Law Commons^™

Where Equity Meets Expertise: Re-Thinking Appellate Review In Complex Litigation, Michael J. Hays

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The field of complex litigation continues to grow as both an academic study and a popular phenomenon. One cannot escape news accounts of major class action litigation, and lawyers continue to find new ways to push the outer bounds of civil litigation practices to accommodate large-scale disputes involving multiple claims or parties. Many question whether traditional procedures can or should apply to these cases. Drawing on this well-recognized procedural tension, this Article explores the relationship between trial and appellate courts in complex litigation and argues for a revised standard of appellate review for trial court decisions affecting the party structure …

Eyes Wide Shut: How Ignorance Of The Common Interest Doctrine Can Compromise Informed Consent, Katharine Traylor Schaffzin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article addresses the novel ethical problems presented by the common interest doctrine that implicate an attorney's duties of diligence, confidentiality, and loyalty to his or her client. These adverse effects of informal aggregation are not always fully considered before engaging a client in a common interest arrangement, but they should be. In Part II, this Article first explains the potential advantages that the common interest doctrine presents as an evidentiary tool, but then recognizes that exercise of the doctrine creates an undefined duty on the part of the attorney to the party with whom a client exchanges confidential information. …

Why Children Still Need A Lawyer, Marcia Robinson Lowry, Sara Bartosz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Every day approximately 500,000 children across the United States wake up in foster care, most in foster family homes, though many others in group homes and institutions. These children entered the state foster care system as innocent victims of abuse or neglect occurring in their birth homes. As wards of the state, they depend completely on the government to provide for their essential safety and wellbeing and to reconnect them with a permanent family, hopefully their own.

Though state child welfare agencies possess fundamental legal obligations under the United States Constitution and federal and state statutes to provide adequate care …

Forcing Attorneys To Represent Indigent Civil Litigants: The Problems And Some Proposals, Greg Stevens

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note argues that uncompensated court appointments represent an unsatisfactory means to provide counsel for indigents. Part I discusses the policy arguments for and against forced, uncompensated court appointments. Part I concludes that the arguments against these appointments outweigh the arguments in favor of them. Part II argues that they violate the Constitution's prohibitions against uncompensated takings and involuntary servitude. Part III offers a proposal that would provide effective representation for indigent civil litigants, while avoiding infringement of attorneys' constitutional rights.

Legitimacy In Social Reform Litigation: An Empirical Study, Timothy Wilton

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article undertakes a detailed examination of a single lawsuit, Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children v. Ann Arbor School District Board. This study first explores the diversity of interests present among both the plaintiff and defendant groups in King, and analyzes the performance of the attorneys in representing these interests. The Article then turns to the problems of resistance that arise at the decree stage in social reform litigation, and presents an empirical evaluation of the factors influencing the response to judicially mandated relief.

The Emerging Right Of Legal Assistance For The Indigent In Civil Proceedings, Jeffrey M. Mandell

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

After the Supreme Court declared in Gideon v. Wainwright that indigents have a constitutional right to appointed counsel in criminal cases, attention turned to the possibility that a similar right could be found for civil litigants. Although there is no explicit constitutional guarantee of counsel for the civil litigant, the due process clause, which protects property rights as well as personal freedoms, arguably mandates that there be a right to professional representation of all citizens in all courts. The inability of most laymen to effectively present even a rudimentary case on their own behalf indicates that without counsel a meaningful …