Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Polysemy And The Law, Daniel J. Hemel

Vanderbilt Law Review

Polysemy-the existence of multiple related meanings for the same word or phrase-is a frequent phenomenon in legal and lay language. Although polysemy sometimes arises by accident, it also can be strategic: framers of legal rules can advance private and public interests by assigning meanings to terms that are different from-though connected to-the meanings that those terms carry outside the law. Understanding the functions of polysemy can help us design more effective legal rules and can shed light on ways in which legal actors translate language into power.

This Article undertakes a comprehensive analysis of polysemy's origins, uses, and consequences across …

You Get What You Pay For: An Empirical Examination Of The Use Of Mturk In Legal Scholarship, Adriana Z. Robertson, Albert H. Yoon

Vanderbilt Law Review

In recent years, legal scholars have come to rely on Amazon's Mechanical Turk ("MTurk') platform to recruit participants for surveys and experiments. Despite MTurk's popularity, there is no generally accepted methodology for its use in legal scholarship, and many questions remain about the validity of data gathered from this source. In particular, little is known about how the compensation structure affects the performance of respondents recruited using MTurk.

This Essay fills both of these gaps. We develop an experiment and test the effect of various compensation structures on performance along two dimensions: effort and attention. We find that both the …

Citation And Representation, Alex Glashausser

Vanderbilt Law Review

A war is raging in the legal citation field. Arbitrary changes in the Bluebook from one edition to the next have incited a populist rebellion in the form of the Association of Legal Writing Directors' ALWD Citation Manual. This Article traces the causes of the conflict and assesses its likely outcomes. Professor Glashausser compares the two citation guides to eighteenth- century Great Britain and America: the Bluebook is the elite empire clinging to its position, and the Manual is the challenger hoping to ride a wave of populism to revolution. Overall, Professor Glashausser's Article sides with the Manual as the …

An Arrow To The Heart: The Love And Death Of Postmodern Legal Scholarship, Stephen M. Feldman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Modernist legal writers, including Dennis Arrow in his well-known Pomobabble article, commonly criticize postmodern legal scholars for being muddle-headed nihilistic thinkers who write indecipherable jargon-filled nonsense and lack political convictions. Professor Feldman responds to these and other related criticisms and, in doing so, explains some key components of postmodernism. For instance, he describes how the pervasiveness of postmodern culture infuses legal scholarship with certain postmodern themes. Ironically, then, even the most vehement critics, like Arrow, display a surprising if unwitting affinity for postmodernism. Finally, in order to deflect precipitate denunciations of postmodernism, Professor Feldman suggests a refinement of terms, dividing …

Spaceball (Or, Not Everything That's Left Is Postmodern), Dennis W. Arrow

Vanderbilt Law Review

Given law-school postmodernism's epistemo/ontology of juvenile antirealist agnosticism, its commitment to Gadamerian and/or Derridean notions of linguistic indeterminacy, its mono- maniacal dedication to centrifugal end-justifies-the-means Lefty politics, its abhorrence of commonly recognized conceptions of neutral principle, its concomitant disrespect for the very notion of truth, and its inextricably intertwined obsession with names and propensity for linguistic doublespeak, Professor Arrow confesses to initially wondering what it might "mean" to take anything uttered by a postmodernist "literally," or at "face value." But undaunted by that 'paradox," Professor Arrow not only takes up Feldman's challenge to "critique postmodernism on its own terms" (by …

Footnotes As Product Differentiation, Arthur D. Austin

Vanderbilt Law Review

When Professor Fred Rodell announced his first Goodbye to Law Reviews in 1936, he established the accepted wisdom for law review criticism. Rodell complained that law review literature had two serious defects-style and content. Subsequent criticism has been persistently harsh; the common theme is that "[the extraordinary proliferation of law reviews, most of them student edited and all but a handful very erratic in quality, has been harmful for the nature, evaluation, and accessibility of legal scholarship."

