Law Commons^™

Feature: The Roots Of The Executive Branch

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

When President Barack Obama needed a top adviser and steadfast sounding board, he turned to a Michigan Law alumna who has been called the "First Friend" and "the other half of Obama's brain." When he considered appointees for the role of Secretary of the Interior, he chose and alumnus he called a "champion for farmers, ranchers, and rural communities." Here, we profile some of Obama's aides, advisers, and appointees who have ties to Michigan Law, and who began their jobs by our press time. We highlight how their experiences in Law School helped to shape their journey from the gothic …

Feature: The Father Of Miranda, James Tobin

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

This is the first in a series of articles about the intellectual history of the Law School, and the impact our scholars have had, from the classroom to the Supreme Court.

Yale Kamisar's transformative impact on the law began with a humble hunch in the early 1960s, when he was a young professor at the University of Minnesota.

Feature: Anatomy Of An Alumnus, Katie Vloet

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

50 years later, remembring Anatomy of a Murder and the fly-fishing, U.P.-loving, mushroom-hunting state Supreme Court justice who wrote it.

Feature: Teaching The Teachers, Nicole Fawcett

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

A new ranking system explores 'intellectual super-spreaders'. A new model for determining the influence of law schools looks at the links between where law professors received their J.D. and where they go on to teach law. The model, which uses a mixture of social network analysis and computer simulation, shows how a handful of elite institutions are likely influencing legal principles and attitudes across the country. Michigan Law ranks third in the study.

The Death Of The Living Will, Carl E. Schneider, Angela Fagerlin

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Enough. The living will has failed, and it is time to say so.

We should have known it would fail: A notable but neglected psychological literature always provided arresting reasons to expect the policy of living wills to misfire. Given their alluring potential, perhaps they were worth trying. But a crescendoing empirical literature and persistent clinical disappointments reveal that the rewards of the campaign to promote living wills do not justify its costs.

Events

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

No abstract provided.

Evidence? Or Emotional Fuel?, Robert E. Precht

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following excerpt is from Defending Mohammad: Justice on Trial (Cornell University Press, 2003), by Robert E. Precht, and appears here with permission of Cornell University Press. The excerpt is from Chapter 8, "Relevance and Prejudice." The book is based on the author's experience as public defender for Mohammad Salameh, the lead suspect in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

A Taxing Settlement, Hanoch Dagan, James J. White

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Citizens sue industries for tort injuries. That is familiar. Governments sue the same industries for costs suffered in ameliorating or preventing those injuries. That is unfamiliar. This new pattern of litigation and settlement inherently puts the government in competition with its citizens.

A Footnote For Jack Dawson, James J. White, David A. Peters

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

In the jointly-authored section below, "I" refers to Professor James J. White and "we" refers to White and co-author David A. Peters.

Jack Dawson, known to many at Michigan as Black Jack, taught at the Law School from 1927 to 1958. Much of his work was published in the Michigan Law Review, where he served as a student editor during the 1923-24 academic year. We revisit his work and provide a footnote to his elegant writing on mistake and supervening events.

In Part 1, we talk a little about Jack the man. In Part II, we recite the nature …

How Well Does The Wto Settle Disputes?, Susan Esserman, Robert L. Howse

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Last fall, a judicial panel of the WorldTrade Organization (WTO) issued a controversial ruling in a high-stakes corporate tax dispute between the United States and the European Union. Paying scant attention to the complexities of the case, the panel authorized Brussels to implement retaliatory sanction of $4 billion - an unprecedented sum - against Washington. Notably, around the same time the United States and its European allies were also making headlines with another fierce legal battle: over the authority of the International Criminal Court to prosecute American soldiers for alleged misdeeds committed abroad.

Features: Taking Globalization Seriously: Michigan Breaks New Ground By Requiring The Study Of Transnational Law, Mathias Reimann

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Taking globalization seriously: Michigan breaks new ground by requiring the study of transnational law. The faculty acted on the conviction that a fundamental understanding of how law works in the global context must be part of every lawyer's toolkit.

Does Information And Agreement Equal Informed Consent?, Carl E. Schneider, Michael H. Farrell

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following essay is based on a talk delivered last summer in England and on the chapter "Information, Decisions, and the Limits of Informed Consent," in (Michael Freeman and Andrew D. E. Lewis, eds.) Law and Medicine: Current Legal Issues 2000, Volume 3 (Oxford University Press, 2000). This version appears with permission of the publisher.

