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Articles 1 - 30 of 56
Full-Text Articles in Law
Regulating Prosecutors’ Courtroom Misconduct, Bruce A. Green
Regulating Prosecutors’ Courtroom Misconduct, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
Trial prosecutors’ visible misbehavior, such as improper questioning of witnesses and improper jury arguments, may not seem momentous. Sometimes, the improprieties are simply the product of poor training or overenthusiasm. In many cases, they pass unremarked. As the Chicago Eight trial illustrated, trial prosecutors’ improprieties may also be overshadowed by the excesses of other trial participants—the witnesses, the defendants, the defense lawyers, or even the trial judge. And when noticed, prosecutors’ trial misbehavior can ordinarily be remedied, and then restrained, by a capable trial judge. It is little wonder that disciplinary authorities, having bigger fish to fry, are virtually indifferent …
Judge Victor Marrero’S Challenge To The Legal Profession: A ‘Little Rebellion Now And Then’, John D. Feerick
Judge Victor Marrero’S Challenge To The Legal Profession: A ‘Little Rebellion Now And Then’, John D. Feerick
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Being Good Lawyers: A Relational Approach To Law Practice, Eli Wald, Russell G. Pearce
Being Good Lawyers: A Relational Approach To Law Practice, Eli Wald, Russell G. Pearce
Faculty Scholarship
In response to past generations of debates regarding whether law is a business or profession, we advance an alternative approach that rejects the dichotomies of business and profession, or hired gun and wise counselor. Instead, we propose a relational account of law practice. Unlike frameworks grounded in assumptions of atomistic individualism or communitarianism, a relational perspective recognizes that all actors, whether individuals or organizations, have separate identities yet are intrinsically inter-connected and cannot maximize their own good in isolation. Through the lens of relational self-interest, maximizing the good of the individual or business requires consideration of the good of the …
How Corporate Governance Is Made: The Case Of The Golden Leash, Matthew D. Cain Ph.D., Jill E. Fisch, Sean J. Griffith, Steven D. Solomon
How Corporate Governance Is Made: The Case Of The Golden Leash, Matthew D. Cain Ph.D., Jill E. Fisch, Sean J. Griffith, Steven D. Solomon
Faculty Scholarship
This Article presents a case study of a corporate governance innovation — the incentive compensation arrangement for activist-nominated director candidates colloquially known as the “golden leash.” Golden leash compensation arrangements are a potentially valuable tool for activist shareholders in election contests. In response to their use, several issuers adopted bylaw provisions banning incentive compensation arrangements. Investors, in turn, viewed director adoption of golden leash bylaws as problematic and successfully pressured issuers to repeal them. The study demonstrates how corporate governance provisions are developed and deployed, the sequential response of issuers and investors, and the central role played by governance intermediaries …
Nationalization And Necessity: Takings And A Doctrine Of Economic Emergency, Nestor M. Davidson
Nationalization And Necessity: Takings And A Doctrine Of Economic Emergency, Nestor M. Davidson
Faculty Scholarship
Serious economic crises have recurred with regularity throughout our history. So too have government takeovers of failing private companies in response, and the downturn of the last decade was no exception. At the height of the crisis, the federal government nationalized several of the country’s largest private enterprises. Recently, shareholders in these firms have sued the federal government, arguing that the takeovers constituted a taking of their property without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment. This Essay argues that for the owners of companies whose failure would raise acute economic spillovers, nationalization without the obligation to pay just …
Prosecutors’ Disclosure Obligations In The U.S., Bruce A. Green, Peter A. Joy
Prosecutors’ Disclosure Obligations In The U.S., Bruce A. Green, Peter A. Joy
Faculty Scholarship
The article offers information on the prosecutor's discovery disclosure obligation in the U.S. Topics discussed include efforts of defense attorney in the prosecutor's disclosure obligation, efforts beyond the professional discipline, and legal enforcement to promote and support the approach of prosecutor's disclosure obligation, and collection of material used as evidence in the civil or criminal litigation.