Having exhausted complaints on substance, critics uncovered another mischievous threat. They discovered that articles are Typhoid Marys of an insidious plague-footnotes. Second-rate style …

Thinking (By Writing) About Legal Writing, Philip C. Kissam

Vanderbilt Law Review

The practice of law requires a good amount of original writing,and it is a commonplace today that much of this writing is done rather poorly. Charles Fried, the United States Solicitor General,has implied that much legal writing, especially in appellate briefs,is "turgid and boring."' John Nowak, a Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, has reiterated Fred Rodell's classic complaint that the writing in law reviews lacks both style and substance. More fundamentally, Steven Stark, in his Harvard Law Review comment, has argued that the style and substance of most legal writing are flawed by lawyers' ideological commitments to …

Earl Warren: The Judge Who Changed America. By Jack Harrison Pollack, Richard Y. Funston

Vanderbilt Law Review

Earl Warren was a decent, personable, and humane man who had the good fortune to preside over the Supreme Court of the United States at a peculiarly propitious moment. That, surely, is enough to say for any man's lifetime, and someday the definitive biography of Warren will say it. In the meantime, it remains some-thing of a mystery why aging liberals find it necessary to canonize the late Chief Justice. Nevertheless, journalist Jack Harrison Pollack's Earl Warren: The Judge Who Changed America is the latest addition to the Warren hagiography. In it you meet Warren,the self-effacing, underpaid, young District Attorney; …

Reference Guides To State Legal Bibliography: A Composite Review, Marvin R. Anderson

Vanderbilt Law Review

At present, the curriculum at almost all law schools includes a first-year course teaching the fundamentals of the legal method.The practical value of these courses, however, has been questioned. One criticism of the current course structure is the overemphasis placed on the basics of legal research and legal writing to the detriment of legal bibliography.More pertinent to this review is another practice of these classes-the use of certain national-in-scope legal research texts that cannot treat fully the many special characteristics of published legal materials in the various states. To know that states have similar publishing practices for codes, session laws, …

Discussion: Crisis In The Courts, Journal Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Articles by Attorney General Griffin Bell, Chief Judge Harry Phillips, and Dean John W. Wade contained in this issue are based upon remarks made by the authors at the Cecil Sims Lecture Series, which was presented by the Vanderbilt Law School on November 4, 1977. The Sims Lecture Series was established in 1973 in memory of Cecil Sims, a 1914 graduate of Vanderbilt Law School and a preeminent attorney in Nashville, Tennessee. It was designed to foster discussion of issues of current significance to the legal community by bringing outstanding judges, attorneys, and public servants into close contact with …

A Primer Of Opinion Writing For Law-Clerks, George R. Smith

Vanderbilt Law Review

Not all appellate judges make the drafting of tentative opinions a part of their law clerks' duties. The practice, however, is increasing, perhaps as a result of the mounting case loads that now occupy the time of most appellate courts. Opinion writing by law clerks is certainly so widespread today that no symposium devoted to the duties of law clerks would be complete without some discussion of the subject. Except for the matter of final responsibility for the opinion, the problems that confront a law clerk in the preparation of an opinion include those that confront the judge himself in …

Sample Instructions To Law Clerks, Frederick G. Hamley, Ruggero J. Aldisert

Vanderbilt Law Review

Sample Instructions to Law Clerks

Sample A -- Law Clerks for Judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

Frederick G. Hamley

General Responsibilities

1. You should therefore adopt a professional attitude at the outset. 2. You will need to employ industrious work habits. 3. Cultivate efficient, time-saving ways of doing your work. 4. Make this a year of continuing legal education and an intensive training period. 5. You will come into possession of information concerning the processing of appeals which must remain secret until the opinions are filed. 6. Your prime loyalty is to your judge. 7. All of …

Choosing Law Clerks In Massachusetts, Robert Braucher

Vanderbilt Law Review

About the summer of 1875" Chief Justice Horace Gray of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts "began a practice, which he continued until the end of his judicial career, of employing a young graduate of the Harvard Law School as a secretary. At first he paid the expense of this from his own purse, but before he had been many years at Washington" as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States "the Government provided for the appointment of a clerk for each of the justices of the Supreme Court. His colleagues generally appointed as their clerks stenographers …

John W. Wade: Gentle Scholar, Pilot Lawyer, Roger J. Traynor

Vanderbilt Law Review

His contributions to the work of the American Law Institute, his career as the dean of a first-rate law school, and his essays on restitution,torts, and conflict of laws would be more than enough to place John Wade in the first rank of American lawyers. The very constructiveness of his work makes him pre-emininently a modern teacher and lawyer.

