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Half-Full, Half-Empty? Asian American Electoral ‘Presence’ In 2008, Robert S. Chang, Keith Aoki Feb 2009

Half-Full, Half-Empty? Asian American Electoral ‘Presence’ In 2008, Robert S. Chang, Keith Aoki

Faculty Articles

The article discusses the role of Asian Americans in the election of the U.S. President Barack Obama in 2008. It notes that the influence of Asian American in national politics may not significantly affect the next cycles of presidential elections in the U.S. It notes the importance of patience and optimism in envisioning and constructing Asian American electorate.


Voice, Self, And Persona In Legal Writing, Chris Rideout Jan 2009

Voice, Self, And Persona In Legal Writing, Chris Rideout

Faculty Articles

From the author's view, sorting out the complexity of voice—and discussing voice in legal prose—requires a rethinking of who the writer is in legal discourse and, importantly, how that writer is represented in legal prose. It becomes a question not of self expression, but of self-representation and persona. This article will first look at discussions of voice in writing—beginning with what we might mean by voice, then with discussion of personal voice, and then of professional voice. The article then offers another model for looking at voice — a discoursal model — and use that model to reconstruct the idea …


The Path To Profitability: Reinvigorating The Neglected Phase Of Merger Analysis, Jack Kirkwood Jan 2009

The Path To Profitability: Reinvigorating The Neglected Phase Of Merger Analysis, Jack Kirkwood

Faculty Articles

This article reviews every litigated federal merger case since 1992, when the federal enforcement agencies revised the entry section of their merger guidelines. This review, unprecedented in the literature, shows that courts continue to neglect the entry phase of merger analysis, the phase that addresses whether, if the merged firm raised prices, new firms would enter the market and restore competition. In determining whether new entry is likely, most courts do not ask whether it would be profitable, but whether the market is protected by entry barriers. This “yes or no” approach is flawed, for all markets have some barriers …


Documenting Gender, Dean Spade Jan 2009

Documenting Gender, Dean Spade

Faculty Articles

This article analyzes gender reclassification policies, which determine when an administrative agency will record a change to an individual's gender marker. It’s analysis takes place in three policy contexts: placement in gender-segregated facilities, changing gender marker on IDs, state provision of healthcare that prohibit gender discrimination on the record for those seeking care. It looks at the significant variation in these policies across agencies to demonstrate the instability of gender as a category of identity verification. The article also asks whether the assumed usefulness of gender for identity tracking in the variety of state programs reviewed is well-founded, and it …


Critical Error: Courts’ Refusal To Recognize Intentional Race Discrimination Findings As Constitutional Facts, Bryan Adamson Jan 2009

Critical Error: Courts’ Refusal To Recognize Intentional Race Discrimination Findings As Constitutional Facts, Bryan Adamson

Faculty Articles

Critical Error: Courts’ Refusal To Recognize Intentional Race Discrimination Findings as Constitutional Facts raises a novel double standard: while fact-specific trial court findings of actual malice are reviewed under the “independent judgment” standard (a wholesale re-weighting of the trial court record and decision) on appeal, intentional race discrimination findings are reviewed under the far more deferential Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52 clear error standard. Both legal concepts are arrived at through assessing state-of-mind determinations; both directly trigger constitutional proscriptions. Only actual malice, however, is classified as a constitutional fact, thus taking it out of the more deferential standard of …


International Judicial Affairs, Robert Alsdorf Jan 2009

International Judicial Affairs, Robert Alsdorf

Faculty Articles

The article reports on training programs launched by several countries for their judges. It is reported that the International Judicial Affairs (IJA) Committee was established in the U.S. in the year 2007 to develop opportunities for judges to work with fellow judges in other jurisdictions in mutually beneficial ways. Sierra Leone, as reported, has also carried out reforms in their legal system through their Justice Sector Reform Programme (JSRP).


