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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Discipline Of Breaks: Making Time For Rest (And Revisions) In Legal Writing, Patrick Barry Jan 2024

The Discipline Of Breaks: Making Time For Rest (And Revisions) In Legal Writing, Patrick Barry

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Editing your work involves the tricky business of finding the right mental distance between two versions of yourself: the version that did the drafting and the version that now needs to do the revising. Mastering that kind of cognitive division is not always an easy task.


Flawless First Draft In Legal Writing: A Fantasy Of The Uninitiated, Patrick Barry Jul 2023

Flawless First Draft In Legal Writing: A Fantasy Of The Uninitiated, Patrick Barry

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I recently received an email from a former student (now a public interest lawyer) who had just finished a major writing project. She wanted to thank me for introducing her to the psychologically liberating concept of “shitty first drafts.” Without it, she said, she probably would have never hit her deadline.


Preface, Margaret C. Hannon, Ruth Anne Robbins Jan 2022

Preface, Margaret C. Hannon, Ruth Anne Robbins

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The overarching theme of Volume 19 of Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD is how legal communication shapes the law, and how doers of legal writing can use their resources to make it better. The volume begins with a fascinating article from Aaron Kirschenfeld and Alexa Chew, “Citation Stickiness, Computer-Assisted Legal Research, and the Universe of Thinkable Thoughts.” In their article, Professors Kirschenfeld and Chew shed light on whether the switch from print research to digital research has changed the way that law students and lawyers conduct research. To do so, the article uses the “citation stickiness” metric, which analyzes whether …


Willard Hurst's Unpublished Manuscript On Law, Technology, And Regulation, Bj Ard, William J. Novak Jan 2022

Willard Hurst's Unpublished Manuscript On Law, Technology, And Regulation, Bj Ard, William J. Novak

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It is with a great deal of excitement ( and with thanks to so many contributing colleagues and collaborators over the years ) that we are able to present to the public for the first time a newly published work by one of the great originators of modem legal history and law and society scholarship-James Willard Hurst. Hurst published his last two books, Law and Markets in United States History and Dealing with Statutes, in 1982. And, fittingly, he published his last substantive article--.-a very short comment on "The Use of Case Histories"-in the Wisconsin Law Review in 1992. In …


Foreword: From Personal Life To Private Law: The Jurisprudence Of John Gardner, Scott Hershovitz Jun 2021

Foreword: From Personal Life To Private Law: The Jurisprudence Of John Gardner, Scott Hershovitz

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John Gardner was a great philosopher. He was appointed as the Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford when he was still quite junior in the profession. It was a big job. Ronald Dworkin held the post before Gardner, and H.L.A. Hart before him. Gardner delivered on his promise. He had wide-ranging interests. He wrote about jurisprudence, criminal law, and tort law. His pushed those fields forward—and others too. Gardner’s scholarship was incisive, creative, rigorous, generous, and witty. He had a knack for illuminating law and life too. In recent years, Gardner published two books that tackled tort law: From Personal Life …


Preface, Margaret C. Hannon, Joanne Sweeny Jan 2021

Preface, Margaret C. Hannon, Joanne Sweeny

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Volume 18 of Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD introduces the theme of author as travel guide who can transport their reader to new places. Lisa Eichhorn’s article, “Tonal Variation,” introduces the concept of tone, which is defined as the author’s attitude toward the audience. Using this frame, Professor Eichhorn explains how the author can use tone to shape the relationship with the reader. The article examines and contrasts two recent judicial opinions authored by Supreme Court Justices Kagan and Gorsuch. Through these tonal analyses, Professor Eichhorn shows how, even within an opinion, the tone may shift as the opinion moves …


Witness Recantation Study: Preliminary Findings, Alexandra E. Gross, Samuel R. Gross Jan 2013

Witness Recantation Study: Preliminary Findings, Alexandra E. Gross, Samuel R. Gross

