Law Commons^™

Setting Attorneys' Fees In Securities Class Actions: An Empirical As, Lynn A. Baker, Michael A. Perino, Charles Silver

Vanderbilt Law Review

n 1995, Congress overrode President Bill Clinton's veto and enacted the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act ("PSLRA"), a key purpose of which was to put securities class actions under the control of institutional investors with large financial stakes in the outcome of the litigation.' The theory behind this policy, set out in a famous article by Professors Elliot Weiss and John Beckerman, was simple: self-interest should encourage investors with large stakes to run class actions in ways that maximize recoveries for all investors. These investors should naturally want to hire good lawyers, incentivize them properly, monitor their actions, and reject …

Nonlegal Regulation Of The Legal Profession: Social Norms In Professional Communities, W. Bradley Wendel

Vanderbilt Law Review

In this Article, Professor Wendel analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of community-based responses to unethical behavior by lawyers. The limits of formal legal regulation of the legal profession are well known. Additional questions have been raised about the efficacy of motivating lawyers to act ethically merely by giving appropriate instruction. What is left, therefore, is a complex and little-studied, but very real, array of informal sanctions. These sanctions are controlled by individual members of the professional community, not by the court or organized bar, and therefore operate largely without the transparency and procedural regularity of formal legal regimes. The advantage …

Legal Malpractice: The Profession's Dirty Little Secret, Manuel R. Ramos

Vanderbilt Law Review

Legal malpractice is a taboo subject. It has been ignored by the legal profession,' law schools, mandatory continuing legal education ("CLE") programs, and even by scholarly' and lay publications. Unfortunately, our perception of legal malpractice, up until now, has been highly distorted by secretive insurance companies, confidential settlement agreements, and a questionable American Bar Association ("ABA") Study. Nonetheless, sharply contrasting portraits of legal malpractice have emerged: either it is just a minor problem of "weeding out" a few "bad apples," or it is the tip of an "iceberg," ready to overwhelm the legal profession. The ABA Study has fostered the …

The Noblesse Oblige Tradition In The Practice Of Law, David Luban

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1905 Louis D. Brandeis delivered a talk entitled The Opportunity in the Law to the Harvard Ethical Society.' It was delivered as a pep talk, what Harvard Law Professor Duncan Kennedy, seventy-six years later, would refer to as "the old address to the troops." Brandeis hoped to rally law students to his vision of the moral possibilities of legal practice-specifically, the elite corporate legal practice into which Brandeis could assume his audience would enter. Brandeis was concerned that elite lawyers were becoming thralls of robber-baron capitalists, that they were ignoring the possibilities of law practice as a kind of …

The Professional Responsibility Of The Law Professor: Three Neglected Questions, Monroe H. Freedman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Law professors have a great deal to say about the ethics of law practitioners. We write law review articles about lawyers' professional responsibilities, and we have participated in drafting codes of conduct for practicing lawyers.

Many of us bring to that task a significant perspective. We can be both informed about and detached from the pressures of daily practice. We are free of involvement or (worse yet) identification with particular clients. Indeed, in choosing to become law professors, we have made the choice to dissociate ourselves from contact with clients.

Not surprisingly, therefore, most law professors tend to minimize the …

Professional Competence And Social Responsibility: Fulfilling The Vanderbilt Vision, Sandra D. O'Connor

Vanderbilt Law Review

In our laudable attempt to train law students to "think like lawyers" by teaching them legal method, we must not lose sight of the fact that questions of professional responsibility cannot properly be resolved with the same legal framework of analysis. Rather,we must see that as professionals with almost exclusive access to our system of justice, we have moral responsibilities totally outside the scope of the legal rules, and not amenable to analysis in terms of legal method. It is time to return to consideration of the moral and spiritual foundations of our legal system. It is time to train …

Admission To The Bar: A Constitutional Analysis, Ben C. Adams, Edward H. Benton, David A. Beyer, Harrison L. Marshall, Jr., Carter R. Todd, Jane G. Allen Special Projects Editor

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Special Project examines and analyzes selected constitutional challenges to requirements for permanent and temporary admission to the bar. In the area of permanent admission, the Special Project looks at constitutional challenges to three qualifications typically required of bar applicants by states: demonstration of good moral character, successful completion of a bar examination, and residency. In the area of admission "pro hac vice", the Project examines constitutional challenges to the basis on which judges have denied temporary admission to an applicant.

Recent Publications, Journal Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Bakke, DeFunis, and Minority Admissions: The Quest for Equal Opportunity

By Allan P. Sindler.

