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Full-Text Articles in Law

Planned Parenthood: Adult Adoption And The Right Of Adoptees To Inherit, Richard C. Ausness Jan 2016

Planned Parenthood: Adult Adoption And The Right Of Adoptees To Inherit, Richard C. Ausness

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article is concerned with the effect of adult adoptions on the inheritance rights (in the broad sense of that term) of adult adoptees. The Article contends many adult adoption statutes assume the existence of a parent-child relationship in which the adopter is the “parent” and the adoptee is a “child” even though this is not true of all adult adoption cases. In addition, legislatures and courts frequently fail to differentiate between “quasi-familial” adoptions and “strategic” adoptions, particularly where inheritance rights are concerned.


Electronic Signatures: Review And Analysis, Bryan Gibson Sep 2015

Electronic Signatures: Review And Analysis, Bryan Gibson

Kentucky Transportation Center Technical Assistance Report

Electronic signatures, or e-signatures, are an increasingly ubiquitous component of a rapidly digitizing world. Compared to traditional paper signature, e-signatures have emerged as a viable, potentially more efficient method of entering into a contract. An e-signature can be thought of as an electronic symbol or marking associated with the signer. It acts as a signature and functions in lieu of a manual paper signature. This technical assistance report briefly reviews relevant Kentucky statutes and guidelines regarding e-signatures and public recordkeeping as well as applicable federal law. Following this, the report presents conclusions and points for continued discussion. Relevant statues and …


A Framework For Judicial Review And Remand In Immigration Law, Collin D. Schueler Jan 2014

A Framework For Judicial Review And Remand In Immigration Law, Collin D. Schueler

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article breaks new ground at the intersection of administrative law and immigration law. One of the more important questions in both fields is whether a reviewing court should resolve a legal issue in the first instance or remand that issue to the agency. This Article advances the novel claim that courts should use the modem framework for judicial review of agency statutory interpretations to inform their resolution of this remand question. Then, using this framework, the Article identifies when remand is and is not appropriate in immigration cases. This critical analysis, which urges a departure from conventional academic wisdom, …


Property In Law: Government Rights In Legal Innovations, Stephen Clowney Jan 2011

Property In Law: Government Rights In Legal Innovations, Stephen Clowney

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

One of the most enduring themes in American political thought is that competition between states encourages legal innovation. Despite the prominence of this story in the national ideology, there is growing anxiety that state and local governments innovate at a socially suboptimal rate. Academics have recently expressed alarm that the pace of legal experimentation has become "extraordinarily slow," "inefficient," and "less than ideal." Ordinary citizens, too, seem concerned that government has been leeched of imagination and the dynamic spirit of experimentation; both talk radio programs and newspapers remain jammed with complaints about legislative gridlock and do-nothing politicians who cannot, or …


Florida East Coast Railway And The Structure Of Administrative Law, Michael P. Healy Oct 2006

Florida East Coast Railway And The Structure Of Administrative Law, Michael P. Healy

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

A typical Administrative Law course presents the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Florida East Coast Railway Co. as establishing the rule that statutory text quite close to the magic words, "on the record after opportunity for an agency hearing," is needed to trigger the Administrative Procedure Act's (APA) formal hearing requirements for a rulemaking. Florida East Coast Railway is a prime example of an underrated case because, even though the case is well known, its renown is a consequence only of its black letter rule about rulemaking procedures. Many scholars and practitioners do not appreciate the case for …


Modifying The Kentucky Rules Of Evidence—A Separation Of Powers Issue, Robert G. Lawson Jan 2000

Modifying The Kentucky Rules Of Evidence—A Separation Of Powers Issue, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

How do you modify laws that simultaneously exist as statutes and rules of court? For reasons that are described elsewhere and need not be repeated here, the Kentucky Rules of Evidence (K.R.E.) came into existence through concurrent enactment by the General Assembly and Kentucky Supreme Court and thus are endowed with all the attributes of both statutes and rules of court. So, how do you change them when the inevitable need to do so arises, a question made both interesting and difficult by the fact that there is no institutional mechanism for concurrent lawmaking by the General Assembly and supreme …


Legislative Intent And Statutory Interpretation In England And The United States: An Assessment Of The Impact Of Pepper V. Hart, Michael P. Healy Jul 1999

