Digital Commons Network^™

Race And Redistricting: Drawing Constitutional Lines After Shaw V. Reno, T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Samuel Isaacharoff

Michigan Law Review

Shaw is no doubt a major opinion that attempts to define limits on the use of racial or ethnic classifications in electoral redistricting. The main thrust of this article is to assess the critical question of whether Shaw renders unconstitutional the type of race-conscious realignment of electoral configurations that have given meaning to the voting rights reforms of the past two decades. In making this assessment, we try to ascertain exactly how the Court has limited the use of race-conscious districting, and we try to determine whether there is any jurisprudential coherence to the Court's latest confrontation with the law …

Removal And The Eleventh Amendment: The Case For District Court Remand Discretion To Avoid A Bifurcated Suit, Mitchell N. Berman

Michigan Law Review

This Note concludes that the Sixth Circuit was half right: when a civil action names both state and private defendants - what this Note terms a "mixed case" - and when the claims against private defendants arise under federal law, the district court must grant removal of the case8 and must remand the claims against the state defendant. However, this Note also observes that the Fifth Circuit probably achieved the better result. After defendants have removed a mixed case to federal court and the district court has remanded the barred claims, the dual court systems and the parties will usually …

Books Received, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A List of Books Received by Michigan Law Review

Front Matter, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Front Matter for volume 92, Issue 3 of Michigan Law Review

Labor Law Successorship: A Corporate Law Approach, Edward B. Rock, Michael L. Wachter

Michigan Law Review

In this article, we take an approach fundamentally different from that of the labor law commentators. We start from a broader perspective than is common: successorship is as important an issue for corporate law as it is for labor law. Given that the two principal inputs to the firm are labor and capital, it would be surprising if the laws for labor law successorship were completely different from the laws for corporate law successorship. To the extent that differences exist, those differences should hinge upon differences between the employees' and the creditors' relationships with the firm.

Knowledge About Legal Sanctions, Stephen Mcg. Bundy, Einer Elhauge

Michigan Law Review

Ironically, the dictum that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" itself illustrates selective transmission because, despite the widespread dissemination of this maxim to the public, ignorance of the law often is a permissible defense in actual adjudication. The divergence between the maxim and reality is a form of selective transmission that encourages individuals to learn the law, which improves their behavior, but avoids any injustice that would arise from punishing uninformed individuals for conduct they reasonably believed was lawful. We aim to offer a more systematic account of whether and when knowledge about legal sanctions, and restrictions on the …

Three Mistakes About Interpretation, Paul Campos

Michigan Law Review

The single most important word in modem constitutional theory is "interpretation." The single most confusing word in modem constitutional theory is "interpretation." What accounts for this unhappy state of affairs?

I will try to show that Barry Friedman's assertions, as well as others that are but rephrasings of the same basic ideas, are not the common sense truths that so many constitutional theorists assume them to be, but are instead the products of an extraordinarily confused and ultimately incoherent set of assumptions regarding the interpretation of language.

Bankruptcy Policymaking In An Imperfect World, Elizabeth Warren

Michigan Law Review

This essay is about bankruptcy policy. It attempts to articulate a comprehensive statement about the various and competing goals that underlie the bankruptcy system. The essay offers both a positive observation, drawn from the Code and its operation, and a normative evaluation, designed to outline the difficult value judgments that comprise the bankruptcy system. It also serves warning: before commentators propose any sweeping changes or policymakers take seriously any suggestions to scrap the system, they must consider the impact of such proposals on a number of competing normative goals.

The Constitution, The Legislature, And Unfair Surprise: Toward A Reliance-Based Approach To The Contract Clause, Robert A. Graham

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that the Court should return to a reliance-based approach to Contract Clause challenges, fashioned loosely along the same lines as the HRID. Although it does not advocate that the Court revivify the rules created by the early decisions, the Note proposes that the Court look to the private parties' expectations and, more specifically, to the reasonableness of those expectations in deciding the clause's applicability to a particular case. Part I provides a brief history of the Contract Clause and its development. This Part follows the clause from the Constitutional Convention through the 1980s to illustrate the Court's …

Books Received, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A List of Books Received by the Michigan Law Review

Periodical Index, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A List of Periodicals Received by the Michigan Law Review

Front Matter, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Front Matter for Volume 92, Issue 2 of Michigan Law Review

Allocating The Burden Of Proof To Effectuate The Preservation And Federalism Goals Of The Coastal Zone Management Act, Martin J. Lalonde

Michigan Law Review

Primarily due to policy considerations, this Note argues that courts should allocate to the federal agency proposing an activity that may affect the coastal zone the burden of proving consistency with a state CMP. This allocation effectuates Congress's intent to vest states with primary control to preserve the coastal zone. Part I provides a general background of the Act's consistency requirement for federally conducted activities. Part II examines the various factors that courts traditionally consider when allocating burdens of proof in litigation. Part III evaluates these factors as applied to the consistency issue under the CZMA. Part IV concludes that …

Life-Cycle Justice: Accommodating Just Cause And Employment At Will, Stuart J. Schwab

Michigan Law Review

The goal of this article is to articulate a coherent framework for understanding the default rules for employment termination. While most observers see chaos here, I find a certain logic in the leading cases. The courts have been boldest when job protection is most appropriate, and they have hesitated precisely when at will plays its most useful role.

