Law Commons^™

Judge Jack B. Miller In Memoriams., L. Wayne Scott

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract Forthcoming.

Television Advertising: Professionalism's Dilemma., Laura R. Champion, William M. Champion

St. Mary's Law Journal

Lawyers are concerned about tactics and antics of advertising attorneys because of possible harm to the reputation of the legal profession due to tasteless, crass ads circulated among the non-legal public. This controversial issue of what is good taste includes the question of how far ads can go before crossing the line of prohibited solicitation. Lawyers advertise through direct mail, television, radio, telephone yellow pages, billboards, newspapers, and magazines. This Article traces the background of legal advertising, focusing on the particular issue of television ads. Some courts purposefully avoid this aspect of legal communication with the public and leave many …

Entering The Thicket - Mandamus Review Of Texas District Court Witness Disclosure Orders., David W. Holman, Byron C. Keeling

St. Mary's Law Journal

In the absence of statutory authorization of interlocutory appeal, the writ of mandamus usually is the sole convenient remedy for an egregious trial court decision prior to judgment. The increasing number of mandamus petitions which annually invade the Texas appellate courts reflects the importance of the writ of mandamus. While once described as the “extraordinary” remedy, it is not uncommon for proceedings in a trial court to cease while a party seeks mandamus review of a controversial discovery ruling. One type of discovery rule which has not escaped mandamus review is the admission or exclusion of the testimony of witnesses …

The Texas Tax Relief Act After Twelve Years: Adoption, Implementation &(And) Enforcement., Michael Weiss

St. Mary's Law Journal

The Texas Tax Reform Act, an amendment to the Texas constitution, undertook to create and enforce spending limits. The Texas Government first followed the spending limits in the 1982-1983 biennium. The threat of veto from Governor Clemments forced the legislature to adopt a budget below the limit. Unfortunately, Texas taxpayers did not see the savings of 1982 repeated in subsequent years. Meaning, the amendment, which passed by an eighty-four percent majority, failed in its purpose for limiting the government growth and spending. The noncompliance of the LBB is in contravention of the people’s will and the laws established to set …

The Carryforward Of Net Operating Losses And Other Tax Attributes After Bankruptcy Reorganizations., Martin M. Van Brauman

St. Mary's Law Journal

When stock is exchanged for debt in a bankruptcy reorganization, potentially abusive tax situations can result if the reorganization occurs strictly for the carryforward of tax attributes to the acquiring corporation. The basic question is to what extent the discharge of indebtedness provisions, the application of the various statutory and judicial requirements, and the consolidated return regulations prohibit or restrict the carryforward of the tax history of the debtor corporation. Bankruptcy reorganization for a corporation under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code can take the form of either a recapitalization or a reorganization. Because a “G” reorganization involves a discharge …

Nude Dancing Conveying A Message Or Eroticism And Sexuality Is Protected By The First Amendment But Can Be Limited Under State Police Powers Provided The Government Establishes A Substantial, Content-Neutral Purpose., Fred S. Wilson

St. Mary's Law Journal

In Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., the Supreme Court held the First Amendment protects nude dancing as conveying an expressive message, but state police powers may limit protection if the government establishes a substantial, content-neutral purpose. It is a principal of constitutional law where an actor intends to convey a message by expressive conduct, the First Amendment protection extends to that expression. Traditionally, time, place, and manner regulations restricting expressive conduct based on either the subject-matter of the message or the viewpoint of the actor receive content-based classification. However, content-based regulation of expressive conduct is constitutional only when narrowly drawn …

The Multiple-Marriage Society And Spousal Rights Under The Revised Uniform Probate Code, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

Nearly everyone knows about the transformation of the American family that has taken place over the last couple of decades. The changes, from the latter half of the 1970s into the present, comprise one of the great events of our age. Articles on one aspect or another of the phenomenon frequent the popular press, and a special edition of Newsweek was recently devoted to the topic.' The traditional "Leave It To Beaver" family no longer prevails in American society. To be sure, families consisting of a wage-earning husband, a homemaking and child-rearing wife, and their two joint children still exist. …

The Iroquois Great Law Of Peace And The United States Constitution: How The Founding Fathers Ignored The Clan Mothers, Renée Jacobs

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Debt, Development, And Human Rights: Lessons From South Africa, Danil D. Bradlow

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This paper explores the lessons to be learned from the South African debt crisis of the mid-1980s and suggests ways in which it could have been used to promote human rights changes in apartheid South Africa.

