Law Commons^™

The Pringle Case's New Notion Of Probable Cause: An Assault On Di Re And The Fourth Amendment, Tracey Maclin

UF Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Myth Of The Residual Owner: An Empirical Study, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

Most bankruptcy scholars who have considered the residual owner approach have come away with a healthy skepticism. But despite its theoretical difficulties, the residual owner approach persists. I attribute this persistence to an empirical assumption that usually remains implicit. In spite of the theoretical difficulties in identifying the single residual owners of bankrupt firms, the scholars who employ residual owner approaches believe that in reality, residual owners exist and can be easily identified inmost cases. Parties may bluster about the uncertainty of firm value and other parties may be compelled to compromise with them in order to avoid an expensive, …

Bringing The Margin To The Center: Comprehensive Strategies For Work/Family Policies, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

The ultimate goal of work/family policy has always seemed deceptively clear: to provide institutional and cultural support to permit a healthy balance between family and work. An implicit assumption of that goal is that it would be achieved without undermining principles of equality. Indeed, the assumed result of work/family balance is that it would help achieve equality: families would be treated equally, caregivers would be supported equally, and children and family members would receive necessary and important care equally. It has long been recognized that work/family balance is especially critical to gender equality. Equality principles require that work/family policy and …

"Well-Behaved Women Don't Make History": Rethinking English Family, Law, And History, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

In 1857 Parliament finally succumbed to public and political pressure and passed a bill creating a domestic relations court: the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes. This new court for the first time in common-law history, combined the following jurisdictions: the ecclesiastical court's jurisdiction over marital validity and separation; the Chancery court's jurisdiction over child custody and equitable estates; the common-law court's jurisdiction over property; and Parliament's jurisdiction over divorce and marital settlements. Wives were given the legal right to seek a divorce or judicial separation in a court of law, receive custody of the children of the marriage, and …

The Non-Merger Virtual Merger: Is Corporate Law Ready For Virtual Reality?, Stuart R. Cohn

UF Law Faculty Publications

The term virtual mergers describes the relatively recent phenomenon of companies entering into contractual arrangements that are functionally, but not legally, equivalent to mergers prescribed by corporate statutes. Virtual mergers usually involve the shared use of assets contributed by each of the companies. A central element of the transaction is that the two companies remain legally independent, each with its own directors, officers, and shareholders. The arrangements can usually be terminated by either party, allowing each company to return to the status quo ante or exercise buyout rights if contractually provided.

Although virtual mergers have occurred among public companies in …

Damages: Using A Case Study To Teach Law, Lawyering, And Dispute Resolution, Leonard L. Riskin

UF Law Faculty Publications

Seven law school faculty members and one practicing attorney recently developed and taught a wholly new kind of law course based on an already published case study, Damages: One Family's Legal Struggles in the World of Medicine, by Barry Werth, an investigative reporter who spent several years researching to write the book. Damages, an in-depth account of a medical malpractice case, presents the perspectives of the injured family, the defendant physician, the lawyers, and the three mediators. In this Symposium Introduction, the authors provide a summary of Werth's book, explain why they decided to create a course based on …

On Collegiality, Michael L. Seigel

UF Law Faculty Publications

The problem of collegiality in academia is like a crazy aunt in the family: ever present, whispered about in hallways, but rarely acknowledged directly. My goal in this article has been to initiate the demise of this pattern of unhappy toleration. The toleration stems, in large part, from an apparently widespread fear that attempts to control colleagues' uncollegial conduct will result in an unacceptable diminution of academic freedom. Although these concerns are legitimate, I have sought to prove that, if appropriate care is taken, academic freedom may flourish at the same time that a norm of basic collegiality is enforced. …

The Application Of Finance Theory To Increased Risk Harms In Toxic Tort Litigation, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

In toxic tort litigation, a plaintiff has no cause of action for increased risk of harm unless that risk is proven by a preponderance of the evidence to lead to a future physical injury. This rule of law is based on an antiquated concept of uncertainty, and evinces the law's detachment from the knowledge gained from other intellectual disciplines and the everyday workings of the world. This article argues that freedom from increased risk should be a legally cognizable interest, the violation of which gives rise to an independent cause of action. When analyzed under finance theory, increased risk harms …

A Good Old Habit, Or Just An Old One? Preferential Tax Treatment For Reorganizations, Yariv Brauner

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article proposes to repeal the preferential tax treatment of certain merger and acquisition transactions known as "reorganizations," and tax them like all other sales or exchanges. In the last 80 years this preference has been a cornerstone of our tax system. It is also one of the most stable rules in the tax code. Nevertheless, its normative justification is weak, and has never been rigorously debated in the legal literature. This article rejects the stated rationale for this rules - that such transactions trigger insufficient realization and therefore it is both unfair and impractical to currently tax them. It …

Teaching And Learning From The Mediations In Barry Werth's Damages, Leonard L. Riskin

UF Law Faculty Publications

This essay is based primarily on materials the author developed for courses taught at the University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Law, in the winter 2002 and 2003 semesters, based on Barry Werth's book, "Damages."

