Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

(Anti)Poverty Measures Exposed, Francine J. Lipman

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Few economic indicators have more salience and pervasive financial impact on everyday lives in the United States than poverty measures. Nevertheless, policymakers, researchers, advocates, and legislators generally do not understand the details of poverty measure mechanics. These detailed mechanics shape and reshape poverty measures and the too often uninformed responses and remedies. This Article will build a bridge from personal portraits of families living in poverty to the resource allocations that failed them by exposing the specific detailed mechanics underlying the Census Bureau’s official (OPM) and supplemental poverty measures (SPM). Too often, when we confront the problem of poverty, the …

Redefining Roles And Duties Of The Transactional Lawyer: A Narrative Approach, Lori D. Johnson

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Today’s transactional lawyers perform myriad tasks for their clients, including structuring, drafting, conceptualizing, negotiating, and executing the complex, risky, and often cutting-edge transactions their clients bring to the table. On the other side of that table, often sits another team of sophisticated transactional lawyers. These opposing counsel are armed for battle over every nuance, every word, every representation, every deliverable, and every obligation their client is poised to undertake or agree to. Therefore, modern transactional lawyers must behave as advocates and explore new modes of persuasion. As a response, scholars have begun to propose that transactional lawyers employ methods of …

From Lonesome Cowboys To Geek Masculinities: A Study Of Documentary Films On The Financial Crisis, Frank Rudy Cooper

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Space is a vantage point from which masculinity can be critiqued and understood. Documentary film-makers employ specific mode(s) to relate space to masculinity by positioning themselves vis-à-vis the interviewees, and the interviewees vis-à- vis the viewers. A financial crisis may threaten the hegemonic masculinity embodied by Wall Street’s lonesome cowboys and provide a chance for film-makers to critique this type of masculinity. This article analyses three documentary films, I.O.U.S.A., Capitalism: A Love Story, and Floored, which were released after the 2008 economic crisis in the United States. The films contain three prototypes: the lonesome cowboy; white, working-class masculinity; and hypermasculinity. …

"Nudging" Better Lawyer Behavior: Using Default Rules And Incentives To Change Behavior In Law Firms, Nancy B. Rapoport

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This article examines how incentives in law firms can affect lawyer behavior and suggests some possible changes to incentive structures and default rules that might improve the ethical behavior of lawyers.

In the changing landscape of law practice — where law firm profits are threatened by such changes as increased pressure from clients to economize and the concomitant opportunities for clients to shop around for the most efficient lawyers — are there ways to change how things are done in law firms so that firms can provide more efficient and ethical service? This article suggests that an understanding of cognitive …

The Patent System In Pre-1989 Czechoslovakia, Marketa Trimble

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The chapter analyzes patent law in Czechoslovakia in the period from 1945 until the end of communist rule in 1989. In addition to reviewing the legislative development of patent law – the laws on the books – the chapter explains the law in action, which includes the application of the law in practice and the attitudes of Czechoslovak society toward inventive activities and patenting. The chapter shows that post-1945 Czechoslovak patent law drew on a highly developed pre-1940 Czechoslovak patent law and practice that was based on the Austrian patent law inherited by Czechoslovakia in 1918 when it split from …

Metaphor And Analogy: The Sun And Moon Of Legal Persuasion, Linda L. Berger

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Drawing on recent studies of social cognition, decision making, and analogical processing, this article recommends that lawyers turn to novel characterizations and metaphors to solve a particular kind of persuasion problem that is created by the way judges and juries think and decide. According to social cognition researchers, we perceive and interpret new information by following a process of schematic cognition, analogizing the new data we encounter to the knowledge structures embedded in our memories. Decision-making researchers differentiate between intuitive and reflective processes (System 1 and System 2), and they agree that in System 1 decision making, only the most …

Latino Voters 2012 And Beyond: Will The Fastest Growing And Evolving Electoral Group Shape U.S. Politics?, Sylvia R. Lazos

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The author reviews two recent books, Marisa A. Abrajano’s Campaigning to the New American Electorate: Advertising to Latino Voters (2010) and Marisa A. Abrajano’s and R. Michael Alvarez’s New Faces New Voices: The Hispanic Electorate in America (2010). These books are part of a growing literature that scientifically studies the evolving Latino electorate, and attempts to answer difficult questions about this ethnic group’s electorate cohesiveness and how candidates might be able to influence the Latino electorate. A careful read of Abrajano’s recent books brings additional understanding to Latino voter behavior, and by implication, how this key group will influence the …

