Law Commons^™

A Jewish Law View Of World Law, Michael J. Broyde

Faculty Articles

This paper will explore two basic Jewish law questions which reflect on the technical issues related to Professor Berman's world law proposal. The first question asks how Jewish law views public international law and whether public international law can be incorporated into the corpus of Jewish law. The second question asks how Jewish law generally incorporates domestic (municipal) law into Jewish law and if this classical paradigm of integration assists in formulating a Jewish law view of world law. To the best of my knowledge, the first matter is a question of nearly first impression in the Jewish law literature.

God In The Machine: A New Structural Analysis Of Copyright's Fair Use Doctrine, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

Recognition of the structural role of fair use has the potential to mitigate some of the uncertainty of current fair use jurisprudence. The statutory framework for fair use both mitigates and causes uncertainty. It mitigates uncertainty by providing a consistent framework of analysis the four statutory factors. However, when judges apply the statutory factors without articulating or justifying their own assumptions, they increase uncertainty. The statutory factors mean nothing without certain a priori assumptions as to the scope of the copyright owner's rights. A more stable and predictable fair use jurisprudence would begin to emerge if those assumptions were made …

The Social Foundations Of Law, Martha Albertson Fineman

Faculty Articles

There are several important questions to ask both our politicians and ourselves as we seek to refine and further define an otherwise abstract commitment to substantive equality with which to replace our current formal version. As with many concepts of historic magnitude, some of the most significant questions to pose about equality have to do with how we should respond to evolutions in understanding and changes in aspiration for the term: ls a mere commitment to formal equality sufficient for a humane and modem state? How should the state respond to the fact that our society is increasingly one in …

The Morality Of Human Rights: A Nonreligious Ground?, Michael J. Perry

Faculty Articles

In the midst of the countless, grotesque inhumanities of the twentieth century, however, there is a heartening story, amply recounted elsewhere: the emergence, in international law, of the morality of human rights. The morality of human rights is not new; in one or another version, the morality is very old. But the emergence of morality in international law, in the period since the end of World War II, is a profoundly important development.

The twentieth century, therefore, was not only the dark and bloody time; the second half of the twentieth century was also the time in which a growing …

Deterrence Versus Brutalization: Capital Punishment's Differing Impacts Among States, Joanna M. Shepherd

Faculty Articles

Recent empirical studies by economists have shown, without exception, that capital punishment deters crime. Using large data sets that combine information from all fifty states over many years, the studies show that, on average, an additional execution deters many murders. The studies have received much publicity, and death penalty advocates often cite them to show that capital punishment is sound policy.

Indeed, deterrence is the central basis that many policymakers and courts cite for capital punishment. For example, President Bush believes that capital punishment deters crime and that deterrence is the only valid reason for capital punishment. Likewise, the Supreme …

The Majoritarian Difficulty: Affirmative Action, Sodomy, And Supreme Court Politics, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

This Article challenges liberal and conservative assessments of Lawrence, Gratz, and Grutter. Although the outcome of these cases might indeed prove helpful to the agendas of social movements for racial and sexual justice, progressive scholars and activists should not receive these cases with elation. Instead, the research of constitutional theorists, critical legal scholars, and political scientists allows for a more contextualized and guarded account of and reaction to these decisions. Instead of representing extraordinary victories for oppressed classes, these cases reflect majoritarian and moderate views concerning civil rights, and the opinions contain many doctrinal elements that reinforce, …

Take The Money Or Run: The Risky Business Of Acting As Both Your Client's Lawyer And Bail Bondsman, Dayla S. Pepi

Faculty Articles

The American Bar Association strongly discourages lawyers from being bondsmen due to the conflicts that can arise when a criminal defense attorney acts as their client's bail bondsman. These same ethical dilemmas can also be encountered in posting a bond for a client in civil matters such as probate, family law, and appeals. In Texas, lawyers are exempt from the requirements of licensure as a bondsmen, including the requirement to maintain a particular level of security to underwrite the bonds. Nonetheless, lawyers are still required to conform to the requirements regulating the practice of bondsmen.

