Law Commons^™

The State Of Judiciary: A Corporate Perspective, Larry D. Thompson

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The rule of law depends on highly talented, independent judges who conscientiously strive to ensure that the law is consistently applied in a principled and predictable manner This Essay addresses two potential threats to judicial independence and the rule of law that we believe warrant special attention at this time. First, inadequate judicial salaries pose a threat to the quality and independence of the judiciary. Judges' real pay has declined substantially over the past generation, even as the compensation of other callings within the legal profession has risen dramatically. This growing disparity in pay has prompted an increasing number of …

Reflections On Hope, Erica J. Hashimoto

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This is an article from a Symposium In Honor of Professor Milner S. Ball. This article describes Professor Ball's dedication towards public interest law and encourages others to join the the fight for justice.

Fighting for a more just society-a society that treats all of its members with dignity and respect-calls for courage, passion, and vision. People with those qualities who choose to work in the public interest will discover the joy of having a "job" that many days is exhilarating and rewarding and often is just plain fun.' There will also, however, be difficult days. Surviving those days and …

An Empirical Analysis Of The Confirmation Hearings Of The Justices Of The Rehnquist Natural Court, Jason J. Czarnezki, William K. Ford, Lori A. Ringhand

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The interpretive or judicial philosophies of Supreme Court Justices can be thought of as “packages of beliefs” about how to interpret the law, packages that go by names like formalism, originalism, and textualism. Given the reasonable assumption that a judge's judicial philosophy could matter for how he or she will decide cases, the judicial philosophy of a nominee to the Supreme Court is of great interest to members of the Senate who vote on a nominee's confirmation. Figuring out a nominee's judicial philosophy is, consequently, one purpose of the confirmation hearings in the Senate, and Senators often claim to base …

The Future Of Footnote Four, Dan T. Coenen

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The Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Carolene Products Co. generated the most famous footnote-and perhaps the most famous passage-in all of the American Judiciary's treatment of constitutional law. Among other things, Footnote Four suggested that "prejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry." The importance of this principle cannot be overstated. It pervaded the work of the Warren Court and has played a prominent role …

Milner S. Ball: Proof That One Professor Can Make A Difference, David Shipley

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Milner S. Ball, the Harmon W. Caldwell Chair in Constitutional Law, is proof positive that one person can make a difference in the world. There is no doubt that he has made a substantial difference for the better during his distinguished career at the University of Georgia, as a campus minister, as a non-traditional law student who was the First Honor Graduate in the Class of 1971 and editor in chief of the Georgia Law Review, and as a highly regarded professor at the School of Law since 1978. This article is part of a symposium in tribute to Milner …

Punish Or Surveil, Diane Marie Amann

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This Article endeavors to paint a fuller picture of previous practice and present options than is often present in debates about the United States' antiterrorism measures. It begins by describing practices in place before the campaign launched after September 11, 2001. The Article focuses on punishment, the first prong of the policy long used to combat threats against the United States. Ordinary civilian and military courts stood ready to punish persons found guilty at public trials that adhered to fairness standards, and national security interests not infrequently were advanced through such courts. That is not to say that courts were …

The Essential Holding Of Casey: Rethinking Viability, J. Randy Beck

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The Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey plurality acknowledged an obligation to "justify the lines we draw." The corollary would seem to be an obligation to eschew lines that defy principled justification. In the decades since Roe v. Wade, the Court has offered no adequate rationale for the viability standard, notwithstanding persistent judicial and academic critiques. Exacerbating this country's divisions over abortion and placing us out of step with the world community, the viability rule seems a strong candidate for abandonment as the Court continues to rethink its abortion jurisprudence in the aftermath of Casey.

Judicial Activism: An Empirical Examination Of Voting Behavior On The Rehnquist Natural Court, Lori A. Ringhand

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This paper attempts to quantify one of the most deeply contested terms in constitutional law: “judicial activism.” Most discussions of “judicial activism” define activism either in reference to a particular political ideology (such as complaints about “liberal activist judges”) or a particular method of constitutional interpretation (such as assertions that a decision was “activist” because it was not based on the original meaning of the Constitution). This paper sidesteps those debates, focusing instead on an empirical examination of how recent U.S. Supreme Court justices have in fact exercised their judicial power. I do this by examining the voting records of …

What Is The Definition Of An "Organ" Under The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act?, Peter B. Rutledge

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Did the court of appeals have jurisdiction to review the district court's remand order, notwithstanding 28 U.S.C. 1447(d)?

does a company wholly owned by a Canadian crown corporation -- that is itself wholly owned by the Canadian Province of British Columbia and that performs obligations and exercises rights of the Province pursuant to a treaty with the United States -- quality as an "organ" of a foreign state or political subdivision under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act?

