Law Commons^™

December 20, 2012: No, God Has Not Called Them Home, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “No, God Has Not Called Them Home“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 16, 2012: Heller Is Good News For Gun Control, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Heller is Good News for Gun Control“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 12, 2012: Bringing Wal-Mart Jobs To Michigan, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Bringing Wal-Mart Jobs to Michigan“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 8, 2012: Another Challenge From Religious Conscience, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Another Challenge From Religious Conscience“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Talkin' 'Bout Law's Generations: Intergenerational Differences In Reading Legal Texts, Marett Leiboff

Marett Leiboff

This paper describes a project I am currently undertaking which seeks to find out if generational differences affect the reading of legal texts, with the potential to compromise the possibility of textual integrity in law. I am calling this concept ‘intergenerational interpretative dissonance’. Using an empirical study (which is currently on foot), the project is drawing on ‘pop culture’ generations to undertake a quiz-style survey to explore differences in knowledge, history and meanings about non-legal events in order to establish what non-legal knowledge is shared (or not) by different generations of lawyers. The survey is being used to provide background …

"Talkin' 'Bout Law's Generations: An Empirical And Jurisprudential Investigation Into The Reading Of Legal Cases By Different Generations Of Lawyers", Marett Leiboff

Marett Leiboff

The Australian TV comedy quiz show, Talkin’ ‘bout your generation, pits the knowledge of three different teams of generations against each other. Like a highlystrung game of trivial pursuit, the show’s comedy darkly exposes the speed with which knowledge, language and meaning is lost and misinterpreted across and between generations. This pilot study, Talkin’ ‘bout law’s generations takes its cue from its namesake, by discovering if legal interpretation is similarly affected. But the character of legal interpretation being explored is not uni-dimensional, and is instead exploring if (and how) social, political, historical and linguistic knowledge is deployed by its interpreters. …

'Ditto': Law, Pop Culture And Humanities And The Impact Of Intergenerational Interpretative Dissonance, Marett Leiboff

Marett Leiboff

Building on Julius Stone's remark that jurisprudence is law's extroversion (or extraversion), this essay explores the consequences that flow from the loss of a shared humanities discourse by lawyers. In adapting the concept of extraversion to those things about us in the world, the essay considers the finding of an empirical study, Law's Gens Project, which revealed a profound, almost seismic shift in what different generational groupings of lawyers know, based in the humanities, placing this point of rupture squarely in the 1970s. Drawing on allusions and cultural references used in judgments, this project reveals how these cultural markers affect …

Alice Through The Wormhole: Reconciling Spatial And Temporal Disjunctions In The Creation Of Content In Australian Media Law, Marett Leiboff

Marett Leiboff

Copy of powerpoint presentation to the conference.

December 5, 2012: Is Abortion Next?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Is Abortion Next?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Fortitude At Forty, Or Why A Seemingly Content, Overly Ambitious, And Detrimentally Optimistic Forty-Something Year Old Decided To Upend His Life And Go To Law School

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Remembering Mary Dunlap As A Student, Herma Hill Kay

Herma Hill Kay

Recounts the experience of having Mary C. Dunlap as a student at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California in Berkeley. Introduction by Dunlap and fellow students, Nancy Davis and Wendy Webster Williams of a course on Women and the Law into the Boalt Hall curriculum; Establishment of the Davis, Dunlap and Williams women' rights law firm, which was later reorganized as the public interest women's rights firm of Equal Rights Advocates, Inc.; Admittance of Dunlap of being involved in a lesbian relationship; Reason given by Dunlap for studying law.

Berkeley Women's Law Journal: A Powerful Force At Twenty, Herma Hill Kay

Herma Hill Kay

Anniversaries provide appropriate occasions to learn from experience by examining the past and planning for the future. The Twentieth Anniversary of the founding of the Berkeley Women's Law Journal (now the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice) is such an occasion.

Conflict Minerals Legislation: The Sec’S New Role As Diplomatic And Humanitarian Watchdog, Karen E. Woody

Fordham Law Review

Buried in the voluminous Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is an oft-overlooked provision requiring corporate disclosure of the use of “conflict minerals” in products manufactured by issuing corporations. This Article scrutinizes the legislative history and lobbying efforts behind the conflict minerals provision to establish that, unlike the majority of the bill, its goals are moral and political, rather than financial. Analyzing the history of disclosure requirements, the Article suggests that the presence of conflict minerals in an issuer’s product is not inherently material information and that the Dodd-Frank provision statutorily renders nonmaterial information material. The provision, therefore, …

An Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To State Pension Reform, Jeremy Stuart Buck

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Public pension systems are underfunded, straining state budgets. Historically, many states have presumed that they can modify pension benefits only as to newly-hired employees, and that they must leave benefit accruals untouched for current workers. More recently, though, states have begun enacting more fundamental pension reform that modifies future accruals or even reduces cost-of-living allowances for retirees. Nearly all such new reforms have been the subject of one or more lawsuits alleging that the federal and/or state constitution bars the legislature from reducing benefits or accrual patterns. This dissertation examines the legal underpinnings for arguments made against pension reform, and …

Instructing Juries On Noneconomic Contract Damages, David A. Hoffman, Alexander S. Radus

Fordham Law Review

Gathering pattern contract jury instructions from every state, we examine jurisdictions’ treatment of noneconomic damages. While the conventional account holds that there is a uniform preference against awards of noneconomic damages, we find four different approaches in pattern instructions, with only one state explicitly prohibiting juries from considering noneconomic losses. Lay juries have considerably more freedom to award the promisee’s noneconomic damages than the hornbooks would have us believe.