Institutional Academic Freedom - A Constitutional Misconception: Did Grutter V. Bollinger Perpetuate The Confusion?, Richard H. Hiers

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article begins with a review of language that eventually gave rise to the concept of institutional academic freedom, and includes a summary of lower court decisions embracing that concept or notion. The second part identifies certain constitutional problems in connection with the idea that institutional academic freedom can somehow be derived from or based upon the First Amendment. The third part describes and analyzes language in the Court's Grutter decision, language that may or may not have the effect of validating the concept of institutional academic freedom under the First Amendment.

The New Bush National Security Doctrine And The Rule Of Law, Winston P. Nagan, Craig Hammer

UF Law Faculty Publications

The war on terrorism has dramatically impacted the direction of U.S. foreign policy, as well as the strategic and tactical operations for securing its objectives. Three questions central to U.S. foreign relations are whether these interests are consistent with international law; whether the United States seeks to modify international law to secure its interests; or whether foreign policy makers see the need to significantly change international legal standards. The aftermath of the of the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States triggered an intuitive reaction that the normal rules of restraint embodied in international law might no longer …

Querying Lawrence, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

In 2003, the Supreme Court in the landmark decision Lawrence v. Texas found a Texas law, banning homosexual, but not heterosexual, sodomy to be unconstitutional. Thus, Lawrence ended the Bowers era in which morality was deemed to be a justification for discrimination against gays and lesbians. While the decision did bring to United States Constitutional analysis the radical idea that gays and lesbians are people too, it stopped short of addressing the real problem the case presents--the existence of a second-class citizenry. This Article examines the Lawrence decision in light of both the international, regional, and foreign jurisprudence and the …

Race, Gender, And Work/Family Policy, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

Family leave is not an end in itself, but rather is part of a much bigger picture: work/family policy. The goal of work/family policy is to achieve a good society by supporting families. Ideally, families enable children to develop to their fullest capacity and to contribute to their communities and society. Public rhetoric in the United States has always strongly supported families. Our policies, however, have not. In the area of work/family policy, the United States continues to lag behind every other advanced industrialized country, as well as many developing countries, in the degree to which we provide affirmative support …

Battle Of The Budget: The Legislature And The Governor Fight For Control, Jon L. Mills

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article describes the policy changes and the history of Article III, Section 19 of the Florida Constitution of 1968, and focuses on the continuing conflict between the branches surrounding the veto and budget reduction process. The battle between Florida's Legislative and Executive branches is sure to continue during the implementation of section 19. Even when section 19 is implemented, the effectiveness of the reforms can only be assessed after several years of experience. However, preliminary analysis indicates serious difficulties with some of the reforms.

Piercing The Prison Uniform Of Invisibility For Black Female Inmates, Michelle S. Jacobs

UF Law Faculty Publications

In Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women In Prison, Professor Paula Johnson has written about the most invisible of incarcerated women — incarcerated African American women. The number of women incarcerated in the United States increased by seventy-five percent between 1986 and 1991. Of these women, a disproportionate number are black women. The percentages vary by region and by the nature of institution (county jail, state prison or federal facility), but the bottom line remains the same. In every instance, black women are incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their percentage in the general population. In Inner Lives, …

A New Time For Denominators - Toward A Dynamic Theory Of Property In The Regulatory Takings Relevant Parcel Analysis, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores the question of how the courts should calculate the denominator in the just compensation equation. The denominator is the amount of property a claimant owns, against which the effects of regulation will be measured. If a landowner owns a single acre that is severely regulated, the takings fraction for the amount of property taken compared to that owned will approach one. If, on the other hand, the landowner owns 100 acres and only one is regulated, the amount of harm is only 1% in comparison to the total amount owned. This Article advocates a paradigm shift in …

Is Yale Kamisar As Good As Joe Namath: A Look Back At Kamisar's Prediction Of Miranda V. Arizona, Tracey Maclin

UF Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.