Law Commons^™

When Is Discrimination Wrong?, Deborah Hellman

Deborah Hellman

A law requires black bus passengers to sit in the back of the bus. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves a drug for use by black heart failure patients. A state refuses to license drivers under age 16. A company avoids hiring women between the ages of 20 and 40. We routinely draw distinctions among people on the basis of characteristics that they possess or lack. While some distinctions are benign, many are morally troubling. In this boldly conceived book, Deborah Hellman develops a much-needed general theory of discrimination. She demonstrates that many familiar ideas about when discrimination is …

Resolving Family Conflicts, Jana Singer, Jane Murphy

Jana B. Singer

Over the past two decades, virtually all areas of family law have undergone major doctrinal and theoretical changes - from the definition of marriage, to the financial and parenting consequences of divorce, to the legal construction of parenthood. An equally important set of changes has transformed the resolution of family disputes. This 'paradigm shift' in family conflict resolution has reshaped the practice of family law and has fundamentally altered the way in which disputing families interact with the legal system. Moreover, the changes have important implications for the way that family law is understood and taught. This volume examines the …

Book Review. The Precautionary Principle In Practice, Warwick Gullett

Warwick Gullett

Since 1992, when the precautionary principle reached centre stage in environmental discourse at the Rio Earth Summit, the literature on the principle has increased exponentially. The literature’s two main streams reflect the principle’s application in the fields of environmental management and public health. In the former field, the principle has generally been an issue either in approval processes for project developments or in management arrangements for the exploitation of natural resources.

Cancellation Provisions In Australia's Commonwealth-Managed Fisheries, Richard Mason, Warwick Gullett

Warwick Gullett

In its recently completed review of Commonwealth fisheries policy the Australian Government, following submissions from the commercial fishing industry, agreed to examine the implications of replacing the power in the Fisheries Management Act 1991 (FM Act) to cancel fishing concessions for non-compliance with management measures that increased financial penalties. Industry argued that the cancellation provisions undermine the security of access rights and the Australian Government had accepted that the current provisions may be an impediment to investment in Commonwealth-managed fisheries. This paper reviews these concerns in light of property rights and compliance issues and concludes that there are no compelling …

Regulating Fishing In Australia: From Mullet Size Limits To International Hot Pursuits, Warwick Gullett

Warwick Gullett

Fisheries laws simply regulate human interactions with fish. Yet it is an enormous challenge to get them right. The central problem with which fishing laws need to deal is that technological advancements continually enable people (especially commercial fishers) to increase their ability to catch fish. This may be coupled with an increasing number of people fishing, or perhaps a relatively stable number of people fishing but changing their practice such as intensively fishing in one location. Human activities affecting fish are ever changing and, as a result, so too are fisheries laws. Past fishery collapses (such as cod stocks off …

The Precautionary Principle In Australia: Policy, Law And Potential Precautionary Eias, Warwick Gullett

Warwick Gullett

The precautionary principle has been adopted in such a widespread fashion that it is now difficult to find in either the international environmental arena or countries with advanced environmental protection frameworks an environmental policy document, a new environmental law, or even a political statement about environmental management that does not include a reference to the principle or reflect some of the core ideas of the precautionary concept. References to the principle can be found in documents produced by organizations such as the European Environment Agency, the World Trade Organization, and of course the United Nations; in numerous environmental treaties ranging …

Fishing Industry - Taiwan, Warwick Gullett

Warwick Gullett

Taiwan has one of the largest fishing industries in the world. But because Taiwan no longer holds a seat in the United Nations, it is often left out of standard U.N. doctrines that monitor and regulate fishing. The dilemma of how to handle Taiwan's unique situation while maintaining fishing-industry standards is an issue still to be addressed.

