Law Commons^™

Fragments On The Deathwatch, Louise Harmon

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No abstract provided.

Claims For Damages For Violations Of State Constitutional Rights – Analysis Of The Recent Court Of Appeals Decision In Brown V. New York; The Resolved And Unresolved Issues, Martin A. Schwartz

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No abstract provided.

Transcript Of The Florida Tobacco Litigation Symposium - Fact, Law, Policy And Significance, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Jean R. Sternlight

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On November 17, 1997, Professors Jeffrey W. Stempel and Jean R. Sternlight joined a group of colleagues specializing in litigation at the Florida State University College of Law Review's Symposium on the tobacco litigation settlement reached between the State of Florida and five leading tobacco manufacturers that same year. The professors appeared on a panel to discuss the the relationship among the legal system, public health concerns, and tobacco. This is a transcript of those preceedings.

The Alleged Distinction Between Euthanasia And The Withdrawal Of Life-Sustaining Treatment: Conceptually Incoherent And Impossible To Maintain, David Orentlicher

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Richard Epstein, in his book Mortal Peril, supports euthanasia and assisted suicide and rejects the distinction between them and withdrawal of treatment. In this essay, Professor Orentlicher argues that Epstein is correct in finding no meaningful moral distinction between euthanasia and treatment withdrawal, examines the reasons why the distinction has persisted in American jurisprudence, and explains why the distinction has eroded.

Epstein also concludes in his book that there is no constitutional right to euthanasia or assisted suicide. Professor Orentlicher's response is that constitutionality is not the appropriate inquiry; rather, the better question is whether to recognize a right to …

Resistance Is Futile: How Legal Writing Pedagogy Contributes To The Law's Marginalization Of Outsider Voices, Kathryn M. Stanchi

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This Article will examine the ways in which legal writing pedagogy contributes to the marginalization of outsider voices in the law. In Part II, the Article explores the two reigning pedagogies of legal writing and describes the linguistic model used to gauge how teaching law as language marginalizes outsider voices. In Part III, the Article applies the linguistic model to explore specific examples of how legal writing pedagogy may contribute to the marginalization of certain groups by focusing on audience and socializing them into the culture and language of law. In Part IV, the Article considers various solutions, all of …

The Need For New Bankruptcy Ethics Rules: How Can "One Size Fits All" Fit Anybody?, Nancy B. Rapoport

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Short discussion why dormant, temporary, actual conflicts (DTACs) in bankruptcy cases can't be handled appropriately under state ethics rules.

Protecting Basic Rights Of Citizens, Ellen Catsman Freidin, Ann C. Mcginley

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Revision 9 suggests three important changes to the basic rights provision of the Florida Constitution. First, it would add “female and male alike” to define “natural persons who are equal before the law.” This change expressly recognizes equality of the sexes. Second, it would prohibit the government from depriving a person of any right because of the person’s national origin. Finally, the revision prohibits the government from depriving a person of any right because of “physical disability,” replacing the currently existing protection for “physical handicap.”

Affirmative Action Awash In Confusion: Backward-Looking-Future-Oriented Justifications For Race-Conscious Measures, Ann C. Mcginley

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The Third Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, decided Taxman v. Board of Education of the Township of Piscataway, in August 1996. Eight judges agreed that he Board of Education of Piscataway Township, New Jersey violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by using race, in accordance with its affirmative action policy, to break a tie between two teachers in the Business Department at Piscataway High School when determining which teacher to lay off. A strong dissent by Chief Judge Sloviter was joined by two other Court of Appeals judges. The majority decision is remarkable in its breadth, …

Symposium, The Florida Tobacco Litigation -- Fact, Law, Policy, And Significance, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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This is the transcript of the Florida tobacco litigation symposium, discussing the s$11.3 billion settlement concerning tobacco in the state of Florida. Jeffrey W. Stempel served as co-chair and moderator of the symposium.

Continuing Classroom Conversation Beyond The Four Whys, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Bailey Kuklin

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LAW school classes regularly prove Santayana's aphorism. Although nearly every law teacher desires to keep discussion focused and forward-moving, there are more than a few moments of thundering silence experienced in the classroom. Most of us adjust to this inevitability by positing some pedagogical virtue to still air and contenting ourselves with the knowledge that conversation-stopping “whys?” are usually delivered by us as teachers rather than the students. Perhaps we are underappreciative of the value discomfitting silence has, but we generally prefer that the conversation continue, that we miss the opportunity to feel simultaneously smug and uncomfortable, and that students …

Unreason In Action: A Case Study In The Wrong Approach To Construing The Liability Insurance Pollution Exclusion, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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For more than twenty-five years, a significant component of the scholarly commentary on insurance law has focused on the so-called “reasonable expectations doctrine” enunciated by then-Professor (now Judge) Robert Keeton in his justly celebrated 1970 article. The reasonable expectations principle made a seemingly sudden emergence with the appearance of Keeton's article and has held particular attraction to academics while simultaneously prompting resistance from elements of the bench and bar, and particularly from the insurance industry. The doctrine's life to date can be described as one of early growth followed by subsequent retreat and dilution, with continuing controversy.

