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Full-Text Articles in Law

An Order, Most Fixed, Alexandra D. Lahav Jan 2023

An Order, Most Fixed, Alexandra D. Lahav

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Rules: A Short History of What We Live By. By Lorraine Daston.


Disabling Lawyering: Buck V. Bell And The Road To A More Inclusive Legal Practice, Jacob Izak Abudaram Jan 2023

Disabling Lawyering: Buck V. Bell And The Road To A More Inclusive Legal Practice, Jacob Izak Abudaram

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be and Ally. By Emily Ladau and Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell By Paul A. Lombardo.


The Problematic Structure Of Indigent Defense Delivery, Eve Brensike Primus Jan 2023

The Problematic Structure Of Indigent Defense Delivery, Eve Brensike Primus

Michigan Law Review

The national conversation about criminal justice reform largely ignores the critical need for structural reforms in the provision of indigent defense. In most parts of the country, decisions about how to structure the provision of indigent defense are made at the local level, resulting in a fragmented patchwork of different indigent defense delivery systems. In most counties, if an indigent criminal defendant gets representation at all, it comes from assigned counsel or flat-fee contract lawyers rather than public defenders. In those assigned-counsel and flat-fee contract systems, the lawyers representing indigent defendants have financial incentives to get rid of assigned criminal …


Racial Trauma In Civil Rights Representation, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Anthony V. Alfieri Jun 2022

Racial Trauma In Civil Rights Representation, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Anthony V. Alfieri

Michigan Law Review

Narratives of trauma told by clients and communities of color have inspired an increasing number of civil rights and antiracist lawyers and academics to call for more trauma-informed training for law students and lawyers. These advocates have argued not only for greater trauma-sensitive practices and trauma-centered interventions on behalf of adversely impacted individuals and groups but also for greater awareness of the risks of secondary or vicarious trauma for lawyers who represent traumatized clients and communities. In this Article, we join this chorus of attorneys and academics. Harnessing the recent civil rights case of P.P. v. Compton Unified School District …


Natural Language Processing For Lawyers And Judges, Frank Fagan Apr 2021

Natural Language Processing For Lawyers And Judges, Frank Fagan

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law as Data: Computation, Text, & the Future of Legal Analysis. Edited by Michael A. Livermore and Daniel N. Rockmore.


Solitude, Leadership, And Lawyers, Amul R. Thapar, Samuel Rudman Jan 2019

Solitude, Leadership, And Lawyers, Amul R. Thapar, Samuel Rudman

Michigan Law Review

Review of Raymond M. Kethledge and Michael S. Erwin's Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude.


An Apology For Lawyers: Socrates And The Ethics Of Persuasion, Sherman J. Clark Jan 2019

An Apology For Lawyers: Socrates And The Ethics Of Persuasion, Sherman J. Clark

Michigan Law Review

Review Plato's "Apology of Socrates" in Six Great Dialogues: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Symposium, and The Republic.


"It's Not You, It's Your Caseload": Using Cronic To Solve Indigent Defense Underfunding, Samantha Jaffe Jun 2018

"It's Not You, It's Your Caseload": Using Cronic To Solve Indigent Defense Underfunding, Samantha Jaffe

Michigan Law Review

In the United States, defendants in both federal and state prosecutions have the constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel. That right is in jeopardy. In the postconviction setting, the standard for ineffective assistance of counsel is prohibitively high, and Congress has restricted federal habeas review. At trial, severe underfunding for state indigent defense systems has led to low pay, little support, and extreme caseloads—which combine to create conditions where lawyers simply cannot represent clients adequately. Overworked public defenders and contract attorneys represent 80 percent of state felony defendants annually. Three out of four countywide public defender systems and fifteen …


In Praise Of Law Books And Law Reviews (And Jargon-Filled Academic Writing), Cass R. Sunstein Apr 2016

In Praise Of Law Books And Law Reviews (And Jargon-Filled Academic Writing), Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

Many people, including many lawyers and judges, disparage law reviews and the books that sometimes result from them on the ground that they often deal with abstruse topics, of little interest to the bar, and are sometimes full of jargon, including excessively academic and impenetrable writing. Some of the objections are warranted, but at their best, law books and law reviews show a high level of rigor, discipline, and care; they have a kind of internal morality. What might seem to be jargon is often a product of specialization, similar to what is observed in other fields (such as economics, …