It is not enough for …

The New Prosecution, Kay L. Levine

Faculty Articles

This Article proceeds as follows. Part I introduces the Statutory Rape Vertical Prosecution Program that took shape in California in the mid-1990s. In addition to explaining how this program emerged and its central features, I highlight the aspects of the SRVPP that distinguish California statutory rape prosecutors from the traditional image of the local prosecutor in the United States. Part II offers some background on the new prosecution and the problem-oriented approach to criminal justice, explaining how this model differs from the traditional crime-based or case-based method of criminal justice work. In Part III, I use empirical data derived from …

The Court Of Appeals For The Fifth Circuit 2003-2004 Insurance Decisions: A Survey And An Empirical Analysis, Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided twenty-four insurance-related appeals between the survey period of June 2003 through May 2004. Those cases originated in nine federal district courts. The overwhelming majority of appeals concerned the interpretation and enforcement of insurance contracts. Barring one case of first impression, most involved very familiar procedural and substantive conflicts.

This year, federal preemption questions and conflicts over subject matter jurisdiction appeared in several cases. The Fifth Circuit also decided six class-action or class-certification cases, and the court decided two conflicts involving allegedly widespread racial and ethnic discrimination in the sale and marketing of various …

The Ethics Of Copyrighting Ethics Rules, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

The American Bar Association’s (“ABA”) practice of requiring students to purchase the Model Rules of Professional Conduct is exploitative and unethical. The ABA uses its role in training lawyers to create a situation which all but requires law students and bar applicants to purchase the organization’s own Model Rules. The fact that the Model Rules constitute a substantial revenue stream for the ABA is due less to lawyers’ desire to brush up on Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which are not laws, than to the ABA's direct role in approving law schools and its indirect role in licensing lawyers.

Law …

Erisa: Fumbling The Limitations Period, George Lee Flint Jr

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court designed the LMRA rule, adopted in 1966, based on legislative history suggesting that the LMRA lacked a need for uniformity in litigating employee benefit plan matters. Congress changed this conclusion when it adopted ERISA in 1974. Thus, Congress preempted state law insofar as it relates to employee benefit plans. The Supreme Court has specifically stated that this need for uniformity extends to ERISA causes of action and awards under them. The Supreme Court spelled out a three-step process to determine whether to use a uniform federal statute of limitations: (1) whether the federal cause of action demands …

Cybersecurity, Identity Theft, And The Limits Of Tort Liability, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

Tort law is the best vehicle for allocating the risks and spreading the costs of database intrusion. It can incentivize database possessors (“possessors”) and data subjects to minimize the harm associated with breaches of database security while also balancing each party’s interests. Life is built upon computerized databases and the information of those databases is subject to hackers and other cyber-threats, which can cause catastrophic damage. It is hard to identify hackers; however, a better object for recovery is likely the possessors who fail to prevent or reveal a security breach.

The law governing database possessors’ liability is far from …

Justice Tom C. Clark’S Legacy In The Field Of Legal Ethics, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

Justice Tom C. Clark served as this nation’s Attorney General and as a Supreme Court Justice during a pivotal time in this nation’s history; however, his greatest legacy is the tremendous impact he and the Clark Report, whose development he oversaw, has in the area of lawyer discipline and ethics. Prior to the Clark Report, there existed a “scandalous situation” with respect to lawyer discipline; however, in the subsequent decades, revolutionary change has occurred. That change is largely attributable to Justice Clark, whether directly or indirectly, as was found in 1992 by the American Bar Association in its McKay Report. …

Ethics In Government At The Local Level, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

Efforts to foster ethics in government should begin at the local, rather than state or national, level. City officials and employees make a broad range of decisions that affect the welfare of citizens in many ways. Those actions determine to a large extent whether, on an everyday basis, people have equal access to the benefits and opportunities that government provides. Focusing efforts on city government ethics may also be the best way to build public support for high standards of conduct at all levels of government. If the public comes to expect (and demand) fair treatment and ethical conduct from …

Estudio Comparativo De La Formacion De Contratos Electronicos En El Derecho Estadounidense Con Referencia Al Derecho International Y Al Derecho Mexicano, Roberto Rosas

Faculty Articles

The author presents the underlying fundamental contractual principles in American law, and in this respect, tire Uniform Commercial Code, with particular emphasis in how electronic transactions are regulating, and therefore in the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, and the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act. Concerning international law, the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods and concerning Mexican law, with reference to the Commerce Code and the Federal Civil Code.

