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Law Library Newsletter, Volume 1, Issue 4 – November/December 2009, Kresge Law Library

Law Library Newsletter

We are quickly moving toward the end of the fall 2009 semester. For me and my colleagues in the Kresge Law Library, the end of this semester will mean that we are only one semester away from the completion of the renovation of the “old” law school. As the 2010 spring semester ends, we will be starting to move all of our print volumes and microforms into Biolchini Hall. This edition of the Law Library News contains some photographs of the construction site. The Reading Room ceiling has been finished, and I think the final renovated space will be spectacular. …

Library Profile: Carmela Kinslow, Susan Hamilton

Law Library Staff & Faculty Works

Carmela Kinslow worked for the Kresge Law Library from 1979–2015, but began her library career at Hesburgh Library in 1974.

Law Library Newsletter, Volume 1, Issue 3 - September/October 2009, Kresge Law Library

Law Library Newsletter

The beginning of the fall 2009 semester marks another benchmark in the physical transformation of the Notre Dame Law School facility. This will be the only complete academic year without dedicated library study and research space and with just one-quarter of our print collection onsite. For first year students, this will mark some changes in the way that we teach legal research. We continue to strive to balance our teaching of various methods of online access to legal information with locating and using traditional print materials. We survey our students annually to monitor what law firms expect in research methods …

Library Profile: Sandra Klein, Susan Hamilton

Law Library Staff & Faculty Works

Sandra Klein has worked for the Kresge Law Library since 1998.

Bulletin Of The University Of Notre Dame The Law School 2009–10, Volume 105, Number 4, University Of Notre Dame

Bulletins of Information

CONTENTS

Graduate Law Programs

Dual-Degree Programs

Requirements for Graduation and Good Academic Standing

Tuition and Fees

Withdrawal Regulations

Curriculum

Law School Courses

Course Descriptions

Officers of Administration

Law School Faculty

Law School Calendar

Important Addresses

Law Library Newsletter, Volume 1, Issue 2 - July/August 2009, Kresge Law Library

Law Library Newsletter

This second issue of Law Library News highlights the dynamic nature of life and work in the Kresge Law Library. Amongst the many pictures of the construction phases of Eck Hall, you will find helpful material gleaned from professional conferences and staff experiences with the continuing evolution of electronic access to information. To me, though, the focus this summer continues to be on our continual quest to provide excellent service to all of our patrons in our transitional environment. That transitional environment includes the impact of our construction project and the changing nature of information delivery. On the construction side, …

Library Profile: Scott Hengert, Susan Hamilton

Law Library Staff & Faculty Works

Scott Hengert has worked at the Kresge Law Library since 2008.

164th University Of Notre Dame Commencement And Mass Program, University Of Notre Dame

Commencement Programs

164th Commencement and Mass Program

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Library Profile: Barb Ritty, Susan Hamilton

Law Library Staff & Faculty Works

Barbara Ritty worked for the Kresge Law Library from 1985–2012.

Standing, Spending, And Separation: How The No-Establishment Rule Does (And Does Not) Protect Conscience, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

The First Amendment’s “Establishment Clause” is widely thought to protect “conscience.” Does it? If so, how? It is proposed in this paper that the no-establishment rule does indeed promote and protect religious liberty, and does safeguard conscience, but not (or, at least, not only) in the way most people think it does, namely, by sparing those who object from the asserted injury to their conscience caused by public funding of religious activity.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation - a case in which the Justices limited taxpayer standing to bring Establishment Clause claims - reminds …

"But For The Grace Of God There Go I": Justice Thomas And The Little Guy, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Journal Articles

This Essay, prepared for a NYU Journal of Law and Liberty symposium on “The Unknown Justice Thomas,” challenges the oft-repeated criticism that Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinions reflect a lack of empathy for the less fortunate. The Essay argues that, on the contrary, Justice Thomas’s opinions are replete with expressions of concern for the “little guy,” which are frequently overlooked or misinterpreted. The Essay explores three themes reflecting this concern in Thomas’s opinions.

Religious Freedom, Church Autonomy, And Constitutionalism, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

Our topic at this symposium is "religion, the state, and constitutionalism"-not "the Constitution," or "the First Amendment," but "constitutionalism." Countless conferences, cases, books, and articles have wrestled with one version or another of the question, "how does our Constitution, with its First Amendment and its religion clauses, promote, protect, or perhaps restrain religion?" We are considering, it seems to me, a question that is different, and that is different in interesting and important ways: What are connections between religion and religious freedom, on the one hand, and constitutionalism, on the other?

