Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 31 - 60 of 65
Full-Text Articles in Law
State Management Of The Environment Part One: An Evaluation Of The Michigan Experience, Geoffrey J. Lanning
State Management Of The Environment Part One: An Evaluation Of The Michigan Experience, Geoffrey J. Lanning
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Michigan's citizens, as well as its government, seem but dimly aware of the fact that Michigan-the home of America's most growth-centered industry, the automobile-lies at the very eye of the environmental storm. This article seeks to take a broad look at the shortcomings of Michigan's environmental protection in recent years. In so doing, it groups many of Michigan's recent environmental failings into broad categories which will both clarify the status of Michigan's environmental law climate and provide a basis for its reform. Parts One and Two consist of this analysis and evaluation. Part Three will examine possible solutions and offer …
The Juvenile Court And Emotional Neglect Of Children, James B. Stoetzer
The Juvenile Court And Emotional Neglect Of Children, James B. Stoetzer
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
A primary function of the Juvenile Court is to assist in the protection of children from abuse and neglect. Juvenile court acts, child abuse reporting statutes, and child protective services legislation have incorporated provisions dealing with physical abuse and physical neglect of children. Such legislation enables state intervention into family life for the protection of children exposed to harmful environments. Statutory definitions of abuse and neglect provide a basis on which the community, frequently through the juvenile court, may pass judgment on the existence of child neglect and offer services or coerce family members to accept them. A few states, …
Michigan Motor Vehicle Service And Repair Act Of 1974, A. Russell Localio
Michigan Motor Vehicle Service And Repair Act Of 1974, A. Russell Localio
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This note will analyze the Michigan Motor Vehicle Service and Repair Act, examining the differences between it and prior Michigan and federal legislation. The new legislation will be compared with similar statutes in other states. Finally, the possible drawbacks of repair shop and mechanic certification programs will be discussed, and suggestions for improvements will be made.
The Michigan Abortion Refusal Act, G. Michael White
The Michigan Abortion Refusal Act, G. Michael White
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Since the United States Supreme Court handed down the landmark decisions of Roe v. Wade andDoe v. Bolton, which placed constitutional limitations, on state regulation of abortions, efforts have been made on the federal and state levels to blunt the effect of those cases. One prevalent reaction has been the enactment of state "conscience clause" legislation, such as the Michigan Abortion Refusal Act, which seeks to extend to all hospitals the right to refuse admission of abortion patients. This legislative note will consider whether the Michigan conscience clause is legally necessary to ensure the right it seeks to …
Michigan Standards Of Conduct And Ethics Act Of 1973, Rogan Alan Petzke
Michigan Standards Of Conduct And Ethics Act Of 1973, Rogan Alan Petzke
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article undertakes an analysis of the Standards of Conduct and Ethics Act. After a discussion of the factors prompting enactment, the statutory framework of the Act is presented. Finally, the Michigan legislation is contrasted with and evaluated in light of similar statutory efforts in other states.
Preferential Property Tax Treatment Of Farmland And Open Space Under Michigan Law, Ronald Henry
Preferential Property Tax Treatment Of Farmland And Open Space Under Michigan Law, Ronald Henry
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This note will attempt to explain the new Michigan statute and evaluate the effectiveness of this type of legislation as a means of preserving open space and farmland from conversion to more intensive use.
State Management Of The Environment Part Two: A Continuing Evaluation Of The Michigan Experience, Geoffrey J. Lanning
State Management Of The Environment Part Two: A Continuing Evaluation Of The Michigan Experience, Geoffrey J. Lanning
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In Part One of this article, the author outlined the scope and character of Michigan's environmental problems and suggested some of the factors underlying the state's weak and bureaucratic decisionmaking process. Part Two concludes the author's analysis of the fundamental obstacles to effective environmental decisionmaking in Michigan, and Part Three will contain recommendations for reform.
