Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Introduction To The Civil Procedure Puzzle, Robert Bloom

Robert Bloom

No abstract provided.

The Quandary Of Serving Multiple Masters: An Institutional Exploratory Analysis Of Publishing In Business Law, Robert S. Rubin, John R. Olson, Laura Hartman, James A. Belohlav

ExpressO

Notwithstanding published articles on the nature and quality of research and scholarship in practically every other business discipline, to date there has been little systematic evaluation of relevant journals in the business law discipline. This deficiency is due, in part, to the fact that business law may still be described as a developing discipline. Thus, the focus of this article is on delineating the nature of research and scholarship within the business law discipline. Specifically, the publishing practices of business law faculty from academic institutions that were members of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International), the …

Defining Dicta, Michael Abramowicz, Maxwell Stearns

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

In recent decades, legal scholars have devoted substantially greater attention to studying the origin and nature of stare decisis than to defining the distinction between holding and dicta. This appears counter-intuitive when one considers, first, that stare decisis applies only to holdings of announced precedents, and second, that beyond problematic and rudimentary intuitions, the legal system has failed to develop meaningful definitions of these terms. While lawyers, legal scholars, and jurists likely assume that they can identify dicta when they see it, a careful analysis that categorizes the range of judicial assertions in need of proper characterization reveals that defining …

Why Do Empirical Legal Scholarship?, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

People conduct legal scholarship for many different reasons. This Article focuses on the demand for and reaction to scholarship that helps inform litigants, policymakers, and society as a whole about how the legal system works. Law schools do little to train generations of lawyers in how to systematically assess the state of the legal system and the legal system's performance. Schools leave such assessments largely to self-interested advocates and to other disciplines. Self-interested advocates have less interest in objective assessment of the system than in pushing preferred policy agendas. Academic disciplines other than law have a distinct advantage in that …

Why We Write: Reflections On Legal Scholarship, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Help Is On The Way, Gail A. Partin, Mary Ann Neary, Jennifer Murray

Faculty Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Help Is On The Way, Gail A. Partin, Mary Ann Neary, Jennifer Murray

Gail A. Partin

No abstract provided.

Advanced Judicial Opinion Writing, Gerald Lebovits

Hon. Gerald Lebovits

No abstract provided.

When Flyspecks Matter—Part Ii, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Most of my columns advise legal writers; this one also aims to change the perspective of a legal reader. The September 2004 column addressed some of the issues raised by a British best- seller on punctuation called Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The author, Lynne Truss, attempts to make a case for "sticklers" who "refuse to patronize any shop with checkouts for 'eight items or less'" or who have urges to "shin up ladders at dead of night with an apostrophe-shaped stencil and a tin of paint" to correct advertisements. To her, punctuation errors are "signs of ignorance and indifference."

Clarifying The Law On Post-Employment Covenants, E. Joan Blum

E. Joan Blum

No abstract provided.

Legal Writing And Academic Support: Timing Is Everything, Dionne L. Koller

Faculty Scholarship

The conventional wisdom is that legal writing and academic support go hand-in-hand. Most law schools assume that struggling students can be reliably identified for academic support through their first-year legal writing course, and that first-year legal writing instructors can fairly easily and effectively provide this support. Indeed, this is the prevailing view in current academic support and legal writing scholarship. Professor Koller's article challenges the conventional wisdom and instead points out several issues that should be considered if a law school relies on the first-year legal writing course as a component of, or in lieu of, an academic support program. …

Common Knowledge About Appellate Briefs: True Or False?, David Lewis

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Federal And State Court Rules Governing Publication And Citation Of Opinions: An Update, Melissa M. Serfass, Jessie Wallace Cranford

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

The Generality Of Law, Frederick Schauer

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Flyspecks Matter—Part I, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Thus, instead of reinforcing the author's premise, the panda story may illustrate the weakness of assertions that most punctuation significantly controls meaning.

The Reference Brief, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Judges read briefs looking for guidance from the parties about the correct law and the proper resolution of a case. Although it would be nice to assume that all of the briefs provide this guidance, many do not. Some briefs are unclear and contain obvious format and substantive errors. Consequently, in sifting through the submissions for a case, the judges and their clerks often learn more heavily on one party's brief over another as a starting point for their analysis.

The Embarrassing Rule Against Perpetuities, Peter A. Appel

Scholarly Works

The Rule Against Perpetuities offers an opportunity for those who teach property or trusts and estates to review some of the major schools of jurisprudence and how accurately or inaccurately those schools characterize law and legal development. At first blush, the idea that the rule can be used to advance a student's mastery or consideration of theory seems absurd. But this essay will outline an innovative approach to the rule that allows those who teach it to mix theory in with the difficult problems that the rule creates.

The modern pedagogical approach to the rule treats it as an embarrassment …

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.

