Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Language (28)
- Law professors (25)
- Scholarship (20)
- Law students (19)
- Legal writing (16)
-
- Curriculum (14)
- Law schools (14)
- Writing (13)
- Legal research (11)
- Legal practice (10)
- Editing (8)
- Logic (8)
- Treatises (8)
- University of Michigan Law School (8)
- Legal analysis (7)
- Empirical studies (6)
- Publication (6)
- Publications (6)
- Websites (6)
- Feedback (5)
- Lawyers (5)
- Persuasion (5)
- United States Supreme Court (5)
- Communication (4)
- Copyediting (4)
- Law reviews (4)
- Legal drafting (4)
- Legal sources (4)
- Michigan (4)
- Rhetoric (4)
Articles 91 - 120 of 133
Full-Text Articles in Law
Bye-Bye Bluebook?, Pamela Lysaght, Grace C. Tonner
Bye-Bye Bluebook?, Pamela Lysaght, Grace C. Tonner
Articles
In March 2000, Aspen Law & Business published a new citation manual, the ALWD Citation Manual-A Professional System of Citation.' Developed mostly as a "restatement of citation," the ALWD Citation Manual not only provides the legal academy with a text that simplifies teaching legal citation, but also provides judges and lawyers with a helpful desktop reference book. This article explains why a new citation manual was created and highlights some of its significant features?
Phoebe's Lament (Symposium: Empirical Research In Commercial Transactions), James J. White
Phoebe's Lament (Symposium: Empirical Research In Commercial Transactions), James J. White
Articles
Assume a bright hypothetical social scientist - call her Phoebe - who is completely ignorant of legal research as it is practiced in today's law schools. Phoebe might speculate about legal research as follows. First, she would note that the law schools are joined with and are the exclusive source of the practitioners of a profession. Second, she would note that commercial and legal actors rub up against and are influenced by the law in countless ways every day. Third, she might remark that this interaction occurs practically on the doorsteps of our law schools. Unlike anthropologists, who may have …
Juries, Hindsight, And Punitive Damage Awards: Failures Of A Social Science Case For Change, Richard O. Lempert
Juries, Hindsight, And Punitive Damage Awards: Failures Of A Social Science Case For Change, Richard O. Lempert
Articles
In their recent Arizona Law Review article entitled What Juries Can't Do Well: The Jury's Performance As a Risk Manager,' Professors Reid Hastie and W. Kip Viscusi purport to show that juries are likely to do a poor job in setting punitive damages, largely because jurors cannot avoid the influence of what is called "hindsight bias," or the tendency to see the likelihood of an event higher in retrospect than it would have appeared before it happened. In particular, they argue that hindsight bias and other cognitive biases undermine the utility of jury-set punitive damage awards as risk management devices. …
Legal Writing Scholarship: Point/Counterpoint, Jan M. Levine, Grace C. Tonner
Legal Writing Scholarship: Point/Counterpoint, Jan M. Levine, Grace C. Tonner
Articles
Perhaps because the field of legal writing has now matured enough so that we professors constitute a critical mass of experienced teachers and scholars, we find ourselves frequently embroiled in debates about legal writing scholarship. What is it? Can we do it? Should we do it? Should it be considered part and parcel of our responsibilities as members of the law school world? To help us better present our shared view that legal writing professors not only can but should produce scholarship, we sought first to take on the role of devil’s advocate, presenting all the rationales we have heard …
Some Examples Of Using Legal Relations Language In The Legal Domain: Applied Deontic Logic, Layman E. Allen
Some Examples Of Using Legal Relations Language In The Legal Domain: Applied Deontic Logic, Layman E. Allen
Articles
The fundamental concept of the LEGAL RELATIONS Language (LRL) is the recursively-defined notion of LEGAL RELATION (LR). As LR is defined here, there is an infinite number of different LEGAL RELATIONS, and LRL is a language for precisely and completely describing each of those infinite number of dfferent LEGAL RELATIONS. With its robust collection of dfferent names, one for each of the different LEGAL RELATIONS, LRL provides adequate vocabulary for (1) describing every possible legal state of affairs, (2) accounting for every possible change from one legal state of affairs to another, (3) representing every possible legal rule, and (4) …
The Cathedral' At Twenty-Five: Citations And Impressions, James E. Krier, Stewart J. Schwab
The Cathedral' At Twenty-Five: Citations And Impressions, James E. Krier, Stewart J. Schwab
Articles
It was twenty-five years ago that Guido Calabresi and Douglas Melamed published their article on property rules, liability rules, and inalienability' Calabresi, then a law professor, later a dean, is now a federal judge. Melamed, formerly a student of Calabresi's, is now a seasoned Washington attorney. Their article-which, thanks to its subtitle, we shall call The Cathedral-has had a remarkable influence on our own thinking, as we tried to show in a recent paper2 This is not the place to rehash what we said then, but a summary might be in order. First, we demonstrated that the conventional wisdom about …
Selecting And Designing Effective Legal Writing Problems, Grace C. Tonner, Diana Pratt
Selecting And Designing Effective Legal Writing Problems, Grace C. Tonner, Diana Pratt
Articles
Legal research and writing courses are unlike most substantive first year law school classes in that they teach using the problem method. The success of a legal writing course depends on the quality of the problems. The purpose of this article is to provide some guidance for legal writing professors in designing legal writing problems. The article addresses (1) general considerations in problem design, (2) designing expository problems, (3) designing persuasive problems, and (4) sources of problems. In the first section, we discuss problem design as it relates to the overall goals for teaching the basic forms of legal analysis, …
Bouquets For Jerry Israel, Yale Kamisar
Bouquets For Jerry Israel, Yale Kamisar
Articles
As it turned out, of those asked to write a few words for an issue of the Michigan Law Review honoring Jerry Israel, I was the last to do so. And when I submitted my brief contribution to the Law Review I took the liberty of reading what the four others who paid tribute to Jerry had written. As a result, I feel like the fifth and last speaker at a banquet who listens to others say much of what he had planned to say.
