Law Commons^™

The Great Recession And The Rhetorical Canons Of Law And Economics, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Great Recession of 2008 and onward has drawn attention to the American economic and financial system and has cast a critical spotlight on the theories, policies, and assumptions of the modern, neoclassical school of law and economics-often labeled the "Chicago School"-because this school of legal economic thought has had great influence on the American economy and financial system. The Chicago School's positions on deregulation and the limitation or elimination of oversight and government restraints on stock markets, derivative markets, and other financial practices are the result of decades of neoclassical economic assumptions regarding the efficiency of unregulated markets, the …

Give Outlines Another Chance, Melissa N. Henke

Law Faculty Popular Media

Much has been written on the benefits of outlining for legal writing specifically and for other professional writing more generally. This commentary provides some of the more common benefits of outlining a legal document.

Will An Institutional Repository Hurt My Ssrn Ranking?: Calming The Faculty Fear, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

James M. Donovan

Librarians have every reason to support the creation of an institutional digital repository (IR). An IR preserves the output of the intellectual life of the school, enables anyone with internet access to enjoy the benefits of the new knowledge, and promotes the institution and scholar by bringing to the foreground their intellectual achievements.

Plans for a new IR project within the law school, however, can quickly find such worthy motives swept aside as faculty members invariably voice some version of the following comments: “Won’t posting my articles elsewhere steal downloads away from SSRN? That would lower my rankings in SSRN …

Will An Institutional Repository Hurt My Ssrn Ranking? Calming The Faculty Fear, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Faculty members should not view the institutional repository as a drain on their SSRN rankings. While SSRN excels at delivering their work to the cadre of legal specialists, IRs typically do a better job of presenting it to a broader readership. This expanded exposure should be judged a

positive benefit of participation in the IR, helping to mitigate criticisms of law faculty as sequestered, insular, and writing only for themselves. Anyone interested in giving their ideas the widest possible hearing should deposit their intellectual work in as many venues as possible. For law professors, this means they should have both …

Tenure And The Law Library Director, James M. Donovan, Kevin B. Shelton

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This essay offers a response to the current discussion concerning the possible rescission of ABA Accreditation Standard 603 governing tenure-track appointment of the law library director.

Part I reviews this discussion, highlighting the terms and arguments on all sides of the debate. Part II offers a defense of the current standard, based upon the need for the director both to receive the protections of academic freedom and to participate in faculty governance of the law school. The need for tenure to perform a director's professional duties, however, does not make one automatically tenureable. Part III examines the skeptical attitude that …

After The Great Recession: Law And Economics' Topics Of Invention And Arrangement And Tropes Of Style, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In the work, The Great Recession and the Rhetorical Canons of Law and Economics,' the Author examined the role of law and economics in the Great Recession of 2008 and onward by examining neoclassical and contemporary law and economics from the perspective of legal rhetoric. The modern, neoclassical school of law and economics-often labeled the "Chicago School"-has had great influence on the American economy and financial system because of its rhetorical canons: mathematical and scientific methods of analysis and demonstration; the characterization of legal phenomena as incentives and costs; the rhetorical economic concept of efficiency; and rational choice theory as …

For The Love Of Parentheticals: The Story Of Parenthetical Usage In Synthesis, Rhetoric, Economics, And Narrative Reasoning, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

What follows is a substantive discussion of the reasons why parentheticals are rhetorically advantageous-in other words, why they are so beloved and often employed in appellate briefs and cases. I will examine the use of parentheticals in citation forms, synthesis, rhetoric, economics, and narrative reasoning in an effort to trace the attraction.

Open Access: Good For Readers, Authors, And Journals, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

James M. Donovan

Readers, authors, and even law journal publishers will all achieve their different but related interests by adopting open access principles. Readers of every kind will have more efficient access to the materials they need to pursue their intellectual and informational goals; authors will see their works read and cited by a broader audience; and law reviews and journals can raise their own profiles without injuring their revenue streams from fee-based sources. Open access works for everyone, and is the future of information creation and distribution.

Open Access: Good For Readers, Authors, And Journals, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Readers, authors, and even law journal publishers will all achieve their different but related interests by adopting open access principles. Readers of every kind will have more efficient access to the materials they need to pursue their intellectual and informational goals; authors will see their works read and cited by a broader audience; and law reviews and journals can raise their own profiles without injuring their revenue streams from fee-based sources. Open access works for everyone, and is the future of information creation and distribution.

Checklists: Not Just For Pilots Anymore, Diane B. Kraft

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this column for Kentucky Bar Association's magazine (B&B - Bench & Bar), Professor Diane B. Kraft discusses how using checklists can improve an individual's legal writing skills.

