Digital Commons Network^™

Comment On Professor Van Alstyne's Paper, Henry P. Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

My major difficulty with Professor Van Alstyne's paper is its incomplete character. In the end, he makes only two points: first, judges are authorized to apply "this Constitution," not to do justice; and second, judges should not lie about what they are doing. The danger is that after a while the first point sounds somewhat empty, while the actual content of the second point seems entirely parasitic on the first.

The Lawyer As Informer, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

From the schoolyard "tattletale" to the police officer's "confidential informant" to the Pentagon "whistle blower," our society is deeply ambivalent toward those who report the wrongdoing of others to the authorities. On the one hand, society values informers. Without informers, serious misbehavior would certainly escape correction. The police officers' code of silence with respect to fellow officers' crimes, for example, may be a major obstacle to eliminating police corruption and brutality. On the other hand, society scorns informers as betrayers of confidence. Even one who violates an antisocial pact such as the police officers' code of silence is viewed as …

The Suspect As A Source Of Testimonial Evidence: A Comparison With The English Approach, Gordon Van Kessel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The "Official" Texas Court Reports: The Rest Of The Story, James Hambleton, Jim Paulsen

Faculty Scholarship

In the January 1986 issue of the Texas Bar Journal, this column recounted the checkered tale of the official Texas court reports, from the birth of the Texas Reports in the first State Legislature, to their mysterious death at the hands of the Legislature in 1963, and their equally mysterious resurrection by the most recent session, in the form of the Texas Government Code. The authors have since been deluged with reader mail on the subject, and have decided to share excerpts from both letters.

The Interpretation Of Means Expressions During Prosecution, R. Carl Moy

Faculty Scholarship

This article briefly explains how the scope of a claim including a means expression is determined both under the PTO view and a strict application of the statutory language. The lack of consensus and current state of the law in the area are illustrated through an analysis of several recent decisions of the Federal Circuit. The policies underlying the PTO and statutory methods of interpreting means expressions during prosecution are examined in an effort to demonstrate that the statutory method more effectively furthers the policies underlying the patent system.

Access To Health Care And Equal Protection Of The Law: The Need For A New Heightened Scrutiny, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

Proposals to reduce national expenditures for health care under Medicare and other programs raise questions about the limits on legislative power to distribute health care benefits. The constitutional guarantee of equal protection has been a weak source of protection for the sick, largely because they fail to qualify for special scrutiny under traditional equal protection analysis. Recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court suggest that the Justices seek a newer, more flexible approach to reviewing claims of unequal protection. This Article examines the application of the equal protection guarantee to health-related claims. It argues that traditional equal protection analysis …

Prospective Payment For Hospital Services: Social Responsibility And The Limits Of Legal Standards, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

The author advances the argument that Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) should be recognized as a health care resource allocation technique. In addition, the author offers four societal goals as a gauge for measurement of DRG performance and reviews the incentives and disincentives connected with utilization of DRGs in health care allocation. Finally, the author examines the dichotomous attitudes toward health care distribution which are present in society today. The author's primary goal is to illustrate the potential inequities which could result from allowing DRGs to force allocation of health resources without any reference to social responsibility issues.

Crisis? What Crisis?, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

Bureaucracy is a favorite target for criticism from the left and the right. Bureaucratization of an organization is claimed to cause excessive reliance upon rigid rules or the absence of rules altogether.' Few people want to be part of a large bureaucracy and fewer still want to depend on a bureaucracy for important benefits or policymaking. In recent years, the business of the federal judiciary has increased dramatically. Congress has attempted to meet the rising caseload by increasing the number of federal judges and assistants. As the federal court system becomes more and more like administrative bureaucracies, the question has …

American Income Tax Aspects Of Trans-Border Securities Investment, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

Encouraging investment of foreign capital in securities issued by American companies does not always marry well with preserving the integrity of the tax system. The interaction between the anonymity sought by some foreign investors and the disclosure required to enforce the law reminds one of the prophet Ezekiel's vision of a wheel within a wheel, and Shakespeare's Hamlet, which contains a play within a play. For today's topicwhich claims neither the elegance of Shakespeare's drama nor the obscure fascination of Ezekiel's vision--contains a problem within a problem.

The Connection Between Law And Morality: Comments On Dworkin, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

Our discussions yesterday seemed haunted by a contrast--never quite formulated--between Natural Law and Legal Positivism. The standard interpretation turns on the idea of a "necessary connection" between law and morality. Positivism has often been understood to hold, and Natural Law to deny, that there can be unjust laws.

Separation Of Political Powers: Boundaries Or Balance, Alan L. Feld

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most significant structural elements of the United States Constitution divides the political power of the government between two discrete political institutions, the Congress and the President, in order to prevent concentration of the full power of the national government in one place. This governmental structure has posed a continuing dilemma of how to allow for the shared decisionmaking necessary to effective government while maintaining the independence of each political branch. As the United States Congress reaches its two hundredth anniversary, questions concerning the relationship between Congress and the President, for a substantial time thought by legal scholars …

The Right Of Elderly Patients To Refuse Life-Sustaining Treatment, George J. Annas, Leonard H. Glantz

Faculty Scholarship

Some legislation, such as law permitting living wills, has addressed the problem of decisions regarding life-sustaining treatment for the elderly. Most of the developing law on the subject is, however, being made by the courts, often in prospective decisions about treatment. These rulings have followed a variety of approaches to the ends of protecting incompetent patients and enforcing the right of the competent to make their own decisions.