John W. Wade And The Development Of The Vanderbilt Law School, Paul H. Sanders

Vanderbilt Law Review

John W. Wade made a decided imprint upon the Vanderbilt Law School in the years before he became Dean in 1952. His contributions to the development of the institution were impressive, not only as a skillful "case-method" teacher in the classroom, but also as Faculty Editor for volumes two through five of the Vanderbilt Law Review at a time when this position entailed responsibilities for all phases of the publication greatly in excess of those imposed upon the Faculty Adviser in later years. Without question he was the person most responsible for the firm and early establishment of the Vanderbilt …

John W. Wade: Friendly Critic And Sensitive Scholar, Wex S. Malone

Vanderbilt Law Review

The teacher could boast only three or four years of maturity over his students; hence, he was vulnerable and was often at-tacked with considerable spirit. From the beginning John Wade faced me with the kind of challenge that can be both the delight and the despair of a beginning law teacher. His characteristic mode of attack by way of imperturbable but relentless prodding will be recalled with admiring pleasure by more than a generation of his own law students. This role of the friendly, reflective skeptic, which is so fundamental a part of the intellectual make-up of John Wade, has …

Law Students And A Constructive Approach To The Future Of America, John W. Wade

Vanderbilt Law Review

In years past, many intellectuals adhered to a theory of laissez faire. They believed that the way to maintain our economic system in good health was to keep our government and laws from interfering with its natural working. In those days, judges did not make law; they discovered through legal reasoning what the law was and what it had always been. In both fields the theory fell into decline and disfavor. As Justice Cardozo put it, the concept of laissez faire in law went the way of laissez faire in economics. Another theory, of more ancient origin, is that of …

Elliott E. Cheatham, John W. Wade

Vanderbilt Law Review

Elliott Cheatham is a man of young ideas--often radical ones. His thoughts and plans are of the future, and he looks to the past only for the lessons it gives as to how the future can be improved. He thinks always of the "energizing forces of the law."' He sees the turmoil and vicissitudes of contemporary society as a challenge to the law, the lawyer, and the law school, to identify the values in them and find a way for law to produce the orderly change which will capture and utilize those values. He can sternly and firmly prod and …

Legal Research--Computer Retrieval Of Statutory Law And Decisional Law, David T. Moody

Vanderbilt Law Review

Legal research presently involves a considerable amount of any lawyer's time and efforts largely because it is a slow and tedious process. Searching for a pertinent legal point can prove to be time-consuming and often fruitless. Moreover, it is here that chance plays one of its largest roles in the law.' An important legal point may exist,yet the researcher may fail to find it although he exercises a great degree of diligence. All lawyers must recognize this problem and the fact that it is becoming more acute with the passage of time. Something needs to be done to facilitate legal …

Annual Survey Of Tennessee Law, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

This is the tenth Annual Survey of Tennessee Law to be published by the Vanderbilt Law Review. During the past ten years, the response to such issues from the members of the Bar has been gratifying to all those connected with the project. Many attorneys have told us that these issues have proved valuable to them both as a means of keeping up to date on recent developments in the law of this state and as a source of research guidance. We have been particularly pleased to see a number of articles from these issues cited by the courts of …

The Published Works Of Edmund M. Morgan, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Books

CASES ON COMMON LAW PLEADING. St. Paul, 1916 (with Clarke B. Whittier). INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LAW. Chicago, 1926; 2d edition, 1948 (with Francis X. Dwyer).

THE LAW OF EVIDENCE: SOME PROPOSALS FOR ITS REFORM. New Haven, 1927 (with others).

SELECTION OF CASES ON EVIDENCE AT THE COMMON LAW. Chicago, 1933 (combined with a Selection of Cases by J. G. Thayer as revised by J. M. Maguire).

CASES ON EVIDENCE. Chicago, 1934 (with J. M. Maguire); revised, with supplementary cases and references, 1937; 2d edition [

CASES AND MATERIALS ON EVIDENCE], 1942; 3d edition, 1951; 4th edition, Brooklyn, …

Edmund M. Morgan, Felix Frankfurter

Vanderbilt Law Review

On a rough estimate, there were some two hundred items of every variety of legal writing: text books, case books, an unpretentious but wise little volume on the Introduction to the Study of Law, the successive stages of the Code of Evidence of the American Law Institute, essays scattered in dozens of law reviews, as well as those contained between book covers, like his Carpentier Lectures, book reviews, surveys of developments in the law both in the Nation and latterly in Tennessee. He has not been a one-subject scholar. But in one field, Evidence,he has become the contemporary master. History …

John Dewey--A Philosophy Of Law For Democracy, Jay W. Murphy

Vanderbilt Law Review

On what bases can a philosophy of law be founded which is equal to the task of the democratization of man in the world today? The purpose of this article is to present some suggestions concerning the fuller use of John Dewey's philosophy in this important regard. In addition to an examination of Dewey's theory of justice, it will be suggested that the richness of Dewey's thought and the variety of its uses in legal scholarship and legal education have yet to be felt.

