Digital Commons Network^™

Changing America: Three Arguments About Asian Americans And The Law, Frank H. Wu

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Real Estate Brokerage: Recent Changes In Relationships And A Proposed Cure, Ronald B. Brown, Joseph M. Grohman, Manuel R. Valcarcel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Professionalism, Gender And The Public Interest: The Advocacy Of Protection, Minna J. Kotkin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

How Can A Product Be Liable?, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Against The Peace And Dignity Of The State: Spousal Violence And Spousal Privilege, Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

Every indictment in Texas ends with the phrase, "[a]gainst the peace and dignity of the State." This phrase is in recognition of the fact that crimes are not purely personal matters between a defendant and a victim, but are offenses against society as a whole. By enacting changes to its spousal privilege statute, Texas has an opportunity to demonstrate that domestic violence offends the peace and dignity of the state.

Rationing Health Care And The Need For Credible Scarcity: Why American's Can't Say No, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

With adequate cost containment unlikely in the foreseeable future, health care use will have to be curtailed, ideally with open and explicit criteria for equitably allocating resources or rationing. Yet, consensus on any such criteria appears remote because Americans cannot say no to health care. Americans may refuse to accept rationing for two reasons. The absence of any global limitation on health care resources may encourage patients to believe that health care resources are not scarce and do not need to be rationed. A belief in vitalism--that everyone is morally entitled to unlimited longevity and good health--may discourage setting limits …

Colloquium - Gender, Law And Health Care: New Perspectives For Teaching And Scholarship: The Role Of Gender In Law And Health Care, Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mandatory Prelicensure Legal Internship: A Renewed Plea For Its Implementation In Light Of The Maccrate Report, Stephen R. Alton

Faculty Scholarship

Since its publication in 1992, virtually everyone who has any opinion about American legal education has been talking about the Mac- Crate Report. Relatively few among this multitude seem actually to have read the report itself. The purpose of this essay is to present an overview of this thoughtful document, along with some thoughts of my own regarding its implications for the future of legal education, particularly its implications for a mandatory prelicensure legal internship.

Elizabeth's Story: Exploring Power Imbalances In Divorce Mediation, Scott H. Hughes

Faculty Scholarship

Case study of many spouses who enter the divorce process with severe deficits in their abilities to deal with the emotional, economic, intellectual, and logistical issues which arise. Mediation may not be adviseable when there is an inequality of bargaining power due to abuse, inexperience, ignorance, socialization and/or the grieving process.

Religious Outlaws: Narratives Of Legality And The Politics Of Citizen Interpretation, Barbara L. Bezdek

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court’S Philosophy Of Science: Will The Real Karl Popper Please Stand Up?, Sean O'Connor

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Decisions And Linguistic Analysis: Is There A Linguist In The Court?, Lawrence Solan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Marlowe's Faustus: Contract As Metaphor?, Daniel B. Yeager

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Institutional Commitment To Minorities And Diversity: The Evolution Of A Law School Academic Support Program, Jackie Slotkin

Faculty Scholarship

Given the severe underrepresentation of minorities in the legal profession, law schools have begun to realize their obligation to provide minorities with access to a quality legal education. This Article profiles the ongoing efforts of one private, free-standing law school to fulfill its commitment to diversity in education.

Contextualizing Professional Responsibility: A New Curriculum For A New Century Teaching Legal Ethics: Iv. Developing Specialized Ethics Courses, Mary C. Daly, Bruce A. Green, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

The teaching of professional responsibility in U.S. law schools is entering a new age. A relative newcomer to the traditional curriculum, professional responsibility has struggled over the past twenty-one years to establish its intellectual legitimacy. It has evolved from a cramped course on the codes of lawyer conduct adopted by the American Bar Association ("ABA") to an expansive course on the law of lawyering. The premise of this essay is that professional responsibility has matured as a subject matter to the point where a new genre of courses should join the pervasive method and the traditional survey course. The richness …

Proposed Evidence Rules 413 To 415 – Some Problems And Recommendations, James S. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Section 320935 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 proposes three new Federal Rules of Evidence-Rules 413-415 – that would liberalize the admissibility of "propensity evidence" in criminal and civil cases involving allegations of sexual assault and child molestation. This Article expresses some reservations about, and suggests some alternatives to, Proposed Rules 413-415.