Article Ii Revisionism, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

One of the most striking developments of the last decade has been the new use of Article II in public law adjudication. Article II is a prominent feature not only of cases involving the creation of federal institutions that are independent of the President, but also of new disputes involving reviewability, scope of review, and standing.

Professor Krent and Mr. Shenkman have performed a valuable service in spelling out the argument that Article II, rather than Article III, justifies constitutional limits on legislative grants of standing. Indeed, on several important matters, we are very much in agreement. In this brief …

Postconviction Review Of Jury Discrimination: Measuring The Effects Of Juror Race On Jury Decisions, Nancy J. King

Michigan Law Review

In Part I, I review the empirical evidence concerning the effect of jury discrimination on jury decisions. Using the work of social and cognitive psychologists, I argue that the influence of jury discrimination on jury decisions is real and can be measured by judges in certain circumstances. The empirical studies suggest criteria that courts could use to identify the cases in which jury discrimination is most likely to affect the verdict. I also refute the argument that white judges can never predict the behavior of jurors of racial backgrounds different than their own and conclude that judicial estimates of the …

Books Received, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A List of Books Received by the Michigan Law Review

Periodical Index, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A List of Periodicals by the Michigan Law Review

Eleonora V. Eckert, Kent D. Syverud, Gregory P. Magarian, Christina B. Whitman, Rodney D. Martin

Michigan Law Review

Tributes to Eleonora V. Eckert

Front Matter, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Front Matter for Volume 92, Issue 1 of Michigan Law Review

The Constitutionality Of Employer-Accessible Child Abuse Registries: Due Process Implications Of Governmental Occupational Blacklisting, Michael R. Phillips

Michigan Law Review

This Note discusses the due process implications of permitting employer access to state child abuse registries when disclosure affects registry members' employment.

Books Received, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A List of Books Received by the Michigan Law Review

Commentary On Judge Edwards' "Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education And The Legal Profession", James L. Oakes

Michigan Law Review

Perhaps this little piece should be entitled Grace Notes rather than Commentary because I agree with so much of what Judge Edwards had to say in the Michigan Law Review. When I first read his piece, I have to say I was quite skeptical of his methodology, namely, running a survey past a group of former law clerks who, by virtue of their own super achievement, primarily in so-called elite law schools, quite easily could have ethereal points of view. But in typical Edwardsian fashion, the judge made appropriate disclaimers, and the clerks' comments seemed to me, for the most …

Periodical Index, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Subject Index of Articles, Comments, Notes, and Recent Developments Appearing in Leading Law Reviews

Plus Ҫa Change, Paul Brest

Michigan Law Review

Harry Edwards and I both finished law school in 1965, and his article presents an occasion to consider how much the legal academy has changed during the intervening years. Animating Judge Edwards' complaints about the contemporary legal academy is a nostalgia for happier days. His images are of decline - of a growing disjunction between the academy and practice, of law schools' abandoning their proper missions, of their movement toward pure theory. My own view is quite different. Except for some noteworthy demographic transformations and a healthy broadening of the academic agenda, legal education has changed little during these almost …

The Mind In The Major American Law School, Lee C. Bollinger

Michigan Law Review

Legal scholarship is significantly, even qualitatively, different from what it was some two or three decades ago. As with any major change in intellectual thought, this one is composed of several strands. The inclusion in the legal academic community of women and minorities has produced, not surprisingly, a distinctive and at times quite critical body of thought and writing. The emergence of the school of thought known as critical legal studies has renewed and extended the legal realist critique of law of the first half of the century. But more than anything else it is the interdisciplinary movement in legal …

Index, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Contents of Volume 91: Subject Index, Articles, Notes, Authors, Books Reviewed

The Growth Of Interdisciplinary Research And The Industrial Structure Of The Production Of Legal Ideas: A Reply To Judge Edwards, George L. Priest

Michigan Law Review

This brief response will attempt to repair these various deficiencies, though only in part because of the difficulty of the subject. It will try to explain more fully the rise of interdisciplinary legal research and will sketch the broader structure of the production and dissemination of new ideas about law and the legal system. The relationship between legal education and legal practice implicates an understanding of the "market" for legal ideas. To describe ideas as the subject of a "market," of course, has become conventional. In my view, however, the market metaphor most typically distorts our understanding of the issue, …

Stewardship, Donald B. Ayer

Michigan Law Review

While I agree with much that Judge Edwards has proposed, I thus submit that his formulations of the problem are partial - a bit like those of the blind men examining different parts of the elephant. The law's current unhappiness is only partly described as that of law schools and practicing lawyers going in different directions, of law practice becoming too commercial, or of law schools failing to serve the needs of the practicing lawyers and judges with practical teaching and scholarship. All of these observations, while correct as far as they go, miss the root of the problem, which …

A Response From The Visitor From Another Planet, J. Cunyon Gordon

Michigan Law Review

In order to admit, as I do, that the related planets of practice and academia are conjoined, one has to realize, as I have, that the legacy of the heavily doctrinal education Edwards wants to preserve may be precisely the lawyers he upbraids - lawyers who generally do not live, work, and behave ethically (with fairness, compassion, and creativity) in a complex, heterogeneous society. This recognition in turn compels the conclusion I reach that the outsiders - with their challenges to the status quo's values, their upstart theories and innovative pedagogies, and even their Star Trek-and-the-law scholarship - may help …