Due Process Problems Of Property Damage No-Fault Insurance, Stephen L. Jones
Due Process Problems Of Property Damage No-Fault Insurance, Stephen L. Jones
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Michigan, Florida, and Massachusetts have recently enacted automobile property damage no-fault legislation. Similar to the concept of personal injury no-fault plans, the property damage legislation bars tort recovery for damage to vehicles involved in collisions and substitutes a system of insurance protection that would compensate the vehicle's owner for these losses without regard to fault. There are, however, two essential differences between the property damage and personal injury proposals. First, because property damage claims have been minor as compared to those for personal injuries, the property damage proposals have permitted the vehicle owner to self-insure for the former losses by …
Legislative Note: Micigan's Criminal Sexual Assault Law, Kenneth A. Cobb, Nancy R. Schauer
Legislative Note: Micigan's Criminal Sexual Assault Law, Kenneth A. Cobb, Nancy R. Schauer
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Under increasing pressure from women's rights groups and other reform organizations, the Michigan legislature has re-evaluated its centenarian rape statute, found it inadequate for the realities of the mid-twentieth century, and enacted a new sexual assault act. While people may refer to the act as "the new rape law," it should be noted at the outset that the statute is intended to prohibit a variety of sexual acts which involve criminal assault. Michigan's new criminal sexual assault law was formulated to distinguish among degrees of violence as motivated by hostility rather than passion; rape, like other crimes, is more heinous …
Michigan Water Resources Commission Act Amendments: A Response To The Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments Of 1972, Jeffrey K. Haynes
Michigan Water Resources Commission Act Amendments: A Response To The Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments Of 1972, Jeffrey K. Haynes
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article appraises the strengths and weaknesses of the WRC Act and its recent amendments. After a description of the federal impetus behind the new amendments, the Michigan statutory framework is evaluated, including comparison of the WRC Act with a model state act designed to meet FWPCA requirements. Finally, the past implementation of the Act is discussed, with suggestions for future improvement.
Impasse Resolution Mechanisms And Teacher Strikes, Diane L. Kaye
Impasse Resolution Mechanisms And Teacher Strikes, Diane L. Kaye
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Public school teachers have no right to strike under Michigan law, but the power to strike exists. Michigan residents witnessed forty teacher strikes in the autumn of 1973 alone. Among them was the forty-four-day strike by Detroit teachers. The strikes during the past fall were not an unfortunate aberration. Ninety percent of the strikes in Michigan are by school teachers. In the public education context, the threat of a strike no longer brings negotiating parties together. A new mechanism for resolution of deadlocks in teacher-school board contract disputes is needed. This article describes the problem, outlines impasse resolution procedures presently …
Lay Divorce Firms And The Unauthorized Practice Of Law, Arthur R. Miller
Lay Divorce Firms And The Unauthorized Practice Of Law, Arthur R. Miller
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Effective January 1, 1972, Michigan adopted a no-fault divorce law. Since that time, at least two firms in the Detroit area have gone into the business of providing assistance to people wishing to process their own divorces. These enterprises, which have been dubbed divorce firms or divorce kit firms, have come under heavy attack from the organized bar. The State Bar of Michigan has instituted court proceedings against one firm for the unauthorized practice of law, and a court on its own initiative has already issued an injunction against the other. These cases raise two important issues: whether the divorce …
Divorce Law Reform In Michigan, B. H. Lee
Divorce Law Reform In Michigan, B. H. Lee
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Few social questions touch the individual so intimately and foster such widely divergent views as the question of divorce. From those who regard marriage as a perpetual and indissoluble bond instituted by God to those who consider it a terminable contract between a man and a woman, every shade of opinion can be found. The subject of marital breakdown is neither new nor peculiar to our age. As one author has said: "The breakdown of marriage with provisions for divorce and remarriage is a phenomenon widely recognized in Babylonian, Hebrew, Greek and Roman law." Nevertheless, ever since Christianity established a …
Police Initiated Emergency Psychiatric Detention In Michigan, Mark F. Mehlman
Police Initiated Emergency Psychiatric Detention In Michigan, Mark F. Mehlman
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
While performing his duties a police officer may frequently be confronted with the behavior of an individual which threatens or has resulted in self-inflicted injury, or which poses an imminent threat to the safety of others. Under such circumstances an officer may determine that criminal arrest is inappropriate but that some form of restraint is necessary. Michigan has provided an alternative course of action by authorizing temporary emergency psychiatric detention of an individual whom a police officer deems to be "mentally ill and manifesting homicidal or other dangerous tendencies."