Legal Resources Of Striking Miners: Notes For A Study Of Class Conflict And Law, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Legal Images Of Battered Women: Redefining The Issue Of Separation, Martha R. Mahoney

Articles

No abstract provided.

Toward An Abolitionist Interpretation Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is by now an open secret that current interpretations of the meaning of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and of its relevance and mandate for contemporary problems of racial, gender, and economic justice, are deeply and, in a sense, hopelessly conflicted. The conflict, simply stated, is this: to the current Supreme Court, and to a sizeable and influential number of constitutional theorists, the "equal protection of the laws" guaranteed by the Constitution is essentially a guarantee that the categories delineated by legal rules will be "rational" and will be rationally related to legitimate state ends. To …

Citizenship And Scholarship (Review Essay), George Kannar

Book Reviews

Review of Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (1990); Ethan Bronner, Battle for Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America (1989); Michael Pertschuk & Wendy Schaetzel, The People Rising: The Campaign Against the Bork Nomination (1989); Patrick B. mcGuigan & Dawn M. Weyrich, Ninth Justice: The Battle for Bork (1990).

The Role Of Law In Progressive Politics, Cornel West

Vanderbilt Law Review

What is the role and function of the law in contemporary progressive politics? Do legal institutions represent crucial terrain on which significant social change can take place? If so, how? In what ways? How can progressive lawyers remain relatively true to their moral convictions and political goals?

In this Article I shall attempt to respond to these urgent questions.I will try to carve out a vital democratic space left between the Scylla of upbeat liberalism that harbors excessive hopes for the law and the Charybdis of downbeat leftism that promotes exorbitant doubts about the law. My argument rests upon three …

Rhetoric Of Silence: Some Reflections On Law, Literature, And Social Violence, James A. Epstein

Vanderbilt Law Review

Martha Minow suggests the importance of looking outside of court-rooms and the law to find ways of speaking about social and family violence. Her article underscores the difficulties of breaking silence, and yet the power to impose silence is integral to violence itself. We are called upon, however, not only to speak, but to listen. Respectful listening indeed may be a prerequisite to attempting to frame words and actions of intervention and resistance. We are called upon to speak, but we are hard pressed to summon public language that does justice to private pain and anguish.

Robert Cover, in his …

Social Violence And Political Representation, Michael Ryan

Vanderbilt Law Review

If I were to sum up the revolution that has occurred in the humanities (and increasingly in the social sciences) in the past two decades, it would be to say that what was before seen as substance is now seen as representation. One could expand on that statement in several ways:what was before seen as nature or reason is now seen as convention or artifact; what was before a logic of necessity is now a highly contingent,even random relation of terms whose connections obey no necessary order; what was before a ground or foundation from which reasonable derivatives could be …

Law, Literature, And Social Change: Foreword, Sharon A. Mattingly

Vanderbilt Law Review

FOREWORD: Interpreting the meaning of words, whether those words compose a precedent-setting case or a newly enacted statute, is an integral part of the law. Furthermore, the impact of legal texts clearly extends beyond the legal discipline and permeates all layers of society. But from where do we derive the meaning of words and texts? Is the text itself the source of meaning, or is the text an embodiment of a meaning, the source of which is society? What determines textual interpretations-the historical roots of the text itself, the historical gloss of prior interpretations, the private experiences that each new …

Afterword: Voices And Violence--A Dialogue, Ellen W. Clayton, Jay Clayton

Vanderbilt Law Review

WE: When organizing this Symposium on the topic of "Law, Literature,and Social Change," we asked whether current trends in literature and in literary, social, and legal theory actually could play a role in bringing about social change. The authors gathered at this Symposium responded to this question in very different ways. As we read their articles and comments, however, and as we talked about their various approaches, some common themes began to emerge. Narrative seemed important. The way people split public life off from private experience came up frequently. But violence seemed to be on everyone's mind.

