Law Commons^™

From Petticoats To Briefs: History Of Women At The University Of Missouri-Kansas City School Of Law, Robert C. Downs, Brooke Grant, Elizabeth Sterling

Faculty Works

The story of women in American society has largely been defined and recorded by men and the institutions that men have dominated for most of the past two hundred-odd years. Women have been denied access to education, employment, political power and other benefits of social intercourse by exclusion, intimidation, ridicule and patronization. The experience of women in law school is one part of that experience. Law school is an arduous undertaking whether one is male or female. Gaining admission to modern law schools requires talent and demonstrated academic performance in a competitive environment. But in the nineteenth century, the foremost …

Beyond Market Share Liability: Theory Of Proportional Share Liability For Nonfungible Products, Allen K. Rostron

Faculty Works

Twenty-five years have passed since courts first adopted market share liability, a theory under which a plaintiff unable to identify the manufacturer of the product that caused his injury can recover on a proportional basis from each manufacturer that might have made the product. Courts have severely restricted the reach of this potentially powerful theory by insisting that it can apply only to products that are perfectly fungible. Most products vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, posing different levels of risk, and therefore do not satisfy the fungibility requirement. As a result, courts have applied market share liability to a very …

The Battle Over Citation Form Brings Notice To Lrw Faculty: Will Power Follow?, Julie M. Cheslik

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Demythologizing The Legal History Of The Jehovah’S Witnesses And The First Amendment, Allen K. Rostron

Faculty Works

In 2002, for the first time in more than 20 years, the Supreme Court of the United States decided a case involving the First Amendment rights of Jehovah's Witnesses. The Court ruled that Witnesses cannot be required to give their names to local government authorities in order to obtain permits before going door-to-door to distribute their publications and preach their religious message.

While the amount of new law being generated by the religion's followers has slowed, scholars have finally begun in recent years to give significant attention to the legal history of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and, in particular, to their …

Individual Aboriginal Rights, John W. Ragsdale Jr

Faculty Works

When Whites first came to North America, they encountered an indigenous population in relative balance with the land. It was not a perfect harmony, but was, nonetheless, capable of enduring indefinitely. Regardless of episodic instability caused by erosion, over-hunting, or deforestation, the distinguishing socio-economic facts were that the native peoples did not treat the land as a commodity or freely exploitable resource, they were not preoccupied with economic growth or personal gain, and they did not believe in human domination over the rest of the world. Instead, their central beliefs were balance and reciprocity. How were these subsistence communities and …

Protein Similarity Score: Simplified Version Of The Blast Score As Superior Alternative To Percent Identity For Claiming Genuses Of Related Protein Sequences, Christopher M. Holman

Faculty Works

Recombinant proteins form the basis for most of the products of biotechnology, including drugs, diagnostics, research reagents, genetically modified organisms and industrial enzymes. However, the nature of proteins and the rules of patentability conspire to make it difficult to achieve adequate patent protection for novel proteins and the polynucleotides that encode them. Narrow patent claims limited to protein sequences sharing a high degree of structural identity can generally be designed around by introducing structural changes in the claimed protein, thereby avoiding the patent without substantially altering the protein's function. However, inventors are generally restricted in their ability to broadly claim …

Multidisciplinary Business Planning Firms: Expanding The Regulatory Tent Without Creating A Circus, Anthony J. Luppino

Faculty Works

Students studying business planning in an American law school should be told up front that a twenty-first century transactional lawyer rarely encounters a truly simple business transaction. Legal educators acknowledge the need to emphasize the complex, multidisciplinary nature of advising modern business clients. Law students must be introduced to the reality that transactional attorneys routinely collaborate with accountants, engineers, and other types of specialists and consultants to properly identify issues and address their clients' needs. Businesses - particularly firms comprised of entrepreneurs on tight budgets in terms of both time and money - benefit greatly when relevant information is accurately …

Unique Property: An Annotated Bibliography, Nancy Levit, Robert R. M. Verchick

Faculty Works

This bibliography covers law review articles and supplemental A.L.R. entries published after 1997. We also include a handful of especially interesting pieces published in or before 1997, which we believe are just too good to pass up. A.L.R. entries, whose titles are usually self-explanatory, are cited, but not annotated. Similarly, articles that concern only a single case or a single state are cited, but not annotated.

The Imperium Strikes Back: The Need To Teach Socioeconomics To Law Students., William K. Black

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Academic Support At The Crossroads: From Minority Retention To Bar Prep And Beyond - Will Academic Support Change Legal Education Or Itself Be Fundamentally Changed?, Ellen Y. Suni

Faculty Works

In 1982, Duncan Kennedy's essay on hierarchies in legal education appeared in the Journal of Legal Education and publicly recognized what many had acknowledged to be problems and gaps in contemporary legal education. At the time the article was written, academic support as an institution in legal education was in its infancy. Looking back at the development of the academic support movement demonstrates that, in many respects, it was designed to address at least some of the issues raised by Kennedy. This essay looks at the emergence of academic support in legal education in the context of Kennedy's article, examining …

Dangerous Games: Student Hazing And Negligent Supervision, Daniel B. Weddle

Faculty Works

For years, some state courts have been willing to hold schools accountable for hazing injuries under a theory of negligent supervision. Outside the hazing context, a claim of negligent supervision will seldom help a plaintiff who has been injured by another student because courts hesitate to hold school officials liable for unanticipated tortuous acts of third parties. With regard to hazing, however, some courts are more willing to view such injuries as foreseeable and preventable, particularly if there has been a history of hazing in groups connected to the school. Where there is knowledge of hazing activities, the power to …

Bullying In Schools: The Disconnect Between Empirical Research And Constitutional, Statutory, And Tort Duties To Supervise, Daniel B. Weddle

Faculty Works

Nearly two decades of educational research has repeatedly demonstrated that one of the most damaging and pervasive problems in our schools today is bullying. That research has shown that bullying leaves its victims with serious and often life-long emotional problems. It has revealed that bullies are substantially more likely than their peers to commit felonies later in their lives. It has even demonstrated that witnesses to the bullying are often affected in serious, lasting ways. Most importantly, it has proven that school officials can dramatically reduce the prevalence of bullying if they implement proven bullying prevention strategies. Nevertheless, in most …

Arbitration And Arbitrability: Toward An Expectation Model, Mark Berger

Faculty Works

The process of arbitration has been transformed by a series of Supreme Court decisions that have increased the enforceability of arbitration awards. Beyond that, the Supreme Court has also taken steps to ensure the enforceability of promises to arbitrate. These latter arbitrability issues raise questions as to who will decide whether an enforceable agreement to arbitrate has been made and what standard shall be applied in making that determination. This article explores the arbitrability question in the wide variety of settings in which it occurs, including post-contract disputes, successor parties, and the separability doctrine which focuses on challenges to the …