County Home Rule: An Approach To Metropolitan Problems In Michigan, Stephen M. Silverman
County Home Rule: An Approach To Metropolitan Problems In Michigan, Stephen M. Silverman
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This note examines what seems to be the most viable solution for metropolitan problems in Michigan: county home rule, as authorized by the 1963 state constitution. Since the primary obstacle to the use of county- home rule as a vehicle for metropolitan reform appears to lie in the present statutory authority, the Michigan County Home Rule Act of 1966 (Act), considerable attention is given to the Act and to recent legislation proposed to amend the Act, Michigan House Bill 5464, introduced into the Michigan Legislature on June 21, 1971, and currently pending before the Michigan House Committee on Towns and …
The Parole Board's Duty Of Self-Regulation, John P. Quinn
The Parole Board's Duty Of Self-Regulation, John P. Quinn
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article examines the Michigan Parole Board in terms of its structure, mode of operation, and certain legal issues raised by its procedures. The note argues that the Board's and the legislature's concept of professional, scientific decision-making is not an adequate substitute for the checks and balances which confine and control the discretion of other governmental agencies, and furthermore, that this concept is inconsistent with both the letter and spirit of the Michigan Administrative Procedures Act (MAPA or Act). Thereafter, an approach is suggested by which the Act can be used as a tool to legitimate and rationalize Parole Board …
Mental Illness And Criminal Commitment In Michigan, Grant H. Morris
Mental Illness And Criminal Commitment In Michigan, Grant H. Morris
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article concentrates on one vital issue: to what extent are differences in treatment justified because of a mentally ill person's "criminal" involvement. While the article is primarily concerned with Michigan institutions and Michigan statutes, the discussion and the solutions proposed are in many respects applicable to all states of the Union. Not only must all states reevaluate their policies toward criminal commitment of the mentally ill in light of ever-changing medical and penal theory, but they must also consider the developing constitutional concepts in this area. These constitutional issues are raised here only to the extent necessary to alert …
Controlling The Controllers In Parent-Subsidiary Relations, James C. Bruno
Controlling The Controllers In Parent-Subsidiary Relations, James C. Bruno
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article will examine the rights and responsibilities of a party in control of a corporation. The discussion of these rights and responsibilities focuses principally on the law of Michigan. However, passages on policy, discussion of the development of relevant Michigan law, and recommendations for changes in the law are pertinent to the general problem-area of parent-subsidiary relations encountered in all jurisdictions.
Family Support From Fugitive Fathers: A Proposed Amendment To Michigan's Long Arm Statute, Robert L. Nelson
Family Support From Fugitive Fathers: A Proposed Amendment To Michigan's Long Arm Statute, Robert L. Nelson
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
It is the purpose of this article to propose and discuss an amendment to Michigan's long arm statute which will allow the entry of extraterritorial alimony, separate maintenance, or child support decrees when Michigan is the state of the marital domicile and the defendant-spouse cannot be located for personal service of process. A plaintiff employing the proposed provision in a divorce action will be able to seek alimony, separate maintenance, or support payments as if the defendant were before the court, and the court will have the authority to grant her the necessary relief. If and when the wife later …
Michigan "Freedom Of Information Act", David T. Alexander
Michigan "Freedom Of Information Act", David T. Alexander
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
A policy of public disclosure is as appropriate at the state level as it is at the federal level. There are comparable state agencies for almost all Federal departments concerned with commerce and the public health, safety and welfare. Through licensing and supervisory powers over businesses and individuals, state agencies exercise extensive quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial powers of immediate concern to the public. The resulting rules, records, regulations, orders and opinions serve as both the factual findings and the substantive law of the particular area administered by each agency. Recognizing this need for public disclosure at the state level, the Michigan …
Michigan Air Pollution Control: A Case Study, William A. Irwin
Michigan Air Pollution Control: A Case Study, William A. Irwin
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The State of Michigan began its fight against air pollution with the passage of two Acts in 1965: the Air Pollution Act and the Tax Exemption for Air Pollution Control Act. In adopting these acts the legislature hoped to solve the state's special needs for immediate air pollution control, created by the heavy concentration of automobile manufacturers and their suppliers in the state. The fight was to be waged through the efforts of a newly-created Air Pollution Control Commission and its staff. To present an evaluation of the success of these efforts, this comment concentrates upon two case studies of …
The Language Of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization: A Study In Sound And Fury, Steven H. Levinson
The Language Of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization: A Study In Sound And Fury, Steven H. Levinson
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Involuntary civil commitment is the business of hospitalizing and treating, without their consent, persons whom a court, with the aid of professional diagnosticians, determines to be psychologically disturbed or mentally ill. The purpose of the present study will be to demonstrate that the medical diagnoses of mental illness which justify involuntary civil commitment are achieved on the basis of at least unreliable and at worst invalid sets of diagnostic categories and assessments. For the purpose of determining the reliability of these diagnostic findings, the author selected a representative sample of the involuntary mental hospitalization proceedings of the Wayne County Probate …
Restrictions On Student Voting: An Unconstitutional Anachronism?, W. Perry Bullard, James A. Rice
Restrictions On Student Voting: An Unconstitutional Anachronism?, W. Perry Bullard, James A. Rice
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Using Michigan as a vehicle for analysis because it has a student voting process representative of many states, this note seeks to accomplish four purposes: (1) an examination of the case law often underlying the presumption against student registrability; (2) an analysis of recent constitutional developments in the due process and equal protection areas as they relate to the particular problems posed by the student voter; (3) a survey of the competing local and student interests in the student vote issue; and (4) a conclusion regarding the likelihood that thwarted student voters can follow the paths of other disfranchised groups …
Michigan Environmental Protection Act, Roger L. Conner
Michigan Environmental Protection Act, Roger L. Conner
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Each of the questions discussed in this note revolve around the same basic issue: the propriety of vesting broad power in the courts to prevent environmental destruction, and to develop an environmental common law. The need for the broad standard of the Act derives from the complexity of the problem. The clear authority of the courts to decide cases which have been, or should have been dealt with by an administrative agency is important both for the relationship it establishes between citizens and agencies, and to insure that the policies of the Act will be implemented. In responding to these …
The Proposed Michigan Business Corporation Act, Stanley Siegel
The Proposed Michigan Business Corporation Act, Stanley Siegel
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The author of this article was selected by the Commission as Reporter, to draft and revise the statute. It is the purpose of this article to describe the drafting process, to outline the general structure and to examine some unique aspects of the proposed Michigan Business Corporation Act. In this discussion, the author expresses his own views only, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Law Revision Commission or its members.