Contesting The Merits Of Aquaculture Development: Port Stephens Pearls Pty Ltd V Minister For Infrastructure And Planning [2005] Nswlec 426, Warwick Gullett

Warwick Gullett

Australia's aquaculture industry has grown rapidly since the mid-1990s. It has become the fastest growing industry in the primary sector and is a valuable contributor to development in regional areas. However, there is increasing community concern about the potential environmental impacts of aquaculture. Concerns vary enormously depending on the type of aquaculture activities but they typically include habitat modification, marine floor degradation, diminished water quality, disease, translocation of aquatic organisms, cumulative impacts and, particularly in highly populated coastal stretches (such as in New South Wales ('NSW')), effects on amenity values. The challenge is to develop an approval process for aquaculture …

American Probate: Protecting The Public, Improving The Process, Paula Monopoli

Paula A Monopoli

New Hampshire judge and probate attorney John Fairbanks, a court-appointed executor and trustee, stole thousands of dollars from the estates of his trusting elderly clients. Successful Virginia lawyer David Murray misappropriated nearly four million dollars from estates entrusted to him in one of the largest financial swindles by a lawyer in U.S. history. Enterprising attorney James Gunderson drafted wills and living trusts for many residents of Leisure World in Orange County, California, who named him the sole trustee and major beneficiary. These are just some of the cases examined by Paula A. Monopoli to illustrate the unsettling prevalence of fraud …

Contemporary Approaches To Trusts And Estates, Susan Gary, Jerome Borison, Naomi Cahn, Paula Monopoli

Paula A Monopoli

This book uses cases and statutory materials along with exercises and problems to integrate legal analysis and practice skills. The book can be used in a three- or four-credit course with or without the exercises, and sample syllabi are included in the Teacher’s Manual.

Cases And Materials On The Law Of Torts, 5th Edition, Harry Shulman, Fleming Jones, Oscar Gray, Donald Gifford

Oscar S. Gray

This casebook is designed for the professor who takes seriously the often-articulated goals of teaching case analysis and the impact of social and economic factors on the common law. Enough of the majority opinions, and often the dissenting opinions, is presented to illustrate how the cases fit together with precedents and to enable students to evaluate competing arguments. The latest edition, though streamlined from previous editions, adds both coverage of emerging areas of liability, including claims under the alien tort statute, and traditional torts applied in new factual contexts, such as cyberspace and biomedical engineering.

Harper, James And Gray On Torts, 3rd Edition, Fowler Harper, Fleming James, Oscar Gray

Oscar S. Gray

This preeminent work on torts is the most complete, authoritative resource analyzing the latest developments in this turbulent field of practice. Harper, James and Gray on Torts, Third Edition, newly revised and updated in a six-volume set, gives you detailed, up-to-date information and expert guidance on such rapidly changing areas as:

• Health care liability
• Standards for damages
• Product liability
• Defamation
• Assumption of risk
• Business torts
• Liability for emotional distress
• Pure economic loss
• Privacy
• Family torts
• Comparative and contributory negligence
• Governmental liability
• Duties of owners and occupiers of land
• Misrepresentation and nondisclosure
• Malicious prosecution and abuse of process
• Liability for abnormally …

Family Law: Cases, Text, Problems, 5th Edition, Ira Ellman, Paul Kurtz, Lois Weithorn, Brian Bix, Karen Czapanskiy, Maxine Eichner

Karen Czapanskiy

Family law is an interdisciplinary area, and the materials in this work reflect the numerous disciplines influencing this field of law. This book is policy-oriented, with non-legal social science featured in the extensive note materials to provide a rich and varied learning experience and a practice resource tool. Notes do more than call attention to difficult questions of legal doctrine and policy; they illuminate them.

The authors use a problem approach throughout, in addition to comprehensive case law sources. Problems provide an ideal mechanism for students to acquire the ability to apply legal rules to concrete fact patterns.