Sindler describes the admissions programs at the Universities of Washington and California-Davis, and the respective experiences of Marco DeFunis and Allan Bakke that preceded their litigation. Then, documenting the disparity in academic qualifications between accepted minorities and rejected nonminorities, Sindler addresses the broad issue before the courts. Is the reservation of academic "places" for minorities an inherently two-track system, which operates as an illegal quota to exclude "better-qualified" applicants; or may a school utilize race as a basis for selection in order to fulfill other commitments …

Access To The Work Product Of An Attorney Disqualified For Opposing A Former Client: First Wisconsin Mortgage Trust, Edward S. Annunziato

Vanderbilt Law Review

The purposes of this Recent Development are to analyze the effect of the Seventh Circuit's work product decision on disqualification standards and to develop a consistent framework for determining whether access to the work product of an attorney disqualified for opposing a former client should be allowed. This Recent Development urges that in order to provide the effective guidance necessary for both voluntary compliance and judicial enforcement, the Code must incorporate those judicial standards that most closely reflect its standards in this area. Thus the Recent Development proposes an Ethical Consideration regarding access to work product that reflects the ethical …

A Remedy For The Discharge Of Professional Employees Who Refuse To Perform Unethical Or Illegal Acts: A Proposal In Aid Of Professional Ethics, Jon P. Christiansen

Vanderbilt Law Review

This note will discuss first the duties demanded of a professional in the proper exercise of his ethical responsibilities, including conduct demanded both by criminal statutes and by professional codes of conduct. Secondly, an examination will be made of three alternatives for the enforcement of professional ethics without the necessity of a right to recovery in the discharged employee. Thirdly,the limitations of traditional master-servant theory will be discussed as they relate to a possible cause of action for an "abusive discharge." Finally, this cause of action will be proposed and a consideration will be made of the elements of the …

Book Review, W. Leslie Peat

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Ethical Investor is, despite its flaws, as thorough and comprehensive a treatment of the problems of universities and corporate responsibility as might be desired. It should be required reading for university trustees, and it offers many valuable insights to the general reader. Although it may appear that student and faculty interest has diminished somewhat during the past two years, it is nearly a certainty that this has been more the result of an intelligent and sincere response by university administrators and trustees than of any profound change in the climate of opinion. If the universities continue to respond in …

Elliott E. Cheatham: His Contributions To A Developing Sense Of Professional Responsibility, Robert E. Mathews

Vanderbilt Law Review

It may not, after all, be difficult to be a nunc pro tunc prophet, but it takes real imagination to think of it. Hindsight is quite another matter; all of us are constantly explaining how a better decision years ago would have made for a happier world today. But to think in 1947 of assuming oneself to have been prophesying in 1897 as to what would be the state of affairs fifty years thence reveals an imaginative gift of some magnitude. Not only does it offer a sure-fire guaranty of accuracy of prediction, but also it dramatizes the fallibility of …

Book Reviews, Henry N. Wieman, Jerome Hall

Vanderbilt Law Review

The problem discussed by Professor Stumpf in his book Morality and the Law can be summarized by these questions: Do we have two kinds of prescribed conduct, one prescribed by morality independent of the government, the other prescribed by government independent of morality? Or is prescription by government necessarily moral because government is necessarily moral by reason of being the government? If not, under what conditions, if any, does prescription by government become a moral prescription? Under what conditions, if any, is government, by law, a matter of expedience, not to be confused with morality?

reviewer: Henry Nelson Wieman

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Class Gifts Of Future Interests: When Is Survival Required?, Herman L. Trautman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Because of recent significant developments, this article will under-take to deal with the requirement of survival in class gifts of future interests both with respect to the responsibility of a lawyer who plans an estate and with the problem confronting the courts in the many cases where either holographic wills are allowed or lawyers fail to discharge their professional responsibility concerning this litigious issue. By way of introduction, it will first stress the importance of a proper training for professional responsibility in this area. It will then attempt to provide a proper perspective for the courts to deal with the …

Legislation, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Federal Diversity Jurisdiction--Citizenship for Unincorporated Associations

In 1889 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Chapman v.Barney' that a New York joint stock company was not to be considered a "citizen" for purposes of federal diversity jurisdiction. This decision provided the basis for the rule that unincorporated associations are not considered juridical persons, and that the citizenship of their individual members is determinative of federal diversity.

