State and Local Government Law Commons^™

Armor Or Withdraw? Likely Litigation And Potential Adjudication Of Shoreland Conflicts Along Michigan's Shifting Great Lake Coasts, Richard K. Norton, Guy A. Meadows, Oday Salim, Matthew Piggins, Phillip Washburn, Lauren Ashley Week

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Michigan enjoys along its inland seas, the Laurentian Great Lakes, one of the longest coastlines in the U.S. Much of that shoreline is privately owned. Because of a confluence of development pressures and irrepressible physical dynamics, growing numbers of Great Lakes shoreland properties, built on shifting sandy shores, are at heightened risk of loss from coastal storm surge, inundation, erosion, and shoreline recession. In response, property owners are installing extensive hardened shoreline armoring structures like seawalls and revetments to arrest those erosional processes. Those structures, however, will substantially impair, if not ultimately destroy, the state’s natural coastal beaches and other …

Incrementalist Vs. Maximalist Reform: Solitary Confinement Case Studies, Margo Schlanger

Articles

Among criminal justice reformers, it has long been hotly contested whether moderate reform helps or harms more efforts to achieve more thoroughgoing change. With respect to solitary confinement, do partial and ameliorative measures undermine the goal of solitary confinement abolition? Or do reformist campaigns advance—albeit incrementally—that ultimate goal? Call this a debate between “incrementalists” and “maximalists.” I offer this Essay as an appeal for empirical rather than aesthetic inquiry into the question. After summarizing nationwide reform litigation efforts that began in the 1970s, I try to shed some factual light by examining solitary reform efforts in two states, Massachusetts and …

States Empowering Plaintiff Cities, Eli Savit

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Across the country, cities are becoming major players in plaintiff’s-side litigation. With increasing frequency, cities, counties, and other municipalities are filing lawsuits to vindicate the public interest. Cities’ aggressive use of lawsuits, however, has been met with some skepticism from both scholars and states. At times, states have taken action—both legislative and via litigation—to preempt city-initiated suits.

This Article contends that states should welcome city-initiated public-interest lawsuits. Such litigation, this Article demonstrates, vindicates the principles of local control that cities exist to facilitate. What is more, a motivated plaintiff city can accomplish public-policy goals that are important not just to …

Neither Limited Nor Simplified: A Proposal For Reform Of Illinois Supreme Court Rule 222(B), Michael S. Smith

Michigan Law Review

A limited and simplified discovery system should broaden access to courts, resolve disputes quickly, and expedite relief to injured parties. It should not incentivize procedural gamesmanship or increase the system’s complexity. Regrettably, Illinois’s “limited and simplified” discovery system does both. The initiation procedure for the simplified system, Rule 222(b), creates procedural traps and perverse incentives for both plaintiffs and defendants, and conflicting appellate interpretations of the Rule intensify the problem. This Note examines the flaws underlying the current simplified discovery scheme and argues for reform. It examines simplified discovery schemes in other states to recommend a new system for initiating …

Arguing On The Side Of Culture, Debra Chopp, Robert Ortega, Frank E. Vandervort

Articles

Human service professions are increasingly acknowledging the ubiquitous role of culture in the human experience. This is evidenced in professional codes of ethics, professional school accreditation standards, licensing, and in some cases through state statutes regarding professional codes of conduct. Across professions, concerted efforts are being made to infuse standards of culturally responsive practice into curricular content and training. For example, instruction on cultural competence is expected in business and medical education.1 Psychology and social work both require their professionals to exercise cultural competence. When it comes to cultural competence/ though, the legal codes of ethics and professional practice are …

Can Courts Repair The Crumbling Foundation Of Good Citizenship? An Examination Of Potential Legal Challenges To Social Studies Cutbacks In Public Schools, Eli Savit

Michigan Law Review

In the wake of No Child Left Behind, many public schools have cut or eliminated social studies instruction to allot more time for math and literacy. Given courts' repeated celebration of education as the "foundation of good citizenship," this Note examines potential legal claims and litigation strategies that could be used to compel social studies instruction in public schools. This Note contends that the federal judiciary's civic conception of education leaves the door slightly ajar for a Fourteenth Amendment chrallenge on behalf of social studies-deprived students, but the Supreme Court's refusal in San Antonio v. Rodriguez to recognize education as …

