Digital Commons Network^™

Rescuing The Private Attorney General: Why The Model Of The Lawyer As Bounty Hunter Is Not Working, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Forty years ago, Judge Jerome Frank coined the term "private Attorney General" to recognize the role of private litigation in the enforcement of law. In the intervening years, the "private attorney general" concept has become both a cliche and a crutch, receiving polite lip service from nearly all, but critical analysis from relatively few. As most college sophomores know, the private attorney general is someone who sues "to vindicate the public interest" by representing collectively those who individually could not afford the costs of litigation; and, as every law student knows, our society places extensive reliance upon such private attorneys …

Legality, Bureaucracy, And Class In The Welfare System, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

When lawyers confronted the welfare system in the 1960's, they charged it with oppressive moralism, personal manipulation, and invasion of privacy. They focused attention on the "man-in-the-house" rules that disqualified families on the basis of the mother's sexual conduct and the "midnight raids" in which welfare workers forced their way into recipients' homes searching for evidence of cohabitation.

When I represented welfare recipients from 1979 to 1981, the workers showed little interest in policing their morals or intruding on their private lives. The "man-in-the-house" rule and the practice of unannounced or nighttime visits had been repudiated. Yet the pathologies emphasized …

Managing Flood Risk: Technical Uncertainty In The National Flood Insurance Program, Michael S. Baram, J. Raymond Miyares

Faculty Scholarship

Congress established the National Flood Insurance Program ("NFIP")² to prevent flood damage and to provide relief after such damage has occurred. The NFIP is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency ("FEMA" or "Agency") ³ and has become a major influence on state and local land use regulation and a critical factor in private land use decisions across the nation.

This innovative program seeks to control the risk of flood damage by inducing local government to take land use control and other "police power" measures. It offers, as the inducement for such measures, the availability of federal flood insurance …

Suing Foreign Sovereigns: A Procedural Compass, Mary Kay Kane

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Polygyny And Polydomy In Three North American Species Of The Ant Genus Leptothorax Mayr (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), Thomas M. Alloway, Robin Stuart, Cynthia Thomas, Alfred Buschinger, Mary Talbot

Faculty Scholarship

This paper deals with certain behavioral and ecological factors which may be relevant to the evolution and maintenance of social parasitism in ants. We will argue that some of the same factors which might predispose one species to evolve into a social parasite might make resistance to parasitism difficult for a closely related species.

Judicial Experimentation With A Strict Products Liability Rule: A Comparison Of The Law In The United Kingdom, Louisiana, And United States' Common Law Jurisdictions, Thomas E. Carbonneau, Catherine Garvey

Faculty Scholarship

Since the mid-nineteenth century, products liability law has undergone significant modifications. The applicable doctrine has oscillated between contract and tort theories; fault and no-fault liability schemes have competed for predominance. Despite attempts to create an internationally accepted liability norm, different legal systems continue to espouse differing perceptions of the liability formula in the products area. In addition, even in jurisdictions in which courts adhere to identical liability theories, there is disagreement as to the application and implications of the same standard. This article attempts to set the shifting doctrinal character of products liability analysis into a comparative perspective principally between …

Developments In Banking Law: 1980-81, Dennis S. Aronowitz, Robert Volk

Faculty Scholarship

The years 1980 and 1981 were marked by a continuation and acceleration of change in the nation's financial institutions in general and in depository institutions in particular. Until recently, the banking and thrift industries have been unique in possessing the capacity to thrive in a changing economy without changing very significantly themselves. This phenomenon was largely attributable to a regulatory environment that protected depository institutions, minimizing competition from unregulated financial entities and imposing a form of organization that permitted institutions to thrive while conducting their activities in traditional ways. The advent of stubbornly high inflation and historically high interest rates …

Legal Education Past And Future: A Summer Carol, A. Kenneth Pye

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Environmental Law (1982), H. Dennis Kelly

Faculty Scholarship

During the survey period the major cases dealing with environmental law arose under one or both of two environmental statutes. This Article will first discuss the cases which arose under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. The second section of the Article will survey the cases decided under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972.