It’S A Sin To Kill A Mockingbird: The Need For Idealism In The Legal Profession, Jonathan A. Rapping Apr 2016

It’S A Sin To Kill A Mockingbird: The Need For Idealism In The Legal Profession, Jonathan A. Rapping

Michigan Law Review

“[T]he first thing I lost in law school was the reason that I came.” This prescient quote by an unnamed law student defines, in a single sentence, our growing problem in training lawyers. From the moment he or she steps foot in a law school classroom, the future lawyer feels a strong pull to pursue a career that has nothing to do with justice. The law school experience will discourage the future lawyer from pursuing a career advocating for those in society who most need a voice. Once graduated, the young lawyer will enter a world where he or she …


Frost For Lawyers: 'The Best Thing That We're Put Here For's To See', Sherman J. Clark Apr 2014

Frost For Lawyers: 'The Best Thing That We're Put Here For's To See', Sherman J. Clark

Michigan Law Review

Why should lawyers read Frost? First of all, of course, it can bring great pleasure. As Robert Pinsky put it, poetry brings pleasures “both intellectual and bodily” and can provide “a satisfaction central to life.” And this is particularly true of Frost, whose poems are both accessible and enjoyable. This does not mean that there are no challenges in his poems. Frost does make us work. Indeed, as I hope to explore in this Essay, the work he asks us to do is essential to what we can learn from his poems. But this work is itself engaging and invigorating …


Letting Go Of Old Ideas, William D. Henderson Apr 2014

Letting Go Of Old Ideas, William D. Henderson

Michigan Law Review

Two recently published books make the claim that the legal profession has changed (Steven Harper’s The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis) or is changing (Richard Susskind’s Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future). The books are interesting because they discuss the types of changes that are broad, sweeping, and dramatic. In suitable lawyer fashion, both books are unfailingly analytical. They both also argue that the old order is collapsing. The Lawyer Bubble is backward looking and laments the legacy we have squandered, while Tomorrow’s Lawyers is future oriented and offers fairly specific prescriptive advice, particularly to those lawyers entering …


Oh, The Treatise!, Richard A. Danner Apr 2013

Oh, The Treatise!, Richard A. Danner

Michigan Law Review

In his foreword to the Michigan Law Review's 2009 Survey of Books Related to the Law, my former Duke colleague Erwin Chemerinsky posed the question: "[W]hy should law professors write?" In answering, Erwin took as a starting point the well-known criticisms of legal scholarship that Judge Harry Edwards published in this journal in 1992. Judge Edwards indicted legal scholars for failing to engage the practical problems facing lawyers and judges, writing instead for the benefit of scholars in law and other disciplines rather than for their professional audiences. He characterized "practical" legal scholarship as both prescriptive (aiming to instruct attorneys, …


Agency And Equity: Why Do We Blame Clients For Their Lawyers' Mistakes, Adam Liptak Apr 2012

Agency And Equity: Why Do We Blame Clients For Their Lawyers' Mistakes, Adam Liptak

Michigan Law Review

If you were to ask a child whether it would be fair to execute a prisoner because his lawyer had made a mistake, the answer would be no. You might even get a look suggesting that you had asked a pretty stupid question. But judges treat the issue as a hard one, relying on a theory as casually accepted in criminal justice as it is offensive to principles of moral philosophy. This theory holds that the lawyer is the client's agent. What the agent does binds the principal. But clients and lawyers fit the agency model imperfectly. Agency law is …


Misunderstanding Lawyers' Ethics, Monroe H. Freedman, Abbe Smith Apr 2010

Misunderstanding Lawyers' Ethics, Monroe H. Freedman, Abbe Smith

Michigan Law Review

The title of Daniel Markovits's book, A Modern Legal Ethics, gives the impression that it is a comprehensive treatise on contemporary lawyers' ethics. The contents of the book, however, are both more limited and more expansive than the title suggests. Markovits's treatment of lawyers' ethics concerns itself with what he conceives to be the pervasive guilty conscience of practicing lawyers over their "professional viciousness" (p. 36), and how lawyers can achieve a guilt-free professional identity "worthy of ... commitment" (p. 2). Markovits's goal in the book is to "articulat[e] a powerful and distinctively lawyerly virtue" (p. 2), one that …