Why I Write, James Boyd White
Why I Write, James Boyd White
Articles
It is a great honor for me to speak to you on this occasion, celebrating the publication of such an original and important book. It is a pleasure of a different kind as well, for Lash LaRue is an old and good friend, and I welcome the chance to join with others in congratulating him.
On Becoming A Law Professor, Terrance Sandalow
On Becoming A Law Professor, Terrance Sandalow
Articles
Thirty-five years ago, when I first joined a law faculty, only one job description existed for law professors, that for the conventional classroom teacher. In the years since, the opportunities available to lawyers interested in teaching have become a bit more varied. In addition to conventional classroom teachers, a growing number of law teachers are employed by law schools to provide what I shall somewhat misleadingly call clinical instruction.1 Although these comments are addressed mainly to men and women interested in classroom teaching, a few lines about clinical teaching may be in order because the initial question for anyone considering …
What's An Opinion For? (Special Issue: Judicial Opinion Writing), James Boyd White
What's An Opinion For? (Special Issue: Judicial Opinion Writing), James Boyd White
Articles
The question the papers in this Special Issue address is whether it matters how judicial opinions are written, and if so why. My hope here is to suggest a way of elaborating the question that may provide the reader with a useful point of departure for reading the more extensive papers that follow.
Controlling Inadvertent Ambiguity In The Logical Structure Of Legal Drafting By Means Of The Prescribed Definitions Of The A-Hohfeld Structural Language, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
Controlling Inadvertent Ambiguity In The Logical Structure Of Legal Drafting By Means Of The Prescribed Definitions Of The A-Hohfeld Structural Language, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
Articles
Two principal sources of imprecision in legal drafting (vagueness and ambiguity) are identified and illustrated. Virtually all of the ambiguity imprecision encountered in legal discourse is ambiguity in the language used to express logical structure, and virtually all of· the imprecision resulting is inadvertent. On the other hand, the imprecision encountered in legal writing that results from vagueness is frequently, if not most often, included there deliberately; the drafter has considered it and decided that the vague language· best accomplishes the purpose at hand. This paper focuses on the use of some defined terminology for minimizing inadvertent ambiguity in the …
The Case Of The Disappearing Briefs: A Study In Preservation Strategy, Margaret A. Leary
The Case Of The Disappearing Briefs: A Study In Preservation Strategy, Margaret A. Leary
Articles
Federal appellate court records and briefs are significant to researchers in many disciplines, but academic law libraries are discarding them. Ms. Leary chronicles the demise of paper holdings in law libraries, the rise of microforms, and the contents and usage of the National Archives and Records Administration's files. She then derives principles for preservation strategies that may apply to other categories of legal material.
Wayne R. Lafave: Search And Seizure Commentator At Work And Play, Yale Kamisar, Jerold H. Israel
Wayne R. Lafave: Search And Seizure Commentator At Work And Play, Yale Kamisar, Jerold H. Israel
Articles
Starting in 1969,1 we have had the honor and pleasure of co-authoring a goodly number of casebooks, texts, treatises, pocket parts, and annual supplements (more than twenty) with Wayne LaFave.2 On each occasion we have been impressed by the quality of his mind and the judiciousness of his temperament, and impressed as well (and sometimes amazed) by his speed and efficiency.
