Digital Commons Network^™

Thoughts On Rodriguez: Mr. Justice Powell And The Demise Of Equal Protection Analysis In The Supreme Court, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

Since the fall of 1969 when Warren Earl Burger took his seat as Chief Justice, the academic community has placed the Supreme Court under a thorough and searching examination. Coming on the heels of enormous and far-reaching activity in the judicial branch, the Burger Court has been called to account for both its adherence to and its rejection of the Warren Court's innovations in constitutional adjudication. The purpose of this article is to continue that constructive criticism by taking stock, after five years, of the Court's performance in one significant class of cases-those interpreting the equal protection clause of the …

The Victim's Role In Criminal Prosecutions In Ethiopia, Stanley Z. Fisher

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this paper is to review developments which have occurred in the victim’s role in criminal prosecutions under Ethiopian law. In contrast to the penal laws of modern Western states, which define a wide range of wrongful conduct as offensive to the state itself, the traditional Ethiopian law of wrongs viewed relatively few offenses thus. For the most part, the state confined itself to legitimating and assisting the victim’s own efforts to obtain redress.

The Uniform Probate Code: Article Iii Analyzed In Relation To Changes In The First Nine Enactments, Richard V. Wellman, James W. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The eleven pioneer states that have adopted the Uniform Probate Code have amended its provisions in various ways. This Article reviews the changes made in article III, the central procedural section of the Code. The Authors analyze the import of these amendments, considering the interplay between the carefully drafted provisions of the Code and its policy of uniformly minimizing the iudicial intervention and expense involved in the administration of estates. The Authors' analysis of these first enactments should prove helpful in those states currently considering adoption of the Uniform Probate Code as well as to lawyers and the courts in …

Constitutional Common Law, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Mr. Justice Powell has publicly characterized the 1974 Term of the Supreme. Court as a "dull" one. Whatever the accuracy of that description, the 1974 Term was, in the public eye, a quiet one. When, late in the Term, the Court ordered the death penalty case held over for reargument, it ensured that the 1974 Term would generate few front-page testimonials to the supreme authority of the Supreme Court. But neither a dull nor a quiet Term can obscure the current reality that the Court's claim to be the "ultimate interpreter of the Constitution" appears to command more nearly universal …

New York's Right Of Privacy – The Need For Change, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In 1890 Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis wrote a famous article on the right to privacy. Concerned especially with newspaper publications about private and family matters, they urged that courts recognize an explicit right to privacy from unreasonable publicity. According to Warren and Brandeis, certain already recognized rights did in fact protect a person's wish to keep his private thoughts private, though these 1ights were founded on some more traditional legal theories. For example, the privilege of a writer of a letter to bar anyone's publication of the letter had been articulated in decisions as a property right, even when …

Assessing The Distributional Effects Of Income Tax Revision: Some Lessons From Incidence Analysis, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years public attention to issues of tax equity has increased dramatically. The testimony in January 1969 of outgoing Secretary of the Treasury Joseph Barr that 154 individuals who had adjusted gross incomes of more than $200,000 in 1966 paid no federal income tax intensified public awareness and concern about the equity of the tax system. Tax reform has remained a central issue of public policy.

At the same time, scholars working in the tax field have refined their methods of analyzing the impact on individuals and classes of individuals of tax laws and tax changes. Theoretical advances in …

Some Regulatory Implications Of Technology Assessment, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

To conclude this wide-ranging panel discussion, I want to briefly address two aspects of regulation which have been troublesome, and for which Technology Assessment may be particularly useful.

The first aspect, which relates to radiation and other hazardous substances in general, is the increasingly important regulatory function of forcing the development and application of appropriate control technologies on industry-normally, the development and application of devices and techniques to protect public and worker health and safety. The question becomes: Is the regulatory program appropriately forcing and guiding necessary advances in control techniques and their timely use?

