Law Commons^™

The Constitutional Logic Of The Common Law, Douglas E. Edlin

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article uses two concepts from philosophical logic, the transitive property and syllogistic reasoning, to examine the history and theory of the common law. More specifically, the Article uses the transitive property to challenge the claims of sovereignty theorists that parliamentary supremacy is truly the most fundamental historical and theoretical basis of the British constitution. Instead, the transitive property helps show that the history and theory of the common law tradition has long provided a role for independent courts in maintaining the rule of law as a foundational principle of the British constitution. The Article then closely analyzes the reasoning …

The Future Of The Federal Common Law Of Foreign Relations, Ingrid W. Brunk

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The federal common law of foreign relations has been in decline for decades. The field was built in part on the claim that customary international law is federal common law and in part on the claim that federal judges should displace state law when they conclude that it poses difficul- ties for U.S. foreign relations. Today, however, customary international law is generally applied based upon the implied intentions of Congress, rather than its free-standing status as federal common law, and judicial evaluation of foreign policy problems has largely been replaced by reli- ance upon presidential or congressional action, or by …

Codifying Custom, Timothy Meyer

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Codifying decentralized forms of law, such as the common law and customary law, has been a cornerstone of the positivist turn in legal theory since at least the nineteenth century. Commentators laud codification’s purported virtues, including systematizing, centralizing, and clarifying the law. These attributes are thought to increase the general welfare of those subject to legal rules, and therefore to justify and explain codification. The codification literature, however, overlooks codification’s distributive consequences. In so doing, the literature misses the primary motive for codification: to define legal rules in a way that advantages individual codifying institutions, regardless of how codification affects …

The "Common-Law Regime" Of Foreign Sovereign Immunity: The Actual Possession Rule In Admiralty, David J. Bederman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

It has been a long-standing rule in admiralty that in order for a foreign sovereign to assert immunity in U.S. courts, the res that is the object of the maritime claim must be in the actual possession of the foreign state at the time the case is brought. Inasmuch as Samantar recognized the existence of a "common-law regime" that preexisted the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), this Article examines whether the actual possession rule remains in force today. The FSIA codified the actual possession rule in its provisions for the handling of admiralty claims against foreign sovereigns, but this has …

The Immunity Of State Officials Under The Un Convention On Jurisdictional Immunities Of States And Their Property, David P. Stewart

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in Samantar v. Yousuf that claims of immunity by individual foreign officials in U.S. courts will be determined not under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act but instead under the common law, drawing on principles of international law. The 2004 UN Convention on the Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Properties represents the most recent and comprehensive international thinking on the question of jurisdictional immunities of foreign states and their officials in foreign courts. Under the Convention, individual representatives of a state acting in that capacity are entitled to the same immunities as the state itself. …

Samantar And Executive Power, Peter B. Rutledge

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This essay examines Samantar v. Yousuf in the context of broader debate about the relationship between federal common law and executive power. Samantar represents simply the latest effort by the Executive Branch to literally shape the meaning of law through a process referred to in the literature as "executive lawmaking." While traditional accounts of executive lawmaking typically have treated the idea as a singular concept, Samantar demonstrates the need to bifurcate the concept into at least two different categories: acts of executive lawmaking decoupled from pending litigation and acts of executive lawmaking taken expressly in response to litigation. As Samantar …

The Dog That Caught The Car: Observations On The Past, Present, And Future Approaches Of The Office Of The Legal Adviser To Official Acts Immnunities, John B. Bellinger Iii

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Supreme Court's decision in Samantar v. Yousuf vindicated the position of the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser, which had long argued that the immunities of current and former foreign government officials in U.S. courts are defined by common law and customary international law as articulated by the Executive Branch, rather than by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. But the decision will place a burden on the Office of the Legal Adviser, which will now be asked to submit its views on the potential immunity of every foreign government official sued in the United States. The …

The Outer Limits Of Gang Injunctions, Scott E. Atkinson

Vanderbilt Law Review

Almost a decade ago, the California Supreme Court endorsed the use of public nuisance injunctions as a means to control street gangs. Public nuisance injunctions against gangs ("gang injunctions"), which result from civil suits filed by district or city attorneys, prohibit the nuisance conduct within a prescribed geographical area, focusing on the "turf' claimed by the gang. In People ex rel. Gallo v. Acuna, the California Supreme Court upheld an injunction against thirty-eight named members of a San Jose gang in a four square block area where none of the gang members lived. The court described the neighborhood as "an …

Globalization And National Culture: Recent Trends Toward A Liberal Exchange Of Cultural Objects, Kurt G. Siehr

