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Full-Text Articles in Law
In Defense Of The Restatement Of Liability Insurance Law, Tom Baker, Kyle D. Logue
In Defense Of The Restatement Of Liability Insurance Law, Tom Baker, Kyle D. Logue
Articles
The importance of liability law to the American system of justice, and to the US economy in general, are well known. Somewhat less well known, at least among non-lawyers, is the corresponding centrality of liability insurance. For most non-contractual legal claims for damages that are brought against individuals or firms, there is some form of liability insurance coverage. Such coverage, provided by state-regulated insurance companies, ranges from auto and homeowners’ policies (sold to consumers throughout the country) to commercial general liability policies (sold to businesses of all sizes) to professional liability policies of various sorts (including Directors and Officers coverage …
Exchange Loss Damages And The Uniform Foreign-Money Claims Act: The Emperor Hasn't All His Clothes, Ronald A. Brand
Exchange Loss Damages And The Uniform Foreign-Money Claims Act: The Emperor Hasn't All His Clothes, Ronald A. Brand
Articles
In 1989, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws approved a new Uniform Foreign-Money Claims Act. This Act is designed to change and clarify the law regarding judgments on obligations denominated in a foreign currency. It does so by recognizing that old rules preventing judgment in a foreign currency - developed in times of a strong dollar - are inappropriate. Unfortunately, in seeking fairness for plaintiffs when the U.S. dollar is weak, the Act replaces rigid old rules with stiff new rules that fail to address the basic issue of appropriate damages for exchange rate losses. While the …
Government Responsibility For Constitutional Torts, Christina B. Whitman
Government Responsibility For Constitutional Torts, Christina B. Whitman
Articles
This essay is about the language used to decide when governments should be held responsible for constitutional torts.' Debate about what is required of government officials, and what is required of government itself, is scarcely new. What is new, at least to American jurisprudence, is litigation against government units (rather than government officials) for constitutional injuries. 2 The extension of liability to institutional defendants introduces special problems for the language of responsibility. In a suit against an individual official it is easy to describe the wrong as the consequence of individual behavior that is inconsistent with community norms; the language …
Constitutional Torts, Christina B. Whitman
Constitutional Torts, Christina B. Whitman
Articles
In this Article, I analyze the significance of the overlap between state tort law remedies and remedies under section 1983. I conclude that the dissatisfaction with section 1983 cannot fairly be attributed to the fact that it has been read to provide a remedy that "supplements" state law. I argue that most of the anxiety over constitutional damage actions under section 1983 can be understood - and resolved - only by focusing on two other questions. The first of these concerns the appropriate reach of the Constitution. Ambivalence about section 1983 reflects, in part, a fear that the federal Constitution …
The 'Right' To Break A Contract, Willard T. Barbour
The 'Right' To Break A Contract, Willard T. Barbour
Articles
It is common knowledge that the fully developed common law affords no means to compel the performance of a contract according to its terms. Does it follow from this that there is no legal obligation to perform a contract, or if obligation there be, that it is alternative: to perform or pay damages? A note in the XIV MICH. L. REV. 480 appears to give an affirmative answer to this question and at least one court (Frye v. Hubbell, 74 N. H. 358, at p. 374) has taken the same view. Probably the most forcible exposition of this position is …
The 'Right' To Break A Contract, Willard T. Barbour
The 'Right' To Break A Contract, Willard T. Barbour
Articles
It is common knowledge that the fully developed common law affords no means to compel the performance of a contract according to its terms. Does it follow from this that there is no legal obligation to perform a contract, or if obligation there be, that it is alternative: to perform or pay damages? A note in the XIV MICH. L. REV. 480 appears to give an affirmative answer to this question and at least one court (Frye v. Hubbell, 74 N. H. 358, at p. 374) has taken the same view. Probably the most forcible exposition of this position is …
The Sheriff's Return, Edson R. Sunderland
The Sheriff's Return, Edson R. Sunderland
Articles
When William the Conqueror found himself military master of Britain, he was confronted by a governmental problem quite different from that which has usually accompanied foreign conquest. He did not subdue a nation already organized, substituting his power for that of its former ruler in the conventional way of conquerors. Britain was a geographical unit but politically and socially it was a congeries of loosely related communities. The natural law of survival of the fittest normally operates upon peoples as upon individuals, and develops centralized power as a means of self-preservation. But Britain had a substitute for this. The sheltering …
Influence Of Social And Economic Ideals On The Law Of Malicious Torts, W. Gordon Stoner
Influence Of Social And Economic Ideals On The Law Of Malicious Torts, W. Gordon Stoner
Articles
"The existence and the alteration of human institutions," says DICEY, "must in a sense, always and everywhere depend upon the beliefs or feelings, or, in other words, upon the opinion of the society in which such institutions flourish."1 Undoubtedly, law, as much as any other human institution, has felt this influence of public opinion. The political, economical and ethical ideals of a people find expression in their laws. True it is that public opinion is usually, if not always, in the lead, but in a truly happy and contented society the distance is never great. As MAINE says, in progressive …
Surface Water In Cities, John R. Rood
Surface Water In Cities, John R. Rood
Articles
It is evident that no one hard and fast rule could be applied to all cases, either in city or country, without producing injustice and impolitic results. The needs and conditions in city and country are different. They usually differ widely in different parts of the same city. These considerations have induced the Supreme Court of New Hampshire to adopt the flexible rule, that: "In determining this question all the circumstances of the case would, of course, be considered; and among them the nature and importance of the improvements sought to be made, the extent of the interference with the …