Legal History Commons^™

A New (And Better) Interpretation Of Holmes's Prediction Theory Of Law, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

Holmes's famous 1897 theory that law is a prediction of what courts will do in fact slowly changed the way law schools taught law until, by the mid-1920s legal realism took over the curriculum. The legal realists argued that judges decide cases on all kinds of objective and subjective reasons including precedents. If law schools wanted to train future lawyers to be effective, they should be exposed to collateral subjects that might influence judges: law and society, law and literature, and so forth. But the standard interpretation has been a huge mistake. It treats law as analogous to weather forecasting: …

A Brief Look At Broward County Lawyers’ And Judges’ Attitudes Toward Plea Bargaining As A Tool Of Courtroom Efficiency, Mohammad A. Faruqui

ExpressO

Even the most rigidly ideological prosecutors acknowledge that they need to plea out most of the less serious criminal charges to ensure justice without incurring an unmanageable backlog of cases. But what do most criminal lawyers and judges think about the plea arrangment system? Is it fair to defendants? Do lawyers use plea bargains to better serve their clients by finding the best deal, or do they use plea bargains to cut their case load for what some call "garbage cases?" This paper surveys a small sample to see how 21st century Broward County criminal lawyers feel about the plea …

The Metamorphoses Of Reasonable Doubt: How Changes In The Burden Of Proof Have Weakened The Presumption Of Innocence, Steve Sheppard

Steve Sheppard

The standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is commonly thought to be an important benefit to the accused. The history of the standard is much more complex and demonstrates lesser commitments to the truth and to the defendant.

This article develops the history of the reasonable doubt instruction in the United States and its English antecedents. Examining the development of the instruction in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its evolution through the nineteenth and twentieth, this history reveals the dual nature of the instruction. It both encapsulated a theory of knowledge and articulated a level of confidence in …

Rethinking Fairness: Principled Legal Realism And Federal Jurisdiction, Aviam Soifer

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can Our Current Conception Of Copyright Law Survive The Internet Age?, Edward Samuels

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jon Newman’S Theory Of Disparagement And The First Amendment In The Administrative State, Edward L. Rubin

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court Of Nova Scotia, Responsible Government, And The Quest For Legitimacy, 1850-1920, Philip Girard

Dalhousie Law Journal

Wallace Graham was one of the ablest judges ever to sit on the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. Born of humble Baptist parentage in Antigonish in 1848, the yearNova Scotia's firstReform government took office, he was truly one of the sons of responsible government: that group of non-61ite, non-Halifax, non-Anglican men who left their stamp on the province's political order after mid-century. Appointed to the bench in 1889, he sat for twenty-six years as puisne judge and judge in equity before being named chief justice in 1915. Sadly, he occupied the post for only two years, dying suddenly in office …

Markets Overt, Voidable Titles, And Feckless Agents: Judges And Efficiency In The Antebellum Doctrine Of Good Faith Purchase, Harold R. Weinberg

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In considering American common law doctrines shaped during the nineteenth century, commentators have advanced differing theories on the primary judicial criteria employed by judges. Recent studies have argued that these doctrines reflect a criterion of economic efficiency. This work has been criticized for its failure to explain why there seems to be a correlation between efficiency and these decision rules or why judges might have preferred efficiency over other decisional criteria. Other studies have proposed that many judicial doctrines announced before the Civil War were intended to facilitate or ratify major shifts in the distribution of social wealth. This article …

Small Claims In Arkansas: A Judicial Comment, Joel C. Cole

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.