Calling Your Bluff: How Prosecutors And Defense Attorneys Adapt Pleas Bargaining Strategies To Increased Formalization, Deirdre Bowen Jan 2009

Calling Your Bluff: How Prosecutors And Defense Attorneys Adapt Pleas Bargaining Strategies To Increased Formalization, Deirdre Bowen

Faculty Articles

This ethnographic work examines the inner workings of a highly formalized plea bargaining unit in a large urban prosecutor's office from the lawyers' point of view. Observations of forty-two plea negotiations between prosecutors and defense attorneys along with both formal and informal interviews reveal how the legal actors adapt to institutional rules in the pursuit of both efficiency and justice. In the face of ever increasing prosecutorial power, defense attorneys find ways to equalize the balance when cases do not fit the "normal crimes" model. Examination of negotiating strategy and discourse give further insight into whether prosecutors and defense attorneys …


Recovering Access: Rethinking The Structure Of Federal Civil Rulemaking, Brooke Coleman Jan 2009

Recovering Access: Rethinking The Structure Of Federal Civil Rulemaking, Brooke Coleman

Faculty Articles

Access to the justice system, which is broadly defined in the article as the opportunity to resolve the merits of a legal claim, is declining. One source of this decline is the Civil Rules. This article examines how the institutional failings of the civil rulemaking process have allowed for the production of rules that diminish access. Rule 1 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that the Civil Rules should facilitate the "just, speedy, and inexpensive resolution" of legal claims. While the Civil Rules Committee considers this timeworn mandate when drafting the rules, there is no agreement about how …


The Classic Rule Of Faith And Credit, David Engdahl Jan 2009

The Classic Rule Of Faith And Credit, David Engdahl

Faculty Articles

Since the late nineteenth century, orthodox doctrine under the Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause has presumed that the interpretation of that Clause set forth in Justice Joseph Story's 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States was essentially sound. This article argues, however, that Justice Story's view had been endorsed by almost no one before him and actually contradicted the "classic rule" of faith and credit, which Justice Story had articulated in 1813. The Supreme Court, moreover, consistently reiterated the "classic rule" despite Justice Story's change of mind, continuing to do so even after his death. By the …


Externships For Millennial Generation Law Students: Bridging The Generation Gap, Susan Mcclellan Jan 2009

Externships For Millennial Generation Law Students: Bridging The Generation Gap, Susan Mcclellan

Faculty Articles

This article examines the literature about our newest generation of law students, the Millennials, and offers suggestions to help externship faculty work with supervisors and students to avoid potential problems that may arise from generational differences. After reviewing the literature, the article discusses both positive and negative Millennial generation traits and explains how identified generational problems might arise in externship field placements. The article then offers suggestions from psychologists, managerial literature, and the author's experience to help externship directors and faculty work with field supervisors and students to avoid or resolve issues. The article concludes that members of the Millennial …


Trans Law Reform Strategies, Co-Optation, And The Potential For Transformative Change, Dean Spade Jan 2009

Trans Law Reform Strategies, Co-Optation, And The Potential For Transformative Change, Dean Spade

Faculty Articles

This paper considers two critiques of how law and rights struggles co-opt social movements and applies them to the example of the emergent law reforms in the area of transgender rights. First, it considers the limitations of the discrimination principle. Second, it looks at the emergent critique of "nonprofitization." Examining how the focus on formal legal equality and the growth of non-profit formations that centralize the concerns and experiences of white and upper class people have impacted gay and lesbian rights work, the paper suggests that these avenues present dangers to creating meaningful transformation of conditions facing trans population, including …


Environmental Impact Assessment In Post-Colonial Societies: Reflections On The Proposed Expansion Of The Panama Canal, Carmen Gonzalez Jan 2009

Environmental Impact Assessment In Post-Colonial Societies: Reflections On The Proposed Expansion Of The Panama Canal, Carmen Gonzalez

Faculty Articles

Post-colonial societies endowed with abundant natural resources often under-perform economically when these resources are exploited as economic enclaves lacking significant linkages to other sectors of the economy. The Panama Canal, a symbol of Panamanian identity and a reminder of Panama's lengthy colonial history, has historically functioned as an economic enclave akin to the mineral extraction and industrial agriculture enclaves prevalent throughout the developing world. Based on a case study of the contentious decision to expand the Panama Canal, this article examines the ways in which the colonial legacy distorts the development planning process, and discusses strategies that might be deployed …


Democratizing The Courts: How An Amicus Brief Helped Organize The Asian American Community To Support Marriage Equality, Robert S. Chang, Karin Wang Jan 2009