We substantiate this claim with an online survey experiment asking respondents about a simple contract case and instructing them using the differing pattern forms. We found that subjects routinely awarded more …

Disfavored Constitution, Passive Virtues? Linking State Constitutional Fiscal Limitations And Permissive Taxpayer Standing Doctrines, Joshua G. Urquhart

Fordham Law Review

This Article contrasts the permissive state taxpayer standing doctrines in place in most states with the restrictive federal and state taxpayer standing rules applied in federal court. It proposes a new theory to explain this disparity, arguing that ubiquitous state constitutional fiscal restrictions, which specifically limit a state government’s ability to tax, spend, and borrow, are a primary impetus in the creation and development of liberal state taxpayer standing doctrines. The Article evaluates this novel hypothesis through an empirical-historical survey of the early state taxpayer standing decisions in every permissive jurisdiction and finds that these provisions are indeed involved in …

Bankrupt Estoppel: The Case For A Uniform Doctrine Of Judicial Estoppel As Applied Against Former Bankruptcy Debtors, Eric Hilmo

Fordham Law Review

This Note examines the role judicial estoppel plays in supporting the U.S. federal bankruptcy regime. Though once considered an obscure doctrine, the use of judicial estoppel to bar pursuit of previously undisclosed claims by former bankrupts has grown apace with burgeoning bankruptcy filings over the last decade. While the doctrine’s application in federal courts has evolved toward a common standard of application, state courts’ application remains idiosyncratic. The Note argues that under the established laws of judgment recognition and in light of federal courts’ sophisticated application of the doctrine, state courts should apply federal judicial estoppel standards to further national …

Functionalism’S Military Necessity Problem: Extraterritorial Habeas Corpus, Justice Kennedy, Boumediene V. Bush, And Al Maqaleh V. Gates, Richard Nicholson

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court has struggled over the last 150 years to definitively answer the question of whether the U.S. Constitution applies beyond the borders of the territorial United States. Because the Constitution is silent on the issue, the burden has fallen on the judiciary to establish the contours of the doctrine. At times, the Court has espoused formulistic theories limiting constitutional application to territorial sovereignty, while at others it has looked to more objective, practical solutions that reach beyond the borders.

In 2008, the Supreme Court held in Boumediene v. Bush that the application of the Suspension Clause of …

Determining Diversity Jurisdiction Of National Banks After Wachovia Bank V. Schmidt, Michael Podolsky

Fordham Law Review

Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Wachovia Bank v. Schmidt, some courts held, for diversity jurisdiction purposes, that national banks were citizens of each and every state in which they had a branch. In Schmidt, the Supreme Court made it clear that this approach was incorrect, but failed to provide an alternative one. Not surprisingly, in the wake of that decision another court split developed. While some courts have found that national banks are citizens only of the state listed on their charters as their main office, others have found that national banks are also citizens …

Service Animals In Training And The Law: An Imperfect System., Darcie Magnuson

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not provide protection for service animals in training anywhere in public places, including workplaces and government buildings. Individual state statutes may or may not grant service animals in training access to places of public accommodations, public buildings, or places of employment. Similarly, neither the Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA) nor the Fair Housing Act (FHA) Amendments afford rights and privileges in air transportation and housing, respectively, to service animals in training. Without service animals, individuals with disabilities would not be able to equally access society or fully participate in many activities. However, without …

Patching The Ark: Improving Legal Protection Of Biological Diversity, Holly Doremus

Holly Doremus

Critiques the species-by-species approach of the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA) and discusses more holistic alternatives; US.

Constitutive Law And Environmental Policy, Holly Doremus

Holly Doremus

No abstract provided.

Legal Framework For Soviet Privatization, Olga Floroff, Susan Tiefenbrun

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ethics In Legal Education: An Augmentation Of Legal Realism, Gerald R. Ferrera

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is Culture A Justiciable Issue? , Jessica L. Darraby

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Child's Right To Be Heard And Represented In Judicial Proceedings , Howard A. Davidson

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Medical Evidence In Cases Of Intrauterine Drug And Alcohol Exposure , Judith Larsen, Robert M. Horowitz, Ira J. Chasnoff

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Lee Miller, Don Mark North

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Line-Item Veto: The Best Response When Congress Passes One Spending “Bill” A Year, L. Gordon Crovitz

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Montesquieu's Theory Of Government And The Framing Of The American Constitution , Matthew P. Bergman

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.