Law Commons^™

The Z-Test For Percentages: A Statistical Tool To Detect Pretextually Neutral Juror Challenges, Marvin L. Longabaugh

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

In June 1999, Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish were arrested and charged with murder, robbery, burglary, and grand larceny related to the death of Las Vegas casino mogul Lonnie “Ted” Binion. The subsequent trial provided a captivated public with the elements of murder, greed, betrayal, torture, and extortion

Richard Posner Meets Reb Chaim Of Brisk: A Comparative Study In The Founding Of Intellectual Legal Movements, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

Of the various movements that have surfaced in American legal theory in recent decades, law and economics has emerged as perhaps the most influential, leading some to characterize it as the dominant contemporary mode of analysis among American legal scholars. In this essay, Levine considers law and economics in the context of a comparative discussion of another prominent intellectual legal movement, the Brisker method of Talmudic analysis, which originated in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century and quickly developed into a leading method of theoretical study of Jewish law. The Brisker method takes its name from the city of …

An Introduction To Self-Incrimination In Jewish Law, With Application To The American Legal System: A Psychological And Philosophical Analysis, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

In recent years, American courts and legal scholars have increasingly turned to Jewish legal tradition for insights into various issues confronting the American legal system. Jewish law has provided an alternative model and, at times, a contrast case that some have found particularly helpful in illuminating complex, controversial, and unsettled areas of American law. In light of these developments, this Essay aims to consider the efficacy of drawing on Jewish law to facilitate a more thoughtful analysis of issues in American law, with a specific focus on the issue of self-incrimination. The Essay begins with a brief discussion of the …

A Look At American Legal Practice Through A Perspective Of Jewish Law, Ethics, And Tradition: A Conceptual Overview, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

Levine examines the roles of legislative and judicial bodies, in the context of a discussion of broader principles of legislation in the Jewish legal system. In recent years, American legal scholars have increasingly looked to Jewish law as a model of an alternative legal system that considers many of the issues present in the American legal system. In relation to the roles of legislative and judicial bodies, the Jewish legal system provides a particularly illuminating contrast to the American legal system, in part because in Jewish law, the same authority, the Sanhedrin, or High Court, serves in both a legislative …

The Puzzle Of Ivf, Dena S. Davis

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This essay seeks to address a puzzling element of the current political and legal struggles over abortion in the United States: if, as pro-life activists insist, embryos are morally equivalent to born, living persons, then why do these activists not oppose in vitro fertilization (IVF) as aggressively as they oppose abortion? IVF accounts for a significant number of destroyed embryos. Constitutionally, IVF appears to be a much more vulnerable target than abortion. And yet, legislative and political attempts to attack and restrict IVF are few, while attempts to erode women's capability to terminate pregnancies are a constant feature of our …

A Tribute To My Friend, Wendy B. Scott

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

The Often Imitated, But Not Yet Duplicated, Revised Uniform Commercial Code Article 1, Keith A. Rowley

Scholarly Works

Unlike Revised Uniform Commercial Code Article 9 (1999), which every state and the District of Columbia enacted within roughly two years of its promulgation, states have been slower to warm to Revised UCC Article 1 (2001). Nearly seven years after the American Law Institute and the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Law promulgated it, thirty-three states have enacted their own versions of Revised UCC Article 1. None of the thirty-three has enacted the uniform version in its entirety. All thirty-three enacting states have rejected the uniform choice-of-law provision (§ 1-301) in favor of retaining language based on pre-Revised …

Introductory Essays, Kellye Testy, Thomas J. Holdych, Robert Medved

Seattle University Law Review

Congratulations to the Law Review for its first thirty years and many thanks to each and every graduate who, during their tenure on the Law Review, made it what it is today. May your outstanding work be an inspiration for those whom follow. After all, look at what four students with typewriters and carbon paper did in 1975!

Final Report Of The Maldivian Penal Law & Sentencing Codification Project: Text Of Draft Code (Volume 1) And Official Commentary (Volume 2), Paul H. Robinson, Criminal Law Research Group -- University Of Pennsylvania

All Faculty Scholarship

The United Nations Development Programme and the Government of the Maldives commissioned the drafting of a penal code based upon existing Maldivian law, which meant primarily a codification of Shari'a. This is the Final Report of that codification project. A description of the process that produced this Report and the drafting principles behind it, as well as a discussion of the special challenges of codifying Islamic criminal law, are contained in an article at http://ssrn.com/abstract=941443.