Democratizing The Courts: How An Amicus Brief Helped Organize The Asian American Community To Support Marriage Equality, Robert S. Chang, Karin Wang

Faculty Articles

In this essay, the authors offer an alternative rationale for amicus practice. This rationale emerges from thier experience working on a brief in support of marriage equality that sixty-three Asian American organizations endorsed. They found that an amicus brief can be an effective tool to engage and educate community-based organizations and their constituencies, thereby helping to advance social justice issues. Their story also illustrates how amicus practice can be used to organize communities around a legal issue and to democratize the courts. In this way, even if the effect of amicus briefs on litigation outcomes may be marginal, the process …


Sharing Stories: Narrative Lawyering In Bench Trials, Paul Holland Jan 2009

Sharing Stories: Narrative Lawyering In Bench Trials, Paul Holland

Faculty Articles

Narrative lawyering theorists have demonstrated the ways in which the dynamics of stories affect the way lawyers deliver and jurors receive messages within trial. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the distinctive ways in which stories are developed in bench trials. Examining three roughly contemporaneous bench trials, this Article illuminates how this trial format requires lawyers to be both performers and audience, alternating roles frequently, sometimes within the span of a breath or a gesture. The availability of feedback to the lawyer and the possibility of direct intervention by the fact-finder produce a stark contrast to what lawyers …


How Privacy Killed Katz: A Tale Of Cognitive Freedom And The Property Of Personhood As Fourth Amendment Norm, Christian Halliburton Jan 2009

How Privacy Killed Katz: A Tale Of Cognitive Freedom And The Property Of Personhood As Fourth Amendment Norm, Christian Halliburton

Faculty Articles

This article seeks for the very first time to inform that debate with a notion of property as an essential aspect of human identity in a "mash-up of sorts that might be called Fourth Amendment jurisprudence meets the Radinesque Property of Personhood. Using an expanded version of the notion of property developed by Professor Margaret Radin in her pioneering work Property and Personhood, the Fourth Amendment must contend with the social reality that some aspects of "ownership" or entitlement to property, and some level of vindication of those interests, are essential to the formation and viability of complete human beings. …


Knocked Down Again: An East L.A. Story On The Geography Of Color And Colors, Steven W. Bender Jan 2009

Knocked Down Again: An East L.A. Story On The Geography Of Color And Colors, Steven W. Bender

Faculty Articles

The article discusses the history of struggle of Latin Americans and the legacy of gang violence in East Los Angeles, California. The author states that the positive thing about the place is the closeness of the community and families. However, the 2000 Census states that ninety-seven percent of the city's population is Latin American with about a quarter living below poverty line. Moreover, sociologists consider gang warfare as a defense of turf marked by defined geographic boundaries.


Marks Of Rectitude, Margaret Chon Jan 2009

Marks Of Rectitude, Margaret Chon

Faculty Articles

Trademarks and certification marks increasingly denote sustainability or social responsibility standards. These marks of rectitude are particularly noticeable in the context of global trade, where market integration is accompanied by relatively uneven integration of environmental, labor and other standards, and where consumers in the so-called global North choose how to empower producers and/or encourage development of markets in the global South. But consumer participation in these transactions is under-explored by reference to criteria such as the quality not to mention accountability and transparency of the standards embedded within the goods or services. Newer stakeholders and meaning-makers such as the largely …


Secrecy And Democratic Decisions, Mark A. Chinen Jan 2009

Secrecy And Democratic Decisions, Mark A. Chinen

Faculty Articles

Secrecy to protect intelligence sources and methods appears often in the nation's discourse about controversial national security matters. Often it is asked whether such secrecy is consistent with the nation's democratic principles and processes. This article argues such principles and processes provide a framework through which we try to answer questions about secrecy and indeed legitimate them, but are often too broad to provide definitive guidance in specific cases. At the same time, the sources and methods argument itself is overbroad because of the nature of the sources and methods themselves; the tentative nature of intelligence assessments derived from those …


Liberal Mccarthyism And The Origins Of Critical Race Theory, Richard Delgado Jan 2009

Liberal Mccarthyism And The Origins Of Critical Race Theory, Richard Delgado

Faculty Articles

The article discusses the emergence of liberal McCarthyism and the origins of critical race theory in the U.S. It reviews the conflicting stories from Harvard Law School in Massachusetts and the University of California in Berkeley and Los Angeles about critical race theory. The article examines the role of radical professors Kingman Brewster, James Conant, Clark Kerr and Albert Bowker in McCarthyism. The author relates how professors David Trubek, Richard Abel, Staughton Lynd and Anthony Platt lost their job due to liberal McCarthyism.