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Protecting the Client When His Lawyer Dies

The problems which arise when a practicing attorney suddenly diestake many shapes. Those which face the law firm are of both an ethical nature, involving the …

Book Note, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Donald K. Carroll, Judge of the District Court of Appeal, First District of Florida, has presented in this book a treasure house of materials useful to every judge. Included in it are writings from a multitude of sources, published both in this country and Europe. The book's primary purpose is to provide an anthology of inspirational and helpful literary gems for use by judges in their work; its secondary purpose is to give source materials for preparing speeches or writings on judicial subjects.

The Ethical Foundation For The Pragmatic Conception Of Justice, Anton Donoso

Vanderbilt Law Review

Since the death of John Dewey ten years ago, his thought has been the subject of a number of works, some of the most significant of which deal with his philosophy of law and of justice. The question of his conception of justice arises out of his general effort to show that the resolution of moral conflicts between various claimants is possible by the use of the scientific method, by which is meant intelligent examination justified by reliable public test through reference to consequences. This entails the formulation of a norm of justice that is both valid (true) and morally …

Ethical Theory And Legal Philosophy, Stanley D. Rose

Vanderbilt Law Review

Jurisprudence and ethics, the author believes, represent distinct efforts to achieve values in society. However, because of their similar method, bases in fact, and testing by consequences, each has something to give the other. With this in mind, the article examines the work of contemporary writers in ethics, both to determine what exactly are their positions and to see what they might offer the student of jurisprudence.

Canons 28 And 29 -- An Appraisal, Henry S. Drinker

Vanderbilt Law Review

How far should Canons 28 and 29 of the ABA's Canons of Ethics deter a lawyer from taking or participating in proceedings against a fellow lawyer in a matter involving the propriety of his professional conduct, by reason of the fact that such proceedings may injure such lawyer's professional reputation. The Canons do not clearly or fully cover this problem...

The solution of these problems related to participating in litigation against a fellow lawyer depends in each case to a great extent on the accompanying circumstances. Professional courtesy should not be distorted or overemphasized merely to avoid a disagreeable or …

Summary Of A Statement Of The Effect Of Religious Principles On Lawyers' Ethical Problems, F. B. Mackinnon

Vanderbilt Law Review

The lawyer-client relationship provides an opportunity for the intimate relationship in which religious principles can best be acted upon. But taking advantage of this opportunity may destroy the lawyer's usefulness to the legal system and be harmful to the client's purely "legal" affairs. And the trends of the profession toward specialization and combination reduce the intimacy of the lawyer-client relationship and emphasize the lawyer's concern with the legal aspects of his client's problem.

Heir Hunting -- A Profession Or A Racket?, Frank C. Ingraham

Vanderbilt Law Review

Although the cases clearly define the law and public policy applicable to the genealogist's contract, the important variable is the individual factual situation and its implications. The courts have upheld the heir-hunter's contract when the following factors were predominant in the suit: where the services of the genealogist amounted to valuable consideration; where the parties were competent and on equal footing; where there was no implied or express agreement to participate in existing or contemplated litigation; where the beneficiary accepted the evidence which established his claim and received the benefit of the claim; where there was no duty on the …

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

CRIMINAL PROCEDURE--FACIAL EXPRESSIONS AND GESTICULATIONS OF TRIAL JUDGE--PREJUDICIAL EFFECT ON JURY

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EMPLOYMENT SECURITY ACT--PERSONS COUNTED TO DETERMINE WHETHER AN EMPLOYING UNIT HAS REQUISITE NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES TO CONSTITUTE AN "EMPLOYER"--STUDENTS WORKING FOR SCHOOL TO PAY TUITION

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FEDERAL JURISDICTION--JURISDICTIONAL AMOUNT--INJUNCTION SUITS

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LEGAL ETHICS--SOLICITATION AND FEE SPLITTING--ATTORNEY CONTRACTING WITH LABOR UNION TO REPRESENT UNION MEMBERS FOR CONTIGENT FEE

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NEGLIGENCE--LANDOWNER'S DUTY OF CARE--DUTY OWED TO FIREMAN

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NEGLIGENCE--STANDARD OF CARE--ASSURED-CLEAR-DISTANCE-AHEAD RULE

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PERSONAL PROPERTY--TENANCY BY THE ENTIRETY--BANK ACCOUNTS

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PLEADING--GENERAL ISSUE--SCOPE IN TENNESSEE

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TORTS--CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS--TORT LIABILITY OF CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS UNDER THE DOCTRINE OF RESPONDEAT SUPERIOR