Digital Commons Network^™

A Broken System, Part Ii: Why There Is So Much Error In Capital Cases And What Can Be Done About It, James S. Liebman, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Andrew Gelman, Valerie West, Garth Davies, Alexander Kiss

Faculty Scholarship

There is growing awareness that serious, reversible error permeates America’s death penalty system, putting innocent lives at risk, heightening the suffering of victims, leaving killers at large, wasting tax dollars, and failing citizens, the courts and the justice system.

Our June 2000 Report shows how often mistakes occur and how serious it is: 68% of all death verdicts imposed and fully reviewed during the 1973-1995 study period were reversed by courts due to serious errors.

Analyses presented for the first time here reveal that 76% of the reversals at the two appeal stages where data are available for study were …

It's A Question Of Market Access, Kyle W. Bagwell, Robert W. Staiger, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, we argue that market access issues associated with the question of the optimal mandate of the World Trade Organization should be separated from nonmarket access issues. We identify race-to-the-bottom and regulatory-chill concerns as market access issues and suggest that the WTIO should address these concerns. We then describe ways that WTO principles and procedures might be augmented to do so. As for nonmarket access issues, we argue that as a general matter these are best handled outside the WTO, and that, while implicit links might be encouraged, explicit links between the WTO and other labor and environmental …

Ensuring The Supremacy Of Federal Law: Why The District Court Was Wrong In Westside Mothers V. Haveman, Erwin Chemerinsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

To What Extent Does The Power Of Government To Determine The Boundaries And Conditions Of Lawful Commerce Permit Government To Declare Who May Advertise And Who May Not?, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tort Reform And The Medical Liability Insurance Crisis In Mississippi: Diagnosing The Disease And Prescribing A Remedy, Neil Vidmar, Leigh Anne Brown

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Pharmacogenetic Interventions, Orphan Groups, And Distributive Justice: The Role Of Cost-Benefit Analysis, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Designing Global Climate Regulation, Jonathan B. Wiener

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Deconstructing The Slums Of Baltimore, Garrett Power

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Environmental Justice In An Era Of Devolved Collaboration , Sheila R. Foster

Faculty Scholarship

Environmental decision-making is undergoing a profound shift. Traditional forums and processes are being displaced by mechanisms emphasizing local, "place-based" decision-making. These emerging decision-making mechanisms are orchestrated through collaborative processes featuring stakeholders from both the public and private sectors. This transformation is evident in a number of recent governmental initiatives, including those by the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA"), most notably its Community-Based Environmental Protection ("CBEP") initiative. Other federal agencies, particularly those with land or species management responsibilities, have similarly advocated a greater role for local decision-makers and collaborative problem-solving. This Article examines the points of convergence and divergence between devolved collaboration …

Crime And Consciousness: Science And Involuntary Acts , Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

This Article confronts this clash between legal and scientific perspectives on consciousness by proposing new ways to structure the voluntary act requirement so that it incorporates the insights of modern science on the human mind. Part I examines the criminal law's voluntary act requirement, particularly in the context of the MPC's influential provision, which reflects the law and psychology of the era in which the MPC was originally developed--the 1950s. Part II analyzes the new science of “consciousness,” a term that typically refers to the sum of a person's thoughts, feelings, and sensations, as well as the everyday circumstances and …

Webwatch—Legal Self-Help, Pat Newcombe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Deep-Water Oculina Coral Reefs Of Florida: Biology, Impacts And Management, John K. Reed

Faculty Scholarship

Deep-water Oculina coral reefs, which are similar in structure and development to deep-water Lophelia reefs, stretch over 167 km (90 nmi) at depths of 70–100 m along the eastern Florida shelf of the United States. These consist of numerous pinnacles and ridges, 3–35 m in height. Coral growth rates average 16.1 mm yr−1 and biodiversity is very rich. Extensive areas of Oculina rubble may be due to human impacts (e.g. fish trawling and dredging, anchoring, bottom longlines) and natural processes such as bioerosion and episodic die-off. Early in the 1970s, the reefs were teeming with fish. By the early 1990s, …

What Family For The 21st Century?, David D. Meyer, Harry D. Krause

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Communities That Make Standards Of Care Possible, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Teaching A Professional Responsibility Course: Lessons Learned From The Clinic, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

In teaching Ethics or Professional Responsibility, I want to do more than teach students the law of the course. While it is important that students become familiar with and able to navigate the rules of professional responsibility, my clinical teaching has helped me develop additional educational objectives that I believe will affect their lives as future lawyers. I categorize my objectives in a three-credit classroom professional responsibility course as three-fold: 1) teaching the law of lawyering; 2) exploring professionalism issues;20 and 3) critically examining the profession. I will discuss a few of my experiences teaching in the clinic and how …

Farmworkers As An Environmental Justice Issue: Similarities And Differences, Eileen Gauna

Faculty Scholarship

This paper endeavors to situate farmworker issues within a broader context of issues in environmental regulation. Environmental regulation is itself a subset of a broader universe of environmental justice concerns. In approaching the issue this way, the author highlights some of the similarities farmworker issues share with other regulatory environmental justice issues. The author highlights the dramatic differences as well. Leaving to others the task of describing the dire conditions of the farmworker, the author takes two important examples of regulatory mechanisms designed to protect farmworkers and describe some of the commonalities. The two sites of regulatory activity used are …

