Law Commons^™

Contracts, Practice And Law In Trade With China: Some Observations, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

Erh Ii gou ("two mile gully") is the street in Peking on which stands the "large import building", the headquarters of the Chinese state trade corporations which purchase machinery, equipment, chemicals and technology from abroad. The punning reference to the protracted length of negotiations there is relevant to this piece, because the writer spent seven weeks between mid-January and mid-April, 1978 participating in negotiations in Peking; the long stay provided an opportunity to test generalizations and to write with some immediacy.

This essay describes the process of negotiating sales of capital goods to the Chinese corporations and the contracts which …

The Constitution Goes To Harvard, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

Doctrinal disorder haunts a generation of Supreme Court decisions construing and applying the strands of the fourteenth amendment. But in a confusion contest between the Court and academic writers on constitutional law, picking a winner would be no simple task. Those of us in the academy, despite our comparatively ample time for reflection, have long resisted discussion of fundamental issues.

Professors Tribe and Michelman, two of our ablest writers, illustrate my point in their provocative recent essays on National League of Cities v. Usery. Neither purports to erect more adequate scaffolding for the decision's federalism foundation. Rather, each attempts …

To Herbert Wechsler With Grateful Appreciation, Michael I. Sovern

Faculty Scholarship

Though the invitation to join this symposium came to me in my official capacity, I prefer to write in personal terms. I make that choice for two reasons. First, I cannot improve on the Faculty's own affectionate resolution of appreciation, and so I am happy to embrace it as the School's official position. (I alone on the Faculty could not vote for it: only a tie gives me the franchise and, try as I might, I could not suborn any contrary votes.) Second, my feelings for Herb Wechsler owe far more to my days as his student and my years …

The Ideology Of Advocacy: Procedural Justice And Professional Ethics, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Conventional morality frowns at the ethics of advocacy. Public opinion disapproves of what it considers the lawyer's most characteristic activities. Popular culture can reconcile itself to him only by pretending that all his clients are virtuous. The lawyer's response takes the form of a dialectic of cynicism and naiveté. On one hand, he sees his more degrading activities as licensed by a fundamental amorality lying beneath conventional morality. On the other hand, he sees his more heartening ones as serving an institutional justice higher than conventional morality. The two moods divide the profession as a whole, and the division can …

Guiding Capital Sentencing Discretion Beyond The "Boiler Plate": Mental Disorder As A Mitigating Factor, James S. Liebman, Michael J. Shepard

Faculty Scholarship

In five decisions handed down on July 2, 1976, the United States Supreme Court held that the death penalty may be imposed for the crime of murder, so long as there are clear standards to guide the sentencing authority and the sanction is not imposed mandatorily. The authors examine the eighth amendment doctrinal framework used by the Court in the July 2 Cases, with particular reference to the requirement that individualized mitigating information be considered in the sentencing decision. Illustrating that requirement, they contend that mental disorder should be considered as a possibly mitigating factor and then suggest a standard …

The Repressed Issues Of Sentencing: Accountability, Predictability, And Equality In The Era Of The Sentencing Commission, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

The existence of disparities in the sentences imposed on equally culpable offenders has long been a subject of jurisprudential concern. The author provides a critique of recent efforts to objectify the sentencing process that rely on a matrix table prescribing guideline sentence lengths on the basis of offense severity and predictions of recidivism. With particular emphasis on the Sentencing Commission authorized by pending federal legislation, he urges the need for political accountability in the body that inevitably makes value judgments in the preparation and administration of such a guideline system. Finally, the author discusses the normative issues that surround the …

Shadow Prices For Project Selection In The Presence Of Distortions: Effective Rates Of Protection And Domestic Resource Costs, T.N. Srinivasan, Jagdish N. Bhagwati

Faculty Scholarship

The paper addresses the problem of deriving shadow prices for use in project evaluation when the existing allocation is characterized by ad valorem trade distortions. The analysis is used to clarify and resolve the long-standing debate among effective-rate-of-protection and domestic resource-cost proponents as to the respective merits of their measures as methods of project evaluation. The derivation of shadow factor prices is then extended to three major factor market imperfections familiar from extensive trade-theoretic analysis.

The Enduring Significance Of Neutral Principles, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Almost twenty years have passed since Herbert Wechsler delivered his Oliver Wendell Holmes lecture, Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law. Although no one piece fully conveys the richness and rigor of Professor Wechsler's conception of constitutional law and the role of the judiciary, Neutral Principles sets out starkly, eloquently, and courageously some of his fundamental beliefs about constitutional decisionmaking. Shifts in jurisprudential fashion, as well as marked changes in constitutional doctrine and the composition of the Supreme Court, would make this an apt time to review what is almost certainly the most cited and most controversial discussion of constitutional …