Evidentiary Rules And Rulings: The Role Of Treatises, Richard D. Friedman
Evidentiary Rules And Rulings: The Role Of Treatises, Richard D. Friedman
Articles
I have devoted large gobs of time to work on a multi-author treatise on the law of evidence.' And before even one volume is published, I will devote further multiple gobs of time to the project-which, perhaps audaciously and perhaps merely foolishly, but with heredity and precedent on our side,2 we are calling The New Wigmore. Accordingly, I found the question posed by this symposium-Does Evidence Law Matter?-rather disquieting. If it is doubtful even whether the law of evidence matters, then how much can a treatise on the law of evidence matter, and how worthwhile can such a work be? …
Translation As A Mode Of Thought, James Boyd White
Translation As A Mode Of Thought, James Boyd White
Articles
I think that Clark Cunningham's article, The Lawyer as Translator, is a wonderful piece of work, full of life and interest and originality. I especially admire: his ability to make vivid to the reader the ways in which languages do truly differ, and differ beyond our efforts to bridge them-as he shows when he imagines an attempt to translate our most common professional terms into Chinese; his recoguition of the kind of force that our languages have over our minds, both as we see the world and as we tell stories about it; his sense that what we think of …
Our Meanings Can Never Be The Same: Reflections On Language And Law, James Boyd White
Our Meanings Can Never Be The Same: Reflections On Language And Law, James Boyd White
Articles
For me it is a starting point in all thought about language that, whatever I say or do with words, my expression will never mean exactly the same thing to you that it does to me; and of course yours will never mean exactly the same thing to me that it does to you. It cannot: each act of expression is a gesture against a context; it derives its meaning largely. perhaps entirely, from its relation to that context; and for each of us the context of every gesture is different, if only because one of us is doing it, …
Judging The Judges: Three Opinions, James Boyd White
Judging The Judges: Three Opinions, James Boyd White
Articles
For some time I have been working on the problem of judicial criticism, focusing especially on the question: What is it in the work of a judge that leads us to admire a judicial opinion with the result of which we disagree, or to condemn an opinion that "comes out" the way we would do if we were charged with the responsibility of decision? The response I have been making is that this kind of judicial excellence (and its opposite too) lies in the sort of social and intellectual action in which the opinion engages: in the character the court …
Francis A. Allen: 'Confront[Ing] The Most Explosive Problems' And 'Plumbing All Issues To Their Full Depth Without Fear Or Prejudice', Yale Kamisar
Articles
Frank Allen began his distinguished teaching career more than thirty-five years ago - at a time when, at more law schools than we like to remember, "the basic criminal law course was routinely assigned to the youngest and most vulnerable member of the faculty or to that colleague suspected of mild brain damage and hence incompetent to deal with courses that really matter."' That those of us who taught criminal law years later were warmly received by our colleagues is in no small measure a tribute to the quality of mind and character and intellectual energy of people like Allen, …
Judicial Criticism, James Boyd White
Judicial Criticism, James Boyd White
Articles
Today I shall talk about the criticism of judicial opinions, especially of constitutional opinions. This may at first seem to have rather little to do with our larger topic, "The Constitution and Human Values," but I hope that by the end I will be seen to be talking about that subject too. In fact I hope to show that in what I call our "criticism" our "values" are defined and made actual in most important ways.
One Use Of Computerized Instructional Gaming In Legal Education: To Better Understand The Rich Logical Structure Of Legal Rules And Improve Legal Writing, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
One Use Of Computerized Instructional Gaming In Legal Education: To Better Understand The Rich Logical Structure Of Legal Rules And Improve Legal Writing, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
Articles
This article describes an innovation in legal education and speculates about its importance and effectiveness as an educational tool. The speculations about its potential use, however, are ones that each legal educator will be able to test individually to determine the effectiveness of this use of microcomputers to improve legal education. The computer software that permits the innovation to be used will be available to interested persons by the time that this article is published.
How Should We Talk About Corporations? The Languages Of Economics And Of Citizenship, James Boyd White
How Should We Talk About Corporations? The Languages Of Economics And Of Citizenship, James Boyd White
Articles
My immediate subject in this Comment is section 2.01 of the American Law Institute's proposed Principles of Corporate Governance (Tentative Draft No. 2), which defines in general terms the proper objectives and conduct of a business corporation. My larger subject has to do with the adequacy and inadequacy of various languages in which corporate purposes and limits might be expressed, and especially with the limits of the economic language used in the ALI Draft.
