Digital Commons Network^™

Sociological And Human Developmental Explanations Of Crime: Conflict Or Consensus , Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines multidisciplinary correlates of delinquency in an attempt to integrate sociological and environmental theories of crime with human developmental and biological explanations of crime. Structural equation models are applied to assess links among biological, psychological, and environmental variables collected prospectively from birth through age 17 on a sample of 800 black children at high risk for learning and behavioral disorders. Results show that for both males and females, aggression and disciplinary problems in school during adolescence are the strongest predictors of repeat offense behavior. Whereas school achievement and family income and stability are also significant predictors of delinquency …

The Common Law Powers Of Federal Courts, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Lawmaking by federal courts has been a matter of controversy since the early days of the Republic. In the last forty years, the debate has fallen into roughly two periods, with Roe v. Wade marking the dividing line. During what might be called the "legal process" era of the 1950's and 1960's, scholarly energy was focused on Erie Railroad v. Tompkins and what was then called the "new federal common law." To be sure, important work on judicial review was also done in those years, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court's dramatic decision in Brown v. Board of …

Retroactivity Revisited, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

In three prior articles, I considered transitional problems of changes the tax law. My general analysis and its specific application to the adoption of a consumption tax were criticized last year in this journal by Avishai Shachar. By taking liabilities explicitly into account in considering tax transition rules, Shachar extended the fundamental principles generated by my theory of legal transitions. Shachar, however, misunderstood or mischaracterized much of my earlier work.

In this comment, I respond briefly to Shachar's criticisms. In Part I, I set out the context and conclusions of my general theory and suggest that Shachar agrees with its …

The Limits Of Expanded Choice: An Analysis Of The Interactions Between Express And Implied Contract Terms, Charles J. Goetz, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Although trade and its defining terms lie at the very core of contract law, perceptions of the state's involvement in the exchange process remain peculiarly incomplete. Everyone understands that the state supplies the fundamental property-defining rules for pre-trade endowments. For instance, governmentally provided rules of tort, nuisance, and civil rights establish basic boundaries of what initially belongs to an individual and, hence, what he has to offer in exchange. When an exchange subsequently takes place, however, the parties themselves assume an important part of the burden of communicating what rights are being given and received. Although the state's general rules …

Babbitt V. Brandeis: The Decline Of The Professional Ideal, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

The vision of professionalism that entranced the liberal legal elite for a century now strikes most lawyers and law students as implausible or uninteresting or both. The papers in this symposium by Robert Nelson and by Ronald Gilson and Robert Mnookin are outstanding examples of two of the current modes of repudiation of this vision: the mode of skepticism and the mode of indifference. Nelson takes the claims of the professional vision seriously, and, using a methodology responsive to them, sets out to refute them. Gilson and Mnookin ignore the vision, and, using a methodology that assumes the vision's invalidity, …

Rendering Arbitral Awards With Reasons: The Elaboration Of Common Law Of International Transactions, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Faculty Scholarship

With the growth of international trade, arbitration has emerged as the preferred remedy for resolving private international commercial disputes. In fact, among major Western legal systems such as those of England, the United States and France, statutory and decisional law developments indicate a nearly complete acceptance of international arbitral adjudication. This recognition of arbitral procedure and the enforcement of awards, which are given uniform legal recognition and enforcement by domestic legal systems, either as provisions in international conventions or as principles of national statutory or decisional law. These rules, in effect, represent an international consensus on arbitration and constitute a …

Supreme Court Report: Five Wins And Nine Losses For Free Speech Fans, Joel Gora

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ideals And Things: International Legal Scholarship And The Prison-House Of Language, James Boyle

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Sound Of Silence: An Epistle On Prayer And The Constitution, Walter E. Dellinger Iii

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Comparison Of The Merger And Acquisition Provisions Of Present Law With The Provisions In The Senate Finance Committee's Draft Bill, Samuel C. Thompson Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Curriculum Structure And Faculty Structure, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Efficient Markets, Costly Information, And Securities Research, Jeffrey N. Gordon, Lewis A. Kornhauser

Faculty Scholarship

Courts, administrative policy makers and legal scholars have widely embraced the theory that well-developed markets are efficient. In this Article, Professors Gordon and Kornhauser cast doubt on the wisdom of reliance on the efficient market hypothesis as applied to various areas of corporate law. Their charge is that legal decision makers and scholars have misunderstood the assumptions and limitations of the theory and have neglected recent critical economics scholarship. Professors Gordon and Kornhauser begin by detailing the assertions of the hypothesis in relation to the workings of securities markets, focusing on various asset pricing models used to test the hypothesis …

Equalities Real And Ideal: Affirmative Action In Indian Law Review, Lance Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

American legal scholars have devoted surprisingly little effort to studying India. In India, as in America, judges, lawyers, and legislators have had to shape a transplanted legal system with English roots. Both countries have adapted English legal institutions to conditions far more heterogeneous – ethnically, racially, linguistically,and geographically – than those of the mother country. It thus seems no accident that India's constitutional structure parallels that of the United States in so many ways. For example, India has a written constitution that embodies principles of federalism and separation of powers, and that provides for judicially enforced guarantees of individual rights. …

Motivation, Rationality, And Secular Purpose In Establishment Clause Review, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rethinking State Action, Erwin Chemerinsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Anatomy Of A Torts Class, James Boyle

