Law Commons^™

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

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The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Form And Substance: Standards For Promotion And Retention Of Legal Writing Faculty On Clinical Tenure Track, Melissa H. Weresh

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This article compares standards for promotion and retention of legal writing faculty on a clinical tenure track. The article provides a brief history of legal writing professionals and examines specific employment criteria such as teaching, service, and scholarship. The article makes recommendations regarding those criteria based upon an assessment of institutional realities and the historical development of the profession.

Teaching In Reverse: A Positive Approach To Analytical Errors In 1l Writing, Lesley S. Kagan, Susan E. Provenzano

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No abstract provided.

Imagining The Law-Trained Reader: The Faulty Description Of The Audience In Legal Writing Textbooks., Jessica E. Price

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In law schools today, first-year legal writing courses play a crucial role in helping students learn to communicate about the law. Many legal writing teachers approach legal writing education in a practical way, attempting to pass on their own experiences in law practice settings to students. Unfortunately, as other writers have observed, such reliance on personal knowledge about “what lawyers are like” may lead legal writing teachers to oversimplify a complicated matter – the needs and preferences of the audience for legal writing – and may even amount to indoctrination in stereotypes about law practice. This article offers a closer …

Learning To Writing In Code: The Value Of Using Legal Writing Exercises To Teach Tax Law, Scott A. Schumacher

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Traditionally, law school tax courses have been taught using a mix of problems, class discussion, the Socratic method, and one end-of-term exam. The goal of these courses is to introduce students to key concepts of tax law and to teach them the essential skill of reading and interpreting the Internal Revenue Code and Treasury Regulations. This traditional method of instruction is an efficient and cost-effective way of transmitting a great deal of complex information to a large number of students. It is also a good vehicle to teach the essential skill of reading and interpreting the Code. However, the time …

[Insert Song Lyrics Here]: The Uses And Misuses Of Popular Music Lyrics In Legal Writing, Alex B. Long

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Legal writers frequently utilize the lyrics of popular music artists to help advance a particular theme or argument in legal writing. And if the music we listen to says something about us as individuals, then the music we, the legal profession as a whole, write about may something about who we are as a profession. A study of citations to popular artists in law journals reveals that, not surprisingly, Bob Dylan is the most popular artist in legal scholarship. The list of names of the other artists rounding out the Top Ten essentially reads like a Who’s Who of baby …

The Clinical Divide: Overcoming Barriers To Collaboration Between Clinics And Legal Writing Programs, Sarah O. Schrup

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Increased communication between legal research and writing (“LRW”) programs and clinical programs is desirable because it provides students with a seamless learning experience, enhances faculty teaching in both departments, and creates opportunities for collaboration that benefits a law-school community generally. But barriers presently exist that hinder collaboration. Specifically, barriers that impact collaboration and integrated learning between LRW and clinical programs stem from: (1) differences in the development of the two disciplines and the resultant differences in teaching methodologies; and (2) other practical barriers including physical separation, status issues, lack of communication, competing demands within the law school and the reality …

Cite Unseen: How Neutral Citation And America's Law Schools Can Cure Our Strange Devotion To Bibliographical Orthodoxy And The Constriction Of Open And Equal Access To The Law, Ian Gallacher

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This article looks at the phenomenon of legal citation and its unintended consequences. After considering the reasons for the American legal system’s devotion to precisely accurate and detailed citations and the history of American legal citation, the article looks at the effect the bibliographical orthodoxy promoted by the two leading citation manuals – The Bluebook and the ALWD Manual – has on open access to the law.

In particular, the article looks at how the required common law citation format prescribed by both of these manuals helps to consolidate the market position of West and LexisNexis, the duopoly of legal …

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

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This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

Economic Analysis Of Law And Economics, Oren Gazal-Ayal

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The academic world is wonderful. Like few other professionals, we can choose what we want to do and what questions we think are important, which in our line of work means choosing what topics we want to research. But what influences our choices? This paper examines what drives scholars to select Law and Economics (L&E) as a topic for research. It does so by implementing the methodology of many L&E papers – by assuming that regulation and incentives matter.

Legal scholars face very different academic incentives in different parts of the world. In some countries, the academic standards for appointment, …

The Constitution As Idea: Defining Describing Deciding In Kelo, Marc L. Roark

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In June 2005, the Supreme Court in a Five to Four Decision marked its most controversial decision in recent memory. The case of Kelo v. City of New London, set off a fire storm of response to the Court’s ruling that economic development takings satisfied the Fifth Amendment. This essay is about Kelo. It is about how the Court uses words, how the defining ability of words create institutional space in which the Court operates, and which defines things beyond the words.

Maccrate (In)Action: The Case For Enhancing The Upper-Level Writing Requirement In Law Schools, Kenneth D. Chestek

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In 2001, the American Bar Association amended the Standards for Accreditation of Law Schools to require, for the first time, a “rigorous writing experience after the first year.” During the summer of 2004 the author conducted a nationwide survey to determine how law schools responded to this change. The author found that most schools did little more than to require students to take at least one course which was evaluated by means of an academic paper rather than an examination. The author concludes that this is probably not the response the ABA had hoped for, but suggests that a 2005 …

Regulation Of Joint Ventures Under Article 81 Of Eu Treaty, Rahul Goel

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The paper discusses Article 81 of EU treaty, which focuses on the analysis of the competitive behavior of a joint venture participant in co-operative non-full-function joint venture with focus on telecommunications sector. The Article 81 analyses the joint ventures that fail to satisfy the threshold of the European Commission’s Merger Regulation (ECMR) due to the factors that either they are not fully-functional in nature or lack a community dimension.

Rhetoricized Constitutionality: Describing -- Defining -- Deciding In Kelo, Marc L. Roark

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This essay is about how the Court uses words, how the defining ability of words creates institutional space in which the Court operates, and which defines things beyond the words.