Digital Commons Network^™

Balzacian Legality: A Proposal For Natural Law Juridicial Standards Of Legality, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Faculty Scholarship

The task of the present article is twofold. First, it represents an attempt to make an original English language contribution to the continuing interdisciplinary inquiry, begun in France, into the presence of law in Balzac's The Human Comedy, by focusing upon themes and novels that have not been the subject of previous individual study. Second, it seeks to contribute to an area of growing interest to legal scholars in the United States – the study of law and literature – by providing an example of the insights one French novelist with legal training and experience had into questions that …

Busfare Increases And Administrative Irregularities, Lawrence G. Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Plain English Movement, The Plain English Movement: Panel Discussion, Carl Felsenfeld

Faculty Scholarship

One of the dominant events between 1975 and today in United States consumer law was the birth of what has become known as the "plain English movement". For centuries lawyers have been derided for the nature of their prose. A word will not suffice where two or even three can take its place; long sentences are preferable to short ones; Latin, or perhaps medieval French, are preferable to English. The plain English movement is the name given to the first effective effort to change this and to write legal documents, particularly those used by consumers, in a manner that can …

Analytical And Comparative Variations On Selected Provisions Of Book One Of The Louisiana Civil Code With Special Consideration Of The Role Of Fault In The Determination Of Marital Disputes, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Faculty Scholarship

This article is intended to be a type of "structuralist" commentary upon selected provisions in Book I of the Louisiana Civil Code. Its sole purpose is to illustrate, both for pedagogical and doctrinal reasons, some of the analytical difficulties to which these code provisions might give rise when they are read in a close textual fashion. It should be emphasized that this study is a textual commentary and not a historical assessment of the sources or origins of the code texts – the latter analysis is outside the purview of the present endeavor.

Accordingly, this article consists of a critical …

Communicating With Juries: Problems And Remedies, William W. Schwarzer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Two Modes Of Legal Thought, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

We should begin with a confession of ignorance. We have no jurisprudence of legal scholarship. Scholars expatiate at length on the work of other actors in the legal culture – legislators, judges, prosecutors, and even practicing lawyers. Yet we reflect little about what we are doing when we write about the law. We have a journal about the craft of teaching, but none about the craft of scholarship.

In view of our ignorance, we should pay particular heed to our point of departure. I start with the observation that legal scholarship expresses itself in a variety of verbal forms. Descriptive …

Our Perfect Constitution, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Monaghan takes issue with "due substance" theorists, who view the Constitution as protecting rights and values generated by current conceptions of political morality. In this Article, he examines and criticizes the theories advanced to justify looking to those current conceptions as an acceptable mode of reasoning about constitutional meaning. Professor Monaghan's own view is that the proper mode of ascertaining constitutional meaning is one that looks to original intent and precedent, a view that acknowledges the Constitution does not guarantee perfect government.

Interspousal Immunity In Pennsylvania, John L. Gedid

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Fate, Philip Chase Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

The Mary Ireland Graves Dougherty Lectures in Constitutional Law were established in 1979 at the University of Texas School of Law in the memory of Mrs. Dougherty by her family. Professor Bobbitt delivered the inaugural series of these lectures on three evenings in April 1979. Of those in attendance, only Professor Bobbitt's students, who had witnessed the evolution of his ideas during that year, and a few colleagues with whom he must have shared his thoughts, could have expected what followed on those spring evenings in Austin. His subject was "the question of judicial review." So stated, the subject hardly …

Discrimination As A Field Of Law, Arthur Larson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Right To Life, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

In the theory of rights we repeatedly encounter the problem of reconciling someone's having a right with his properly suffering damage to the interest protected by the right. In the case of right to life, we have to assess numerous cases in which individuals are killed or allowed to die, and we wish nonetheless to affirm their right to life. These cases include killing an aggressor in self-defense, accidental homicide, terminating life-sustaining therapy, and capital punishment.