Deterrence And Origin Of Legal System: Evidence From 1950-1999, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

This article offers evidence on legal systems' deterrence of acts that may cause harm, which extends law—and finance—literature comparing common law and civil code systems. Fatality rates from two causes are used to gauge deterrence: (1) motor vehicle accidents and (2) accidents other than motor vehicle. Both vary significantly across countries classified by origin of legal system. The data cover 50 years, offering evidence on evolution of differences over time. Findings for accidents other than motor vehicle are evidence on legal system flexibility, as the diffuse set of causes increases the difficulty of specifying harmful actions ex ante.

Curiouser And Curiouser: Involuntary Medications And Incompetent Criminal Defendants After Sell V. United States, Dora W. Klein

Faculty Articles

The government should not place a defendant to whom it is administering involuntary medications in front of a jury. The test the Supreme Court created in Sell v. United States will likely result in the administration of involuntary medications to incompetent defendants in more than rare instances. Given the importance of the right to a fair trial, and the threat to this right posed by administering involuntary medications, the Supreme Court understandably cautions in its decision in Sell that the instances in which the government will be justified in administering such medications for the purpose of rendering a defendant competent …

Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Water: Evaluating Water As A Human Right And The Duties And Obligations It Creates, Amy Hardberger

Faculty Articles

The Right to Water should be an independent, explicit human right. As such, the status of the right to water would be raised to the status of customary international law (jus cogens), imposing an affirmative, obligatory duty an all nations. Historically the right to water has been included in the right to life, limiting the right; however, that approach undermines the essential importance of water and causes enforcement problems that would be avoided by regarding water as an independent right.

Landmark international agreements, treatises, and the work of various international entities and other non-governmental organizations have made tremendous strides in …

Law Fragments, Emily A. Hartigan

Faculty Articles

The contrast between the portrayal of Christianity and the treatment of earth-based religions by dominant legal discourse is illustrated throughout history. The true images of “saturated auratic [or] sacred elements-become-images” accompanies the division of history into fragments. The fragmented image is particularly important when it arises from a suppressed history or marginalized persons—these fragments are necessary to resist totalitarianism.

One way to see the call for “explosive fragments” is to acknowledge that the culture in the United States is already in ruins. Part of that dissolution is the loss of hegemony by white-male-European culture which can be seen in the …

When Prosecutors Control Criminal Court Dockets: Dispatches On History And Policy From A Land Time Forgot, Andrew Siegel

Faculty Articles

The decision as to who has the authority to bring a matter up for resolution before a criminal court is one of the most basic decisions a system of criminal adjudication must make. Despite - or perhaps because of - the elemental nature of this structural matter, historians and scholars of criminal procedure have thus far offered a startling paucity of evidence as to the history and policy consequences of different docket control regimes. This article offers the first comprehensive examination of this issue, rescuing the history of criminal court calendar control from the dustbin of history and grappling in …

A Call From Jerome, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

This short article is a homage to the late Professor Jerome M. Culp, Jr. who provided courage necessary to propel critical race legal scholarship. He focused on building coalitions in the Crit community and his more recent work urged looking inwards. While he has passed away, his call to action remains.

What Is War? Reflections On Free Speech In 'Wartime, David Skover, Ronald Collins

Faculty Articles

Written as the lead article for a Symposium issue commemorating the Free Speech in Wartime Conference held in January of 2005 at Rutgers Law School - Camden, this piece analyzes the following questions: What qualifies as war in the 21st Century? Who determines when the country is at war? And what effect, if any, should the existence of a war have on judicial review of First Amendment challenges?