However, despite the …

Contracting Access To The Courts: Myth Or Reality? Bane Or Boon?, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Many scholars of the dispute resolution system perceive a sea change in attitudes toward adjudication that took place in the mid-1970s. Among the events of the time included the Pound Conference, which put the Chief Justice of the United States and the national judicial establishment on record in favor of at least some refinement, if not restriction, on access to courts. In addition, Chief Justice Burger, the driving force behind the Pound Conference, also used his bully pulpit as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to promote ADR, particularly court-annexed arbitration. The availability of judicial adjuncts such as court-annexed arbitration …

Unmet Expectations: Undue Restriction Of The Reasonable Expectations Approach And The Misleading Mythology Of Judicial Role, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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A complete and open embrace of the pure version of the doctrine as enunciated in Judge Keeton's famous article--which expressly provides for finding coverage consistent with the objectively reasonable expectations of the policyholder even where those expectations are contradicted by apparently clear policy language --is viewed by much of the legal and political mainstream as too inconsistent with the prevailing American paradigm of judicial restraint, strict construction of disputed texts, and minimal government involvement in market activity. Some of this resistance to reasonable expectations is the product of an unrealistic reification of the prevailing American politico-legal philosophy of judicial restraint. …

A More Complete Look At Complexity, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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The ability of courts to successfully resolve complex cases has been a matter of contentious debate, not only for the last quarter-century, but for most of the twentieth century. This debate has been part of the legal landscape at least since Judge Jerome Frank's polemic book from which this Symposium derives its title, and probably since Roscoe Pound's famous address to the American Bar Association. During the 1980s and 1990s in particular, the battlelines of the pro-and anti-court debate have been brightly drawn. Some commentators, most reliably successful plaintiffs' counsel and politically liberal academics, defend the judicial track record in …

Mandatory Pre-Dispute Arbitration: Steps Need To Be Taken To Prevent Unfairness To Employees And Consumers, Jean R. Sternlight

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Courts, arbitral organizations and governmental agencies are increasingly recognizing that mandatory binding arbitration can be used both to disadvantage employees and consumers, and to evade legal requirements. Over the last decade, private parties such as employers, manufacturers and financial organizations began using binding arbitration agreements to skirt the public law, and public juries, with increasing intensity. As so often happens, overreaching may once again be giving way to retrenchment, as the tide seems to be turning away from the “anything goes” approach of the earlier 1990s.

Forum Shopping For Arbitration Decisions: Federal Courts' Use Of Antisuit Injunctions Against State Courts, Jean R. Sternlight

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Arbitration clauses, which are supposed to do away with litigation, have ironically spawned many complicated and expensive court fights. Some of the most complex cases involve both forum shopping by the parties and jurisdictional turf battles between federal and state courts. Federal courts have, on quite a few occasions, actually gone so far as to enjoin a state court from continuing to consider a pending case because the federal court concluded that the matter ought to be arbitrated. The Supreme Court, however, has never ruled on whether or when such "arbitral antisuit injunctions" are permissible. In Moses H. Cone Memorial …

Race, Angst And Capital Punishment: The Burger Court's Existential Struggle, Katherine R. Kruse

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This article chronicles the Burger Court's inability to fashion a suitable remedy for racism in the discretionary system of capital sentencing. The article discusses the Court's initial response, “remedial paralysis,” which is evident, not only in McGautha v. California, where the Court refused to find that the Due Process Clause was violated by standardless death sentencing, but also in Furman v. Georgia, where the Court decided to abolish the death penalty. The article further explores the Court's reinstatement of the death penalty, and two of the Court's forays into “bad faith” denial that sustained the death penalty, particularly the Court's …

The Federal System As Bill Of Rights: Original Understandings, Modern Misreadings, Thomas B. Mcaffee

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In the modern era, we have almost completely lost track of the relationship that the Framers of the United States Constitution perceived between the structure of our federal system and the protection of popular rights. At least two obvious components of this confusion persist. First, as we have come to think of rights almost exclusively in terms of the claims of individuals against the government, we have lost the ability to hear the Framers' voices referring to rights held by the people in their collective capacity, including the rights of the people within each of the sovereign states to be …

Business Subsidies And The Dormant Commerce Clause, Dan T. Coenen

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In this Article, I seek to respond to the Court's overture with a treatment of of subsidies under the dormant Commerce Clause that moves progressively from the general to the specific. Part I examines key Supreme Court cases to show that the basic question of whether state business subsidies are constitutional remains open and important. Part II then turns to how that question should be resolved, focusing on whether subsidies are fairly distinguishable from ostensibly equivalent, and concededly unlawful, discriminatory tax relief. The thrust of Part II is that both precedent and policy support the traditional, pre-West Lynn Creamer" view …

Can Inordinate Delay Between A Death Sentence And Execution Constitute Cruel And Unusual Punishment?, Dwight Aarons

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No abstract provided.

Rethinking Law In Globalizing Labor Markets, Fran Ansley

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No abstract provided.