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Jurisprudence Commons

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Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

Risk-Utility Balancing In Design Defect Cases, David G. Owen Dec 1997

Risk-Utility Balancing In Design Defect Cases, David G. Owen

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Design defectiveness is generally defined in terms of a risk-utility balance, the form of liability test adopted by the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability. However, confusion abounds in how courts formulate such balancing tests. A national survey of recent appellate court decisions reveals that courts generally define the balance in terms of the product's risks and utility, a formulation which appears to call for weighing the product's global costs against the product's global benefits. So defined, the design defect test is incorrect. What appellate courts mean for juries to decide, and what juries ordinarily do in fact decide, …


Cultivating A Seedling Charter: South Africa's Court Grows Its Constitution, Margaret A. Burnham Jan 1997

Cultivating A Seedling Charter: South Africa's Court Grows Its Constitution, Margaret A. Burnham

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

As South Africa emerges from the vestiges of apartheid, its Constitutional Court struggles to develop a jurisprudence that reflects the lasting ideals of a constitutional democracy. This Article examines the Court's use of international and foreign law in developing a unique form of constitutional jurisprudence. It argues that the Constitutional Court is in the process of developing an innovative form of decision-making that effectively combines domestically derived principles of justice with those developed in the international forum. This Article concludes that reliable methods of adjudication are firmly entrenched in the South African legal system and that its constitutional jurisprudence should …


The Passive Virtues And The World Court: Pro-Dialogic Abstentation By The International Court Of Justice, Antonio F. Perez Jan 1997

The Passive Virtues And The World Court: Pro-Dialogic Abstentation By The International Court Of Justice, Antonio F. Perez

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article will describe how the World Court has abstained in a way that not only expresses its commitment to principled government but also implements a coordinate, participation-inducing agenda. The article argues that the most recent jurisprudence of the ICJ manifests an acceleration of this tendency in response not only to the need to conserve judicial resources in light of the increased use of the Court by States, but also, and more significantly, to the enhanced law-making activity of the political organs of the U.N.