Rethinking Commodification: Cases And Readings In Law And Culture, Martha Ertman, Joan Williams

Martha M. Ertman

What is the price of a limb? A child? Ethnicity? Love? In a world that is often ruled by buyers and sellers, those things that are often considered priceless become objects to be marketed and from which to earn a profit. Ranging from black market babies to exploitative sex trade operations to the marketing of race and culture, Rethinking Commodification presents an interdisciplinary collection of writings, including legal theory, case law, and original essays to reexamine the traditional legal question: ̶To commodify or not to commodify?” In this pathbreaking course reader, Martha M. Ertman and Joan C. Williams present the …

Housing And Community Development: Cases And Materials, 4th Edition, James Kushner, Charles Daye, Peter Salsich, Henry Mcgee, W. Keating, Barbara Bezdek, Otto Hetzel, Daniel Mandelker, Robert Washburn

Barbara L Bezdek

The fourth edition of Housing and Community Development presents a fresh and comprehensive look at housing law and policy with full coverage of the foreclosure crisis and its aftermath, exploring housing policies and neighborhood revitalization policies to address the new urban reality. It also discusses the issue of sustainability and the relationship between community development, housing, and climate change. The book contains materials covering housing policy and litigation; tenants’ rights in the private and public spheres; urban redevelopment, including a comprehensive look at Kelo v. New London, including its setting and aftermath; and a completely revised section of the …

Screening Justice - The Cinema Of Law: Significant Films Of Law, Order And Social Justice, Rennard Strickland, Teree Foster, Taunya Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Screening Justice is designed to tell the complex story of law through an exploration of forty films focusing upon courtroom dramas, social issues and questions of justice. These motion pictures are evaluated by distinguished scholars who, using a range of narrative styles, compare the law on the screen and the law in action. The work serves as a guide to understanding law, the rhetoric of law and images of justice. The book will introduce readers to new films as well as help create new perspectives on familiar classic movies.

The Difference Between The Occupiers And The Tea Party? The Meaning Of Freedom, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

“Am I Impossible? A Political Theologian’S Response To Kahn’S Political Theology,", William Cavanaugh

William T. Cavanaugh

No abstract provided.

Efficiencies In Aids Programming: The Rhetoric And The Realities, Brook Baker, David Holtzman, Jennifer Cohn

Brook K. Baker

Finding “efficiencies” in global HIV programs is the buzzword of the hour. This term has peppered speeches of everyone from Global AIDS Ambassador Eric Goosby to President Clinton and Bill Gates. Even UNAIDS is utilizing new frameworks for costing HIV interventions focusing on strategic investments instead of needs-based costing. “Efficiency” here is generally taken to mean “do more with less” — save lives with fewer resources and win the war against HIV without funding increases. Although there are efficiencies to be gained, additional up-front investments are necessary to turn the tide against HIV and save future costs. It is also …

Fighting For The Debtor's Soul: Regulating Religious Commercial Conduct, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

Although courts often think of religion in terms of faith, prayer, and conscience, many religious groups are increasingly looking to religion as a source of law, commerce, and contract. As a result, courts are being called upon to regulate conduct that is simultaneously religious and commercial. In addressing such cases, some courts minimize the religious features of the case and simply focus on its secular elements while others over-exaggerate the religious features of the case and thereby refuse to adjudicate the dispute on Establishment Clause grounds. As an example of this dynamic, I explore the constitutionality of imposing sanctions for …

Resolving Large, Complex Financial Firms, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Mark Greenlee, James Thomson

James B Thomson

How to best manage the failure of systemically important fi nancial fi rms was the theme of a recent conference at which the latest research on the issue was presented. Here we summarize that research, the discussions that it sparked, and the areas where considerable work remains.

Conference Organizer & Moderator, The Way To Carnegie: Practice, Practice, Practice: A Conversation Of Pedagogy, Social Justice, And Cost In Experiential Legal Education, Sharon Beckman

Sharon Beckman

No abstract provided.