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

“Of Law And The River,” And Of Nihilism And Academic Freedom, Paul D. Carrington, Peter W. Martin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction: A Symposium Of Critical Legal Studies, James Boyle

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments In Conflicts Of Law Notes, Michael M. Martin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Professional Peer Review And The Antitrust Laws, Clark C. Havighurst

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Havighurst exhaustively explores the antitrust implications of fee, utilization, and quality-oriented peer review. He places such activity first in a theoretical context and then in an historical context that shows why peer review merits particular antitrust attention. He suggests the defending peer review on the same public-interest grounds as are used in defense of the actions of public regulatory bodies is conceptually mistaken. A more appropriate defense, he says, would be that properly conducted peer review-- which eschews coercion, performs an advisory function, and leaves to others the decision whether to act on its advice-- actually enhances competition in …

More Is Not Less: A Rejoinder To Professor Marshall, Erwin Chemerinsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Joseph Story's Commentaries On The Constitution: A Belated Review, H. Jefferson Powell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Right And The Reasonable, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

As the common law relies on the concept of "reasonableness," the civil law relies on the concept of "Right." Professor Fletcher argues that reliance on reasonableness enables the common law to develop rules that can be voiced in a single standard. Such rules permit what Professor Fletcher terms 'flat" legal thinking. In contrast, the civil law's reliance on the concept of Right leads it to develop rules that proceed in two stages: the first rule asserts an absolute right; the second, a limitation based upon criteria other than Right. The application of such rules proceeds by what Professor Fletcher terms …

Television And The Quest For Gold: The Unofficial Paper Of The 1984 Olympics, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

While sitting in front of the tube watching Olympic canoeing (or Greco-Roman water polo, it's all a blur), I began to wonder about why ABC had been granted exclusive rights to televise the Olympics. The owners of the "Olympics" brand name could have sold the television rights in numerous ways. Why did they choose to have a single network provide all the coverage? Further, I mused, how did they get away with it? If the NCAA's football package violates the antitrust laws, how does the Olympic package remain within the law? It struck me that a paper speculating on the …

Taking Bureaucracy Seriously, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

The Federal Courts: Crisis and Reform can be viewed as not one but two "books." "Book I" (pp. 1-192), which reflects Judge Posner's well-known commitment to the interplay of law and economics, adds to the literature on the explosive and unremitting growth of litigation in the inferior federal courts during the last quarter-century. Noting this situation with alarm, Judge Posner seeks to identify the dimensions of the "crisis," to evaluate some current proposals for reform, and to advance some of his own. “Book II” (pp. 192-340) is quite different. Considerably less reliant upon law and economics, it addresses the substance …

A Transaction Theory Of Crime?, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The most difficult questions are foundational. It is no surprise then that one of the most puzzling questions in criminal law frames the whole inquiry: what is the nature of crime? Positivists dispose of the question easily. If the law is whatever the legislature and courts say it is, then crime is whatever these authoritative agencies designate as crime. The question becomes more interesting, however, if we regard crime as a prepositive concept, a concept that exists logically prior to the positive law. It is not that conduct is criminal because the legislature speaks; rather the legislature speaks because conduct …

Constitutional Fact Review, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States held that the clearly erroneous standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a) does not prescribe the scope of appellate review of a finding of actual malice in defamation cases governed by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Rather, as a matter of "federal constitutional law," appellate courts "must exercise independent judgment and determine whether the record establishes actual malice with convincing clarity." Thus, in addition to the familiar judicial duty to "say what the law is," the first amendment imposes a special duty with respect to law application: both …

The Pathological Perspective And The First Amendment, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutions are designed to control, or at least influence, future events – political events, adjudicative events, to some extent even interactions between private parties. Yet the future is unknowable, largely unpredictable, and inevitably variable. At any moment there exists a short-run future, a long-run future, and a future in between. The future is virtually certain to contain some progress, some regression, some stability, some volatility. How is a constitution supposed to operate upon this vast panoply?

That is a question that ought to loom large in the deliberations of persons who propose and ratify new constitutions and new constitutional amendments. …

A New Service On The Texas Legal Horizon: Texas Supreme Court Index, James Hambleton, Jim Paulsen

Faculty Scholarship

Since the late 1950's the Texas Supreme Court Journal has been a mainstay of Texas lawyers, offering speedy copies of all supreme court opinions as well as writ dispositions. Though the Texas Supreme Court Journal is invaluable, it does have one major deficiency. Marian Boner's Reference Guide to Texas Law and Legal History puts the problem succinctly: "There is no cumulation, and the cases are not indexed."

A new publication, Texas Supreme Court Index+, is now making a creditable bid to fill that gap. A weekly service originating in Houston, the Index+ contains up-to-date data on the …

Whatever Happened To 1845 - The Missing Decisions Of The Texas Supreme Court, Jim Paulsen, James Hambleton

Faculty Scholarship

Have you ever noticed a gap in the publication of Texas Supreme Court decisions? Both the Harvard "Blue Book" and the University of Texas "Green Book" inform readers that opinions of the court from 1840 to 1844 (the Republic period) can be found in Dallam's Decisions, while decisions from 1846 on (statehood) are available in Texas Reports or the Southwestern Reporter. That's all very clear, but whatever happened to 1845? This article will supply half an answer to this question; perhaps some reader can provide the other half.

Three questions arise. The first, and simplest: Are there any …