Legislative Intent And Statutory Interpretation In England And The United States: An Assessment Of The Impact Of Pepper V. Hart, Michael P. Healy

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Statutory interpretation is the process of discerning the meaning of legislation, and U.S. law has permitted courts to find meaning through a variety of often contradictory interpretive approaches. As a result, U.S. litigants often are uncertain about the interpretive approach a court will apply to a statute, even though the choice of the interpretive approach may determine the outcome of the litigation. Until the recent decision in Pepper (Inspector of Taxes) v. Hart, English approaches to statutory interpretation were more circumscribed because English courts foreclosed the intentionalist approach. This Article considers the impact that Pepper has had on statutory …


Interpretation Of The Kentucky Rules Of Evidence—What Happened To The Common Law?, Robert G. Lawson Jan 1999

Interpretation Of The Kentucky Rules Of Evidence—What Happened To The Common Law?, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Kentucky Rules of Evidence, which became effective on July 1, 1992, dramatically transformed the method by which lawyers and judges address evidence issues. Before the adoption of the Rules, the law of evidence consisted mostly of a vast collection of common law rulings, accumulated over two centuries and inaccessible to lawyers and judges for all practical purposes. In addressing an evidence issue, participants had to first deal with the problem of "finding" the law-distilling from a morass of conflicting common law precedents the ones applicable to the issue at hand, a task regularly producing contention rather than agreement and, …


Perjury! The Charges And The Defenses, Richard H. Underwood Jul 1998

Perjury! The Charges And The Defenses, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Perjury is the most hotly debated topic in America today. In this witty and instructive article, the author explains what constitutes the crime of perjury, provides examples of how defendants have sometimes avoided conviction, and discusses the impact of federal and state statutes on prosecutors, defendants, witnesses, the judiciary, the legislature, and society.


"Intensional Contexts" And The Rule That Statutes Should Be Interpreted As Consistent With International Law, John M. Rogers Mar 1998

"Intensional Contexts" And The Rule That Statutes Should Be Interpreted As Consistent With International Law, John M. Rogers

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Striving for consistency—for consistency, that is, properly understood—must characterize legal reasoning in order for the reasoning to deserve to be called "legal." It may conceivably be "good" or "moral" for identically situated persons to be treated differently by institutions with power, but doing so can hardly be called "legal." Very careful attention must be given, of course, to what is meant by "identically situated," as no two different persons can be 100% identically situated. Their names, for instance, are different. By identical, we must mean no relevant distinction, or no distinction that serves a purpose that we can articulate and …


An American Lawyer's Reflections On Pepper V. Hart, Michael P. Healy Jan 1997

An American Lawyer's Reflections On Pepper V. Hart, Michael P. Healy

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Pepper v. Hart gave American lawyers a number of insights into the English law of statutory interpretation. For example, English law as described by the case was not as tidy as had been thought. To be sure, the case does state what Americans had believed was true about English law: “[u]nder present law, there is a general rule that references to parliamentary material as an aid to statutory construction is not permissible (the exclusionary rule).” Notwithstanding that rule, however, Pepper recognized that the rule of exclusion had an important and long-standing exception. This exception applies when the legislative materials identify …


White Collar Crime From Scratch: Some Observations On The East European Experience, Sarah N. Welling Oct 1993

White Collar Crime From Scratch: Some Observations On The East European Experience, Sarah N. Welling

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Essay recounts the Author’s experiences with an American Bar Association program called the Central and East European Law Initiative (CEELI). The Author traveled in Eastern Europe and focused on white collar crime issues in Poland. The Author was exposed to Eastern Europe's conversion to democracy and a market economy and the role of white collar crime in this conversion. Poland is drafting white collar crime statutes from scratch. There is also the opportunity that Poland’s effort can help us examine our attitudes toward white collar crime.


Joint Custody, Carolyn S. Bratt Jan 1979

Joint Custody, Carolyn S. Bratt

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Shared custody has traditionally been looked upon with disfavor by the courts. Similarly, some professionals in the field of child development oppose the concept of shared custody. There are, however, several advantages to shared custody. The legal system benefits, as judges escape the unenviable task of playing Solomon. The child benefits because both parents continue to have a voice in the child’s upbringing, and the child continues to enjoy the love, advice, and companionship of both parents. In addition, because both parents share the responsibility of child raising, neither is faced with the loss of self-esteem which results from being …