A Review Of Richard A. Posner, How Judges Think (2008), Jeffrey S. Sutton Jan 2010

A Review Of Richard A. Posner, How Judges Think (2008), Jeffrey S. Sutton

Michigan Law Review

I was eager to enter the judiciary. I liked the title: federal judge. I liked the job security: life tenure. And I could tolerate the pay: the same as Richard Posner's. That, indeed, may have been the most flattering part of the opportunity-that I could hold the same title and have the same pay grade as one of America's most stunning legal minds. Don't think I didn't mention it when I had the chance. There is so much to admire about Judge Posner-his lively pen, his curiosity, his energy, his apparent understanding of: everything. He has written 53 books, more …


Against Practice, Anthony V. Alfieri Jan 2009

Against Practice, Anthony V. Alfieri

Michigan Law Review

This Review examines the theory/practice dichotomy in legal education through the prism of the Carnegie Foundation's Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law. Descriptively, it argues that the Foundation's investigation of law school curricular deficiencies in the areas of clinical-lawyer skills, professionalism, and public service overlooks the relevance of critical pedagogies in teaching students how to deal with difference-based identity and how to build cross-cultural community in diverse, multicultural practice settings differentiated by mutable and immutable characteristics such as class, gender, and race. Prescriptively, it argues that the Foundation's remedial call for the curricular integration of clinical lawyer …


Young Associates In Trouble, William D. Henderson, David Zaring Apr 2007

Young Associates In Trouble, William D. Henderson, David Zaring

Michigan Law Review

Large law firms have reputations as being tough places to work, and the larger the firm, the tougher the firm. Yet, notwithstanding the grueling hours and the shrinking prospects of partnership, these firms perennially attract a large proportion of the nation's top law school graduates. These young lawyers could go anywhere but choose to work at large firms. Why do they do so if law firms are as inhospitable as their reputations suggest? Two recent novels about the lives of young associates in large, prestigious law firms suggest that such a rational calculation misapprehends the costs. Law professor Kermit Roosevelt's …


The Bureaucratic Court, Benjamin C. Mizer Apr 2007

The Bureaucratic Court, Benjamin C. Mizer

Michigan Law Review

In August 2006, the New York Times caused a stir by reporting that the number of female law clerks at the United States Supreme Court has fallen sharply in the first full Term in which Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is no longer on the bench. In an era in which nearly fifty percent of all law school graduates are women, the Times reported, less than twenty percent of the clerks in the Court's 2006 Term - seven of thirty-seven - are women. In interviews, Justices Souter and Breyer viewed the sharp drop in the number of female clerks as an …


Capital Defense Lawyers: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Sean D. O'Brien Apr 2007

Capital Defense Lawyers: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Sean D. O'Brien

Michigan Law Review

Professor Welsh S. White's book Litigating in the Shadow of Death: Defense Attorneys in Capital Cases collects the compelling stories of "a new band of dedicated lawyers" that has "vigorously represented capital defendants, seeking to prevent their executions" (p.3). Sadly, Professor White passed away on New Year's Eve, 2005, days before the release of his final work. To the well-deserved accolades of Professor White that were recently published in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, I can only add a poignant comment in a student blog that captures his excellence as a scholar and educator: "I wanted to …


Judging Magic: Can You See The Sleight Of Hand?, Rebecca Johnson Apr 2007

Judging Magic: Can You See The Sleight Of Hand?, Rebecca Johnson

Michigan Law Review

Cultural critic bell hooks says, "Movies make magic. They change things. They take the real and make it into something else right before our very eyes." Movies do not, of course, have an exclusive hold on this ability to change one thing into something else. Law, too, possesses this power. Certainly, one must acknowledge some significant differences in the "magic" of filmic and legal texts. For the most part, as willing consumers of cultural products, we "choose" to subject ourselves to the magic of film. We sit in a darkened theater and let ourselves be taken away to a different …