For many years, a principal labor of bioethics has been to find a way of confiding medical decisions to patients and not to doctors. The foremost mechanism for doing so has been the doctrine of informed consent. Anxious as bioethicists and courts have been to …

Credit Cards In The United States And Japan, Ronald J. Mann

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following essay is excerpted from a paper prepared during fall 2000 during the author's stay in Tokyo as a visiting scholar at the Institutefor Monetary and Economic Studies at the Bank of Japan.

One of the most important aspects of consumer payment systems in the United States is the widespread use of credit cards. American consumers use credit cards to pay for about one-fifth of their purchases each year. That pattern of use is not universal.

A Suggestion On Suggestion, Richard D. Friedman, Stephen J. Ceci

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following essay is adapted from "The Suggestibility of Children: Scientific Research and Legal Implication" (86.1 Cornell Law Review 33-108 [November 2000]) and appears here with permission of the publisher.

The vulnerabilities of young children have far-reaching implications for the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Arguably, these vulnerabilities may affect how an investigator should interview the child; whether her hearsay statements should be admitted; whether expert evidence concerning her vulnerability should be admitted; and whether a criminal conviction based principally on her testimony should be allowed.

Dna As Evidence: Viewing Science Through The Prism Of The Law, Peter Donnelly, Richard D. Friedman

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

DNA evidence has transformed the proof of identity in criminal litigation, but it has also introduced daunting problems of statistical analysis into the process. In this article, we analyze a problem related to DNA evidence that is likely to be of great and increasing significance in the near future. This is the problem of whether, and how, to present evidence that the suspect has been identified through a DNA database search. The following article is adapted from "DNA Database Searches and the Legal Consumption of Scientific Evidence," 97.4 Michigan Law Review 931-984 (1999), and appears here with permission of the …

Uncoupling The Law Of Takings, Michael A. Heller, James E. Krier

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following article is based on "Deterrence and Distribution in the Law of Takings," 112 Harvard Law Review 997-1025 (March 1999), © 1999 by the Harvard Law Review Association, and appears here by permission. A complete version, with citations, is available from the authors or the editor of Law Quadrangle Notes.

The law of takings couples together matters that should be treated independently. Whatever the boundaries of the the Takings Clause, we think there is much to be gained by analyzing takings in terms of the clause's underlying purposes, and by understanding that efficiency and justice are best served by …

Confrontation Confronted, Richard D. Friedman, Margaret A. Berger, Steven R. Shapiro

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following article is an edited version of the amicus curiae brief filed with the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1998, in the case of Benjamin Lee Lilly v. Commonwealth of Virginia(No.98-5881). "This case raises important questions about the confrontation clause, which has been a vital ingredient of the fair trial right for hundreds of years," Professor Richard Friedman and his co-authors say. "In particular, this case presents the Court with an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between the confrontation clause and the law of hearsay." On June 10 the Court handed down a decision …

Doing Well & Doing Good: The Careers Of Minority And White Graduates Of The University Of Michigan Law School, 1970 - 1996, David L. Chambers, Richard O. Lempert, Terry K. Adams

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

In the last few yearsm affirmative action in higher education has faced increasing legal scrutiny, in part because of doubts about the kinds of graduates these programs produce. A few years ago, we and some of our colleagues at Michigan started asking whether we could learn the answers to these questions about the careers of our graduates. The Law School already possessed considerable information about our minority graduates - from the surveys we have conducted each year for over 30 years of our alumni five and 15 years after graduation. But, while the annual survey asks many questions about careers …

The Right To Participate, Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan, Richard H. Pildes

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following essay is excerpted and adapted from The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process, © The Foundation Press, Inc., Westbury, NY (1998). Publication is by permission.

Constitutions are often viewed today as constraints on majoritarian power in the service of minority interests. But constitutional ground rules also create the possibility of ongoing democratic self-government; constitutions establish relatively stable and non-negotiable precommitments that enable generally accepted structures of political competition to emerge and endure.

