Law Commons^™

History, Human Nature, And Property Regimes: Filling In The Civilizing Argument, Jedediah Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

Comment on Carol Rose's 2005 Childress Lecture

A Tribute To Mel Shimm, Barak D. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ecosystem Services And The Public Trust Doctrine: Working Change From Within, James Salzman, J.B. Ruhl

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Conservative Case For Federalism, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Contract As Statute, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi

Faculty Scholarship

Formalists contend that courts should apply strict textual analysis in interpreting contracts between sophisticated commercial parties. Sophisticated parties have the expertise and means to record their intentions in writing, reducing the litigation and uncertainty costs surrounding incomplete contracts. Moreover, to the extent courts misinterpret contracts, sophisticated parties may simply rewrite their contracts to clarify their true intent. We argue that the formalist approach imposes large costs on even sophisticated parties in the context of boilerplate contracts. Where courts make errors in interpreting boilerplate terms, parties face large collective action problems in rewriting existing boilerplate provisions. Any single party that attempts …

Building On Custom: Land Tenure Policy And Economic Development In Ghana, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

This Note addresses the intersection of customary and statutory land law in the land tenure policy of Ghana. It argues that improving the current land tenure policy demands integration of customary land law and customary authorities into the statutory system. After describing why and how customary property practices are central to the economic viability of any property system, the Note gives a brief overview of Ghana’s customary and statutory land law. The Note concludes with specific policy suggestions about how Ghana could better draw on the strength of its customary land sector.

Combatant Status Review Tribunals: Flawed Answers To The Wrong Question, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

This Comment argues that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals were not competent to deny Prisoner of War status because they were charged only with identifying enemy combatants, a broad category that by its own terms includes many POWs. Given the substantial overlap between the definitions of "enemy combatant" and "POW," a CSRT's affirmative enemy combatant determination actually supports a detainee's POW status. Thus, even after their enemy combatant status has been adjudicated by the CSRTs, Guantánamo detainees should still be treated as presumptive POWs.

Fair Pay For Chief Executive Officers: Maximizing Firm Value By Minimizing Income Disparity, James D. Cox

Faculty Scholarship

This article links the growing income disparity in America to a possible metric that can be used to better assess the appropriate level of executive compensation. The article reviews the intellectual, commercial, cultural, and judicial forces that have each contributed toward the significant rise in executive compensation. Of particular note is the unqualified failure of courts and outside directors to provide meaningful supervision of executive compensation. This failure in part reflects the failure of society to develop guidance regarding what is the appropriate level of compensation for executives of public companies. The article concludes by reviewing evidence that income disparity …

Immigration Status And The Best Interests Of The Child Standard, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Criminal Justice Collapse: The Constitution After Hurricane Katrina, Brandon L. Garrett, Tania Tetlow

Faculty Scholarship

The New Orleans criminal justice system collapsed after Hurricane Katrina, resulting in a constitutional crisis. Eight thousand people, mostly indigent and charged with misdemeanors such as public drunkenness or failure to pay traffic tickets, languished indefinitely in state prisons. The court system shut its doors, the police department fell into disarray, few prosecutors remained, and a handful of public defenders could not meet with, much less represent, the thousands detained. This dire situation persisted for many months, long after the system should have been able to recover. We present a narrative of the collapse of the New Orleans area criminal …

Revisiting "The Need For Negro Lawyers": Are Today's Black Corporate Lawyers Houstonian Social Engineers?, H. Timothy Lovelace Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Trilemma Of Meta-Blackmail: Is Conditionally Threatening Blackmail Worse, The Same, Or Better Than Blackmail Itself?, Russell Christopher

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Meta-Blackmail, Russell Christopher

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Rwu School Of Law Enewsletter, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Responsibilities Of Judges And Advocates In Civil And Common Law: Some Lingering Misconceptions Concerning Civil Lawsuits, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., Angelo Dondi

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Preemption In The Rehnquist Court: A Preliminary Empirical Assessment, Michael S. Greve, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

The federal preemption of state law has emerged as a prominent field of study for legal scholars and political scientists. This rise to prominence of a technical and often dull field of jurisprudence is due to a number of developments-increasingly frequent federal statutory preemptions; the states' unprecedented aggressiveness in regulating business transactions, the expansion of corporate liability under state common law and the increased resort of corporate defendants to federal preemption defenses; and, not least, the Rehnquist Court's discovery of federalism and states' rights.