My program in this Article is to provide an account of how it is that those with a right to life may nonetheless be …

Fairness And Natural Justice In English And South African Law, Lawrence G. Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Court Of Appeals Of Maryland: Roles, Work And Performance - Part Ii: Craftsmanship And Decision-Making, William L. Reynolds

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Ideology Of Advocacy: Procedural Justice And Professional Ethics, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Conventional morality frowns at the ethics of advocacy. Public opinion disapproves of what it considers the lawyer's most characteristic activities. Popular culture can reconcile itself to him only by pretending that all his clients are virtuous. The lawyer's response takes the form of a dialectic of cynicism and naiveté. On one hand, he sees his more degrading activities as licensed by a fundamental amorality lying beneath conventional morality. On the other hand, he sees his more heartening ones as serving an institutional justice higher than conventional morality. The two moods divide the profession as a whole, and the division can …

The Metamorphosis Of Larceny, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

To the modern lawyer, the rules of common law theft offenses do not seem ordered by any coherent principle. In this Article, however, Professor Fletcher shows that the common law of larceny can be understood in terms of two structural principles, possessorial immunity and manifest criminality. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the modern style of legal thought evolved, first commentators and then courts lost their ability to understand these principles and came to rely on intent as the central element of criminal liability. As a result of this transformation, Professor Fletcher argues, the range of circumstances that can …

Logic And Coercion In Bentham's Theory Of Law, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

Unlike conventional moral standards and other social rules, laws can be deliberately laid down and changed by specified procedures. It therefore seems reasonable to think of laws as issuing from or adopted by lawmakers who are ordinary human beings. Since laws tell us what must or must not be done, and since there is some temptation to understand all laws on the same pattern, it is natural to think of them as either commands or prohibitions. This is indeed a traditional view.

The Hunting Of The Shark: An Inquiry Into The Limits Of Congressional Power Under The Commerce Clause, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Traditional Criminal Procedure In Ethiopia, Stanley Z. Fisher

Faculty Scholarship

In the decade 1955-1965 the Ethiopian government completely revolutionized its legal system by promulgating comprehensive legal codes and a new constitution. These laws have a predominantly Western flavor, and seem to bear little relation to the traditional patterns of life which still prevail in the Empire-one of the least "developed" areas of Africa. This state of affairs has led some to characterize the new codes as "fantasy law," which may serve to put a modern "face" on the country but, at least for some time to come, will not have any serious impact on the conduct of its affairs.

On Lawful Governments, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

What is the meaning of sentences of the form 'X is the lawful government of the country Y,' and what kinds of statements are normally -made by using them? Most answers to these questions can be classified as legalistic, moralistic, or compromise solutions. The gist of the legalistic approach is that the lawful government is that authorized by the positive law of the land. Critics of the legalistic approach point out that disagreement about the lawful government is not always solved when agreement is reached about the positive law of the land. For example, two people may disagree as to …

On Interpreting The Ethiopian Penal Code, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

The aim of this article is to set out and discuss some general principles of interpreting the Ethiopian Penal Code – that is to say, of using it. Even now, ten years after it came into effect, many people have difficulty in understanding and using the Penal Code in a straightforward way. It seems complex, and many of its fundamental conceptions are unfamiliar to Ethiopian lawyers. This article, discussing at length how the code is built, may help reduce its apparent complexity and thus facilitate its day-to-day application.

The Presumption Of Innocence In The Soviet Union, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The presumption of innocence is a curious item in the baggage of Western legal rhetoric. Revered today here and abroad, it has become a standard clause in international testimonials to the rights of man. Yet, at first blush, it seems conceptually anomalous and irrelevant in practice. It is hardly a presumption of fact – a distillation of common experience; statistics betray the suggestion that men indicted on criminal charges are likely to be innocent. Nor is it a legal rule masquerading as an irrebuttable presumption; it is rebuttable by proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt. Further, it …

Language And Law In Ethiopia, Fassil Abebe, Stanley Z. Fisher

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to introduce our readers to the problems of legal terminology in Ethiopia's codes and to explain what the Faculty of Law has been attempting to achieve in this area; second, to give some specific examples, drawn from the procedural codes, of these language problem.

A Plea For A Uniform Parole Evidence Rule And Principles Of Contract Interpretation, Joseph Perillo

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Prolonging Life, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

A physician decides not to prolong the life of a terminal patient. What are the legal consequences? Is it murder, akin to a gunman's pulling the trigger? Or is the law more sensitive? Professor Fletcher proposes that a decision to interrupt life-sustaining therapy, such as that to turn off a mechanical respirator, should be classified as an omission, not an act. He arrives at this conclusion by analyzing the common sense usages of "cause" and "permit." If the decision is an omission then the law must focus on the doctor-patient relationship to define legal consequences, allowing customary standards of the …