In Defense Of Process, Aaron Twerski, Alvin S. Weinstein, William A. Donaher, Henry R. Piehler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Look At Labor Law In The Land Down Under: Industrial Relations In Australia, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

In Order To Have Water: Legal, Economic And Institutional Barriers To Water Reuse In Northern New England, Michael S. Baram, J. Raymond Miyares

Faculty Scholarship

The maintenance of adequate water supplies to meet increasing demand upon residential and industrial users in New England is now an urgent concern. Encouragement of water reuse is one of the ways in which water conservation can be implemented. This Article, synthesized by the authors from their technical report, examines current legal and institutional methods of promoting water reuse and conservation. They analyze their effectiveness and argue that legal and political reform is needed to achieve the ends of water conservation. I

"No Soul To Damn: No Body To Kick": An Unscandalized Inquiry Into The Problem Of Corporate Punishment, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?
—Edward, First Baron Thurlow 1731-1806

The Lord Chancellor of England quoted above was neither the first nor the last judge to experience frustration when faced with a convicted corporation. American sentencing judges are likely to face a similar dilemma with increasing frequency in the near future, for a number of signs indicate that corporate prosecutions will become increasingly commonplace. At first glance, the problem of corporate punishment seems perversely insoluble: moderate fines do not deter, …

Conflicts Of Law And Morality – Institutions Of Amelioration, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In his rich, intricate, and wise examination of themes from the Crito, A. D. Woozley explores Socrates' proposal, put in the mouth of the personified laws of Athens, that the duty of a citizen is to obey a law or to persuade society that the law is wrong. If this position is understood to permit disobedience and attempted persuasion after a law is adopted, one of its implications is that on some occasions when people intentionally break the law, those who administer the law may properly decline to impose the stipulated punishment, because they believe that disobedience was justified. Suggesting …

A Structural Approach To Corporations: The Case Against Defensive Tactics In Tender Offers, Ronald J. Gilson

Faculty Scholarship

Tender offers present an obvious and inherent conflict of interest between management and shareholders. On the one hand, an offer provides shareholders with the opportunity to sell their shares for a substantial premium over market price. On the other hand, the tender offer is the principal mechanism by which management can be forcibly unseated from control. It should thus come as no surprise that management often resists outsiders' efforts to direct tender offers at its shareholders. The form of that resistance, however, is somewhat surprising. Because the tender offer is the only form of corporate acquisition addressed directly to the …

The Regime Of Diplomacy And The Tehran Hostages, Kazimierz Grzybowski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Shifting Perspective In Product Liability: From Quality To Process Standards, Aaron Twerski, Alvin S. Weinstein, William H. Donaher, Henry R. Piehler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Labor-Antitrust: The Problems Of Connell And A Remedy That Follows Naturally, Michael J. Cozzillio, Joseph T. Casey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Defining The Role Of The Physician: Medical Education, Tradition, And The Legal Process, Robert L. Schwartz

Faculty Scholarship

The professional conflict and animosity that have developed between the legal and medical professions are symptomatic of something that is basic and disturbing to the traditional science and practice of medicine. Even a cursory review of the literature will reveal that physicians, lawyers, philosophers, and others (with greater or lesser degrees of insight and awareness) are currently engaged in serious reevaluations of such concepts as the definition of medicine as science and/or art, the structure and administration of effective medical curricula, and the goals of the medical profession itself. Such analyses require not only that physicians evaluate what they ought …

Annual Report Of The Electric Power Committee, J. David Prince

Faculty Scholarship

This is the annual report of the Electric Power Committee for 1980. It reports on legislative and judicial developments, and issues relevant to the Electric Power Committee.