Blue Cross: What Went Wrong?, Frances H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law And Procedure, David Rossman

Faculty Scholarship

Trial De Novo. The constitutional foundation underlying the system of trial de novo in Massachusetts was subjected to a frontal assault during the Survey year. The system survived, but there is reason to doubt its continuing validity. The debate over the wisdom of maintaining a two-tiered system of trial courts has been wide-ranging. One of the chief complaints against the trial de novo system is that it insulates trial judges from any meaningful appellate review. This isolation fosters an environment in which trial judges can, with impunity, ignore the constraints placed upon judges in courts of record. It is exceedingly …

Medical Malpractice Litigation Under National Health Insurance: Essential Or Expendable, George J. Annas, Barbara F. Katz, Robert G. Trakimas

Faculty Scholarship

"Medical malpractice" denotes the basis for a civil action brought by a patient against a physician for injuries resulting from negligence. The current method for compensating victims of these occurrences is primarily a fault-and-liability insurance system. The first principle of tort liability is that the party at fault pays for the damage inflicted upon an innocent victim. Whether a doctor is at fault is determined in an adversary proceeding, with both the doctor and the patient represented by counsel. The triers of fact have the task of ascertaining whether the defendant was at fault, and if so, what compensation he …

Law And Medicine: Myths And Realities In The Medical School Classroom, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The goal of legal education in a nutshell is to get the student to "think like a lawyer." The goal of medicolegal courses in medical schools, on the other hand, has often seemed to be to get the medical student to think bad things about lawyers. While the total solution to the legendary distrust between these two professions may not be an understanding of methodology, this article will suggest that one way to increase cooperation between the professions is to teach law in medical schools in a way that emphasizes methods of approaching problems and which seeks to dispel the …

"Fitness" For Birth And Reproduction: Legal Implications Of Genetic Screening, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The introduction of accurate methods to screen for genetic defects in the adult, the newborn, and the fetus promises to increase man's control over his own destiny. If that promise is to be realized, however, careful planning will be needed to prevent the technology of screening from imposing its own ethic on man. The invention of the club enabled man to increase his ability to hunt for food, and simultaneously to brutalize his fellow man. In the same way, while advances in genetic screening could lead to an increase in self autonomy for a few, they may also encourage the …

The Burger Court, "State Action," And Congressional Enforcement Of The Civil War Amendments, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

There is an uncertainty abroad in the land. At its root, to speak boldly, lies the fear that the fate of individual liberty in this Nation is in the hands of a Supreme Court whose newest members, cast in the intellectual likeness of a disgraced Executive, lack sufficient sensitivity to libertarian ideals to preserve the American democracy as we know it. Particularly for those who found in the Warren Court the moral leadership necessary to move the country toward a just resolution of the perplexing social problems that plague us all, the skies seem dark. Our constitutional system has always …

The Division Of Legal Labor In Rural Haiti, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

This paper explores the institutional facilities available to Haitian peasants for the settlement of their disputes. More specifically, it compares the institution of the Chef de Section - the lowest administrative appointee in the Haitian countryside and the Justice of the Peace - the lowest ranking judicial institution provided by the Haitian legal system. The paper further advances the hypothesis that at the present time there is a shift in the division of labor between the two institutions, in favor of the Justice of the Peace, and that this shift may be attributed to processes of social differentiation currently detectable …

Discretion And Judicial Decision: The Elusive Quest For The Fetters That Bind Judges, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

"The Judge as a Legislator" is the subtitle of the third of Benjamin Cardozo's famous lectures on The Nature of the Judicial Process, delivered in 1921. Though emphasizing the restraints under which judges should act, Cardozo nevertheless compares the task of the judge with that of the legislator:

The choice of methods, the appraisement of values, must in the end be guided by like considerations for the one as for the other. Each indeed is legislating within the limits of his competence. No doubt the limits for the judge are narrower. He legislates only between gaps. He fills the open …

