Law Commons^™

Coase’S Parable, F.E. Guerra-Pujol

Mercer Law Review

Some stories have heroes and villains. Others involve a voyage, a quest, or a monster to be defeated. The law is no exception. Most legal stories are about identifying wrongdoers and vindicating the rights of victims, and this standard victim-wrongdoer model not only informs recent developments in legal scholarship, such as feminist jurisprudence or critical race theory; it also informs our classical liberal tradition.5 But what if harms are reciprocal or jointly caused? In other words, what if victims are just as responsible as wrongdoers for their plight?

The Path To Coleman Hill: Mercer Law School's 150-Year Journey, Neil Skene

Mercer Law Review

It was a time for entrepreneurs, and Walter B. Hill quickly proved to be one after he finished his studies at the University of Georgia Law School and joined his father’s law practice in Macon, Georgia. Before his first year in Macon ended, he joined Superior Court Judge Carlton B. Cole and Macon’s leading lawyer, Clifford Anderson, to launch a new law school at Mercer, the second in the state. They were the professors. They started with sixteen students.

History, Norms And Conflicting Loyalties In The Office Of Attorney General, Nancy Virginia Baker

Mercer Law Review

A sincere thank you to Patrick Longan and Mercer Law Review for organizing this timely and important symposium on ethics and professionalism in the Office of the U.S. Attorney General. It is such a fascinating office to study, at the nexus of law and politics.

I was a college undergraduate during Watergate, when I first became aware there was an office of attorney general. In graduate school, my interest in it piqued when Edwin Meese was nominated by Ronald Reagan. From then on, I have focused my research on the U.S. Attorney General, especially the duality inherent in the office. …

A Bleak House: The Story Behind The Oldest Legal Controversy In The State Of Georgia, Clayton T. Kendrick

Mercer Law Review

Bleak Houseis a novel written by Charles Dickens, which centers around the fictional English Court of Chancery case Jarndyce and Jarndyce.The fictional case concerns a dispute surrounding a large inheritance that drags on for several generations.As Dickens put it,

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on . . . . Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it . . . . The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled, has grown up, possessed himself …

Baby Ninth Amendments And Unenumerated Individual Rights In State Constitutions Before The Civil War, Anthony B. Sanders

Mercer Law Review

Perhaps the greatest questions of modern constitutional law are "Does the Constitution protect unenumerated rights, and, if so, what are those rights?" The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly, yet haphazardly and often reluctantly, answered "yes" to the first question, and essentially "it depends" to the second.' The Court has proceeded with basically the same approach concerning the Constitution's unenumerated protections against both the federal government and the states. ...

This Article makes a small step toward demonstrating that at least most state constitutions protect unenumerated rights by focusing on Baby Ninth Amendments. Calabresi and Vickery recently demonstrated some of …

Brainerd Currie's Contribution To Choice Of Law: Looking Back, Looking Forward, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

Mercer Law Review

The subject of this Article is Currie's contribution to choice of law. There is a historical reason for that because Currie is an enormously important figure in the field, and there is a value to understanding what he said and what it meant.' And there is a more practical reason,

What We Can Learn About The Art Of Persuasion From Candidate Abraham Lincoln: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Three Speeches That Propelled Lincoln Into The Presidency, Michael W. Loudenslager

Mercer Law Review

Abraham Lincoln is renowned as an impressive orator and writer. Historians have long studied his life and writings, some dedicating their whole careers to this task. However, few commentators have focused upon how studying the persuasive techniques utilized by Lincoln in his speeches can help lawyers to improve their own persuasive writing and speaking. Lincoln was an experienced litigator, and over the course of his legal career, he tried a voluminous number of cases, was involved in several appeals before the United States Supreme Court, and argued numerous times before the Illinois Supreme Court. These experiences helped Lincoln to cultivate …

Justice As Play, Jack L. Sammons

Mercer Law Review

I am interested here in using Johannes Huizinga's work on play, Homo Ludens, to explore a strange, yet civilizing, phenomenon. Why do we take those social disputes in our ordinary lives that often seem most serious and therefore most divisive, turn them over to playful participants in a legal game, and then choose, more or less, to call the outcome of this game justice and to trust it as such even to the point of preferring it to the political? Why, that is, do we think that it is justice that arises from this play?

This inquiry is not …

The Bloodless Revolution: The Role Of The Fifth Circuit In The Integration Of The Deep South, Frank T. Read

Mercer Law Review

On October 1, 1981, the nation's foremost civil rights tribunal will be no more. On that date, the Fifth Circuit Reorganization Act will become effective and the famous United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will be divided into two new circuits.' With the passing of the Fifth Circuit into history's dusty pages, it is appropriate to reflect on the contributions of that court in this nation's monumental struggle to desegregate the public schools of the Deep South.

On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court, in its most important decision in this century, rejected the "separate …

Remembering 1965: Abe Fortas And The Supreme Court, Larry M. Roth

Mercer Law Review

With 1965 an era both ended and began. That year the American consciousness over the Vietnam War was truly awakened to the sound of far off howitzers. Also that year, Abe Fortas was nominated and confirmed by the Senate for the Supreme Court seat vacated by Arthur Goldberg. The reverberations of both phenomena still exist although the former permeates our social order much more than the latter. Quite recently, however, we witnessed a positive by-product of the Fortas appointment: the appointment of John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court. With Stevens' nomination the appointive process witnessed a selection procedure that …