Political Correctness In Jury Selection, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The values of equality and freedom are in constant tension, or so some think. The more society stresses equality, the less freedom people have. For example, Bruce Ackerman would abolish inheritance in his utopian society to insure that every generation begins on an equal footing. Many commentators have advocated restrictions on pornography and hate speech in order to protect the likely targets of these traditionally protected uses of free speech. Additionally, Catharine MacKinnon has invoked the principle of equality in the form of protecting disempowered minorities to argue for a restriction on liberty and freedom. Conversely, the more economic freedom …

On Resegregating The Worlds Of Statute And Common Law, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

In the early afternoon of a humid, 97 degree summer day, James Gottshall was part of a crew of mostly 50- to 60-year-old men replacing track for Conrail. Michael Norvick, the crew supervisor, pressed the men to finish the work. He discouraged observance of the scheduled breaks. Richard Johns collapsed in the heat; Norvick ordered the men back to work as soon as a cold compress had revived him. Five minutes later Johns collapsed again, the victim of a heart attack. Gottshall began 40 minutes of ultimately fruitless cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Johns, his friend for 15 years. Norvick was unable …

Feminism And The False Dichotomy Of Victimization And Agency, Elizabeth M. Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Rethinking The American Constitutional Tradition: National Dimensions In The Formulation Of State Constitutions, Christian G. Fritz

Faculty Scholarship

Founding the Far West is an important scholarly contribution to nineteenth-century American history. However, its analysis of how California, Oregon, and Nevada became states identifies a dynamic that fails to capture the tradition of American constitution-making. Only when state constitution-making is more widely studied can the dimensions of that tradition be understood in ways that will integrate the meaning of the state constitutional experience. So too, the recent interest in state constitutions as documents having an independent source of constitutional authority may curb the ingrained habit of studying American constitutional law from "the top down" and encourage scholars to bring …

A Square Peg In A Vicious Circle: Stephen Breyer's Optimistic Prescription For The Regulatory Mess, Eric J. Gouvin

Faculty Scholarship

This Article reviews the book by Supreme Court Justice, Steven G. Breyer, "Breaking The Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regulation. " The Author discusses this book's most significant contribution that draws attention to the current regulatory regime's systemic problems, thereby encouraging serious discussion about how to "reinvent" the regulatory process. Breyer courageously points out that the political legitimacy of the process rests to some degree on the effectiveness of its product. This Review outlines the systemic problems and the "vicious circle" identified by Justice Breyer and then proceeds to review his proposed solution. The final part presents several criticisms of …

Of Communism, Treason, And Addiction: An Evaluation Of Novel Challenges To The Military's Anti-Gay Policy, Taylor Flynn

Faculty Scholarship

A recent wave of decisions have held unconstitutional the exclusion of lesbians, bisexuals,and gay men in the military when the only evidence of same-sex "conduct" is the servicemember's self-identification as gay. These courts, as well as some pro-equality commentators, have drawn upon three criminal law models by characterizing same-sex orientation as akin to a status and a form of political expression.