Lawyers’ Professional Independence: Overrated Or Undervalued?, Bruce A. Green
Lawyers’ Professional Independence: Overrated Or Undervalued?, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
This article explores the concept of lawyers’ "professional independence" in the literature of the U.S. legal profession. It begins with some reflections on the conventional meanings of professional independence, which encompasses both the bar’s collective independence to regulate its members and individual lawyers’ independence in the context of professional representations, including independence from clients, on one hand, and independence from third parties, on the other. The article suggests that the professional conduct rules are overly preoccupied with protecting lawyers’ professional independence from the corrupting influences of other professionals. The article then turns to an aspect of professional independence that has …
Unregulated Corporate Internal Investigations: Achieving Fairness For Corporate Constituents, Bruce A. Green, Ellen S. Progdor
Unregulated Corporate Internal Investigations: Achieving Fairness For Corporate Constituents, Bruce A. Green, Ellen S. Progdor
Faculty Scholarship
This article focuses on the relationship between corporations and their employee constituents in the context of corporate internal investigations, an unregulated multi-million dollar business. The classic approach provided in the 1981 Supreme Court opinion, Upjohn v. United States, is contrasted with the reality of modern-day internal investigations that may exploit individuals to achieve a corporate benefit with the government. Attorney-client privilege becomes an issue as corporate constituents perceive that corporate counsel is representing their interests, when in fact these internal investigators are obtaining information for the corporation to barter with the government. Legal precedent and ethics rules provide little relief …
Making Good Lawyers, Eli Wald, Russell G. Pearce
Making Good Lawyers, Eli Wald, Russell G. Pearce
Faculty Scholarship
Today, the criticism of law schools has become an industry. Detractors argue that legal education fails to effectively prepare students for the practice of law, that it is too theoretical and detached from the profession, that it dehumanizes and alienates students, too expensive and inapt in helping students develop a sense of professional identity, professional values, and professionalism. In this sea of criticisms it is hard to see the forest from the trees. “There is so much wrong with legal education today,” writes one commentator, “that it is hard to know where to begin.” This article argues that any reform …
Patient Racial Preferences And The Medical Culture Of Accommodation, Kimani Paul-Emile
Patient Racial Preferences And The Medical Culture Of Accommodation, Kimani Paul-Emile
Faculty Scholarship
One of medicine’s open secrets is that patients routinely refuse or demand medical treatment based on the assigned physician’s racial identity, and hospitals typically yield to patients’ racial preferences. This widely practiced, if rarely acknowledged, phenomenon — about which there is new empirical evidence — poses a fundamental dilemma for law, medicine, and ethics. It also raises difficult questions about how we should think about race, health, and individual autonomy in this context. Informed consent rules and common law battery dictate that a competent patient has an almost-unqualified right to refuse medical care, including treatment provided by an unwanted physician. …
Prosecutors And Professional Regulation, Bruce A. Green
Prosecutors And Professional Regulation, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
Prosecutors often express mistrust of professional regulators, their rules and their processes. This may have been more understandable twenty years ago, when prosecutors perceived that the organized bar had been captured by defense lawyers seeking to use professional regulation as a means of imposing limits on criminal investigative authority that the law did not otherwise recognize. Although that criticism no longer has much basis in reality, it has persisted in the rhetoric prosecutors employ in advocacy regarding their professional conduct. This article explores prosecutors’ public attitude toward professional regulation, beginning with a brief account of their responses two decades ago, …
Rethinking Lawyer Regulation: How A Relational Approach Would Improve Professional Rules And Roles, Russell G. Pearce, Eli G. Wald
Rethinking Lawyer Regulation: How A Relational Approach Would Improve Professional Rules And Roles, Russell G. Pearce, Eli G. Wald
Faculty Scholarship
This Article offers both a way to understand emerging developments in the regulation of the legal profession in the United States and internationally, and an explanation for why these developments grounded in a relational perspective on lawyers and their work are likely to be more effective in encouraging lawyers to follow the legal ethics rules and to fulfill professional aspirations. The dominant United States approach to lawyer regulation is the command and control model that penalizes lawyers for failing to follow a lengthy set of prescribed rules. As the article explains, this approach assumes – and reinforces the idea – …