A Tragedy Of The Commons: Property Rights Issues In Shanghai Historic Residences, Kara Phillips, Amy Sommers Jan 2009

A Tragedy Of The Commons: Property Rights Issues In Shanghai Historic Residences, Kara Phillips, Amy Sommers

Faculty Articles

This article explores the tensions between China’s newly privatized model of urban housing ownership and its socialist foundations. Through a combination of interviews and local research, the authors investigate the evolution of property ownership in Shanghai’s architecturally-distinctive stock of historic housing, encompassing various architectural periods and styles (including leading examples of Art Deco), which have gone through periods of private ownership (pre-1949), gradual socialization (1949-1965), militant squatting and occupation (1966-1976), and now privatization (1977 to current). Originally single-family residences, many were gerrymandered into multi-family units, in which the original owner/resident was relegated a small portion of space, and the remainder …


Asking Jurors To Do The Impossible: A Response To Peter Tiersma, Janet Ainsworth Jan 2009

Asking Jurors To Do The Impossible: A Response To Peter Tiersma, Janet Ainsworth

Faculty Articles

Comments from Janet Ainsworth at the Summers-Wyatt Symposium - Asking Jurors to Do the Impossible - Friday March 27, 2009 Transcript.


Trans Politics On A Neoliberal Landscape, Dean Spade Jan 2009

Trans Politics On A Neoliberal Landscape, Dean Spade

Faculty Articles

These edited Keynote remarks from the Temple Political and Civil Rights Law Review Symposium on transgender law address how questions of law reform strategy relate to critical understandings of neoliberalism. The paper addresses questions of administrative governance, identity documentation, the relationship between law and social movements, and questions of economic and racial justice as applied to transgender politics.


Crossover, Richard Delgado Jan 2009

Crossover, Richard Delgado

Faculty Articles

Should minority writers aim for a "crossover" audience of mainstream (white) readers or write mainly for a circle of readers like themselves, viz., minorities or people of color? Despite the attractions of achieving crossover status -- including fame, fortune, and book reviews -- the article argues that writers of color should usually visualize an audience of their peers, that is, readers of color. Writing for a broad audience of mostly white readers risks that the minority writer will adopt topics, language, and approaches that will appeal and ring true to this group. Consciously or unconsciously the writer may pull his …


Stories Absent From The Courtroom: Responding To Domestic Violence In The Context Of Hiv And Aids, Jane Stoever Jan 2009

Stories Absent From The Courtroom: Responding To Domestic Violence In The Context Of Hiv And Aids, Jane Stoever

Faculty Articles

HIV/AIDS dramatically impacts domestic violence survivors' needs and demands reconceptualization of current responses to domestic violence. This article aims to illuminate the problem of domestic violence in the context of HIV/AIDS and to prompt further development of legal response systems. Specifically, this article brings together the worlds of law, public health, and women's lived experiences to argue for recognizing and responding to domestic violence in the context of HIV/AIDS in the United States. Utilizing accounts of clients' experiences and data from public health studies, this article sets forth eight categories of HIV/AIDS-related domestic violence: repercussions from partner notification, use of …


Richard Delgado And The Politics Of Citation, Robert S. Chang Jan 2009

Richard Delgado And The Politics Of Citation, Robert S. Chang

Faculty Articles

Twenty-five years ago, Professor Richard Delgado published The Imperial Scholar. The article asserted that a group of white scholars dominated the field of civil rights scholarship to the exclusion of minority scholars. It created a firestorm of sorts with what one critic called a "serious charge of invidious racism on the part of respected legal scholars." Professor Derrick Bell described the piece as "an intellectual hand grenade, tossed over the wall of the establishment as a form of academic protest." Whether as firestorm or grenade, this foundational piece had a tremendous impact on the legal landscape. This brief essay examines …