Law Commons^™

Can Government Lawyers Be Heroes?, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Promoting Dignity And Preventing Shame And Humiliation By Improving The Quality And Education Of Attorneys In Sexually Violent Predator (Svp) Civil Commitment Cases, Heather Ellis Cucolo, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

In Strickland vs. Washington, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the role of counsel is critical to the ability of the adversarial system to best insure that just results are produced. Yet, the Court did not elaborately define the Sixth Amendment constitutional right to counsel and lower courts, have set the bar shockingly low.

In this article we examine the quality of attorneys who litigate Sexually Violent Predator Act (SVPA) cases, and conclude that a failure to apply a higher standard of adequate counsel – beyond what was set out in Strickland – results in humiliation, shame and lack of dignity …

The Organization Of Prosecutorial Discretion, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Contemporary understanding of prosecutorial discretion is influenced by anachronistic conceptions of judgment and organization. These conceptions have lost ground dramatically in professions like medicine, teaching, and social work. Yet, they remain prominent to a unique degree in law. They are embedded both in the general professional culture and in legal doctrine. Innovative prosecutorial practices have emerged in recent decades, but their progress has been inhibited by attachment to these older conceptions.

The older conceptions understand professional judgment as a substantially tacit and ineffable decision by a single professional grounded in a relatively static and comprehensive discipline. The associated model of …

Attorney-Client Confidentiality: A Critical Analysis, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Attorney-client confidentiality doctrine is distinguished by its expansiveness and its rigid or categorical form. This brief essay argues that the rationales for these features are unpersuasive. It compares the “strong confidentiality” of current doctrine to a hypothetical narrower and more flexible “moderate confidentiality” and concludes that moderate confidentiality is more plausible. It is unlikely that current doctrine yields benefits that justify its costs.

Is The Future Of Law A Driverless Car? Assessing How The Data Analytics Revolution Will Transform Legal Practice, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies (“data analytics”) are quickly transforming research and practice in law, raising questions of whether the law can survive as a vibrant profession for natural persons to enter. In this article, I argue that data analytics approaches are overwhelmingly likely to continue to penetrate law, even in domains that have heretofore been dominated by human decision makers. As a vehicle for demonstrating this claim, I describe an extended example of using machine learning to identify and categorize fiduciary duty waiver provisions in publicly disclosed corporate documents. Notwithstanding the power of machine learning techniques, however, I …

Exploring The Origins Of America's Adversarial Legal Culture, Edward A. Purcell Jr.

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Accounting For Prosecutors, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

What role should prosecutors play in promoting citizenship within a liberal democracy? And how can a liberal democracy hold its prosecutors accountable for playing that role? Particularly since I’d like to speak in transnational terms, peeling off a distinctive set of potential “prosecutorial” contributions to democracy – as opposed to those made by other criminal justice institutions – is a challenge. Holding others – not just citizens but other institutions – to account is at the core of what prosecutors do. As gatekeepers to the adjudicatory process, prosecutors shape what charges are brought and against whom, and will (if allowed …

Envisioning 100% Access To Justice In Colorado, Daniel M. Taubman, Melissa Hart

Publications

No abstract provided.