Prosecutors' Ethical Duty Of Disclosure In Memory Of Fred Zacharias , Bruce A. Green
Prosecutors' Ethical Duty Of Disclosure In Memory Of Fred Zacharias , Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
In the spring of 2009, I sent Fred Zacharias an e-mail to let him know that the American Bar Association's (ABA) Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, on which I was serving, was working on an opinion on prosecutorial ethics and to suggest that once it was published, the opinion might be fodder for our next article. Over the preceding decade, Fred and I had coauthored five articles on the regulation of prosecutors,' and various others on the regulation of lawyers in general, but at that time, we had no work in progress and had been out of touch …
Legal Ethics Scholarship Of Ted Schneyer: The Importance Of Being Rigorous, The Festschrift For Ted Schneyer Lawyer Regulation For The 21st Century: Foreword, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
This collection on "Lawyer Regulation for the 21st Century" celebrates Ted Schneyer's legal ethics scholarship. From my perspective as Ted's friend and colleague in the field of legal ethics, it is obvious how richly he deserves this festschrift, and it is my privilege to be invited to contribute its foreword. But to someone outside the field, many questions might be raised. Why celebrate legal scholarship? Why celebrate legal ethics scholarship? Why celebrate Ted Schneyer's legal ethics scholarship? And why celebrate it by collecting writings on the theme of Lawyer Regulation for the 21st Century? Though I have no desire to …
You Do Have To Keep Your Promises: A Disgorgement Theory Of Contract Remedies, Steve Thel, Peter Siegelman
You Do Have To Keep Your Promises: A Disgorgement Theory Of Contract Remedies, Steve Thel, Peter Siegelman
Faculty Scholarship
Contract law is generally understood to require no more of a person who breaches a contract than to give the injured promisee the "benefit of the bargain." The law is thus assumed to permit a promise-breaker to keep any profit remaining from breach, after putting the victim in the position he would have been in had the promise been performed. This conventional description is radically wrong: across a wide range of circumstances, standard contract doctrines actually do require people to keep their promises, or to disgorge their entire profit from breach if they do not. Rather than protecting the expectation …
Physicians And Execution: Highlights From A Discussion Of Lethal Injection, Deborah W. Denno
Physicians And Execution: Highlights From A Discussion Of Lethal Injection, Deborah W. Denno
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Wilfulness Versus Expectation: A Promise-Based Defense Of Wilfull Breach Doctrine, Steve Thel, Peter Siegelman
Wilfulness Versus Expectation: A Promise-Based Defense Of Wilfull Breach Doctrine, Steve Thel, Peter Siegelman
Faculty Scholarship
Willful breach doctrine should be a major embarrassment to contract law. If the default remedy for breach is expectation damages designed to put the injured promisee in the position she would have been in if the contract had been performed, then the promisor's behavior-the reason for the breach-looks to be irrelevant in assessing damages. And yet the cases are full of references to "willful" breaches, which seem often to be treated more harshly than ordinary ones based on the promisor's bad/willful conduct. Our explanation is that willful breaches are best understood as those that should be prevented or deterred because …
Public Service Must Begin At Home: The Lawyer As Civics Teacher In Everyday Practice, Bruce A. Green, Russell Pearce
Public Service Must Begin At Home: The Lawyer As Civics Teacher In Everyday Practice, Bruce A. Green, Russell Pearce
Faculty Scholarship
Fifty years ago, the leading national representatives of the American legal profession, the American Bar Association (ABA), and the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), issued a joint report (the Report) on the nature of lawyers' professional responsibility in the context of the adversary system. Principally authored by legal philosopher Lon Fuller, who co-chaired the joint conference that issued it, the Report's premise was that the legal profession's inherited traditions provided only indirect guidance to lawyers in light of their changing roles, and that a "true sense of professional responsibility" must derive from an understanding of the "special services" that …
Do You See What I See - Reflections On How Bias Infiltrates The New York City Family Court - The Case Of The Court Ordered Investigation, Leah A. Hill
Faculty Scholarship