Unfortunately, the preemption debate has been marred by misperceptions and a lack of reliable data. Extravagant …

Re-Thinking Alimony: The Aaml's Considerations For Calculating Alimony, Spousal Support Or Maintenance, Mary Kay Kisthardt

Faculty Works

The mission of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers is "to encourage the study, improve the practice, elevate the standards and advance the cause of matrimonial law, to the end that the welfare of the family and society be protected." The AAML Comission was charged to analyze, critically review and make recommendations consistent with the mission of the Academy. After considering all available sources of information the Commission concluded that there are two significant and related problems associated with the setting of spousal support. The first is a lack of consistency resulting in a perception of unfairness. From this flows …

The Wakarusa Wave: An Essay On Life, Law, And Urban Kayaking, John W. Ragsdale Jr

Faculty Works

The Wakarusa River, a rather modest watercourse, emerges from confinement behind Clinton Dam, near Lawrence, Kansas, and flows dutifully eastward in a regularized, barren channel. Perhaps a half mile beyond the dam, the Wakarusa begins to reassert itself as a natural waterway; trees appear along the banks and the stream enters a shallow gorge. Midway down lies the Wakarusa Wave, described by some as "the best whitewater spot within 400 miles." At highwater, around 1000 c.f.s., there is a standing wave, a deep trough, and a high, foaming reflex wave, oscillating, and undulating in place over a bottom irregularity, which …

Montana At The Crossroads, Judith Royster

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Indian Tribal Rights To Groundwater, Judith Royster

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Safeguarding The Interests Of Children In Intercountry Adoption: Assessing The Gatekeepers, Marianne Blair

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Teaching Decolonization: Reacquisition Of Indian Lands Within And Without The Box - An Essay, G. William Rice

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Texture Of Loyalty, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines whether and how reforms in corporate governance structures and practices in the United States may reshape conventional notions of the fiduciary duties owed by independent directors of public companies. The paper identifies two focal points for the evolution of directors' fiduciary duties. First, various reforms in corporate governance assign more specific responsibilities to directors, arguably reorienting directors' loyalty to due discharge of a specified function along with ongoing or residual duties of loyalty owed in more general terms to the corporation and its shareholders. The relationships among these specific duties and more general ones may be complex, …

The Functional Method Of Comparative Law, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

The functional method has become both the mantra and the bete noire of contemporary comparative law. The debate over the functional method is the focal point of almost all discussions about the field of comparative law as a whole, about centers and peripheries of scholarly projects and interests, about mainstream and avant-garde, about ethnocentrism and orientalism, about convergence and pluralism, about technocratic instrumentalism and cultural awareness, etc. Not surprisingly, this functional method is a chimera, both as theory and as practice of comparative law. In fact, "the functional method" is a trifold misnomer: There is not one ("the") functional method …

Financial Information Failure And Lawyer Responsibility, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

When public firms collapse amid allegations of financial information failure-such as misleading financial statements-society looks beyond the role of accountants to see who else should be held responsible. Lawyers advising the firm increasingly are charged with responsibility, perhaps because modern financial and business complexities, as well as rules that make accounting determinations turn in part on legal conclusions, have blurred the boundary between legal and accounting duties. Lawyers should want to satisfy this responsibility not only to avoid liability but also to safeguard their reputation and integrity. The difficult question, which this article attempts to answer, is what that responsibility …

Lawyers, Guns, & Money: The Rise And Fall Of Tort Litigation Against The Firearms Industry, Allen K. Rostron

Faculty Works

As the twentieth century came to a close, the gun industry was under siege. The murders of twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School in April 1999 brought a chorus of calls for legislation limiting access to guns. A year later, demonstrators gathered in front of the U.S. Capitol building for the Million Mom March, the largest rally ever held in support of gun control measures.

The industry's greatest concern, however, arose in another arena. Gun manufacturers found themselves in courts on an array of tort lawsuits across the country. Many of those asserting claims were individuals injured …

Legal Issues In Coalition Warfare: A U.S. Perspective, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Welfare Polls: A Synthesis, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

"Welfare polls" are survey instruments that seek to quantify the determinants of human well-being. Currently, three welfare polling formats are dominant: contingent valuation (CV) surveys, quality-adjusted life year (QALY) surveys, and happiness surveys. Each format has generated a large, specialized, scholarly literature, but no comprehensive discussion of welfare polling as a general enterprise exists.This Article seeks to fill that gap.

Part I describes the trio of existing formats. Part II discusses the current and potential uses of welfare polls in governmental decisionmaking. Part III analyzes in detail the obstacles that welfare polls must overcome to provide useful well-being information, and …

Checks And Balances: Congress And The Federal Court, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

This essay was published as a chapter in Reforming the Supreme Court: Term Limits for Justices (Paul D. Carrington & Roger Cramton eds, Carolina Academic Press 2006). Its point is that Congress has long neglected its duty implicit in the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers to constrain the tendency of the Court, the academy and the legal profession to inflate the Court's status and power. The term "life tenure" is a significant source of a sense of royal status having not only the adverse cultural effects noted by Nagel, but also doleful effects on the administration and enforcement of …

Cost-Benefit Analysis, The Death Penalty, And Rationales For Punishment, Rahiim Manji

Senior Thesis Projects, 2003-2006

No abstract provided.