Fidelity To Law And The Moral Pluralism Premise, Katherine R. Kruse

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In Fidelity to Law, Wendel presents and defends a comprehensive theory of legal ethics with two interrelated arguments: a functional argument that law deserves respect because of its capacity to settle normative controversy in a morally pluralistic society; and a normative argument that law deserves respect because democratic lawmaking processes respect the equality and dignity of citizens. This review essay questions Wendel’s move from the premise of moral pluralism to his conclusion that the function of law is to settle normative controversy in society on both practical and theoretical grounds. Practically, it argues that law lacks the capacity to …

Work, Caregiving, And Masculinities, Ann C. Mcginley

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In her book Reshaping the Work-Family Debate, Joan Williams demonstrates the vulnerability of parent workers in working class America. In Chapter 2, "One Sick Child Away from Being Fired," she examines the records of ninety-nine union arbitrations to analyze the problems of working class parents who struggle to juggle their working and parenting responsibilities. Because this chapter is a tour de force in an overall excellent book, and because it suggests an area that Professor McGinley's research has focused on over the past number of years, in this Essay, Professor McGinley limits her discussion almost exclusively to this chapter. …

Nietzschean Critique And Philosophical Hermeneutics, Francis J. Mootz Iii

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This article appears as part of a Symposium on "Nietzsche and Legal Theory" published by the Cardozo Law Review. It addresses connections between philosophical hermeneutics and Nietzschean critique, and the relevance that these connections might have for legal theory.

Legal practice inevitably is hermeneutical, with lawyers and judges interpreting governing legal texts and the social situations in which they must be applied. Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics describes this practice well, but he treats the question of the possibility of a critical hermeneutics in an ambiguous and under-developed manner. Consequently, Gadamer is frequently (and unfairly) accused of conventionalism and quietism. At …

A Future Foretold: Neo-Aristotelian Praise Of Postmodern Legal Theory, Francis J. Mootz Iii

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Postmodern thinking puts severe stress on the project of legal theory. The philosophical critique of grand narratives, coupled with the radically pragmatic return to localized practices, has rendered theorizing suspect. Theory appears to be a quaint vestige of previous "bad faith" refusals to accept the finitude of human existence. But the postmodern position is even more complex, because postmodern anti-theorists tend to employ perplexing jargon and wield sophisticated and obscure concepts in their work. The postmodern puzzle is whether one can challenge theory without theorizing. Is theory defined by its practical effects, or by its refusal to become complicit in …

Rhetorical Knowledge In Legal Practice And Theory, Francis J. Mootz Iii

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Rhetorical Knowledge in Legal Practice and Critical Legal Theory has just been published by the University of Alabama Press as part of its series, Rhetoric, Culture and Social Critique. My central themes are that rhetorical knowledge - however imperfectly pursued and attained - is a feature of social life; that rhetorical knowledge plays an important role in legal practice; and that legal critique is appropriately grounded by the normative injunction to maximize the generation of and reliance on rhetorical knowledge in the administration of justice by legal actors. If nothing else, I want to make clear that by recovering and …

Desperately Seeking Science, Francis J. Mootz Iii

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In this commentary I offer a lawyer’s view of what law and linguistics interdisciplinary studies might mean for legal practice, as well as a legal theorist’s view of what importance they may hold for jurisprudence. I do not pretend to have more than cursory knowledge about linguistics, and so my remarks about what linguistics scholars might gain from an interdisciplinary exchange necessarily will be brief general.

The Paranoid Style In Contemporary Legal Scholarship, Francis J. Mootz Iii

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This paper criticizes Pierre Schlag's postmodern legal theory by arguing that his idealized critic exhibits the style of functioning that we commonly would attribute to a paranoid individual. The paper concludes that a dialogical model of postmodern thought inspired by Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics provides a more helpful basis for contemporary legal theory.

The Ontological Basis Of Legal Hermeneutics: A Proposed Model Of Inquiry Based On The Work Of Gadamer, Habermas And Ricoeur, Francis J. Mootz Iii

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This paper provides a detailed account of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and its relationship to contemporary problems in legal theory. I first demonstrate that Gadamer's approach charts a course between the inflated claims of critical legal studies and the subjectivism of the law and literature movement. I then interrogate the hermeneutical approach from the perspective of Habermas's critical theory. I conclude that Ricoeur's intervention in the Gadamer-Habermas debate helps significantly to draw out the critical elements of Gadamer's work. I conclude by developing new model of legal practice and theory grounded in the textuality of law.