Encyclopedia Of The Supreme Court Of The United States, David Tanenhaus, Kay Kindred, Felice Batlan, Alfred Brophy, Mark Graber

Mark Graber

This 5-volume set focuses on the substance of American law, the processes that produce its legal principles, and the history of the Supreme Court, from its creation to the present. One of the encyclopedia's distinguishing themes is the examination of case law, the essential texts that form the backbone of legal and pre-legal study in the United States. Overview essays address the history of such topics as citizenship, due process, Native Americans, racism, and contraception, emphasizing the social context of each and the social and political pressures that shaped interpretation. This approach plays directly into the cutting-edge field known as …

How Well Does Bankruptcy Work When Large Financial Firms Fail? Some Lessons From Lehman Brothers, Thomas Fitzpatrick, James Thomson

James B Thomson

There is disagreement about whether large and complex financial institutions should be allowed to use U.S. bankruptcy law to reorganize when they get into financial difficulty. We look at the Lehman example for lessons about whether bankruptcy law might be a better alternative to bailouts or to resolution under the Dodd-Frank Act’s orderly liquidation authority. We find that there is no clear evidence that bankruptcy law is insufficient to handle the resolution of large complex financial firms.

Constitutional Democracy, Human Dignity, And Entrenched Evil, Mark Graber

Mark Graber

The following essay pays tribute to Sandy Levinson's thoughts on constitutional compromises by paying tribute to the thoughts on constitutional compromises by our common mentor, Walter Murphy. Rather than directly engage in a dialogue with Compromise and Constitutionalism, the analysis below joins the preexisting dalogue between Professors Levinson and Murphy on how to construct a decent polity among people who have deep disputes over what constitutes political decency. Walter Murphy is unfortunately largely known to legal audiences only through the work of such outstanding mentees as Sandy Levinson, Jim Fleming, Christopher Eisgruber, Andrew Koppelman, Jennifer Nedelsky, and Robert George. Walter …

Occupational Injuries Among Nurses And Aides In A Hospital Setting, Leslie Boden, Grace Sembajwe, Torill Tveito, Dean Hashimoto, Karen Hopcia, Christopher Kenwood, Anne Stoddard, Glorian Sorenson

Dean M. Hashimoto

Background

Patient care workers in acute care hospitals are at high risk of injury. Recent studies have quantified risks and demonstrated a higher risk for aides than for nurses. However, no detailed studies to date have used OSHA injury definitions to allow for better comparability across studies.

Methods

We linked records from human resources and occupational health services databases at two large academic hospitals for nurses (n = 5,991) and aides (n = 1,543) in patient care units. Crude rates, rate ratios, and confidence intervals were calculated for injuries involving no days away and those involving at least 1 day …

Reflections And Perspectives On Reentry And Collateral Consequences, Michael Pinard

Michael Pinard

This essay addresses the continued and dramatic increase in the numbers of individuals released from correctional institutions and returning to communities across the United States. It provides a brief history of the collateral consequences of criminal convictions, and the ways in which these consequences impede productive reentry. It then highlights national and state efforts to address to persistent reentry obstacles and to better understand the range and scope of collateral consequences. It concludes by offering suggestions for reform.

Commerce Games And The Individual Mandate, Leslie Henry, Maxwell Stearns

Maxwell L. Stearns

While the Supreme Court declined an early invitation to resolve challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”), a recent split between the United States Courts of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (sustaining the PPACA’s “individual mandate”) and the Eleventh Circuit (striking it down) virtually ensures that the Court will decide the fate of this centerpiece of the Obama Administration’s regulatory agenda. Whatever the Court’s decision, it will likely affect Commerce Clause doctrine- and related doctrines - for years or even decades to come.

Litigants, judges, and academic commentators have focused on whether the Court’s “economic activity” tests, …

Courts Address Issue Of Eyewitness Identifications, Timothy O'Neill

Timothy P. O'Neill

The Herman Cain Blame Game, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.