Law Commons^™

Foreword: The Question Of Process, J. Harvie Wilkinson Iii

Michigan Law Review

Many in the legal profession have abandoned the great questions of legal process. This is too bad. How a decision is reached can be as important as what the decision is. In an increasingly diverse country with many competing visions of the good, it is critical for law to aspire to agreement on process - a task both more achievable than agreement on substance and more suited to our profession than waving the banners of ideological truth. By process, I mean the institutional routes by which we in America reach our most crucial decisions. In other words, process is our …

Zen And The Art Of Jursiprudence, Matthew K. Roskoski

Michigan Law Review

Lawyer bashing is by no means a remarkable phenomenon. It was not remarkable when Shakespeare wrote, "[t]he first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," and it's not remarkable today. Paul Campos, however, has written a particularly readable example, blending venerable Western lawyer-bashing and pop psychology with unsystematic invocations of Eastern religion. Jurismania is named after Campos's theory that the American legal system has a lot in common with a person suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder, an addiction to law that does neither the patient nor those around him much good. In Jurismania, Campos criticizes our insistence on regulating …

The Price Of Law: How The Market For Lawyers Distorts The Justice System, Gillian K. Hadfield

Michigan Law Review

Bill Clinton's legal bills in connection with the Lewinsky scandal topped $10 million; the bill for Ken Starr's investigation of the President exceeded $50 million. The cost to the eight families portrayed in the bestseller A Civil Action for their tort suit against a manufacturing company accused of dumping hazardous chemicals into the water supply was $4.8 million (paid from a settlement of about $8 million); the cost for the defense exceeded $7 million. Lawyers who represented the three states in the nationwide suit by state attorneys general against tobacco companies to recoup smoking-related health care costs were awarded $8.2 …

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 …

In Praise Of Thermostats, John W. Reed

Other Publications

Fifty years ago, a famous book was published that chronicled the sea change then occurring in society. David Reisman's The Lonely Crowdl made us aware of the decline of concern for the common good and the rise of the search for individual meaning. What was going on at that time was one of the most profound cultural changes that has ever taken place in such a short time. It was not just the beginning of the Me Generation but, it turned out, the beginning of the Me Culture, which continues to this day.

Learning And Serving: Pro Bono Legal Services By Law Students, David L. Chambers, Cynthia F. Adcock

Articles

All lawyers' codes of professional ethics in the United States expect members of the bar to perform legal services for low-income persons. In practice, as we all know, many lawyers perform a great deal of such service while others do little or none. By much the same token, the accreditation rules of the American Bar Association urge all law schools to provide students with opportunities to do pro bono legal work; by much the same token, some schools in the United States have extensive programs for their students but many do not. In 1998, the Association of American Law Schools …

Michigan's Minority Graduates In Practice: Answers To Methodological Queries, Richard O. Lempert, David L. Chambers, Terry K. Adams

Articles

Before making a few remarks in response to those who commented on our article (Lempert, Chambers, and Adams 2000), we would like to express our gratitude to the editors of Law and Social Inquiry for securing these commentaries and to the people who wrote them. The comments both highlight the potential uses to which our research and similar studies may be put and give us the opportunity to address methodological concerns and questions that other readers of our article may share with those who commented on it. The responses to our work are of two types. Professors Nelson, Payne, and …

Michigan's Minority Graduates In Practice: The River Runs Through Law School, Richard O. Lempert, David L. Chambers, Terry K. Adams

Articles

This paper reports the results of a 1997-98 survey designed to explore the careers of the University of Michigan Law School's minority graduates from the classes of 1970 through 1996, and of a random sample of Michigan Law School's white alumni who graduated during the same years. It is to date the most detailed quantitative exploration of how minority students fare after they graduate from law school and enter law practice or related careers. The results reveal that almost all of Michigan Law School's minority graduates pass a bar exam and go on to have careers that appear successful by …

Legal Representation For Children In Protection Proceedings: Two Distinct Lawyer Roles Are Required, Donald N. Duquette

Articles

The thesis of this article is that it is a mistake to try to develop a single lawyer role for children in protection cases which tries to accommodate their developing capacities from infants to articulate teens. Sometimes a child needs a traditional attorney; sometimes a best interests advocate. We should adopt different standards for the different lawyer roles. Trying to define a single lawyer role for children of all ages and all capacities is an impossible task. This article argues that we should resolve the ambivalence not by adopting a client-directed or a best interests approach, but by having two …

Building Pediatric Law Careers: The University Of Michigan Law School Experience, Melissa Breger, Suellyn Scarnecchia, Frank E. Vandervort, Naomi Woloshin

Articles

There are several obstacles to training and supporting pediatric lawyers. Children are a relatively new group of clients and law schools have not traditionally provided pediatric training. The required training is particularly challenging to deliver because it is inherently interdisciplinary, requiring faculty and students to look outside of the law school to obtain necessary knowledge. The greatest obstacle to developing the careers of pediatric lawyers is the low pay and low prestige typically afforded children's lawyers. As a result, law students reasonably question the likelihood of developing a successful career in the field. The number of available jobs is limited …