The first model relies upon Robinson v. California and Powell v. Texas, in which the Supreme Court announced the constitutional impermissibility of criminalizing the status of addiction to narcotics and alcohol. In the context of military litigation, this model …

The New Movements In International Economic Law, Joel R. Paul

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Federal Environmental Citizen Provisions: Obstacles And Incentives On The Road To Environmental Justice, Eileen Gauna

Faculty Scholarship

This article attempts to examine the special problems that community-based groups in low income and minority communities might encounter in prosecuting citizen suits under highly technical environmental statutes. To set the context for this inquiry, part II of this article describes the environmental justice movement and investigates the charge that communities of color are disproportionately and unjustly burdened with environmental hazards. Part II also explores the differences in perspective that underlie much of the conflict among environmental justice activists, mainstream environmental organizations, and EPA. Part II concludes with a look at social forces that have contributed to environmental inequities and …

Legal Enforcement Of Morality, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In modern Western political and legal thought, the subject of legal enforcement of morality is narrower than the literal coverage of those terms. That is because much legal enforcement of morality is uncontroversial and rarely discussed. Disagreement arises only when the law enforces aspects of morality that do not involve protecting others from fairly direct harms. More precisely, people raise questions about legal requirements (1) to perform acts that benefit others, (2) to refrain from acts that cause indirect harms to others, (3) to refrain from acts that cause harm to themselves, ( 4) to refrain from acts that offend …

Reflections On A Case (Of Motherhood), Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

She surveyed my office for signs of conspiracy. We had had two or three telephone conversations that had conveyed my ambivalence about representing her. A former colleague had urged her to call the clinic for help but I was reluctant to accept her case for the clinic: we rarely represented foster parents and the procedural complexity of the case convinced me that I would be unable to assign students to represent this client so late in the semester. I was resigned, however, to help her find a lawyer, both because a former colleague had sent her and because the snippets …

Imagery And Adjudication In The Criminal Law: The Relationship Between Images Of Criminal Defendants And Ideologies Of Criminal Law In Southern Antebellum And Modern Appellate Decisions, Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Criminal law opinions often project a distinct image of the accused. Sometimes, she is cast in a sympathetic light and may appear vulnerable or impressionable: a single mother, whose husband has died, struggling to raise her two, loving children; an impoverished, nineteen-year-old African-American with a fifth-grade education, "mentally dull and 'slow to learn;'" or a defenseless "obedient servant," protecting himself from an "adversary armed with a deadly weapon." On other occasions, the defendant may appear threatening, savage or even diabolical: a cold-blooded recidivist that escapes from a prison workcrew, brutally stabs, rapes and murders a woman, and returns for a …

The Profession Of Law: Columbia Law School's Use Of Experiential Learning Techniques To Teach Professional Responsibility, Carol B. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Columbia Law School's ethics course, "The Profession of Law" ("POL"), is an interactive, experiential exploration of lawyer ethics. The course, required for all third-year students, is taught on an intensive basis during the first week of the fall semester. It begins on Monday morning, the first day of the semester, and runs through mid-afternoon on the following Friday. The course has five goals: to introduce students to the rules that govern professional conduct; to help them develop an analytic framework for making ethical decisions in those broad areas where the rules do not give clear answers; to provoke them to …

Parents As Fiduciaries, Elizabeth S. Scott, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Traditionally, the law has deferred to the rights of biological parents in regulating the parent-child relationship. More recently, as the emphasis of legal regulation has shifted to protecting children's interests, critics have targeted the traditional focus on parents' rights as impeding the goal of promoting children's welfare. Some contemporary scholars argue instead for a "child-centered perspective," in contrast to the current regime under which biological parents continue to have important legal interests in their relationship with their children. The underlying assumption of this claim is that the rights of parents and the interests of children often are conflicting, and that …

Paint-By-Numbers Tax Lawmaking, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

Although their meaning and contours have long been controversial, the general criteria for evaluating changes in tax law enjoy both stability and consensus. At least since Adam Smith, there has been virtually universal agreement that the nation's tax law should be fair, economically efficient, and simple to comply with and to administer. Tax law changes should be designed to make the law more equitable, easier to comply with, more conducive to economic growth, and less likely to interfere with private economic decisionmaking.

Precisely what these criteria imply for policymaking is controversial, however. Fairness is often said to require that people …