Michigan Compulsory Arbitration Act For Essential Services, William J. Rainey
Michigan Compulsory Arbitration Act For Essential Services, William J. Rainey
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
When Public Act 312 became effective on October 1, 1969, Michigan joined Rhode Island and Pennsylvania in permitting compulsory arbitration of unresolved labor disputes involving municipal police and firemen. Wyoming similarly provides for compulsory arbitration in fire department disputes. Passage of the Act was prompted by a desire to avoid the dire consequences of strikes or work stoppages by firefighters and policemen, and to provide a method by which the bargaining power of public service unions could be maintained in the absence of the strike privilege. Since Michigan had barred strikes by public employees in 1947, the unions felt that …
Integrated Pretrial Attack On A Pleading: A Critical Evaluation Of Michigan's New Summary Judgement Rule, Carl S. Hawkins, Brett R. Dick
Integrated Pretrial Attack On A Pleading: A Critical Evaluation Of Michigan's New Summary Judgement Rule, Carl S. Hawkins, Brett R. Dick
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Modern procedural reforms reflect diminished confidence in the demurrer or "no cause" motion as a device to dispose of non-meritorious claims before trial. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, setting the pattern of reform for many states, abolished the demurrer. Although a preliminary attack upon the legal sufficiency of the complaint is still permitted by a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule 12 (b) (6), the challenged pleading may be amended as a matter of course, to minimize the risk that a good claim might be lost because it was poorly pleaded. The risk that sham amendments might then be …
Reflections From A Different Perspective, B. J. George Jr.
Reflections From A Different Perspective, B. J. George Jr.
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
A signal fact of the 1960's is the widespread attention being paid to modernization of America's criminal law and procedure. After nearly a century of patchwork adjustments of state codes or fragmentary modification of the common law, the federal government and a great many states are moving toward new substantive codes and new codes or rules of criminal procedure. As one who has been working as a reporter in Michigan's endeavor to revise its criminal law and procedure, I have been asked to comment in a general way on Mr. Robinson's effort at reforming Wisconsin law.
Persuader: Mobilization Of Support, Mary Ann Beattie
Persuader: Mobilization Of Support, Mary Ann Beattie
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Law reform can be achieved through precedent-setting case law and through legislation. Each is a time-consuming activity with its own stumbling blocks. To establish law through the case method, one must have a fact situation directly on point with the inequity which one is trying to remedy. In many situations the client must be willing to follow through a long process of trial and appeal, instead of settling for a more immediate but incomplete resolution of his problem. The costs of litigation may become an insurmountable problem. Another difficulty with the test case as a vehicle for law reform is …
Tenant's Attorney: Evaluation Of Impact, Ronald D. Glotta
Tenant's Attorney: Evaluation Of Impact, Ronald D. Glotta
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The natural question raised by the passage of "Tenant Rights" legislation is whether the new law helps or hinders the practicing attorney representing tenants. In analyzing the package of Tenant Rights Bills enacted in Michigan in 1968 this article will focus on three questions: 1) whether such legislation raises false hopes in being heralded as a major declaration of rights and an effort to solve the problem of housing shortage; 2) whether such legislation actually further oppresses tenants, especially in their exercise of the one effective instrument in their power: collective action; and 3) whether such legislation significantly changes the …