Rudolf Von Jhering, Iredell Jenkins

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is often the fate of the giants of thought to have their names live on while their doctrines are neglected, and even for their reputations to wax as their influence wanes. Indeed, this happens at some periods to the work that all such men leave behind them; it is esteemed but not appreciated, acknowledged but not cultivated. The precise reasons for this fall into oblivion vary with every individual case, but there is one factor that is common and constant: the prominence within the work of these men of ideas that push inquiry beyond the comfortable limits that are …

Book Reviews, James B. Earle, J. Allen Smith, Samuel E. Stumpf, Ingram Bloch, J. Raymond Denney

Vanderbilt Law Review

Book Reviews

The Oppenheimer Case: The Trial of a Security System

By Charles P. Curtis

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955. Pp. xi, 281. $4.00

reviewer: Ingram Bloch

=============================

Trial Tactics and Methods

By Robert E. Keeton

New York: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1954. Pp. xxiv, 438. $6.65

reviewer: J. Raymond Denney

=============================

Military Law under the Uniform Code of Military Justice

By William B. Aycock and Seymour W. Wurfel

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955. Pp. xviii, 430.

reviewer: James B. Earle

=================================

Why Johnny Can't Read

By Rudolf Flesch

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955. Pp. ix, …

Book Reviews, Stanley D. Rose (Reviewer), Charles C. Trabue, Jr. (Reviewer)

Vanderbilt Law Review

READINGS IN AMERICAN LEGAL HISTORY

Compiled and edited by Mark DeWolfe Howe

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949. Pp. 529.$7.50

reviewer: STANLEY D. ROSE

=======================

THE GROWTH OF AMERICAN LAW: THE LAW MAKERS

By James Willard Hurst

Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1950. Pp. xiii, 502. $5.50

reviewer: STANLEY D. ROSE

=============================

REASON AND LAW

By Morris R. Cohen

Illinois: The Free Press, 1950. Pp.211. $3.50

reviewer: STANLEY D. ROSE

================================

AN INTRODUCTION TO LEGAL REASONING

By Edward H. Levi

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1949. Pp. 74. $2.00

reviewer: STANLEY D. ROSE

====================================

LIVING LAW OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

By …

A Better Theory Of Legal Interpretation, Charles P. Curtis

Vanderbilt Law Review

We have, almost all of us, I think, been brought up in the belief that the interpretation of legal documents consists essentially in a search for the intention of the author. I take it the classic, and I am sure the most elegant, exposition of this doctrine is the paper which Vaughan Hawkins, almost ninety years ago, in 1860, read before the juridical Society. Thayer printed it as an appendix in his Preliminary Treatise on Evidence and said of it, "the nature of the inquiry is described with penetration and accuracy." Hawkins states our creed in a few sentences...

"[I]n …

Legal Writing On Statutory Construction, Paul H. Sanders, John W. Wade

Vanderbilt Law Review

This review does not purport to provide a complete critique of the various works in the field of Statutory Construction. It is not directed primarily to the specialist. Instead, it is intended to bring together for the benefit of the general practitioner the various books and other writings on the subject and thus amounts essentially to a bibliography. But an effort has been made to suggest the approach of the longer works and to estimate in some measure their value. Thus this symposium on the subject of Statutory Construction can be rounded out by providing convenient reference to other writings …

Book Notes And Books Received, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Book Notes

Labor Relations and Federal Law

By Donald H. Wollett

Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1949. Pp. xxv, 148, 30. $3.00

===============================

Tennessee Personal Injury Fact Digest

Compiled by Eugene McSweeney

Nashville: The Fact Digest Co., 1949. Pp. 124. $5.50

==============================

BOOKS RECEIVED

Cases on Federal Taxation

By Roswell Magill

Brooklyn: The Foundation Press, Inc., 1950. Pp. i, 546. $7.00

===============================

Cases on Trusts

By George Gleason Bogert

Brooklyn: The Foundation Press, Inc., 1950. Pp. i, 1041. $7.50

===============================

Differences in Income for Accounting and Federal Income Tax

By Clarence F. Reimer

Chicago: Commerce Clearing House, 1949. Pp. iii,184. …