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Full-Text Articles in Law
Abolishing State Trademark Registrations, Lee Ann Lockridge
Abolishing State Trademark Registrations, Lee Ann Lockridge
Lee Ann W. Lockridge
No abstract provided.
Standards Of Proof Revisited, Kevin M. Clermont
Standards Of Proof Revisited, Kevin M. Clermont
Kevin M. Clermont
This Essay focuses not on how fact-finders process evidence but on how they apply the specified standard of proof to their finding. The oddity that prompts speculation is that, in noncriminal cases, the common law asks only that the fact appear more likely than not, while the Civil Law seems to apply the same high standard in these cases as it does in criminal cases. As a psychological explanation of the cognitive processes involved, some theorists posit that the bulk of fact-finding is an unconscious process, powerful but dangerous, which generates a level of confidence against which the fact-finder could …
The Original Meaning Of "Unusual": The Eighth Amendment As A Bar To Cruel Innovation, John F. Stinneford
The Original Meaning Of "Unusual": The Eighth Amendment As A Bar To Cruel Innovation, John F. Stinneford
John F. Stinneford
In recent years, both legal scholars and the American public have become aware that something is not quite right with the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. Legal commentators from across the spectrum have described the Court's treatment of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause as "embarrassing," "ineffectual and incoherent," a "mess," and a "train wreck." The framers of the Bill of Rights understood the word "unusual" to mean "contrary to long usage." Recognition of the word's original meaning will precisely invert the "evolving standards of decency" test and ask the Court to compare challenged punishments with the longstanding principles and …
Punishment Without Culpability, John F. Stinneford
Punishment Without Culpability, John F. Stinneford
John F. Stinneford
For more than half a century, academic commentators have criticized the Supreme Court for failing to articulate a substantive constitutional conception of criminal law. Although the Court enforces various procedural protections that the Constitution provides for criminal defendants, it has left the question of what a crime is purely to the discretion of the legislature. This failure has permitted legislatures to evade the Constitution’s procedural protections by reclassifying crimes as civil causes of action, eliminating key elements (such as mens rea) or reclassifying them as defenses or sentencing factors, and authorizing severe punishments for crimes traditionally considered relatively minor. The …
Measuring The Transplantation Of English Commercial Law In A Small Jurisdiction: An Empirical Study Of Singapore’S Insurance Judgments Between 1965 And 2012, Christopher Chen
Measuring The Transplantation Of English Commercial Law In A Small Jurisdiction: An Empirical Study Of Singapore’S Insurance Judgments Between 1965 And 2012, Christopher Chen
Christopher Chao-hung CHEN
This article seeks to measure the development of law after transplanting common law and statutes from another country by conducting an empirical study of the citation of precedents and demography of disputes of insurance cases in Singapore. This article recognizes that there are justifications for Singapore to transplant English insurance law. However, this research shows that the transplantation of English commercial law into a small jurisdiction, even within the common law family, may cause the law to be in a static state if courts do not have enough cases to maintain the development of law or to consider new development …
Examining A Comparative Law Myth: Two Hundred Years Of Riparian Misconception, Andrea B. Carroll
Examining A Comparative Law Myth: Two Hundred Years Of Riparian Misconception, Andrea B. Carroll
Andrea Beauchamp Carroll
This article is a first step in an effort to critically examine - and to debunk - some of the myths that persist about the degree to which the common and civil law systems differ. Specifically, the article questions the validity of recent scholarly commentary suggesting that the primary differences between the systems can be found in their substantive legal rules or in their respective "spirits." A relatively narrow issue of riparian access perfectly highlights the problem. Nearly all of the high courts in the United States that have examined this particular riparian issue have chosen to adopt either the …