Access To Information, Access To Justice: The Role Of Presuit Investigatory Discovery, Lonny Sheinkopf Hoffman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

What is the relationship between access to information and access to justice? Private parties obviously have many publicly available points of access to the information they seek in order to file a lawsuit. Lawyers can talk to their clients and other willing witnesses. Documents can be gathered. Specific statutes may sometimes permit information to be obtained before a formal lawsuit is brought. On other occasions, however, information needed or desired will lie solely within the exclusive knowledge and control of another The ability of private parties to compel the production of information, documents, or testimony before litigation rarely has been …

Why Children Still Need A Lawyer, Marcia Robinson Lowry, Sara Bartosz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Every day approximately 500,000 children across the United States wake up in foster care, most in foster family homes, though many others in group homes and institutions. These children entered the state foster care system as innocent victims of abuse or neglect occurring in their birth homes. As wards of the state, they depend completely on the government to provide for their essential safety and wellbeing and to reconnect them with a permanent family, hopefully their own.

Though state child welfare agencies possess fundamental legal obligations under the United States Constitution and federal and state statutes to provide adequate care …

Financing Plaintiffs' Lawsuits: An Increasingly Popular (And Legal) Business, Susan Lorde Martin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In the late eighties and early nineties there were a few publicized cases in which the plaintiffs invited investors to finance their litigation in exchange for a share of the awards if the plaintiffs won. This kind of arrangement provides access to the justice system which might otherwise be denied impecunious plaintiffs with meritorious claims. The problem with this kind of arrangement is that it is champerty, which is prohibited in most states. This Article discusses Massachusetts' recent rejection of the champerty prohibition, the expansion of exceptions to the prohibition in this country and others, and the emergence of firms …

The Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act Of 1998: The Sun Sets On California's Blue Sky Laws, David M. Lavine, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

It is often said that California sets the pace for changes in America's tastes. Trends established in California often find their way into the heartland, having a profound effect on our nation's cultural scene. Nouvelle cuisine, the dialect of the Valley Girl and rollerblading all have their genesis on the West Coast. The most recent trend to emerge from California, instead of catching on in the rest of the country, has been stopped dead in its tracks by a legislative rebuke from Washington, D.C. California's latest, albeit short-lived, contribution to the nation was a migration of securities fraud class actions …

Damned For Using Daycare: Appellate Brief Of Jennifer Ireland In Ireland V. Smith, Julie Kunce Field

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

At issue is custody of three-and-a-half-year-old Maranda (date of birth: April 22, 1991). The trial court found that Maranda had an established custodial environment with her mother, Jennifer Ireland, but then nominally ordered custody changed to Steven Smith. The court's order changing custody was based on a determination that day care is an inappropriate choice for care of a preschool child, and that no one effectively can be a single parent and a student at the same time. Those findings have no factual basis in the record, no legal basis under Michigan law, and no logical or even common sense …

School Finance Adequacy As Vertical Equity, Julie K. Underwood

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, Dean Underwood explains that school finance cases can be divided into three waves of reform. The first wave involved efforts to use the Federal Equal Protection Clause to overturn financing systems. Litigants in the second wave turned to state equal protection and due process clauses. Finally, the third wave involved the utilization of education clauses in state constitutions as the predominant litigation vehicle. These three waves embody two primary approaches to school finance litigation. The first approach involves a challenge to the adequacy of a state's funding system under either the state or federal equal protection clause, …

Establishing Education Program Inadequacy: The Alabama Example, Martha I. Morgan, Adam S. Cohen, Helen Hershkoff

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The authors draw on their experience as attorneys for a statewide class of plaintiff school children in the liability phase of ongoing public education reform litigation in Alabama to demonstrate the availability of state and nationally recognized standards concerning educational resources (inputs) and results (outputs) that can serve as evidentiary tools for assessing and for establishing a state public education system's failure to satisfy constitutional mandates of educational adequacy. The Article discusses the usefulness and limitations of using such standards as a starting point in a court's constitutional analysis. It suggests an integrated approach that links input and output standards …

Achieving Equity And Excellence In Kentucky Education, C. Scott Trimble, Andrew C. Forsaith

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, Trimble and Forsaith discuss the landmark Kentucky school finance case, Rose v. Council for Better Education, 790 S.W.2d 186 (Ky. 1989), and the school reform efforts it spawned. In Council for Better Education, the Kentucky Supreme Court held that the state had failed its duty under the state constitution to provide all students with an adequate education, which it defined in terms of seven categories of knowledge and skills students should acquire. The State General Assembly responded with the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), which significantly boosted state funding as well as established an ambitious accountability system …