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In September 2012, the National Registry of Exonerations began a research study of all the cases in our database that involve post-conviction recantations by witnesses or victims. This is the first systematic study of recantations ever conducted. Its purpose is to identify patterns and trends among these cases, with a particular focus on the circumstances that first elicit the false testimony, and on the official reactions to the recantations by judges and other authorities. Our data set includes all the cases in the Registry as of February 28, 2013 – a total of 1,068 cases, 250 of which involve recantations. …


Exonerations In The United States, 1989-2012: Report By The National Registry Of Exonerations, Samuel R. Gross, Michael Shaffer Jan 2012

Exonerations In The United States, 1989-2012: Report By The National Registry Of Exonerations, Samuel R. Gross, Michael Shaffer

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This report is about 873 exonerations in the United States, from January 1989 through February 2012. Behind each is a story, and almost all are tragedies. The tragedies are not limited to the exonerated defendants themselves, or to their families and friends. In most cases they were convicted of vicious crimes in which other innocent victims were killed or brutalized. Many of the victims who survived were traumatized all over again, years later, when they learned that the criminal who had attacked them had not been caught and punished after all, and that they themselves may have played a role …


Rookie Mistakes To Avoid, Edward R. Becker Jun 2011

Rookie Mistakes To Avoid, Edward R. Becker

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I'm Ted Becker from the University of Michigan. My part of today's presentation is to fall on the sword. I say that because my topic is rookie mistakes to avoid. Many of us up here on the panel aren't rookies but I certainly am. I just completed my first semester of teaching transactional drafting so I'm new to the game, and then when it comes to mistakes, oh yes, there's a bunch of them that we can talk about. Because the semester just ended, these missteps are as fresh in my mind as they could possibly be, and I hope …


Foreword, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 2005

Foreword, Theodore J. St. Antoine

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Specialists in any field have a vested interest in their mastery of the subject. Expertise, after all, is their stock in trade. Assaults on the conventional wisdom can be unnerving if not discrediting. In the pages that follow, such an experience awaits all conscientious readers with a labor background who dare to expose themselves to Professor Charles Morris's provocative, iconoclastic, and ultimately persuasive arguments. He insists that a half-century of American labor law thinking has gone astray in failing to recognize the duty of an employer to bargain with a labor union representing less than a majority of the firm's …


Faculty Spotlight, Grace C. Tonner Jan 1996

Faculty Spotlight, Grace C. Tonner

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Professor Grace Tonner talks about her teaching and work.


Clarifying Legal Drafting By Well-Structuring It: An Improved Version Of The Plain Language Game, Layman E. Allen Jan 1982

Clarifying Legal Drafting By Well-Structuring It: An Improved Version Of The Plain Language Game, Layman E. Allen

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In order to be plain, language should be well-structured. This is the theory upon which the PLAIN LANGUAGE Game is based. It provides those who aspire to be legal drafters with practice in constructing well-structured statements - a useful skill for expressing clear legal norms. You have already encountered the underlining of part of the term 'well-structured', 'PLAIN LANGUAGE' and 'norm', and may be wondering about it The underlining of the first two letters of each word of a term indicates that the term is a defined term and that it is being used in its defined sense. Thus, a …


The State Of The Law: A Test Of National Progress, Thomas M. Cooley Dec 1876

The State Of The Law: A Test Of National Progress, Thomas M. Cooley

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“The work to which the student in law first addresses himself is the fixing in his mind of certain principles which are agreed upon, or are supposed to be, and which collectively constitute the body of the law…. The brief remarks that I shall make will be addressed to two points: 1. That the law of the land must in the main be the handiwork of those who administer and practice it, and 2, That the final and most satisfactory evidence of assured national advancement must be found in the state of the law….”


Brief Of T.M. Cooley, Cook And Waldron V. Hillsdale, 1859, Thomas M. Cooley Dec 1858

Brief Of T.M. Cooley, Cook And Waldron V. Hillsdale, 1859, Thomas M. Cooley

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Mr. Cooley writes this Brief as counsel for the Complainants. Cook & Waldron own a grist mill and the Village of Hillsdale feels that the owners "voluntarily" gave leave for a public way to be conducted through the property. Cook & Waldron disagree.