Profiling Minority Law Librarians: An Update, Dwight B. King, Rhea Ballard-Thrower, Grace M. Mills

Journal Articles

This is a 2007 update of a survey of minority law librarians first conducted in 1992. It offers a recent profile of our minority colleagues, enabling one to see how things have changed - or remained the same - over the course of fifteen years.

An Alternate Approach To Channeling?, Mark P. Mckenna

Journal Articles

Intellectual property law has developed a variety of doctrines to police the boundaries between various forms of protection. Courts and scholars alike overwhelmingly conceive of these doctrines in terms of the nature of the objects of protection. The functionality doctrine in trademark law, for example, defines the boundary between trademark and patent law by identifying and refusing trademark protection to features that play a functional role in a product’s performance. Likewise, the useful article doctrine works at the boundary of copyright and patent law to identify elements of an article’s design that are dictated by function and to channel protection …

The Idea Of Pollution, John C. Nagle

Journal Articles

Pollution is the primary target of environmental law. During the past forty years, hundreds of federal and state statutes, administrative regulations, and international treaties have established multiple approaches to addressing pollution of the air, water, and land. Yet the law still struggles to identify precisely what constitutes pollution, how much of it is tolerable, and what we should do about it.

But environmental pollution is hardly the only type of pollution. Historically, the idea of pollution referred to a host of effects upon human environments. This remains evident in contemporary anthropological literature, which studies the pollution beliefs of cultures throughout …

Trademark Use And The Problem Of Source, Mark P. Mckenna

Journal Articles

This Article mediates a scholarly debate regarding the existence and desirability of a "trademark use" doctrine. It argues that trademark use is a predicate of liability under the Lanham Act, but those who advocate treating trademark use as a threshold question put much more weight on that concept than it can bear. Courts cannot consistently apply trademark use as a distinct element of the plaintiff's prima facie case because trademark use can be determined only from the perspective of consumers. Specifically, courts can determine whether a defendant has made trademark use of a plaintiff's mark only by asking whether consumers …

H.L.A. Hart: A Twentieth-Century Oxford Political Philosopher, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

This essay offers first a sketch (by a student and colleague) of H.L.A. Hart's life; second an account of the political philosophy which he explicitly articulated in The Concept of Law (1961), and of its relation to the main currents of Oxford political philosophy in the 1950s; and thirdly an exposition and critical assessment of the normative political theory deployed, to widespread acclaim, in his Law, Liberty & Morality (1963).

Public Bioethics And The Bush Presidency, O. Carter Snead

Journal Articles

Public bioethics figured prominently during the tenure of President George W. Bush. This Article explores the Bush legacy in this domain. It begins by articulating and examining the grounding norms of President Bush’s approach to public bioethics. Next, it analyzes how these norms were applied to concrete areas of concern. Building on this analysis, the next section reflects on what the President’s actions illustrate about the capacity of the Executive Branch to shape public bioethics. The Article concludes with a brief discussion of the possible metrics by which the Bush Administration’s efforts might be judged, and then offers several assessments …

The Effectiveness Of Biodiversity Law, John C. Nagle

Journal Articles

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has generated a heated debate between those who believe that the law has succeeded and those who believe that the law has failed. The resolution to that debate depends upon whether the law’s stated purposes or some other criteria provide the basis for judging a law’s effectiveness. Meanwhile, since the enactment of the ESA in 1973, biodiversity protection has received growing attention in the nations of southeastern Asia. So far, the law has been much less effective in protecting Asian biodiversity from habitat loss, commercial exploitation, and other threats, yet southeastern Asia’s biodiversity law has …

Response To Michael Sandel, Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

Professor Michael J. Sandel has treated us to an elegant argument against efforts by athletes to use medicine to "enhance" their bodies or by parents, in effect, to genetically engineer their children. I cannot agree with him more that "playing God" (my phrase, not his) in these ways is fundamentally an exercise in hubris, a rejection of the gifts that we have been given. I cannot improve on Professor Sandel's presentation of his argument. Unlike some Supreme Court Justices, I know that I am not a philosopher. Having said that, one of the joys of being a law professor is …

The Nobel Effect, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

For the first time in scholarly literature, this article traces the history of modern international law from the perspective of the constructivist theory of international relations. Constructivism is one of the leadings schools of thought in international relations today. This theory posits that state preferences emerge from social construction and that state interests are evolving rather than fixed. Constructivism further argues that international norms have a life cycle composed of three stages: norm emergence, norm acceptance (or "norm cascades"), and norm internalization. As such, constructivism treats international law as a dynamic process in which "norm entrepreneurs" interact with state actors …

The Securities Laws And The Mechanics Of Legal Change, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

This essay, prepared for the Virginia Law Review symposium marking the 75th anniversary of the Securities Exchange Commission, explores the mechanisms through which the Roosevelt Administration secured the Supreme Court's approval of various features of the New Deal's securities law program.