Evaluating Brady Error Using Narrative Theory: A Proposal For Reform, John B. Mitchell

Faculty Articles

When the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Old Chief v. United States, the Court examined Federal Rule of Evidence 403 in light of a defense offer to stipulate to aspects of the proffered prosecution evidence, purportedly to lessen their prejudicial impact. At the core of the opinion rests the validation of a theory born from such disparate fields as Law and Literature, Sociology, and Narrative Theory. This article argues that, though it was not on the proverbial radar screen of the Court when it decided Old Chief, narrative theory provides the most effective tool available for assessing prejudice …

Screening The Law: Ideology And Law In American Popular Culture, Mark Niles, Naomi Mezey

Faculty Articles

This paper reevaluates Frankfurt School theory, and other cultural critiques, in an effort to bring a more sophisticated analysis to bear on popular culture depictions of law. It invokes the cultural critiques of the Birmingham School in order to assess the more subtle ideological content more often found in film. The focus is not only on how popular culture functions as a mechanism for communicating and reproducing ideologies, but also what this function is based on, a theoretical analysis that asks what images of law and legal justice one might expect to see in popular media. The article also assesses …

Litigating Global Warming: Substantive Law In Search Of A Forum, Henry Mcgee

Faculty Articles

In response to the obstruction by the United States of the Kyoto protocols and its subsequent agreements, American environmental NGOs and state governments have filed a range of lawsuits to force the current U.S. administration, automobile manufacturers, and regulatory actors to combat global warming. This essay first very briefly sketches some of the strategies by litigants to force compliance with Kyoto, an agreement which reflects nearly all of the international community's desire to schedule reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The essay then describes a strategy that perhaps is the most conventional in terms of international law, but requires a nation …

Reflections On Complicity, Julie Shapiro

Faculty Articles

The author of this article participated in the litigation of Andersen v. King County, Washington in which lesbian and gay couples unsuccessfully sought access to marriage. Although part of the plaintiffs' litigation team, she is a feminist anti-assimilationist and as such, is generally opposed to articulating marriage as a priority of the lesbian/gay civil rights movement. Confronted with the undeniable reality that marriage has become the central demand of the lesbian and gay movement, the author explores the tensions and contradictions encountered during the litigation. The article examines how one might critically manifest resistance even while working for an assimilationist …

Military Justice At Abu Ghraib, Jeffrey F. Addicott

Faculty Articles

Previous efforts to denigrate the credibility of U.S. war policies in the War on Terror pale in the wake of the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib. Photographic evidence of American soldiers abusing detainees created a firestorm of allegations concerning illegal interrogation practices and threatened to derail fundamental legal and policy pillars upon which America conducts the War on Terror. It raised the question of whether the prison abuse reflected a systemic policy to illegally obtain information from detainees or isolated acts of criminal behavior by a handful of soldiers. Thanks to several investigative reports, the legal and policy pillars …

Regulating Sars In China: Law As An Antidote?, Chenglin Liu

Faculty Articles

Severe Acute Respiratory Disease (SARS) is caused by a coronavirus, and as of this writing has no known vaccine or cure. Generally, the disease starts with a high fever, headaches, body aches, and mild respiratory symptoms. SARS spreads through respiratory droplets produced by an infected person when he or she coughs or sneezes or through physical contact.

The disease was first identified in a southern province of China in November of 2002, and quickly spread to twenty-seven different countries. In March of 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared SARS a global health threat. In China, the economic and social …

Race And The California Recall: A Top Ten List Of Ironies, Steven W. Bender, Keith Aoki, Sylvia Lazos

Faculty Articles

Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as governor of California in the 2003 recall campaign is rife with cruel ironies. An immigrant himself, he beat the grandson of Mexican immigrants, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, by playing the race card, and managed to dodge allegations of his praise for Hitler as a strong leader. While the pundits say that the California recall was about angry voters lashing back at faithless, self-dealing politicians, more lurks beneath the surface. In California, racial and ethnic minorities now comprise a majority of the population, and the recall election brought barely concealed and seething schisms to the surface. Californians, …

The Case Of The Little Yellow Cuban Biplane: Can Interest Analysis Reconcile Conflicting Provisions In Federal Statutes And International Treaties?, Diane Lourdes Dick

Faculty Articles

This article analyzes conflicts that arise under international agreements that define and protect foreign ownership interests in civil aircraft, on the one hand, and domestic laws that allow Americans to bring suit against state sponsors of terrorism, on the other hand. Finding that courts often perform concealed interest analyses under the guise of mechanical application of canons of construction, this article recommends a comparative impairment interest analysis approach to resolving this and related conflicts.