The Rehnquist Court: A "By The Numbers" Retrospective, Lori A. Ringhand

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The late Chief Justice William Rehnquist presided over the U.S. Supreme Court for nineteen years, longer than any other Chief Justice in the 20th century. Despite this longevity, however, there is little consensus on just what the legacy of the Rehnquist Court is. Was the Rehnquist Court a restrained Court that embraced a limited, text-based reading of the Constitution? Or was it a much more aggressive Court, responsible for a resurgence of conservative judicial activism? Is it best epitomized by the “swaggering confidence” that put a President in office, or the cautious minimalism that disappointed its conservative supporters by failing …

The State Of The Judiciary: A Corporate Perspective, Larry D. Thompson, Charles J. Cooper

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The rule of law depends on highly talented, independent judges who conscientiously strive to ensure that the law is consistently applied in a principled and predictable manner. This Essay addresses two potential threats to judicial independence and the rule of law that we believe warrant special attention at this time. First, inadequate judicial salaries pose a threat to the quality and independence of the judiciary. Judges' real pay has declined substantially over the past generation, even as the compensation of other callings within the legal profession has risen dramatically. This growing disparity in pay has prompted an increasing number of …

Successor Liability In Vermont, George Kuney

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No abstract provided.

Behavioral Economists At The Gate: Antitrust In The 21st Century, Maurice Stucke

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Although tossed against the rocks elsewhere, the Law and Economics' rational choice theories, within the quiet waters of antitrust, stand largely unchallenged. Antitrust's economic theories, premised on 'rational' profit maximizing behavior, enjoy the deep slumber of a decided opinion. Although Post-Chicago School antitrust theories have developed, the Chicago School's rational choice theories still dominate. This article explores some possible paradoxes and anomalies with respect to antitrust's merger theories. It appears anecdotally that some corporate behavior is (or is not) occurring which is not readily explainable under the Chicago School's theories. It is an empirical question as to the degree the …

Acquisition Licenses In Tennessee: An Annotated Model Tennessee Acquisition License Agreement, Joan Macleod Heminway

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The coauthors have constructed a model license agreement for use in connection with acquisitions, annotated with footnotes on substantive law and legal drafting issues. This model is intended to serve as a research piece, teaching tool, and practitioner resource. This agreement is part of a series of acquisition agreements and related ancillary contracts and instruments published by Transactions: Tennessee Journal of Business Law beginning in 2003.

[Insert Song Lyrics Here]: The Uses And Misuses Of Popular Music Lyrics In Legal Writing, Alex B. Long

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Legal writers frequently utilize the lyrics of popular music artists to help advance a particular theme or argument in legal writing. And if the music we listen to says something about us as individuals, then the music we, the legal profession as a whole, write about may something about who we are as a profession. A study of citations to popular artists in law journals reveals that, not surprisingly, Bob Dylan is the most popular artist in legal scholarship. The list of names of the other artists rounding out the Top Ten essentially reads like a Who's Who of baby …

State Sovereignty In Bankruptcy After Katz, Thomas E. Plank

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No abstract provided.

Toward A More Efficient Bankruptcy Law: Mortgage Financing Under The 2005 Bankruptcy Amendments, Thomas E. Plank

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No abstract provided.

A Tax Lawyer's Perspective On Section 527 Organizations, Gregg D. Polsky

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Proponents of campaign finance reform generally assume that, by definition, all section 527 organizations are partisan, election-driven organizations. They also believe that by self-identifying to the IRS, these organizations receive substantial tax benefits. Based on these presuppositions, reformers argue that strict regulation of 527organizations is both constitutional and normatively beneficial. In this Essay, I argue that once section 527 is carefully analyzed from a tax perspective, it becomes evident that these assumptions are flawed. Ultimately, I conclude that section 527 should not be used as a mechanism for regulating campaign finance

How Government Regulation Forces Americans Into Their Cars: A Case Study, Michael Lewyn

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No abstract provided.

Emerging Latina/O Nation And Anti- Immigrant Backlash, Sylvia R. Lazos

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This foreword is an introduction to the LatCrit XI, Working and Living in the Global Playground: Frontstage and Backstage symposium, convened at William S. Boyd School of Law, in Las Vegas Nevada, during October 2006 and called upon over 150 academics to focus on the impacts of globalization and immigration. At no time has LatCrit's critical approach of interconnecting the structures of inequality, the market forces of globalization, and the cultural hostility towards outsider groups been more relevant.