The Multistate Bar Exam As A Theory Of Law, Daniel J. Solove May 2006

The Multistate Bar Exam As A Theory Of Law, Daniel J. Solove

Michigan Law Review

What is the most widely read work of jurisprudence by those in the legal system? Is it H.L.A. Hart's The Concept of Law? Ronald Dworkin's Law's Empire? No. It is actually the Multistate Bar Exam ("Bar Exam"). Perhaps no other work on law has been so widely read by those in the legal profession. Although the precise text of the Bar Exam is different every year, it presents a jurisprudence that transcends the specific language of its text. Each year, thousands of lawyers-to-be ponder over it, learning its profound teachings on the meaning of the law. They study …


Tribute To John Pickering, Ruth Bader Ginsburg Nov 2005

Tribute To John Pickering, Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Michigan Law Review

John Pickering was a grand human whose life is just cause for celebration. He taught constantly, through his own work and deeds, how lawyers in private practice can contribute hugely to the public good. John's dear friend, my revered D.C. Circuit colleague, Carl McGowan, spoke of the lawyer of technical competence content to be a working mason. The best of lawyers, Judge McGowan said, serve as architects, planners, builders in law. Along with high technical competence, the best of lawyers have a deep understanding of the nature and purposes of the law, which makes them wise and reliable counselors, broad-gauged …


Tribute To John Pickering, Timothy B. Dyk Nov 2005

Tribute To John Pickering, Timothy B. Dyk

Michigan Law Review

It is very appropriate that we are here today to honor John Pickering, who, for more than five decades, was a leading member of our bar. I first met John when I joined the small firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in 1964, two years after it was founded. The three founding fathers of the firm were formidable figures, particularly to a young lawyer, and John Pickering was no exception. I do not mean that John was unkind. He was the kindest of people. But there was something particularly serious about him, and I always wondered whether that had to …


Tribute To John Pickering, Esther Lardent Nov 2005

Tribute To John Pickering, Esther Lardent

Michigan Law Review

I want to talk to you about the lessons that so many of us have learned from John, and the qualities that made him so memorable and so extraordinary. The first was his unerring ability to know what was right. Now, many of us want to do right, but John always knew what the right thing was. Despite growing up in a time and place where women and people of color were not valued, where the homeless, the despised, the poor, and the disadvantaged were not considered worthy, John cared deeply about doing right by all of these people.


Tribute To John Pickering, Raymond C. Clevenger Nov 2005

Tribute To John Pickering, Raymond C. Clevenger

Michigan Law Review

This is my homage to John. I ask you to summon up in your imagination today a grand circus, a sort of Cirque du Soleil of lawyers: full of shining talents performing legal feats of wonder, but presided over by a grand ringmaster. This ringmaster knows his performers very well. He knows how to train and stroke them to high achievement. He knows how to groom the younger workers. He can keep his stars in check. He knows when to sit back with a smile, letting his charges perform and claim the applause, even when the applause rightfully belongs to …


Tribute To John Pickering, Marcia Greenberger Nov 2005

Tribute To John Pickering, Marcia Greenberger

Michigan Law Review

This room is filled with many women lawyers. All of us loved John Pickering and are in his debt, but we are only a small number of those who do. For many decades, John guided young, and I must admit not so young, women lawyers to positions where they could stand up for their own rights and the rights of others. He worked with us to champion the causes that matter most to women and their families. John used his great stature and the enormous respect that he garnered to open doors for women to leadership positions in the bar, …


Tribute To John Pickering, Elaine R. Jones Nov 2005

Tribute To John Pickering, Elaine R. Jones

Michigan Law Review

This talented, persuasive, committed lawyer-leader, John Pickering, had several abiding personal and professional interests, two of which enhanced my life directly, and most of which enhanced my life indirectly. The first was the great personal interest he took in lawyers younger than himself, and the second was his passion about civil rights and combating the effects of racial discrimination.


Tribute To John Pickering, Noël Anketell Kramer Nov 2005

Tribute To John Pickering, Noël Anketell Kramer

Michigan Law Review

I knew John Pickering from the time that I was a second-year law student- just a few years ago, it seems-when he and Sally Katzen recruited me to join what was then the small firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. We remained friends thereafter, sharing among other interests an avid loyalty to the University of Michigan.


Tribute To John Pickering, Louis F. Oberdorfer Nov 2005

Tribute To John Pickering, Louis F. Oberdorfer

Michigan Law Review

John left word that he did not want a lot of eulogies, so there is much I could say about him that I do not because I honor his request.