Private Adjudicators And The Public Interest: The Expanding Scope Of International Arbitration, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

When Solomon arbitrated a child custody dispute, the baby almost perished.' Today's arbitrator probably could not propose such a drastic award. Yet courts may refuse to compel arbitration of some disputes for fear that societal interests may suffer a fate similar to that which would have befallen the baby under Solomon's initial judgment. The parties to the dispute are not free to compromise rights other than their own.

The Forgotten Era, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Pitfalls Of Empirical Research: Studying Faculty Publication Studies, David H. Kaye, Ira Mark Ellman

Faculty Scholarship

This article critiques empirical studies by attorneys in the hopes that they will be held to the minimal standards of research competence that are to be found in other academic fields which rely on empirical studies. Because law-trained scholars are notoriously weak at empirical research, this article identifies some of the methodological considerations that should inform empirical research. These fall into four broad categories: (1) problems of conceptualization, (2) problems of measurement, (3) problems of data presentation and analysis, and (4) problems of inference. This article examines all of these considerations in the context of an empirical survey done by …

Do We Need A Calculus Of Weight To Understand Proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt?, David H. Kaye

Faculty Scholarship

The commentary on a paper by L.J. Cohen, prepared for a symposium on probability and inference in the law of evidence, shows that the legal requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt can be understood simply as demanding a sufficiently high probability that the prosecution's narrative or story of the facts, which captures all the elements of the offense, is true. No separate measure of the "weight" of the totality of the evidence is required to understand the burden of persuasion. Any incompleteness in the evidence can be accounted for by a conditional probability that includes the presence of any …

Constitutionalizing The Codes, James Hambleton, Jim Paulsen

Faculty Scholarship

The Texas Legislative Council has been proposing, and the Texas Legislature has been routinely approving, codes since 1967. Just last year, in fact, this program to codify all the statutory law of Texas passed the halfway mark, with adoption of the Election Code, the Government Code, and the Civil Practice and Remedies Code.

The legislation implementing each of these codes contains an identical proclamation: "This Act is enacted pursuant to Article III, Section 43, of the Texas Constitution." Oddly enough, though, the 69th Legislature not only passed these codes; it passed a joint resolution calling for a change in the …

Sanctions Under Amended Federal Rule 11–Some "Chilling" Problems In The Struggle Between Compensation And Punishment, Melissa Lee Nelken

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Constitutional Vulnerability Of American Local Government: The Politics Of City Status In American Law, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On The 'Usefulness' Of Suspect Classifications, James W. Ellis

Faculty Scholarship

Reviewing discrimination in legal decisions.

The Consequences Of The Insanity Defense: Proposals To Reform Post-Acquittal Commitment Laws, James W. Ellis

Faculty Scholarship

There are sound public policy reasons for considering a reform of state laws concerning commitment of insanity acquittees. A balanced system of special commitment can protect the public safety and, at the same time, give acquittees a fair hearing on their current mental condition and continuing need for confinement. Special commitment can also insulate general commitment laws from political pressures that can arise from the prospect of the possible release of notorious insanity acquittees. Several of the recently proposed model reforms, however, have features that commend them to the attention of state legislators. The Oregon model of using a Psychiatric …

New Role For Nonparties In Tort Actions-The Empty Chair, Reed D. Benson

Faculty Scholarship

In courtroom drama, the spotlight rarely falls on an empty chair. That may change, due to a new Colorado statute allowing factfinders to consider the negligence or fault of nonparties in tort actions. The new statute may not give nonparties starring roles in every trial, but it will certainly thicken the plot.

From Confidential Supervision To Market Discipline: The Role Of Disclosure In The Regulation Of Commercial Banks, Alfred Dennis Mathewson

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines traditional regulatory discipline, the development of a legal basis for confidential supervision, the role of the SEC and federal securities laws in the development of a public disclosure system for banks and bank holding companies, and the utilization of public disclosure to achieve market discipline as a major tool in preventing bank failure and maintaining the stability of the banking system. The scope of this Article is limited to the regulation of commercial banks, whether state or federally chartered, by the following federal bank regulatory agencies: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (Comptroller), the Federal …

El Salvador: Methods Use To Document Human Rights Violations, Gloria Valencia-Weber

Faculty Scholarship

This study describes and analyzes the methods used to document human rights abuses in El Salvador, focusing on the methods used by the United States Government through its Embassy in San Salvador, and by Tutela Legal, a nongovernmental monitoring agency in San Salvador. The authors examined Tutela and U.S. records which were relevant and available for 1980 through 1984 and used post-1984 official statements which relate to methods. The focus is on the method used for the documentation of the murder or disappearance of civilians. This paper begins with an examination of the current international human rights standards as they …

Politics And The Courts: The Struggle Over Land In San Francisco 1846-1866, Christian G. Fritz

Faculty Scholarship

The struggle over land constitutes one of the most persistent and important themes of Californias nineteenth-century legal history. Ultimately that struggle pitted those who had objections to the concentration of land in a few hands against those who believed in the sanctity of vested interests; those who recognized the letter and spirit of treaty obligations to Mexico, against those with an antipathy toward Hispanics; those concerned with protecting the public's welfare against real estate speculators; and the civil law against the common law tradition. While the struggle over land in San Francisco was not typical of all California land disputes, …

Rising Above Principle, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Revival Of Fact Pleading Under The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Richard L. Marcus

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Hearsay Rule And The Stability Of Verdicts: A Response To Professor Nesson, Roger C. Park

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Joys Of Law Library Management Are Without Number, Jenni Parrish

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Can Regulators Of International Capital Markets Strike A Balance Between Competing Interests?, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.