Law Commons^™

The Life And Legacy Of Chief Judge Lawrence H. Cooke: "Truly An Exemplary Life. A Life Well Lived", Jay C. Carlisle

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

It is an appropriate tribute to the late Chief Judge of New York, Lawrence H. Cooke, that this article be devoted to a man who many leaders of the bench, bar, and academia consider to be the greatest jurist to ever serve on New York State's highest court. Chief Judge Cooke, better known as Larry, served with honor and distinction as an associate judge of the Court of Appeals, and later as Chief Judge.

Slides: Best Management Practices For Oil And Gas Development And Comparative Water Quality Database Of Regulations Relating To Shale Oil And Gas, Matt Samelson, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment. Intermountain Oil And Gas Bmp Project

Fracking, Water Quality and Public Health: Examining Current Laws and Regulations (March 20)

Presenter: Matt Samelson, J.D., Attorney, Consultant for Intermountain Oil and Gas Best Management Practices (BMP) Project, Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment, University of Colorado Law School

34 slides

The Jurisprudence Of Union, Gil Seinfeld

Articles

The primary goal of this Article is to demonstrate that the interest in national unity does important, independent work in the law of vertical federalism. We have long been accustomed to treating union as a constitutionally operative value in cases involving the duties states owe one another (i.e. horizontal federalism cases), but in cases involving the relationship between the federal government and the states, the interest in union is routinely ignored. This Article shows that, across a wide range of cases relating to the allocation of power between the federal government and the states, the states are constrained by a …

Withdrawal: The Roberts Court And The Retreat From Election Law, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Last Term the Supreme Court handed down four decisions that upheld diverse efforts by state governments to regulate the electoral process. The Court turned back challenges to New York’s method for nominating judicial candidates, Washington’s modified blanket primary system, Indiana’s voter identification requirement, and Alabama’s use of gubernatorial appointment to fill county commission vacancies in Mobile County. Unlike other recent election decisions, these were not close cases. All nine Justices supported the New York holding, while supermajorities voted in favor of the result in the others. This consensus, moreover, emerged even as the Court voted to reverse unanimous decisions by …

A Picture Of The New York Court Of Appeals At The Time Of Wood V. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, Meredith R. Miller

Scholarly Works

Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon is an enduring part of the Contracts canon. A symposium addressing the legacy of the case would be incomplete without a picture of the New York Court of Appeals at the time the case was decided and a discussion of the oft-neglected role that court rules and administration play in the development of the law. Thus, it is the aim of this short essay to place Wood in the context of the Court's history, and to explore how structural and jurisdictional changes to the Court could have had an impact on how the case was …

On The Meaning And Impact Of The Physician-Assisted Suicide Cases, Yale Kamisar

Book Chapters

I read every newspaper article I could find on the meaning and impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's June 1997 decisions in Washington v Glucksberg and Vacco v Quill. I came away with the impression that some proponents of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) were unable or unwilling publicly to recognize the magnitude of the setback they suffered when the Court handed down its rulings in the PAS cases.

State Responses To Task Force Reports On Race And Ethnic Bias In The Courts, Suellyn Scarnecchia

Articles

While several states have embarked on studies of race and ethnic bias in their courts, Minnesota is only the sixth to publish its report to date. As Minnesota joins the ranks of states with published reports, it is worthwhile to assess the impact of the five earlier published reports from other states. Final reports have been published in Michigan (1989), Washington (1990), New York (1991), Florida (1991) and New Jersey (1992). The published reports make findings and provide several specific recommendations for change. This article will review the published findings and recommendations of the task forces and will discuss the …

The Delaware River Basin: Courts, Compacts And Commissions, R. Timothy Weston

Boundaries and Water: Allocation and Use of a Shared Resource (Summer Conference, June 5-7)

112 pages (includes illustrations and 1 map).

Contains references.