Oklahoma School Finance Litigation: Shifting From Equity To Adequacy, Mark S. Grossman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article traces the history of Oklahoma school finance litigation from the initial challenge based on funding inequity to a recent lawsuit founded on alleged constitutional inadequacies in the state system. Although the legal challenge based on funding inequity was unsuccessful in the courts, the pendency of the suit helped push the state legislature toward some reforms. The threat of a new lawsuit based on alleged inadequacies in the state school system, together with a serious funding shortfall, propelled a comprehensive education reform plan through the state legislature in 1990. The association of local school boards that led the equity …

Law And Disputing In Commercializing Early America, Cornelia Dayton

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Neighbors and Strangers: Law and Community in Early Connecticut by Bruce H. Mann

Beyond Busing: Inside The Challenge To Urban Segregation, Lawrence T. Gresser

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Beyond Busing: Inside the Challenge to Urban Segregation by Paul R. Dimond

Opinions And Expert Testimony, John W. Reed

Book Chapters

Article VI of the Michigan Rules of Evidence contains the rules dealing with witnesses. Trials bring to mind testimonial evidence. There surely are other kinds of evidence, such as docmnents, guns, automobile tires, chemical substances, and the like. But most evidence comes from the mouths of witnesses, and even demonstrative evidence usually is admitted only after a witness has taken the stand and testified to foundation facts. So it is important and appropriate that we turn to the provisions of the rules that deal with qualifications and credibility of witnesses. I would like to direct your attention to MRE 601 …

Rules Pertaining To Witnesses, John W. Reed

Book Chapters

Article VI of the Michigan Rules of Evidence contains the rules dealing with witnesses. Trials bring to mind testimonial evidence. There surely are other kinds of evidence, such as docmnents, guns, automobile tires, chemical substances, and the like. But most evidence comes from the mouths of witnesses, and even demonstrative evidence usually is admitted only after a witness has taken the stand and testified to foundation facts. So it is important and appropriate that we turn to the provisions of the rules that deal with qualifications and credibility of witnesses. I would like to direct your attention to MRE 601 …

Evaluating Article 2 Of The Uniform Commercial Code: A Preliminary Empirical Expedition, James J. White

Articles

A proponent of commercial law codification, Mr. Eaton was one of the first American lawyers to perceive that mere codification of the law did not necessarily produce certainty and lack of discord in the law of commercial transactions. Indeed, in the same article Eaton reveals that of the 1,091 cases that had arisen under the Negotiable Instruments Law, only 704 cited the Act and in the other 387 "the Negotiable Instruments Law [was] ignored by the courts in the decisions, and (so far as the reports show) by the counsel in these cases...." Unlike Bentham, Carter, and Field, each of …

Evidence Problems In Criminal Cases, John W. Reed

Book Chapters

The Federal Rules of Evidence, enacted by Congress, became effective on July 1, 1975. Ten states have adopted state versions of the Federal Rules to govern trials in their courts, and about half the remaining states are considering whether to follow suit. Michigan is one of these latter states. Early in 1977 a committee appointed by the Supreme Court of Michigan proposed rules of evidence for Michigan closely patterned on the Federal Rules, and, if all goes well, the Court will promulgate rules for the Michigan courts to become effective in 1977 or soon thereafter. Michigan lawyers should be aware …

Child Custody In A Federal System, Leonard G. Ratner

Michigan Law Review

Among the most difficult of judicial functions is the determination of a child's custody after its parents have separated. The difficulties are acute enough when all the parties remain in the same place; when the parties are in different states, an additional perplexing problem arises as to which state should have authority to make the custody decision. This broad question can be resolved into three distinct though interrelated issues: (1) what state may initially determine custody; (2) what state may later modify that determination; (3) to what extent is such a determination binding on other states.

