidents. Referring to this variable more generally as "race salience," we predicted that any aspect of a trial that leads White mock jurors to be concerned about racial bias should render the race of a defendant less influential. Though subsequent researchers have further explored this idea of "race salience," they have manipulated it in the same way as …

She...Refuses To Deliver Up Herself As The Slave Of Your Petitioner': Émigrés, Enslavement, And The 1808 Louisiana Digest Of The Civil Laws (Symposium On The Bicentennial Of The Digest Of 1808--Collected Papers), Rebecca J. Scott

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Philosophically and juridically, the construct of a slave-a "person with a price"--contains multiple ambiguities. Placing the category of slave among the distinctions of persons "established by law," the 1808 Digest of the Civil Laws Now in Force in the Termtoiy of Orleans recognized that "slave" is not a natural category, inhering in human beings. It is an agreement among other human beings to treat one of their fellows as property. But the Digest did not specify how such a property right came into existence in a given instance. The definition of a slave was simply ostensive, pointing toward rather than …