Citation Advantage Of Open Access Legal Scholarship, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this study focusing on the impact of open access on legal scholarship, the authors examine open access articles from three journals at the University of Georgia School of Law and confirm that legal scholarship freely available via open access improves an article’s research impact. Open access legal scholarship—which today appears to account for almost half of the output of law faculties—can expect to receive fifty-eight percent more citations than non–open access writings of similar age from the same venue.

The Perils Of Hyperbole, Diane B. Kraft

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this column for Kentucky Bar Association's magazine (B&B - Bench & Bar), Professor Diane B. Kraft makes suggestions about avoiding hyperbole in legal writing.

Institutional Repositories: A Plethora Of Possibilities, Carol A. Watson, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

The law library can be a major contributing partner to the success of its law school by establishing a digital repository to preserve and promote the institution's intellectual memory. Today's law school repositories have matured to include many more types of materials than simply faculty law review and journal articles. Librarians are ideally poised to capture, organize and preserve their institution's history in this new and powerful showcase.

Citation Advantage Of Open Access Legal Scholarship, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

James M. Donovan

In this study focusing on the impact of open access on legal scholarship, the authors examine open access articles from three journals at the University of Georgia School of Law and confirm that legal scholarship freely available via open access improves an article’s research impact. Open access legal scholarship—which today appears to account for almost half of the output of law faculties—can expect to receive fifty-eight percent more citations than non–open access writings of similar age from the same venue.

Explanatory Synthesis And Rule Synthesis: A Comparative Civil Law And Common Law Analysis, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In comparative study of common law and civilian legal analysis, many scholars have noted a convergence in the two systems' use of precedent cases. Although common law legal theory historically has started from a position that judges are fully competent to create law and change the law through their adjudication of cases and the judicial opinions they write, and civilian theory historically has started from a position that judges are not empowered to create and change the law enacted by the legislature but rather are to read and apply the existing law to new cases, the practice of tribunals within …

Rule Synthesis And Explanatory Synthesis: A Socratic Dialogue Between Ireac And Treat, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article explores the theory and process of explanatory synthesis in comparison to rule synthesis and case-to-case analogical reasoning as a method of demonstrative legal reasoning and analysis and legal rhetoric. The Article takes the form of a Socratic dialogue to discuss the analytical and rhetorical advantages of explanatory synthesis. Explanatory synthesis provides an important option for inductive reasoning and argumentation within the deductive paradigm of legal analysis, and has rhetorical advantages over other forms of analogical reasoning when examined using the tools of modern argument theory and the rhetorical canons of law and economics.

Institutional Repositories: A Plethora Of Possibilities, Carol A. Watson, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The law library can be a major contributing partner to the success of its law school by establishing a digital repository to preserve and promote the institution's intellectual memory. Today's law school repositories have matured to include many more types of materials than simply faculty law review and journal articles. Librarians are ideally poised to capture, organize and preserve their institution's history in this new and powerful showcase.

Commas And Colons And Semicolons - Oh My! 10 Rules To Remember, Diane B. Kraft

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this column for Kentucky Bar Association's magazine (B&B - Bench & Bar), Professor Kraft provides ten helpful grammar rules for commas. colons, and semicolons.

Back Away From The Survey Monkey!, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

In an environment of too many—and too many ill-designed—surveys, our twin aims should be to reduce the number of surveys overall and to improve the quality of those that do circulate. This burden falls on both those who distribute questionnaires—to make them as efficient as possible—and those answering—to decline to participate in any project that shows signs of unthoughtful design, thereby forcing surveyors to “up their game.” Good surveying, a difficult task in the best of circumstances, becomes even more complicated when pushed through the favored medium of the online discussion list (commonly called a listserv), a choice that can …

Libraries As Doppelgängers: A Meditation On Collection Development, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Debates about the balance between electronic and paper resouces typically employ points on economics or patron access. That line of argument can be shown to depend upon an understanding of libraries as reducible to their contents. After showing that this premise must be discarded as logically inconsistent with the broader assertions made in favor of digital materials, the question is posed as to what qualities of libraries are not reducible to the materials they contain. The attractiveness of digital content, even if conclusive from a merely economic perspective, may still founder on the intrinsic properties of library qua "library."

One …

Current Awareness Alerts Make The Internet Revolve Around You, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Shares ways for busy lawyers to utilize tech-savvy methods to receive desired news and information.

Quality Online Legal Researching -- On The Cheap!, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Summarizes issues to consider when exploring the internet for free but reliable legal resources, and offers a table of links to federal and Georgia state materials.

Kentucky Legal Research On The Internet, Kurt X. Metzmeier

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Wanted: Advocates Who Can Argue In Writing, J. Clifford Wallace

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

On Legal Style, George John Miller

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Irregularities Of Testamentary Expression, Alvin E. Evans

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Our Obsolete Legal English, Dagobert D. Runes

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Law And The Dog, Kentucky Law Journal

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.