That the Family Court is ill-equipped to address the needs of the hundreds of thousands of cases handled therein is not news. Exploding caseloads, complex problems, and minimal resources are just a few of the ingredients that combine to undermine the Court's ability to fulfill its promise. What has been given less attention until very recently is the extent to which the Family Court's failures disproportionately impact low-income families of color. Any analysis of the Court's impact or efficacy must consider the context I have described in my observations of the Court- the images of black and brown litigants hurrying …
Religious Lawyering's Second Wave, Russell G. Pearce, Amelia J. Uelmen
Religious Lawyering's Second Wave, Russell G. Pearce, Amelia J. Uelmen
Faculty Scholarship
Since the mid-1990s, the "religious lawyering movement" has expanded dramatically, receiving greater attention within the academy and the bar. As the movement enters what we term its "second wave" of development, this essay begins with a look back to its "first wave" of path-breaking scholarship and its gradual shift toward more institutionalized structures and programs. It argues that the predominant characteristic of first-wave religious lawyering scholarship was to claim a space within the professional conversation for lawyers to bring religious values to bear on their work. The essay then predicts that in the second wave religious lawyering conversations and scholarship …
Religious Lawyering In A Liberal Democracy: A Challenge And An Invitation William A. Brahms Lecture On Law & Religion, Russell G. Pearce
Religious Lawyering In A Liberal Democracy: A Challenge And An Invitation William A. Brahms Lecture On Law & Religion, Russell G. Pearce
Faculty Scholarship
At a time when many believe that law is no longer a noble profession, many lawyers see no reason to devote time and energy to promoting the public good. Religious lawyering may offer a powerful antidote: a robust framework for lawyers to integrate into their professional lives their most deeply rooted values, perspectives and critiques, and persuasive reasons to improve the quality of justice and work for the common good. At its best, religious lawyering echoes Martin Luther King's advice to the street sweeper. How wonderful it would be, indeed, if we practiced law so well that the host of …
Criminal Neglect: Indigent Defense From A Legal Ethics Perspective Ethics Symposium What Do Clients Want: Practice Contexts, Bruce A. Green
Criminal Neglect: Indigent Defense From A Legal Ethics Perspective Ethics Symposium What Do Clients Want: Practice Contexts, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
Most criminal defendants in the United States cannot afford to pay for a lawyer's services, and as a result their lawyers are government funded. Unfortunately, some state and local governments drastically under-fund indigent defense services. Criminal defense lawyers serving in these jurisdictions typically carry grossly excessive caseloads and are therefore severely restricted in how much time they can devote to individual clients. Commentators have targeted the under-funding of indigent defense systems as a problem of criminal justice, constitutional law, and civil rights. That is certainly true, but the under-funding of indigent defense also raises a serious and inadequately recognized problem …
Maccrate's Missed Opportunity: The Maccrate Report's Failure To Advance Professional Values Symposium, Russell G. Pearce
Maccrate's Missed Opportunity: The Maccrate Report's Failure To Advance Professional Values Symposium, Russell G. Pearce
Faculty Scholarship
The 1992 Report of the Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap (the "Task Force"), Legal Education Professional Development - An Educational Continuum, popularly known as the MacCrate Report (the "Report"), was the most ambitious effort to reform legal education in the past generation. Some commentators have described the Report as "the greatest proposed paradigm shift in legal education since Langdell envisioned legal education as the pursuit of legal science through the case method in the late 19th century.” Although the Report sought to promote education in both lawyering skills and values, its major influence has …
Don't Believe Everything You Think: Cognitive Bias In Legal Decision Making, Ian Weinstein
Don't Believe Everything You Think: Cognitive Bias In Legal Decision Making, Ian Weinstein
Faculty Scholarship
This article discusses the role of cognitive bias in legal decision making. Drawing on research in cognitive science and law, it explores the impact of cognitive bias on both lawyers and clients. These often subtle mental biases can lead to pervasive errors in decision making by causing us to ignore important information and make inaccurate predictions. They may lead a client to underestimate the risk of litigation. They may also lead a lawyer to miscategorize a client's value choice as a misjudgement of fact. The article offers illustrative stories of the impact of bias on both client and lawyer and …