Should I Have Learned To Cook? Interviews With Women Lawyers Juggling Multiple Roles, Jackie Slotkin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Don't Believe Everything You Think: Cognitive Bias In Legal Decision Making, Ian Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the role of cognitive bias in legal decision making. Drawing on research in cognitive science and law, it explores the impact of cognitive bias on both lawyers and clients. These often subtle mental biases can lead to pervasive errors in decision making by causing us to ignore important information and make inaccurate predictions. They may lead a client to underestimate the risk of litigation. They may also lead a lawyer to miscategorize a client's value choice as a misjudgement of fact. The article offers illustrative stories of the impact of bias on both client and lawyer and …

From Harlem To Havana: Sustainable Urban Development Symposium - Environmental Law And Sustainable Development , Sheila R. Foster

Faculty Scholarship

Consider two remarkable places: Harlem, New York and Old Havana, Cuba. These are two different neighborhoods, cities, countries, political systems, economies, and cultures. Yet these two neighborhoods are bound together by a common phenomenon unlimited by geography or differences in political and economic systems. The global prosperity of the last two decades has created historic opportunities to usher in development and revitalization efforts in neglected urban areas across the world! Governments, along with the private sector, have moved capital back to cities or neighborhoods that became endangered from years of disinvestment, lack of economic opportunities, and inadequate access to essential …

The Real Properties Of Contract Law, Michael Madison

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Few Reflections On A Long Deanship, John D. Feerick

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lawyers, Non-Lawyers And Mediation: Rethinking The Professional Monopoly From A Problem-Solving Perspective , Jacqueline Nolan-Haley

Faculty Scholarship

Mediation is a big business today that is practiced by lawyers and non-lawyers, and is closely related to the business of law. Lawyers have a long-standing monopoly on the law business and do not look favorably on sharing their power with nonlawyers. This phenomenon is odd because it occurs at the same time that the legal profession is beginning to embrace a new ethic of problem-solving that honors the values of collaboration and power-sharing among professionals in multiple disciplines. Lawyers protect their professional monopoly through the unauthorized practice of law ("UPL") doctrine that limits the practice of law to licensed …

Privacy Wrongs In Search Of Remedies, Joel R. Reidenberg

Faculty Scholarship

The American legal system has generally rejected legal rights for data privacy and relies instead on market self-regulation and the litigation process to establish norms of appropriate behavior in society. Information privacy is protected only through an amalgam of narrowly targeted rules. The aggregation of these specific rights leaves many significant gaps and fewer clear remedies for violations of fair information practices. With an absence of well-established legal rights, privacy wrongs are currently in search of remedies. This Article first describes privacy rights and wrongs that frame the search for remedies in the United States. It explores public enforcement of, …

Two Concepts Of Immortality: Reframing Public Debate On Stem-Cell Research, Frank Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Splitting The Atom Of Marshall's Wisdom, Susan Herman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Synergy Of Equality And Privacy In Women's Rights, Elizabeth M. Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Recognizing The Interdependence Of Rights In The Antidiscrimination Context Through The World Conference Against Racism , Catherine Powell, Jennifer H. Lee

Faculty Scholarship

This background paper assesses the importance of integrating gender into efforts to address racial discrimination and related intolerance in the WCAR process. While this background paper primarily focuses on racial discrimination, the analysis may be applied to xenophobia and related intolerance where these experiences are "raced" experiences. Addressing these forms of intolerance in a comprehensive manner requires unmasking the ways in which race intersects with gender and other status. A gender analysis is needed to make racism more fully visible, because "racial discrimination does not always affect men and women equally or in the same way." Women often experience compounded …

The Invisible Patient (Reviewing Sally Satel, How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine (2000)), Barbara A. Noah

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the fact that African-Americans suffer from a variety of health problems at disproportionately higher rates than whites, inequities in the medical system make access to care more difficult for minorities. The problem of racial disparities in health care encompasses more than problems of access or payment, however. Communication difficulties between physician and patient and disparate provision of services covered by insurance also may contribute substantially to health disparities between the races. This review canvasses some of the evidence of differential medical treatment and offers some suggestions that may improve the quality of communication between physicians and patients. In addition …

Giving Suckers (And Salmon) An Even Break: Klamath Basin Water And The Endangered Species Act, Reed D. Benson

Faculty Scholarship

An extreme drought hit the Klamath River Basin of southern Oregon and northern California in 2001, and a remarkable water controversy soon followed. Hundreds of farmers, who for decades had reliably received irrigation water from the federal government's Klamath Project, were told, for the first time, that they would get none that year. Instead, the government would hold the water in Upper Klamath Lake and release it to flow down the Klamath River in an effort to ensure the survival of fish protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Rice V. Cayetano: The Supreme Court Declines To Extend Federal Indian Law Principles To Native Hawaiians Sovereign Rights, Jeanette Wolfley

Faculty Scholarship

As I read and reread the Rice decision, I realized how similar it is to the trend in the recent Indian law cases decided by the Supreme Court. For example, Rice, in many respects, represents the discomfort the Justices feel for upholding "special treatment" of Native Americans under the law. The Court in Rice reversed the Ninth Circuit's decision allowing the State of Hawaii to conduct a Natives-only election of trustees to administer a trust to benefit Native Hawaiians. It found that the Fifteenth Amendment, adopted after the Civil War to prevent states from denying the elective franchise to former …