The Anatomy Of Products Liability In Minnesota: Principles Of Loss Allocation, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, Professor Steenson continues the discussion that began in The Anatomy of Products Liability in Minnesota: The Theories of Recovery, appearing in the last Issue of the William Mitchell Law Review, by shifting the analytical focus to the problems involved in allocating awards among the parties in Minnesota products liability cases. Professor Steenson analyzes defenses, contribution and indemnity, and the impact of Minnesota's comparative fault act on products liability law.

The French Legal Studies Curriculum: Its History And Relevance As A Model For Reform, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Faculty Scholarship

This article attempts to describe and analyze those events which fostered the historical metamorphosis of the French legal studies curriculum. The predominance of a broad academic approach to law and the concomitant absence of a narrow "trade school" mentality in the French law schools might be attributed to the general organization of higher education in France. One of the primary contentions of this article is that the fundamental character of French legal education, which emphasizes the educating of jurists as opposed to the training of lawyers, is the product of a set of factors which are deeply rooted in French …

Panel I: A Fresh Look At Federal Regulatory Strategies, Roberta S. Karmel, Richard B. Smith

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Managing Risks To Health, Safety And Environment By The Use Of Alternatives To Regulation, Michael S. Baram, David Sandberg, Larry Dufault, Kevin Mcallister

Faculty Scholarship

The management of risks to health, safety and environment is one of the central concerns of our society. This important function has been largely delegated to federal regulatory agencies which, over the last decade, have tried to respond to the difficult mandate of managing risk under conditions of technical uncertainty by implementing complex regulatory programs. The federal government is now grappling with the design and implementation of various regulatory reforms to lessen economic burdens and to harmonize regulation with marketplace considerations, because of growing opposition to further regulation.

What has been left unpromoted as a reform thus far is the …

The Mccarthy Era: History As Snapshot, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Cost-Benefit Analysis: An Inadequate Basis For Health, Safety, And Environmental Regulatory Decisionmaking, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

The use of cost-benefit analysis in agency decisionmaking has been hailed as the cure for numerous dissatisfactions with governmental regulation. Using this form of economic analysis arguably promotes rational decisionmaking and prevents health, safety, and environmental regulations from having inflationary and other adverse economic impacts. Closer analysis, however, reveals that the cost-benefit approach to regulatory decisionmaking suffers from major methodological limitations and institutional abuses. In practice, regulatory uses of cost-benefit analysis stifle and obstruct the achievement of legislated health, safety, and environmental goals.

This Article critically reviews the methodological limitations of cost-benefit analysis, current agency uses of cost-benefit analysis under …

Rebuttal: The Individual Or The Firm? Focusing The Threat Of Criminal Liability, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

I cannot disagree with much of what Mr. Crane has said in his very articulate presentation. One must be careful about trying to prove too much. I have not argued against individual criminal liability, but I do not believe we can rely on it exclusively. Let me therefore confine my reply to this question and to Mr. Crane's criticisms of my equity fine proposal.

Making The Punishment Fit The Corporation: The Problem Of Finding An Optimal Corporation Criminal Sanction, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

To be "present at the creation," in Dean Acheson's felicitous phrase, is always an honor. In addition, to be present at the commencement of what I expect will be a sustained and fruitful tradition at this law school, namely, the Governor Thompson Lectureship, is a second honor. Finally, let me express my thanks to Dean Bainbridge for a third honor: the compliment implicit in the 2 to 1 odds he has arranged today. Both Norval Morris and Mark Crane are men with distinguished careers in quite different fields of the law. If I am confident of one thing today, it …

Annual Report Of The Electric Power Committee, J. David Prince

Faculty Scholarship

This is the annual report of the Electric Power Committee for 1979. It reports on legislative and judicial developments, and issues relevant to the Electric Power Committee. This report is in four parts. Part I reviews the extensive developments during 1978 under the federal air and water pollution laws. Part II briefly considers other federal developments of significance to the electric power industry. Part III is an update of last year's review of developments concerning solar energy. Part IV consists of the 1978 reports from selected states.

Discrimination As A Field Of Law, Arthur Larson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.