Bioethics And Self-Governance: The Lessons Of The Universal Declaration On Bioethics And Human Rights, O. Carter Snead

Journal Articles

The following article analyzes the process of conception, elaboration, and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights, and reflects on the lessons it might hold for public bioethics on the international level. The author was involved in the process at a variety of levels: he provided advice to the IBC on behalf of the President's Council of Bioethics; he served as the U.S. representative to UNESCO's Intergovernmental Bioethics Committee; and led the U.S. Delegation in the multilateral negotiation of Government experts that culminated in the adoption of the declaration in its final form. The author is currently …

Response To Nicholas Boyle, O. Carter Snead

Journal Articles

Response to Nicholas Boyle’s talk “God, Sex, and America: From Decline of the Common Morality to the Emergence of a Global Ethical Life” at The Catholic University of America Center for Law, Philosophy and Culture’s Symposium “A Common Morality for the Global Age: In Gratitude for What We Are Given.”

Religious Liberties: The International Religious Freedom Act, Richard W. Garnett, Thomas F. Farr, T. Jeremy Gunn, William L. Saunders

Journal Articles

MR. SAUNDERS: Welcome to this panel, put on by the Religious Liberties Practice Group. Any of you who would like to join that Practice Group, you are cordially invited to do so. Welcome to the Federalist Society Annual Convention. My name is Bill Saunders. I am a Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council, and I am the Chairman of the Religious Liberties Practice Group at the Federalist Society.

Our aim today is: to talk about religious freedom, to talk about whether it should be an aspect of U.S. foreign policy, how best to make it so if you believe …

Does Free Exercise Of Religion Deserve Constitutional Mention?, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

The article discusses the inclusion of the free exercise of religion among a society's constitutional guarantees in the U.S. It cites Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager, authors of the book "Religious Freedom and the Constitution," who hold that religion does not deserve constitutional mention on account of any special value. It disputes this view and states that religion does deserve constitutional mention and that the constitution should protect a citizen's right to practice his or her religion.

The One-Size-Fits-All Family, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock

Journal Articles

Family policy and the law based on it assume universals. That is, if marriage improves the welfare of the majority of couples and their children, it is worth pushing as a policy initiative. Further, laws will be written (or kept on the books) that privilege marriage over other family forms. Similarly, research that tells us that divorce harms children except following the relatively small number of highly conflicted marriages, spawns efforts to preserve troubled marriages or even to roll back liberal or relatively inexpensive divorce laws. With yet another example, since adopted children mostly do better than children left either …

The N-Effect More Competitors, Less Competition, Stephen M. Garcia, Avishalom Tor

Journal Articles

This article introduces the N-effect—the discovery that increasing the number of competitors (N) can decrease competitive motivation. Studies 1a and 1b found evidence that average test scores (e.g., SAT scores) fall as the average number of test takers at test-taking venues increases. Study 2 found that individuals trying to finish an easy quiz among the top 20% in terms of speed finished significantly faster if they believed they were competing in a pool of 10 rather than 100 other people. Study 3 showed that the N-effect is strong among individuals high in social-comparison orientation and weak among those low in …

Private Norms And Public Spaces, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Journal Articles

This Essay explores the role of private norms in the allocation of urban public spaces as well as local governments' efforts to enforce these norms. The Essay was prepared for the 2008 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference, William and Mary School of Law, as a tribute to Robert Ellickson. community policing, informal norms

Taking Strickland Claims Seriously, Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

Every criminal defendant is promised the right to the effective assistance of counsel. Whether at trial or first appeal of right, due process is violated when attorney negligence undermines the fairness and reliability of judicial proceedings. That, at least, is the black-letter law articulated in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 688 (1984). In practice, however, the right to effective representation has meant surprisingly little over the last two decades. Under the standards that emerged from Strickland, scores of defendants have received prison or death sentences by virtue of serious unprofessional errors committed by their attorneys.

This Essay canvasses a line …