Despite the centrality of this role for the American Constitution , however, there is paradoxically little that the text or its history offers …

A Critique Of The Proposed Tobacco Resolution And A Suggested Alternative, Jon D. Hanson, Kyle D. Logue

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following essay is adapted from testimony presented to the Senate Democratic Task Force on Tobacco in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 9 1997, which in turn is based on the authors' forthcoming article, "The Costs of Cigarettes: The Economic Case for Ex Post Incentive-based Regulation," 107 Yale Law Journal (March 1998)

If the goal of cigarette regulation is either to reduce substantially the public health problem created by cigarette smoking or to allocate the costs of smoking more equitably, there are significantly better alternatives to the regulatory regime than would be created by the state attorneys general's Proposed Tobacco Resolution. …

Upstream Patents = Downstream Bottlenecks, Michael A. Heller, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following text is excerpted from "Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons in Biomedical Research" and is reprinted with permission from 280 Science 698-701 (May 1998). © 1998 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Thirty years ago in Science, Garrett Hardin introduced the metaphor "tragedy of the commons" to help explain overpopulation, air pollution, and species extinction. People often overuse resources they own in common because they have no incentive to conserve. Today, Hardin's metaphor is central to debates in economics, law, and science and powerful justification for privatizing commons property. While the metaphor highlights the cost of overuse …

Going To Trial: A Rare Throw Of The Die, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Few of the suits that are filed continue to trial, but some plaintiffs and defendants find their interests served best by going to trial.

This essay is adapted from "Don’t Try: Civil Jury Verdicts in a System Geared to Settlement," appearing in 44 UCLA Law Review 1 (1996). Publication is by permission. A complete, fully cited version is available from the editor of Law Quadrangle Notes.

If it is true, as we often hear, that we are one of the most litigious societies on earth, it is because of our propensity to sue, not our affinity for trials. …

Eye On The World, Jose E. Alvarez, Virginia A. Gordon

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

In a special section coinciding with the International Reunion of Law School graduates, Law School graduates who are deeply involved in the globalization of legal practice respond to the question, "If you could leap ahead 10 years, how do you think what you are doing now will change?" And in a thought-provoking prologue, Professor of Law Jose Alvarez and Assistant Dean for International Programs Virginia A. Gordan consider the historical - and historic - impact of Law School graduates from overseas on the legal profession.

A New Nuremberg?, Jose E. Alvarez

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following essay is based on presentations given recently at the University of Michigan, Harvard Law School and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. While most citations have been removed for publication here, the author gratefully acknowledges the work of Mark Osiel, whose article, "Ever Again: Legal Remembrance of Administrative Massacre," 144 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 463 (1995), inspired much of the analysis here

On May 25, 1993, acting under the same powers it had used to authorize the Gulf War, the United Nations Security Council established the first international war crimes tribunal since post World War II …

Feature: Learning The Practical Side Of Scholarship

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

For generations, law students have enhanced their education by working on a law journal. In addition to honing their writing, research, and analytical skills, they learn valuable life lessons about working with all kinds of people, motivating others, meeting deadlines,and handling the details involved with printing and mailing a tangible product. Of course, as a sign of good grades, hard work, and strong writing ability, hournal experience gives students a leg up in the job market, and it's a critical first step to a scholarly career.

Prosecutors' Peremptory Challenges - A Response And Reply, Lynn A. Helland, Sheldon N. Light, William J. Richards

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Three federal trial attorneys disagree with Professor Richard Friedman's proposal to eliminate the prosecution's peremptories, while Friedman defends his view.

Recalibrating The Balance: Reflections On Welfare Reform, Jeffrey Lehman, Sheldon Danziger

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Candidate Clinton promised, in Putting People First, "to make work pay" and to "end welfare as we know it":

"It's time to honor and reward people who work hard and play by the rules. That means ending welfare as we know it not by punishing the poor or preaching to them, but by empowering Americans to take care of their children and improve their lives. No one who works full-time and has children at home should be poor anymore. No one who can work should beable to stay on welfare forever."

Accommodation And Satisfaction: Women And Men Lawyers And The Balance Of Work And Family, David L. Chambers

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

This article by Professor Chambers began with data from the periodic surveys of Law School alumni he has conducted. It is adapted from an article Professor Chambers published in the journal Law and Social Inquiry.

Women first entered the legal profession in large numbers in the 1970s. The same movement that brought them into the profession also sought to deliver messages to men that they ought to participate more in the raising of children. How, over the years that have followed, have men and women lawyers responded to the multiple roles of home and work? How satisfied are they with …

Tax Policy And Panda Bears, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

In this article, Professors Kahn and Lehman argue that the concept of tax expenditures is flawed as a tool for measuring the propriety of tax provisions. It assumes the existence of one true and correct standard of dederal income taxation that applies to all circumstances. To make that assumption, the proponents of the concept implicitly make a particular moral claim about the relative importance of a wide range of values, including efficiency, consumption/savings neutrality, privacy, distributional equity, administrability, charity, and pragmatism. They then measure a tax provision's "normalcy"exclusively by how it conforms to their Platonic concept of income.

Professors Kahn …

Front Cover

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

No abstract provided.