Section 1983 Cases In The October 2004 Term, Martin A. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Man, The State And You: The Role Of The State In Regulating Gender Hierarchies, Meredith Render

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

On Nourishing The Curriculum With A Transnational-Law Lagniappe (From The Association Of American Law Schools' Workshop On Integrating Transnational Legal Perspectives Into The First-Year Curriculum, Annual Meeting, Torts Panel, January 2006), Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Clinical Legal Education In Hong Kong: A Time To Move Forward, Stacy Caplow

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The "Public Use" Requirement In Eminent Domain Law: A Rationale Based On Secret Purchases And Private Influence, Daniel B. Kelly

Journal Articles

This Article provides a rationale for understanding and interpreting the public use requirement within eminent domain law. The rationale is based on two factors. First, while the government often needs the power of eminent domain to avoid the problem of strategic holdout, private parties are generally able to purchase property through secret buying agents. The availability of these undisclosed agents makes the use of eminent domain for private parties unnecessary and indeed undesirable. The government, however, is ordinarily unable to make secret purchases because its plans are subject to democratic deliberation and thus publicly known in advance. Second, while the …

Celebrating Life And Taxes, Francine J. Lipman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Relief From The Rubble: Tax Assistance For Victims Of The 2005 Hurricane Season, Francine J. Lipman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Uniform Commercial Code Survey: Sales, Keith A. Rowley, Carolyn L. Dessin, Larry T. Garvin, Robyn L. Meadows

Scholarly Works

2005 Uniform Commercial Code Survey: Sales

To Err Is Human, Keith A. Rowley

Scholarly Works

This essay reviews Allan Farnsworth's final book, Alleviating Mistakes: Reversal and Forgiveness for Flawed Perceptions (Oxford U. Press 2004). There are many kinds of mistakes. One kind - a rational, well-intended decision or act that results in unanticipated, negative consequences - was the principal subject of Allan Farnsworth's previous foray into the realm of contractual angst: Changing Your Mind: The Law of Regretted Decisions (Yale U. Press 1998). Another kind - the subject of this book - is a mistake caused by an inaccurate, incomplete, or incompetent mental state at the time of an act or decision that results in …

Bringing Families In: Recommendations Of The Incarceration, Reentry And Family Roundtables, Ann Cammett, Johnna Christian, Nancy Fisherman, Lori Scott-Pickens

Scholarly Works

Building on the findings of the New Jersey Reentry Roundtable and a growing concern around the state about how to improve outcomes for the more than 70,000 individuals expected to return home from prison over the next five years, the roundtable examined the complex role that families – broadly defined – play in the lives of prisoners during incarceration and after their release. This document presents a set of recommendations emerging directly from roundtable sessions and provides a road map for individual and collaborative efforts accepted by a range of key players in New Jersey, including government officials, community and …

Frontier Justice: Legal Aid And Unhcr Refugee Status Determination In Egypt, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

Where UNHCR conducts refugee status determination (RSD), its reactions to legal aid for asylum-seekers have been mixed. Statistical evidence collected from Egypt in 2002 indicates a correlation between receiving some form of legal aid service and an asylum-seeker's increased chances of gaining refugee protection from UNHCR. Unconventional forms of legal aid, including limited services by supervised non-lawyers (including volunteers from the refugee community) showed a positive impact on first instance cases, while traditional legal aid models showed an impact at the appeal stage. Legal aid should form an essential part of UNHCR's RSD procedures, and NGOs should work to expand …

The Beleaguered Gatekeeper: Protection Challenges Posed By Unhcr Refugee Status Determination, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

The number of individual Refugee Status Determination (RSD) applications received by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offices worldwide nearly doubled from 1997 to 2001, while UNHCR’s RSD operations have been criticized for failing to implement basic standards of procedural fairness. Yet, although there is some literature critiquing how UNHCR determines refugee status, there is little literature examining whether UNHCR should do so, and if it should, when, where, and under what conditions.

UNHCR performance of RSD poses protection challenges because it is founded on a basic contradiction. On the one hand, government action is essential for effective refugee …

Tribute To Adam Milani, Linda H. Edwards, Terry Phelps

Scholarly Works

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." So muses David Copperfield in the first pages of Dickens' eponymous novel, and these words seem a particularly fitting epigraph for Adam Milani's life. Adam's life took unexpected, even tragic turns that could have left someone with less character overwhelmed, completely victimized. But Adam remained the hero of his own life, down to the last page. This article is a tribute to Adam Milani.

Standing In Babylon, Looking Toward Zion, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

This article defends the triumph of vision at the 2006 UNLV Conference on Representing Children in Families by examining the interrelationship between idealism and realism in the definition of lawyers' roles and the importance of idealized visions to the process of reforming dysfunctional systems. This article suggests that the vision of lawyering for children sketched in the UNLV Recommendations--though based in idealism--is both deeply realistic and ultimately practical. This article thus affirms the choice of the group of idealists who stood together for a few days in modern-day Babylon to keep their eyes trained on the vision of Zion as …

A Tribute To Professor Daniel G. Gibbens, Andrew Coats

Andrew M. Coats

No abstract provided.