Scholarly Books: What, To Whom And Why, James J. White
Scholarly Books: What, To Whom And Why, James J. White
Articles
A consideration of the role that the books reviewed in this edition will play in the future of American legal thought has led me to speculate about the transmission of ideas into acts and about the role of books in that transmission. In certain arenas, tracing an idea from its origins to its ultimate application is straightforward. For example, the evolution of Germany's Schlieffen plan for invading France can be traced with little difficulty from the circumstances responsible for its birth, through years of refinement, to its eventual application in World War I. The development and acceptance of a medical …
The Need For Clear Structure In 'Plain Language' Legal Drafting, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm
The Need For Clear Structure In 'Plain Language' Legal Drafting, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm
Articles
Language is not simple. To pretend otherwise is to mislead. In practice the aspect that is handled most ineptly in written legal materials is the structure. The focus of this article is upon structure and how to improve it. At the outset, let one thing be absolutely clear. In seeking to achieve clarity of expression, those who have no more to recommend than short sentences, simple words, and readability formulas are offering a cracker in circumstances where a full gourmet feast is gleaming in the chef's eye for those with the wit but to ask for the menu. To practice …
On The Relevance Of Philosophy To Law: Reflections On Ackerman's Private Property And The Constitution, Philip E. Soper
On The Relevance Of Philosophy To Law: Reflections On Ackerman's Private Property And The Constitution, Philip E. Soper
Articles
To turn to moral philosophy these days for help in trying to decide "what to do" is a bit like turning to recipe books for help in a famine. One soon discovers that most philosophers avoid ultimate questions about actual choices in actual cases, preferring to concentrate instead on a preliminary problem: how to go about thinking about what to do. One also discovers that philosophers who have written about this preliminary problem of the structure of moral inquiry are neatly divided, as logically they must be, into precisely two camps: those who do and those who do not think …
Normalized Legal Drafting And The Query Method, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm
Normalized Legal Drafting And The Query Method, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm
Articles
Normalized legal drafting is a mode of expressing ideas in statutes, regulations, contracts, and other legal documents in such a way that the syntax that relates the constituent propositions is simplified and standardized. This "normalization" results in documents that are easier to understand in the dual sense that they can be read faster and more accurately than corresponding documents that are not normalized. The query method is a technique for familiarizing learners with normalized drafting and providing practice in some of the easier aspects of doing it.
Fred E. Inbau: 'The Importance Of Being Guilty', Yale Kamisar
Fred E. Inbau: 'The Importance Of Being Guilty', Yale Kamisar
Articles
As fate would have it, Fred Inbau graduated from law school in 1932, the very year that, "for practical purposes the modern law of constitutional criminal procedure [began], with the decision in the great case of Powell v. Alabama."1 In "the 'stone age' of American criminal procedure,"2 Inbau began his long fight to shape or to retain rules that "make sense in the light of a policeman's task,"3 more aware than most that so long as the rules do so, "we will be in a stronger position to insist that [the officer] obey them."4
Formalizing Hohfeldian Analysis To Clarify The Multiple Senses Of 'Legal Right': A Powerful Lens For The Electronic Age, Layman E. Allen
Formalizing Hohfeldian Analysis To Clarify The Multiple Senses Of 'Legal Right': A Powerful Lens For The Electronic Age, Layman E. Allen
Articles
Careful communication is frequently of central importance in law. The language used to communicate even with oneself in private thought profoundly influences the quality of that effort; but when one attempts to transmit an idea to another, language assumes even greater significance because of the possibilities for enormously distorting the idea. Word skill is to be prized.
Scholarship On Soviet Family Law In Perspective, Whitmore Gray
Scholarship On Soviet Family Law In Perspective, Whitmore Gray
Articles
The radical changes in the norms of Soviet family law over the past fifty years have reflected the convulsions of Soviet society as well as the revisions of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. This paper is a commentary on the writing in this field by Americans in particular, and by other non-Soviets in general. In view of the volume of writing in this field, it has been necessary to limit discussion in the text to a few representative articles illustrating a few of the subject matters treated and various typical approaches employed. The topic is a particularly timely one, for new, comprehensive Principles of …
Better Organization Of Legal Knowledge, Layman E. Allen, Tomoyuki Ohta
Better Organization Of Legal Knowledge, Layman E. Allen, Tomoyuki Ohta
Articles
The increasing need of legislatures to draft complicated statutes, e.g., the Internal Revenue Code, requires the development of new techniques for defining and communicating complicated policies both accurately and understandably. At present, these complicated statutes are expressed in long, convoluted sentences with frequent uses of exceptions and limitations. Current drafting technique, with its inadequacies, often hinders a comprehensive understanding of the policy being communicated and often fails to communicate the policy accurately. Moreover, with the voluminous increase of legal literature in recent times, legal researchers experience increasing difficulty in attempting to retrieve relevant judicial and administrative interpretations. The authors propose …