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Can Ignorance Be Bliss? Imperfect Information As A Positive Influence In Political Institutions, Michael A. Fitts

Michigan Law Review

In Parts I and II, I shall summarize the law-and-economics and civic virtue perspectives on the value of political information and their proposals for reforms in the political process that would stimulate greater political information. These two literatures are often viewed as distinct in their objectives: one seeking to improve means/ends rationality; the other seeking to improve goal formation - a function that I loosely describe as normative, ethical, or value-based. Nevertheless, they share some common practical approaches where information is concerned. In Part Ill, I shall discuss the instrumental advantages to limiting political information, focusing particularly on the role …

The Virtue Of Liberality In American Communal Life, Linda R. Hirshman

Michigan Law Review

This article attacks the barriers to articulation of a theory of the good and advocates discussion of the substance of a good regime, specifically, a good American regime. Part I of this article addresses in some detail the civic republicans' revival of interest in the common life. I propose that it is dauntingly difficult, if not impossible, to articulate a satisfying version of a common life without a theory of the good life, an undertaking traditionally associated with authoritarianism and elitism. Rather than abandoning the enterprise, however, I propose to reopen the assumption that the association automatically rules out any …

Heritage Preservation As A Public Duty: The Abbé Grégoire And The Origins Of An Idea, Joseph L. Sax

Michigan Law Review

Public responsibility for the conservation of artifacts of historic or aesthetic value is now acknowledged everywhere. One way or another the state will ensure preservation of a Stonehenge or a Grand Canyon as well as a great many lesser cultural icons. We have names for such things - "heritage" and "cultural property" are two of them; "patrimony" is a European counterpart - but these words have no very specific meaning. Many, but by no means all, of the objects we feel constrained to protect are old. They include human artifacts as well as natural objects or places. Though it is …

Homelessness: A Historical Perspective On Modern Legislation, Mark Peters

Michigan Law Review

This Note will demonstrate how current legislative responses to homelessness are bound and crippled by the social reform theories of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Before legislators can devise more efficient remedies to tackle current problems, they must identify and transcend earlier, ineffective thinking. This requires viewing the homelessness problem· in historical perspective. Specifically, legislatures must (1) examine the origins of the legal system's underlying conceptions about homelessness, (2) understand how these conceptions undermined earlier legislation designed to deal with the crisis, and (3) isolate, and escape, the modem manifestations of these conceptions.

This Note examines the early twentieth …

Social Irresponsibility, Actuarial Assumptions, And Wealth Redistribution: Lessons About Public Policy From A Prepaid Tuition Program, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Michigan Law Review

In this article, I shall try to illuminate the question of how governments, as opposed to private insurers, grapple with the problem of intergenerational social irresponsibility. I shall do so by analyzing and criticizing a single public program. That program, the Michigan Education Trust (MET), was the most widely publicized government action in the field of higher education finance during the 1980s. MET allows parents of young children to purchase contracts promising to cover the children's tuition at Michigan public colleges when they enroll up to eighteen years later.

In setting forth this case study, I also attempt to develop …

That Old Due Process Magic: Growth Control And The Federal Constitution, Keith R. Denny

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that the interests of nonmunicipal federal citizens in being able freely to migrate about the nation are not adequately accounted for in a due process analysis which sanctions regulations with any, even a debatable, relation to the public welfare.

More adaptable and appropriate are the constitutional safeguards designed to protect the interests of nonmunicipal federal citizens: the privileges and immunities clause, the right of interstate travel, and the commerce clause. This Note concludes that GCOs should be measured against these safeguards and not the standards of the due process clause. When so reviewed, GCOs are found wanting. …

A Prior Restraint By Any Other Name: The Judicial Response To Media Challenges Of Gag Orders Directed At Trial Participants, René L. Todd

Michigan Law Review

Gag orders directed at trial participants do not directly intrude into the media's editorial process, but instead result in a reduction of the total communication available regarding trial proceedings. In this way, participant-directed gag orders are effective, albeit indirect, restraints upon the media. This Note examines the dynamics of these participant-directed restrictions and their consequent effect upon the media. Part I examines participant-directed gag orders in relation to traditional prior restraint doctrine. After discussing the history of prior restraint doctrine and the present standard of prior restraint analysis, Part I relates efforts by courts to apply. prior restraint doctrine to …

Front Matter, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Front matter for Volume 88, Issue 5 of Michigan Law Review

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A List of Books Received by Michigan Law Review

Periodical Index, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

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

Progressive And Conservative Constitutionalism, Robin West

Michigan Law Review

The article's central thesis is that the understandings of the constitutional tradition most central to both paradigms are determined by sometimes implicit, but more often explicit, political dispositions toward various forms of social and private power, and the normative authority to which social and private power gives rise. Very broadly, conservative constitutionalists view private or social normative authority as the legitimate and best source of guidance for state action; accordingly, they view both the Constitution and constitutional adjudication as means of preserving and protecting that authority and the power that undergirds it against either legislative or judicial encroachment. Progressive constitutionalists, …

A Comprehensive Attack On Tax Deferral, Mary Louise Fellows

Michigan Law Review

This article explores the operation of T ARET and demonstrates that it produces economic neutrality and fairness among taxpayers, while simplifying the tax system by eliminating the need for provisions designed to reduce deferral advantages or ameliorate the inequities created by the realization-event rule. Finally, even if one decides that TARET should not be implemented, considering its operation provides a useful and quite different perspective on tax policy and taxing issues. In Simons' words, exploring the T ARET model allows us "to consider fruitfully the problem of bettering the system of presumptions."

Part I establishes the foundation for the time-adjustment …

Idea, Process, Or Protected Expression?: Determining The Scope Of Copyright Protection Of The Structure Of Computer Programs, Steven R. Englund

Michigan Law Review

Courts considering the alleged copying of the structure, rather than literal copying of the text, of a computer program have usually concerned themselves with whether protected expression or an unprotected idea was copied. Courts have seldom suggested that it might be an unprotected process that was copied. However, this Note concludes that the legislative history of the 1976 Act indicates that that legislation's drafters envisioned a far more prominent role for the process-expression dichotomy than it has played to date. The process inquiry is at least as important as the idea inquiry in striking the proper balance between promoting progress …

Periodical Index, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

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

Women, Mothers, And The Law Of Fright: A History, Martha Chamallas, Linda K. Kerber

Michigan Law Review

This article presents a gendered history of the law's treatment of fright-based physical injuries. Our goal is to connect the law of fright to the changing cultural and intellectual forces of the twentieth century. Through a feminist lens, we reexamine the accounts of the legal treatment of fright-based injuries offered by Victorian-erajurists, traditionalist legal scholars of the first two decades of the twentieth century, a legal realist in the 1930s, and a Freudian medical-legal commentator from the 1940s, all of whom helped to shape present-day tort doctrine. We conclude with an account of Dillon v. Legg, in which the …

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A List of Books Received by Michigan Law Review

Periodical Index, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

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