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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

Five Years Under The Veterans Judicial Review Act: The Va Is Brought Kicking And Screaming Into The World Of Meaningful Due Process, Lawrence B. Hagel, Michael P. Horan May 2018

Five Years Under The Veterans Judicial Review Act: The Va Is Brought Kicking And Screaming Into The World Of Meaningful Due Process, Lawrence B. Hagel, Michael P. Horan

Maine Law Review

I have been asked to give you the “veterans' perspective” on whether the Court of Veterans Appeals has served the purpose for which it was created by Congress and also to describe what additional steps the court might take to further the ends desired by veterans. This is no easy task. It is difficult not because I do not have a lot to say. It is difficult because it is a charge to speak, in a sense, for all veterans. In order to understand what I mean, I think it may be helpful to give you a little background on …


The Impact Of Judicial Review On The Department Of Veterans Affairs' Claims Adjudication Process: The Changing Role Of The Board Of Veterans' Appeals, Charles L. Craigin May 2018

The Impact Of Judicial Review On The Department Of Veterans Affairs' Claims Adjudication Process: The Changing Role Of The Board Of Veterans' Appeals, Charles L. Craigin

Maine Law Review

In a March 1992 statement submitted to the Congress, the Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs described the impact of judicial review on the Department of Veterans Affairs (Department or VA) as “profound.” That description is still apt and applies with as much force to the Board of Veterans' Appeals (Board or BVA) as it does to the Department as a whole. Nothing has had as much impact on the Board as the Veterans' Judicial Review Act (VJRA). The VJRA established the United States Court of Veterans Appeals in 1988 and charged it with the review of decisions of the Board. …


Jurisdiction Of The United States Court Of Veterans Appeals: Searching Out The Limits, Frank Q. Nebeker May 2018

Jurisdiction Of The United States Court Of Veterans Appeals: Searching Out The Limits, Frank Q. Nebeker

Maine Law Review

I have been asked to talk to you about the United States Court of Veterans Appeals-specifically, challenges and trends in defining the scope of the court's jurisdiction. As a brand-new court, and one without any antecedent, the court began to establish precedent to deal with all aspects of its jurisdiction. In fact, it is still very much in the process of setting such precedent. For the first time, the court brought the principle of stare decisis to the veterans' community. The principle required considerable readjustment within the Department of Veterans Affairs (Department or VA). The VA's regional offices and the …


Introductory Remarks, Donald N. Zillman May 2018

Introductory Remarks, Donald N. Zillman

Maine Law Review

I am very pleased to welcome this distinguished company to the University of Maine School of Law and to Portland. I thank Chairman Cragin for bringing such a distinguished group to his law school. I thank the Maine Law Review for taking the sponsor's role and for insuring that the publication of our proceedings will take our thoughts far beyond this room. My interest in military law and veterans law as participant and scholar extends over the last twenty years. And so, when Chairman Cragin broached the idea of a conference to provide the first assessment of how the “new …


Reclaiming A Great Judge's Legacy, Frank M. Coffin Apr 2018

Reclaiming A Great Judge's Legacy, Frank M. Coffin

Maine Law Review

In the legal profession a deep sigh of relief is heard over the land. After roughly two decades of incubation, the long-awaited biography of the great judge has arrived, Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge, by Stanford Law Professor Gerald Gunther. The book, in my opinion, is well worth the wait. Nearly 700 pages, plus a hundred more for footnotes, it nevertheless represents a heroic condensation of some 100,000 different items on file at Harvard Law School, including no fewer than 50,000 items of correspondence, 1,000 district court opinions, and nearly 3,000 circuit court opinions. The inventory alone requires …


Honorable John D. Clifford, Jr. A Memoir By His Three Law Clerks, Frank M. Coffin, L. Damon Scales Jr., Richard E. Poulos Apr 2018

Honorable John D. Clifford, Jr. A Memoir By His Three Law Clerks, Frank M. Coffin, L. Damon Scales Jr., Richard E. Poulos

Maine Law Review

The domain over which United States District Judge John D. Clifford, Jr. presided from 1947 until his death in 1956 was very different from what it is today. Anyone could walk into the federal courthouse in Portland. Security guards were unknown, and lawyers, litigants, and passers-by were free to come and go. A leisurely air pervaded all the court offices. There was no hurry. This was an era when there were only two lawyers in the United States Attorney's office: the United States Attorney and his one assistant.


Justice Edward Godfrey And The Role Of The Trial Judge In The Criminal Process, Melvyn H. Zarr University Of Maine School Of Law Apr 2018

Justice Edward Godfrey And The Role Of The Trial Judge In The Criminal Process, Melvyn H. Zarr University Of Maine School Of Law

Maine Law Review

At the end of 1994 Dean Edward S. Godfrey III stepped down from his teaching position as Professor Emeritus of the University of Maine School of Law. In honor of his service to Maine’s only law school, to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, to the Maine Bar, and to the people of the State of Maine, the Board and Staff dedicate Volume 47 of the Maine Law Review to Dean Edward Godfrey. Reviews by Maine Law School faculty members of Dean Godfrey’s Law Court decisions in several areas of the law follow.