Backlash against immigrants, particularly Latina/o “illegals,” is on the rise. This Introduction seeks to outline the challenges that the current immigration quandary …

Developing Las Vegas: Creating Inclusionary Affordable Housing Requirements In Development Agreements, Ngai Pindell

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The lack of affordable shelter for all of America's families often appears to be an immutable part of America's housing landscape. If the inclusionary housing regime in Las Vegas allowed local governments and developers any discretion in the decision to include affordable housing in a particular development agreement, the regime would have to establish an equivalent mechanism such as individual developer suits to check abuses of this discretion. A potential safeguard of effective affordable housing planning under development agreements could be the expertise of planners and other local government officials. Inclusionary housing requirements within development agreements ensure affordable housing issues …

Evidentiary Wisdom And Blinders In Perspective: Thoughts On Misjudging, Elaine W. Shoben

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Empirical studies serve to enlighten the law, even when they simply confirm the wisdom of existing rules. Chris Guthrie's article, Misjudging, primarily serves that useful function—confirming the wisdom of existing rules—even though the author sought to establish something different. Guthrie's article applies insights from cognitive psychology to the resolution of legal disputes and presents some empirical proof of the effect of the application. He concludes that three sets of “blinders”—informational, cognitive, and attitudinal—affect the ability of judges to reach correct resolutions of disputes. He therefore recommends further appreciation of the ability of arbitration and mediation to avoid some of the …

Toward A History Of Children As Witnesses, David S. Tanenhaus, William Bush

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This brief essay offers a selective overview of recent trends in the historical scholarship on American childhood from the origins of the American Revolution to the early years of the Cold War. This overview of the literature has two purposes. First, it highlights recent socio-cultural scholarship that presents substantive challenges to the conventional ways of understanding the history of children and the law. Second, in so doing, it points out that legal histories concerned solely with doctrinal matters can, and often do, present a limited and distorted window into the past. Instead, the essay argues that the place of children, …

The Constitutional Structure Of Disestablishment, Ian C. Bartrum

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This article proceeds in the structuralist tradition, which Professor Charles Black describes as "the method of inference from the structure and relationships created by the Constitution." The article takes a structural approach to the Establishment Clause: it reexamines the theoretical foundations of disestablishment, and infers a constitutional structure designed to create a dialectical relationship between political institutions and social institutions. The structural thesis requires that our political institutions safeguard individual liberty of conscience by bracketing all religious questions. The antithesis ensures the existence of free and independent social organizations dedicated to building public virtue. The article then applies the structural …

Reconsidering Procedural Conformity Statutes, Thomas O. Main

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No abstract provided.

Review Essay: Religion And Politics 2004-2007, Leslie C. Griffin

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No abstract provided.

Placing The Reality Of Employment Discrimination Cases In A Comparative Context, Jean R. Sternlight

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No abstract provided.

Destructive Ambiguity: Enemy Nationals And The Legal Enabling Of Ethnic Conflict In The Middle East, Michael Kagan

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In the course of the Middle East conflict since 1948, both the Arab states and Israel have tended to take harsh measures against civilians based on their national, ethnic, and religious origins. This practice has been partially legitimized by a norm in international law that permits states to infringe the liberty and property interests of enemy nationals during armed conflict. Middle Eastern governments have misused the logic behind this theoretically exceptional rule to justify far-reaching measures that undermine the “principle of distinction” between civilians and combatants and erode the principle of non-discrimination that lies at the center of human rights …

The Spirit Of 1968: Toward Abolishing Terry Doctrine, Frank Rudy Cooper

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In this essay, Professor Frank Rudy Cooper summarizes how the Terry opinion's refusal to apply the probable cause standard made Fourth Amendment doctrine more conservative. He then suggests that the result has gone largely unchallenged because whites have been willing to trade decreases in the civil liberties of blacks for perceived increases in crime control. Prof Cooper concludes by calling on us to consider returning to the spirit of the beginning of 1968 by abolishing Terry doctrine.

Five Myths About Sprawl, Michael Lewyn

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In Sprawl: A Compact History, Robert Bruegmann, an art historian, has painted a superficially convincing case for the status quo, asserting that sprawl is "a natural result of affluence that occurs in all urbanized societies." Bruegmann's book has generated glowing media publicity. This article suggests that Bruegmann overestimates the universality of sprawl, by overlooking the differences between pedestrian-friendly cities with some sprawling development and cities in which automobile-dependent sprawl is the only choice available to most consumers. In addition, Bruegmann understates the harmful social effects of sprawl, especially the effect of automobile-dependent development upon non-drivers. Bruegmann also consistently underestimates the …