IT: Why violence? …

Law As Text: A Response To Professor Michael Ryan, Robert N. Covington

Vanderbilt Law Review

Law, Professor Michael Ryan reminds us by his emphasis on law as legitimating representation, is also text. This is the most telling of the many points he sets out in his provocative and thoughtful article; for those of us called to the bar, it is an important reminder. For us lawyers, after all, law is not so much text as it is process, not so much noun as verb. It is not that we disregard the fact that law is in part a pen-and-ink affair. Our shelves sag with books; in academic life, few divisions of a university spend so …

Afterword: Voices And Violence-- A Dialogue, Ellen Wright Clayton, Jay Alexander Clayton

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

When organizing this Symposium on the topic of "Law, Literature, and Social Change," we asked whether current trends in literature and in literary, social, and legal theory actually could play a role in bringing about social change. The authors gathered at this Symposium responded to this question in very different ways. As we read their articles and comments, however, and as we talked about their various approaches, some common themes began to emerge. Narrative seemed important. The way people split public life off from private experience came up frequently. But violence seemed to be on everyone's mind.

The Emergence Of The Social Dimension Of The European Economic Community, Timothy W. Dowdy

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Holmes As Correspondent, G. Edward White

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article explores the function of letter writing in the life of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. I argue that letter writing was a by-product of an effort by Holmes to compartmentalize his life into professional ("my work") and domestic ("my wife") spheres, a compartmentalization that had its constraining effects. Because of this compartmentalization, a series of pursuits to which Holmes was attracted, ranging from speculation in the realms of literature and philosophy to flirtations with attractive women, were relegated implicitly to secondary stature, causing strain. In this context, letter writing functioned as a release for Holmes: a release from the …

To Quote Or Not To Quote: The Status Of Misquoted Material In Defamation Law, Sharon A. Mattingly

Vanderbilt Law Review

To quote or not to quote' is no longer a valid question in defamation law because courts have lessened the burden on writers to use the exact words of the speaker in quoted language. If individuals feel that the press has misquoted them, they have three realistic options: First,ignore the misquotation; second, contact the media and request a re-traction; and third, file a lawsuit claiming defamation and seeking monetary damages.' The first alternative is the easiest, but given the emotional overtones of defamation, it is also the most unlikely. If the media were more sensitive and less defensive, the second …

Law And The Media: An Overview And Introduction, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Although occasional articles on law and the media have been published in Law and Human Behavior, this special issue is the first collection of articles on the topic to appear in the journal. By publishing some of the most recent work on issues in law and the media, we hope to draw the attention of psycholegal scholars to questions in this fertile research area that deserve theoretical and empirical study.

Law and the media have become inescapably intertwined. Because a relatively small proportion of the public has direct experience with the justice system, public knowledge and views of law …

Curtailing Inherited Wealth, Mark L. Ascher

Michigan Law Review

One of the most dominant themes in American ideology is equality of opportunity. In our society, ability and willingness to work hard are supposed to make all things possible. But we know there are flaws in our ideology. Differences in native ability unquestionably exist. Similarly, some people seem to have distinctly more than their fair share of good luck. Both types of differences are, however, beyond our control. So we try to convince ourselves that education evens out most differences. Still, we know there are immense differences in the values various parents imbue in their children. And we also know …

Talking About Difference: Meanings And Metaphors Of Individuality, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This paper discusses the relationship between communitarianism and difference theory. Specifically, it focuses on the rhetorical practices that have created an apparent conflict between difference theory and communitarianism. My purpose is to suggest why this conflict dissolves when community and difference are understood as strategic rhetorics that share a common political vision.

Strategic Research In Law And Society, Bryant G. Garth

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Durkheimian Epiphanies: The Importance Of Engaged Social Science In Legal Studies, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

"His" And "Her" Story: The Life And Future Of The Law And Society Movement, Felice J. Levine

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Back To The Future: The Short, Happy Life Of The Law And Society Movement, David M. Trubek

Florida State University Law Review

The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Meeting of the Law and Society Association: The Ice Cream Social

The family has returned to Madison, Wisconsin where it all started. The old-timers are in a mood for celebration and self-congratulation. The past presidents are serving ice cream to a huge crowd of people from all over the world. These founding fathers (the first female president is still in office and isn't yet eligible to serve ice cream) look pleased. This is a world they have made. It is full of old friends, recent students, ardent disciples, a few critics who have at least taken them …