Walter Gellhorn, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

Walter Gellhorn is irreplaceable. To be sure, in every generation there will be a few scholars who are his peer. In a strong teaching faculty like Columbia's, there will always be some who teach as well as he. The republic is occasionally blessed with public servants who give themselves with the sort of selfless devotion that Walter Gellhorn brings to every task. Each of us can count on a handful of good friends like him for moral support, good advice and uncritical love. But I know of no one who has served an institution so loyally and so effectively with …

The Right Deed For The Wrong Reason: A Reply To Mr. Robinson, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

So far as there is a school of criminal theory in the United States, it is a school devoted to sifting and celebrating the purposes of the criminal law. Discussions in the literature are dominated by endless recitals of the deterrent, rehabilitative and retributive functions of criminal sanctions. The orthodox view is that all of these purposes are relevant and that any proposed rule of criminal law must be measured by its tendency to further one or all of these goals. If the issue is punishing negligence, for example, the standard mode of analysis is to ask whether punishing negligent …

Evidence, Frank W. Elliott

Faculty Scholarship

During the past year there were a number of cases of interest dealing with various aspects of the hearsay rule.

The Technological Expert In Products Liability Litigation, Aaron Twerski, William A. Donaher, Henry R. Piehler, Alvin S. Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Review Of Administrative Action And Responsible Government, Warner W. Gardner, Michael Greenberger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Old Wine In A New Flask -- Restructuring Assumption Of Risk In The Product Liability Era, Aaron Twerski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Legal Aid In America, A. Kenneth Pye

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ππ Scattering In The Energy Region 0.6 To 1.42 Gev, J. Díaz, F. A. Dibianca, William J. Fickinger, D. K. Robinson

Faculty Scholarship

ππ scattering amplitudes have been determined in the energy range 0.6 to 1.42 GeV. The amplitudes have been extracted in the framework of an absorption-modified one-pion-exchange model with certain energy-dependent assumptions.

The Nature Of The Contract Argument, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

As truth is the first virtue of belief, so justice is of social institutions. That is John Rawls's view, and it seems true, at any rate, of the law. Official acts, laws, and legal arrangements generally are characterized as just or unjust, while other moral categories are much less frequently invoked. Justice seems inseparable from good law. It is therefore striking and important that justice has recently been regarded by prominent legal theorists as rationally disreputable--as, in Kelsen's words, "an irrational idea." Many divergent conceptions of social justice have been propounded, and it is held that there is no rational …

From Codling To Bolm To Velez: Triptych Of Confusion, Aaron Twerski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Taking Stock Of The Court's Jurisdiction In A Sipa Liquidation, Roberta S. Karmel, Jeffery M. Weissman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Corporate Interest Deduction: A Policy Evaluation, Alvin C. Warren Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Product Liability: A Study Of The Interaction Of Law And Technology, Aaron Twerski, Alvin S. Weinstein, Henry R. Piehler, William A. Donaher

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Implications Of Minority Interest And Stock Restrictions In Valuing Closely-Held Shares, Alan L. Feld

Faculty Scholarship

The federal estate and gift taxes levy on the gratuitous transfer of wealth by both testamentary and lifetime disposition. The amount of the tax depends on the value placed on the property transferred by the decedent or donor. When the property transferred consists of shares of stock in a closely held corporation, there often exists no ready market to help in valuation. As a result, the value of the shares used to compute the federal estate or gift tax must be determined first by appraising the value of the enterprise, and then by allocating some portion of that value to …

Evidence For The Ωππ Decay Modes Of The A₂ And Ω(1675), J. Diaz, F. A. Dibianca, William J. Fickinger, A. Malko, D. K. Robinson, C. R. Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

We present evidence for the decay A20→ωπ+π0 with a branching ratio Γ(A2→ωππ)/Γ(A2→ρπ)=0.28±0.09 and for the decay ω(1675)→ωπ+π- with a branching ratio Γ(ω(1975)→ωπ+π-)/Γ(ω(1675)→ρπ)=0.47±0.18. Evidence is given for an intermediate B(1235)π state in the ω(1675) decay.