Real Property-Torrens System-Preservation Of Equitable Easements, Paul Campbell

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff sued to have certain lots declared free and clear of a restrictive covenant. The land was registered under a Torrens statute, but the restrictive covenant was not noted on the certificate of title. However, it was noted on a plat of the land which was referred to in the certificate of title for the purpose of identifying the location of the land. The lower court denied relief and enjoined violation of the restrictions. Held, reversed, plaintiff as a good faith purchaser for value of registered land, obtains the land free and clear of a restrictive covenant not noted …

Municipal Corporations-Validity Of Agreement By Municipal Employees To Accept Less Than Statutory Salary, John T. Gallagher

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff firemen sued the City of Chattanooga to recover the difference between the salary actually paid them during the depression years and the minimum salary provided by statute. The city, as a defense, relied upon certain instruments voluntarily executed by the plaintiffs by which they authorized the city auditor to reduce their salaries by a specified amount each month during these years so that the city could meet its budget without being compelled to exercise its legal right to reduce the fire force. The plaintiffs claimed that the reductions were illegal because of the minimum salary fixed by law. On …

Municipal Corporations-Validity Of Agreement By Municipal Employees To Accept Less Than Statutory Salary, John T. Gallagher

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff firemen sued the City of Chattanooga to recover the difference between the salary actually paid them during the depression years and the minimum salary provided by statute. The city, as a defense, relied upon certain instruments voluntarily executed by the plaintiffs by which they authorized the city auditor to reduce their salaries by a specified amount each month during these years so that the city could meet its budget without being compelled to exercise its legal right to reduce the fire force. The plaintiffs claimed that the reductions were illegal because of the minimum salary fixed by law. On …

Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure-Statute Of Limitations Not Tolled By Filing Complaint Under Rule 3, Clinton R. Ashford S. Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff's cause of action arose out of a highway accident that occurred on October 1, 1943. Basing jurisdiction on diversity of citizenship, he brought suit in a United States District Court in Kansas. The complaint was filed on September 4, 1945, and defendant was served on December 28, 1945. In Kansas, the two-year statute of limitations applicable to such tort claims is tolled by service on the defendant, not by filing the complaint. Held, plaintiff is barred by the Kansas statute of limitations. Ragan v. Merchants Transfer & Warehouse Co., Inc., (U.S. 1949) 69 S.Ct. 1233.

Municipal Tort Liability, Allan F. Smith

Michigan Law Review

Municipal government in the United States is big business. In 1946, the 397 cities having a population of 25,000 or more spent a total of nearly 3 billion dollars for general governmental expenditures. In 1947 the total increased by 17 per cent to $3,477,000,000. Of that amount, 2½ billion were actual operational expenses for such activities as public safety, public health, sanitation, hospitals, local street and highway maintenance, and schools. Since the figures do not include the amounts expended in connection with municipal water works or municipal street railways, they lend weight to the assertion that our municipal governments are …

Tort Liability Of The State: The Federal Tort Claims Act And The Crown Proceedings Act, Harry Street

Michigan Law Review

Anglo-American legal systems have for so long lingered behind the Continent of Europe in developing a satisfactory basis of governmental civil liability that the enactment of the Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946 in the United States, and the Crown Proceedings Act of 1947 in Great Britain are events justifying a comparison and evaluation of these belated attempts to provide the citizens with an adequate remedy against the State.

Courts--Process--Nonresident Motorist Service Statute--Service On "Driver" As Within Provision Permitting Service On "Owner", C. C. Grunewald S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

While in Arkansas, appellee, an Illinois resident, drove a third party's automobile and was involved in a collision in which plaintiff's intestate was killed. Plaintiff instituted a negligence action in an Arkansas court against appellee, who had previously returned to Chicago, by service and notification pursuant to the Arkansas nonresident motorist service statute. Appellee appeared specially and moved to quash the service as ineffective under the statute. On appeal from the lower court's decision sustaining the motion, held, affirmed. The statutory language which permitted service on a nonresident "owner" did not allow service on a nonresident "driver." Kerr v. …

Federal Courts-Venue-Construction Of Sections 51 And 52 Of Judicial Code, Daniel W. Reddin Iii S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Petitioner, a resident and citizen of Mississippi, brought a negligence action based upon diversity of citizenship in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, joining as defendants Highways Insurance Underwriters, a Texas corporation qualified to do business in Louisiana, and respondents, Reich Brothers Construction Co., a partnership, and its individual members, residents of the Western District of Louisiana. Respondent, Reich Brothers, moved to dismiss on the ground of improper venue under sections 51 and 52 of the Judicial Code which in effect provide that in diversity cases, suit shall be brought only in the district where either …