The Family Court: An Historical Survey, Merril Sobie

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The New York Family Court this year celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary. Hailed as an "experimental" tribunal, designed to resolve society's most intractable problems, including family dissolution, delinquency and child neglect, the court has been perceived as a radical development which altered the then existing legal rules governing family affairs. The Family Court Act indeed incorporates several creative provisions. But the court's foundations were built upon solid jurisprudential underpinnings, principles which had evolved over the course of the preceding century. Establishment of the court was neither radical nor experimental; in reality, Family Court represents the latest increment in the development of …

The Emergence Of A General Reformation Doctrine For Wills, Lawrence W. Waggoner, John H. Langbein

Articles

In this article, which both summarizes and updates an extensively footnoted article published last year ("Reformation of Wills on the Ground of Mistake: Change of Direction in American Law?" 130 University of Pennsylvania Law Rmiew 521 (1982)), we report on this new case law and discuss the analytic framework that we think it suggests and requires.

Reformation Of Wills On The Ground Of Mistake: Change Of Direction In American Law?, John H. Langbein, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

Although it has been "axiomatic" that our courts do not entertain suits to reform wills on the ground of mistake, appellate courts in California, New Jersey, and New York have decided cases within the last five years that may presage the abandonment of the ancient "no-reformation" rule. The new cases do not purport to make this fundamental doctrinal change, although the California Court of Appeal in Estate of Taff and the New Jersey Supreme Court in Engle v. Siegel did expressly disclaim a related rule, sometimes called the "plain meaning" rule. That rule, which hereafter we will call the "no-extrinsic-evidence …

Perpetuity Statutes, Edwin C. Goddard

Articles

THE common law of perpetuities is one of the most interesting examples of almost pure judicial legislation. De Donis, The Statutes of Uses and of Wills, but gave wider scope to the development by the courts of rules of law to thwart the attempt of the great landowners to tie up their landed estates in their families in perpetuity. One body of rules to this end limited restraints upon alienation, another the creation of future interests vesting at too remote a period. Restriction of restraints upon alienation, and the rule against perpetuities, these two were developed for the same end, …

Unrecognized Government Or State In English And American Law (Part 1), Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

From the decision of this novel case, reported as Pelzer v. United Dredging Co., we may infer that the New York courts regard unrecognized Mexico as a sort of legal vacuum. In granting the corporation's motion for judgment on the pleadings, the Supreme Court said: "The administratrix plaintiff is an officer of a foreign court. It is syllogistically true that if the foreign court has no recognized power here she may not assert a right derived through her appointment therefrom. The Mexican government is not de facto here, since recognition alone can make it so. It may have all the …

Unrecognized Government Or State In English And American Law (Part 2), Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

PROBABLY no one in the British Empire or the United States would question the doctrine that it belongs exclusively to the political departments to recognize new governments or states. The difficulties involved are those which arise in the application of a doctrine so broadly stated. Not every situation involving an unrecognized government or state requires the decision of a question of recognition. If the decision of a political question is not involved, then it is entirely proper for the courts to take cognizance of a mere de facto government or state. In what situations may the courts appropriately take account …

Taking Of Equitable Easements For Public Use, Edgar N. Durfee

Articles

The case of Flynn v. New York &c Railway Co., decided by the Court of Appeals of New York in April last, involves the right of an owner of land to which is appurtenant a so-called equitable easement, arising under a covenant restricting the use of other land, to compensation upon the taking of the servient land for a public use inconsistent with the restriction. A tract of land was laid out in accordance with a plan, and all, lots therein were sold and conveyed by deeds containing covenants, inter alia, that, "No building or structure for any business purpose …

The Michigan Judicature Act Of 1915, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

IN 1848 a wave of reform in judicial procedure began to sweep over the United States. In that year the legislature of New York enacted the Code of Civil Procedure, a statute of far-reaching importance, for it became the source of and the model for similar legislation in almost two-thirds of the States in the Union.

Mortgagee In Possession In New York And Michigan, Edgar N. Durfee

Articles

It is interesting to observe how tenaciously the old common law of mortgages has persisted in the state of New York, the very cradle of the modem lien theory of the mortgage. As early as 1802 Chancellor KENT began the importation into that state of Lord MANSFIELD'S Civil Law doctrines of mortgage. Johnson v. Hart, 3 Johns. Cas. 322. In 1814, in the case of Runyan v. Mersereau, 11 Johns. 534, the lien theory definitely triumphed over the old law. In other cases, both before and since the statute of 1828 denying ejectment to the mortgagee, the details of mortgage …