Of Judicial Review, High Standards And Edward S. Godfrey, David P. Cluchey Apr 2018

Of Judicial Review, High Standards And Edward S. Godfrey, David P. Cluchey

Maine Law Review

At the end of 1994 Dean Edward S. Godfrey III stepped down from his teaching position as Professor Emeritus of the University of Maine School of Law. In honor of his service to Maine’s only law school, to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, to the Maine Bar, and to the people of the State of Maine, the Board and Staff dedicate Volume 47 of the Maine Law Review to Dean Edward Godfrey. Reviews by Maine Law School faculty members of Dean Godfrey’s Law Court decisions in several areas of the law follow.


Basic Trial Advocacy, Michael W. Mullane Apr 2018

Basic Trial Advocacy, Michael W. Mullane

Maine Law Review

Mary Crates taught me to “begin as you mean to go on.” Peter Murray's book is a good place to begin for those embarking on a life of trial advocacy. For those of us whose beginnings are distant and often painful memories, it is an excellent reminder of where we meant to go. Trial advocacy is an infinitely complex task. This simple fact is both its joy and curse. Teaching trial advocacy is equally difficult. There is no “never” and no “always.” There is a host of commonly accepted maxims, many of which are contradictory on their face and all …


Nuccio V. Nuccio: The Doctrine Of Equitable Estoppel Will Not Bar The Statute Of Limitations Defense In A Child Sexual Abuse Case Involving Repressed Memory, Christina J. D'Appolonia Mar 2018

Nuccio V. Nuccio: The Doctrine Of Equitable Estoppel Will Not Bar The Statute Of Limitations Defense In A Child Sexual Abuse Case Involving Repressed Memory, Christina J. D'Appolonia

Maine Law Review

Kathleen Nuccio alleged that she was sexually abused by her father when she was three years old. He continued to sexually abuse her for ten long years. He threatened her life when he held a chisel to her throat and vowed to kill her if she ever told anyone of the abuse. Luke Nuccio not only sexually defiled his daughter but also verbally abused her and physically beat her until she was seventeen years old. One such beating caused damage so severe to Kathleen's ear that she was forced to have surgery. Kathleen never spoke of the abuse during the …


Report Of The Maine Commission On Gender, Justice, And The Courts, Maine Commission On Gender, Justice, And The Courts Mar 2018

Report Of The Maine Commission On Gender, Justice, And The Courts, Maine Commission On Gender, Justice, And The Courts

Maine Law Review

The Commission on Gender, Justice, and the Courts was established by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in January 1993, pursuant to a resolution adopted by the Conference of Chief Justices in 1988 urging the creation of task forces to study gender bias and minority concerns within court systems. In recent years, forty-one states, the District of Columbia, and two federal circuits have established task forces on gender bias in the courts as part of a continuing effort to achieve equality for women and men in American society. These jurisdictions recognized that access to a neutral and unbiased court is essential …


A Matter Of Interpretation: Federal Courts And The Law, Charles R. Priest Mar 2018

A Matter Of Interpretation: Federal Courts And The Law, Charles R. Priest

Maine Law Review

Justice Scalia's engaging essay, “Common-Law Courts in a Civil-Law System: The Role of United States Federal Courts in Interpreting the Constitution and Laws,” and the four comments it provokes, should provide lawyers, judges, and other lawmakers with an interesting evening. Instead of presenting a theoretical view of the role of the federal courts in interpretation, Justice Scalia sketches out a case for “textualism.” “Textualism” is one of several currently contending methods of interpreting statutes and the United States Constitution, and is currently popular among federal judges who see their role as restricting government's powers to those expressly stated in the …


Maine's Overburdened Law Court: Has The Time Come For A Maine Appeals Court?, Peter L. Murray Feb 2018

Maine's Overburdened Law Court: Has The Time Come For A Maine Appeals Court?, Peter L. Murray

Maine Law Review

For the entire 178 years of Maine's statehood, its Supreme Judicial Court, “sitting as the Law Court,” has served as Maine's appellate court of first and last resort for all appeals from its trial courts of general jurisdiction. Over this time span, and particularly over the last three decades, the growth in number and complexity of civil and criminal appeals has placed the Law Court under an extremely heavy burden of cases. The sheer number of the appeals which the Law Court is expected to consider and decide risks exceeding the capacity of the institution for careful, thorough, and deliberate …


The Tradition Of Sustantive Judicial Review: A Case Study Of Continuity In Constitutional Jurisprudence, David M. Gold Feb 2018

The Tradition Of Sustantive Judicial Review: A Case Study Of Continuity In Constitutional Jurisprudence, David M. Gold

Maine Law Review

Until the 1970s, scholars routinely asserted that courts in the late nineteenth century initiated a radical reinterpretation of due process of law in their attempt to stem an onrushing tide of legislation designed to regulate business activity. This protection-of-business theory of due process development originated with the efforts of socialist and progressive commentators of the early twentieth century to discredit what they saw as a “revolutionary” transformation of due process from a term of “nominal significance in American constitutional law” into a bulwark of property. Progressive intellectuals assailed the judiciary in similar terms. Yale University president Arthur T. Hadley, an …


In Pursuit Of The Public Good: Lawyers Who Care, Ruth Bader Ginsburg Feb 2018

In Pursuit Of The Public Good: Lawyers Who Care, Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Maine Law Review

The Eighth Annual Frank M. Coffin Lecture on Law and Public Service was held on November 22, 1999. The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, delivered the lecture. Established in 1992, the lecture honors Judge Frank M. Coffin, Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and long-time friend of the University of Maine School of Law.