Law Commons^™

The Influence Of Income Tax Rules On Insurance Reserves, David F. Bradford, Kyle D. Logue

Book Chapters

An insurance company is a financial intermediary whose main line of business is the sale of a particular type of contingent contract, called an insurance policy. Under this contract, the insurer promises to pay some amount to the policyholder, or to some other beneficiary, following the occurrence of an insured event. In the context of property-casualty insurance, the relevant insured events include, for example, the accidental destruction of the insured's property or the award of a liability judgment against the insured. In return for this promise the insured pays the insurer a premium. The premium and the earnings on the …

The Warn Act, David A. Santacroce

Book Chapters

Plant closings are devastating for workers, their families and the communities in which they live. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act ("the WARN Act" or "WARN") requires some employers to give their workers sixty days' notice before a plant closing or mass layoff. The purpose of the WARN Act is to provide workers with time to seek alternative employment or retraining and to plan for the transition phase after the layoff.

The WARN Act does not prevent employers from closing a plant; instead it only requires larger employers to give notice, subject to a number of exceptions and exemptions. …

Rights Discourse And Neonatal Euthanasia, Carl Schneider

Book Chapters

At the heart of our difficulty in approaching neonatal euthanasia lie the intractable questions it raises: What is human life? When is death preferable to life? What do parents owe their children? What does society owe the suffering? Those moral questions could hardly be more perplexing, yet they are further complicated when they must be resolved not informally and case by case, but through generally applicable social rules. This is so for numerous reasons. For instance, the wide range of deeply held opinions about neonatal euthanasia makes rules hard to formulate, and the wide range of factual situations in which …

The Relationship Between Human Rights And Refugee Law: What Refugee Law Judges Can Contribute, James C. Hathaway

Book Chapters

In a document released during the summer of 1998, the Austrian Presidency of the European Union formally questioned the continuing value of the United Nations Refugee Convention, and called for the adoption of a new "instrument of speedy assistance in the framework of the political possibilities."

The Austrian proposal would deny most refugees arriving in Europe the legal right to be protected. For the majority, protection would instead become a matter of political discretion. The proposal erroneously asserts that only a small minority of contemporary asylum seekers is entitled to Convention refugee status, in consequence of which a "new approach" …

Cultural Differences And Discrimination: Samoans Before A Public Housing Eviction Board, Richard O. Lempert, Karl Monsma

Book Chapters

In the 1971 case, Griggs v. Duke Power (401 U.S. 424), the United States Supreme Court held that if an employment test (or other mechanism for screening job applicants) had a disparate impact on a group protected by Title VII of The Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination in violation of the Act would be presumed unless the employer could prove the "job-relatedness" of the test. (For details on the Griggs case, see England 1992 chap. 5.) The Griggs case represents a high-water mark in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence of discrimination, for it establishes proof rules that can catch both …

Trial Preparation, Barbara Mcquade

Book Chapters

Trial preparation should begin with a careful review of the current law applicable to the case and a consideration of what legal and factual arguments will be presented to the jury. Such a review is often done in connection with the preparation of a court-ordered final pretrial order or the preparation of a trial brief. Even where such documents are not required by the court, an outline of the applicable law and the critical evidence expected to be put forth in the trial is vital to trial preparation.

As soon as possible before the scheduled trial date, you should consider …

Gewirth On Necessary Goods: What Is The Agent Committed To Valuing?, Donald H. Regan

Book Chapters

In this chapter I shall be concerned with stage I of Gewirth's argument, in which he argues that the agent must value her freedom and well-being as necessary goods. Stage I has attracted less criticism over the years than stages II and III, but even so, a good deal has been written about it. I do not claim to have found any brand new objection to Gewirth's argument. The core of my objection occurred to me during my first reading of Reason and Morality, and it obviously occurred to a number of other people as well. 3 But it is …

Fuller And Language, Joseph Vining

Book Chapters

His style made him distinctive. His substance made him distinctive. The two crossed, were genetically related as we now say. Style and substance each drew on and was implied by the other. One point of their crossing was his sense of the nature of human language; what language was and could be, what it was not and could never be. In 1930, early in his work, Fuller took up the problem of language in a series of articles. Toward the end of his time he republished this initial ground-establishing effort as the little book we now have, Legal Fictions, …

In Defense Of Revenge, William I. Miller

Book Chapters

One of the risks of studying the Icelandic sagas and loving them, is, precisely, loving them. And what is one loving when one loves them? The wit, the entertainment provided by perfectly told tales? And just how are these entertaining tales and this wit separable from their substance: honor, revenge, individual assertion, and yes, some softer values, too, like peacefulness and prudence? Yet one suspects, and quite rightly, that the softer values are secondary and utterly dependent on being responsive to the problems engendered by the rougher values of honor and vengeance. Is it possible to study the sagas and …

Fear, Weak Legs, And Running Away: A Soldier's Story, William Miller

Book Chapters

Statutes make for appallingly tedious reading unless primitively short and to the point as, for example, this provision in the early Kentish laws of Æthelberht (c. 600): “He who smashes a chin bone [of another] shall pay 20 shillings” or this one from King Alfred (c. 890): “If anyone utters a public slander, and it is proved against him, he shall make no lighter amends than the carving out of his tongue.”1 Yet on very rare occasion a modern statute can rivet our attention and when it does, it seems to do so by mimicking some of the look and …

Writing And Reading In Philosophy, Law, And Poetry, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

In this paper I will treat a very general question, the nature of writing and what can be achieved by it, pursuing it in the three distinct contexts provided by philosophy, law, and poetry.

My starting-point will be Plato's Phaedrus, where, in a wellknown passage, Socrates attacks writing itself: he says that true philosophy requires the living engagement of mind with mind of a kind that writing cannot attain. Yet this is obviously a paradox, for Socrates' position is articulated and recorded by Plato in writing. How then can we make sense of what Plato is saying and doing? What …