Reputation, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Whenever you send our a piece of paper or, nowadays, an email, your reputation flutters or flickers on the words you write. Perhaps you have an engaging presence or you are a crack litigator in the courtroom. Perhaps your tech department can help you use multimedia to make innovative presentations. Still, ninety percent of what lawyers do is writing. Be vigilant about what your writing is saying to others about you.

Are Single-Sex Schools Inherently Unequal?, Michael Heise

Michigan Law Review

In chess, a "fork" occurs when a player, in a single move, attacks two or more of an opponent's pieces simultaneously, forcing a necessary choice between unappealing outcomes. Similar to the potentially devastating chess move, single-sex public schooling forks many constitutionalists and feminists. Constitutionalists are forced to reexamine the "separate but equal" doctrine's efficacy, this time through the prism of gender. Although the doctrine - forged in the crucible of race and overcome in the monumental triumph we know as Brown v. Board of Education - rested dormant for generations, persistent (and increasing) single-sex education options are forcing scholars to …

Justice In The Time Of Terror, Sharon L. Davies

Michigan Law Review

On my drive into work recently I found myself behind a Ford pickup truck and noticed its bumper sticker: "When the going gets tough, I get a machine gun." Not a doctor. Not a counselor or mediator. Not a shelter for cover. Not the wisdom of a favored advisor or a proven friend. But a machine gun. How odd, I thought, to prefer a weapon incapable of identifying with any precision, any careful thought, where the enemy of the wielder of it might actually be hidden. A weapon as apt to injure non-targets as targets. A weapon mindless of its …

Pleas' Progress, Stephanos Bibas

Michigan Law Review

George Fisher's new book, Plea Bargaining's Triumph, is really three books in one. The first part is a careful, detailed explanation of how and why plea bargaining exploded in Middlesex County, Massachusetts in the nineteenth century. This part is the fruit of an impressive amount of original research in Massachusetts court records and newspaper archives. The second part of the book looks more broadly at other academic histories of plea bargaining in England, California, and New York. It explains how the forces that produced plea bargaining in Middlesex County likewise contributed to plea bargaining's rise elsewhere. The final part …

Generalizing Disability, Michael Ashley Stein

Michigan Law Review

Published in 1949, Joseph Tussman and Jacobus tenBroek's article The Equal Protection of the Laws has exerted longstanding influence on subsequent Fourteenth Amendment scholarship. Insightfully, Tussman and tenBroek identified a paradox: although the very notion of equality jurisprudence is a "pledge of the protection of equal laws," laws themselves frequently classify individuals, and "the very idea of classification is that of inequality." Notably, classification raises two sometimes concurrent varieties of inequality: over-inclusiveness and under-inclusiveness. Of these, over-inclusiveness is a more egregious equal protection violation due to its ability to "reach out to the innocent bystander, the hapless victim of circumstance …

Easing The Path For Newer Colleagues: Conference For New Law Librarians Helps Beginners Learn Aall's Ropes, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

The author provides advice for prospective attendees of the Conference of Newer Law Librarians (CONELL).

Spectres Of Law & Economics, William H. Widen

Michigan Law Review

There are spectres haunting law and economics - the spectres of G.W.F. Hegel and Jacques Lacan. This is one of the central theses of Professor Jeanne L. Schroeder's challenging new book: The Triumph of Venus, the Erotics of the Market ("Triumph of Venus"). Schroeder uses insights inspired by the teachings of Hegel and the French psychoanalyst, Lacan, to critique some basic assumptiosn made by scholars who use economic ideas to investigate the law and legal institutions - the law and economics ("L&E") practitioners. The book devotes much space to criticism of Judge Posner's vision of law, using it …

Critiquing As An Opportunity, Joel Atlas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The path of critiquing a paper is, in all but a rare case, laced with mines: poorly constructed sentences, non-thematic paragraphs, and mangled legal standards. But rather than view these as trip interruptions, perhaps teachers can view them as challenges. After all, every student error is a learning opportunity for that student.

Growing Greener Grass: Looking From Legal Ethics To Business Ethics, And Back, Rob Atkinson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Connecting Business Ethics And Legal Ethics For The Common Good: Come, Let Us Reason Together, Rob Atkinson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Alwd Citation Manual: A Grammar Guide To The Language Of Legal Citation, Jennifer L. Cordle

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Law's Many Bodies, And The Manuscript Tradition In English Legal History, David J. Seipp

Faculty Scholarship

Sir John Baker's recent book The Law's Two Bodies supplies a happy occasion to celebrate and reflect on Professor Baker's unique place within the field of English legal history today

Students beginning their study of this subject can well imagine the long history of the English common law as an hourglass. The wide upper chamber of the hourglass is the rich, complex, intricate medieval law of the Year Books. The wide bottom chamber is the equally rich, complex, intricate but very different caselaw of the modem age. The narrow neck of the hourglass can be imagined as the mind of …