Legal Ethics Must Be The Heart Of The Law School Curriculum Symposium: Recommitting To Teaching Legal Ethics- Shaping Our Teaching In A Changing World, Russell G. Pearce
Legal Ethics Must Be The Heart Of The Law School Curriculum Symposium: Recommitting To Teaching Legal Ethics- Shaping Our Teaching In A Changing World, Russell G. Pearce
Faculty Scholarship
Despite what seems to be far greater attention paid to the teaching of legal ethics than to any other law school subject, legal ethics remains no better than a second class subject in the eyes of students and faculty. This essay suggests that all efforts at innovation in legal ethics teaching are doomed to a marginal impact at best. Only recognition that legal ethics is the most important subject in the law school curriculum will lead to real and significant changes in the teaching of legal ethics. If the commitment of the legal profession and of legal academia to producing …
Lawyer And Public Service, The Historical Perspectives On Pro Bono Lawyering, Russell G. Pearce
Lawyer And Public Service, The Historical Perspectives On Pro Bono Lawyering, Russell G. Pearce
Faculty Scholarship
Historically, the first way of viewing the lawyer's role was as a member of America's governing class. Second came cause lawyering on behalf of a particular issue. Third, and most recently, arose the idea of pro bono lawyering, a less ambitious incarnation of the governing class lawyer who contributes time to helping cause lawyers. These categories are not rigid: for each individual they may overlap to one degree or another. This framework is preliminary and requires further research and development. Nonetheless, it provides a useful tool for explaining how lawyers-and in particular the heroic lawyers described in this symposium-connect to …
Faith And The Lawyer's Practice Symposium: Law Religion And The Public Good, Russell G. Pearce
Faith And The Lawyer's Practice Symposium: Law Religion And The Public Good, Russell G. Pearce
Faculty Scholarship
If there is a religious way to read, is there a religious way to be a lawyer? More and more lawyers, judges and scholars are answering yes to that question. We heard earlier from Cardinal Bevilacqua about the history of the Religious Lawyering Movement, which blossomed in the 1990s. There was writing about the law and religion before that time." We can date religious lawyering as a body of work in mainstream legal literature, as Cardinal Bevilacqua did, to the work of Professor Thomas Shaffer in the 1980s.Why did this movement take off in the 1990s? Again, what accounts for …
Reflections On The Ethics Of Legal Academics: Law Schools As Mdps; Or, Should Law Professors Practice What They Teach Symposium: Ethics Of Law Professors, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
[A member of the House of Commons said in Samuel Johnson's presence] that he paid no regard to the arguments of counsel at the bar of the House of Commons, because they were paid for speaking. JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, argument is argument. You cannot help paying regard to their arguments, if they are good, If it were testimony, you might disregard it, if you knew that it were purchased. There is a beautiful image in Bacon upon this subject: testimony is like an arrow shot from a long bow; the force of it depends on the hand that draws it. …
Bar Association Ethics Committees: Are They Broken Conference On Legal Ethics: What Needs Fixing, Bruce A. Green
Bar Association Ethics Committees: Are They Broken Conference On Legal Ethics: What Needs Fixing, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
This Article explores the work of bar association ethics committees. These are committees established by bar associations to give advice to lawyers about how to comply with the applicable rules of professional conduct. My question is, are these committees broken? Over the past two decades, several legal academics have concluded that they are. At its harshest, the critique is that ethics committees, typified by the American Bar Association's ("ABA") ethics committee, publish opinions that respond to trivial questions by providing poorly reasoned answers on which nobody can or does rely, and that the reason that the committees' opinions are inadequate …
Lawyer Role, Agency Law, And The Characterization Officer Of The Court , James A. Cohen
Lawyer Role, Agency Law, And The Characterization Officer Of The Court , James A. Cohen
Faculty Scholarship
The law of agency has governed American lawyers since before the Revolution, but recent scholarship about legal ethics and professional role almost entirely ignores it. Most commentators would concede that attorneys are agents, but would quickly add that the lawyer is also an "officer of the court" who has obligations to seek justice. However, analysis of the phrase "officer of the court" reveals that it has surprisingly little content; it is mostly rhetoric, caused by self-love and self-promotion. What little content it has points to a role of the attorney as agent whose obligations to the court are almost identical …