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In discussing trends toward liberal exchange of cultural objects, it must be stressed that the exchange should be a legal exchange. This, however, is not easy to define because legal systems differ with respect to the qualifications of legality of art trade. Since United States v. Schultz, there is less of a disparity between Europe and the United States as to the characterization of illegal excavations as a kind of theft in countries claiming that archaeological finds are state property. Also, with respect to export prohibitions, there is not much disagreement so far: in all countries, foreign export prohibitions are …

Enlisting The U.S. Courts In A New Front, Debra M. Strauss

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The time has come to extend the national approach that has been used successfully to dismantle the infrastructure of hate groups to the international realm against terrorist groups. The foundation of this approach is a private right to a cause of action apart from any military or diplomatic efforts by the government. In this Article, Professor Strauss analyzes case precedents under several federal statutes--the Antiterrorism Act of 1991, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the Torture Victim Protection Act, the Alien Tort Claim Act--as well as state common-law tort claims, including aiding and abetting liability. Professor Strauss …

Defamation Law And Free Speech: Reynolds V. Times Newspapers And The English Media, Andrew T. Kenyon, David F. Partlett, Clive P. Walker

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The common law of defamation cut the balance between speech and reputation decisively in favor of reputation and allowed for the imposition of significant damages against media outlets that defamed. For the last four decades, U.S. media outlets have been insulated against the common law rules by the United States Supreme Court's landmark decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Following Sullivan, Commonwealth countries clung steadfastly to common law rules and are only now beginning to modify the common law rules to provide speech and media protections. Rather than following Sullivan by adopting constitutional protections, however, Commonwealth courts have …

Other Disciplines, Methodologies, And Countries: Studying Courts And Crisis, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

How do governments and their citizens respond to fear and risk in times of crisis? Dr. Lee Epstein and Professor Christina Wells, in papers presented on the final symposium panel focus in particular on the Supreme Court's response to government encroachment on individual liberties during a national emergency. Their work is made particularly timely by three Supreme Court decisions this past term. In this essay, I begin by framing the issue very briefly. I then argue that understanding this issue requires scholars to follow Epstein and Wells by looking to other disciplines, methodologies, and countries.

Haste Makes Waste: Congress And The Common Law In Cyberspace, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law Review

Speed is an asset in computer technology, but not necessarily in law. The new technologies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have inevitably raised new legal questions; all too often, the response to these new legal challenges is a hastily enacted federal statute. If the Internet allows children access to pornography, we enact the Communications Decency Act ("CDA"). Commercial concerns about cyber-authenticity prompt the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act ("E-SIGN"). Are cybersquatters creating domain name problems? We've got a law for that, too. These are just a few of the quick fixes driven by a perceived need …

Birthright Citizenship In The United Kingdom And The United States, Michael Robert W. Houston

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The common law concept of territorial birthright citizenship is the foundation for the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause, which confers citizenship on those born within the United States and "subject" to its "jurisdiction." Likewise territorial underpinnings were the basis for over 375 years of birthright citizenship within the United Kingdom. Contemporary discourse with respect to territorial birthright citizenship, however, has shifted from its common law basis and now focuses on whether citizenship ought to inhere in children born to illegal immigrants. In the United Kingdom, the British Nationality Act of 1981 abandoned territorial birthright citizenship in favor of parentage based citizenship. …

Negotiation And Native Title: Why Common Law Courts Are Not Proper Fora For Determining Native Land Title Issues, Geoffrey R. Schiveley

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The displacement of indigenous populations is an obvious but often-overlooked consequence of worldwide European colonization. Until relatively recently, the rights of these groups have consistently been held to lower standards of protection than those of their colonizing counterparts, partly through the use of doctrines such as terra nullius. While earlier decades established the groundwork for recognition of these rights, in the 1990s native rights issues became of greater importance to both the international community and individual nations. Some of this heightened interest can be attributed to a series of high-profile common law court cases that provided native populations with favorable …

The Road Less Taken: Annulment At The Turn Of The Century, Chris Guthrie, Joanna Grossman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

It is hardly surprising that certain legal institutions--adoption, wills, and guardianship--have lasted through the centuries. Each meets a different, seemingly timeless need: providing parenting for orphans or abandoned children, distributing property at death, and dealing with legal incapacity, respectively. Similarly, divorce, though it appeared somewhat later, took hold and persisted for an obvious reason-the increasing demand for a legally sanctioned way to terminate broken marriages. The endurance of annulment, however, particularly in the face of increasingly liberalized divorce laws, defies easy explanation. The existence of annulment prior to the mid-nineteenth century is easily explained. Until 1857, England was a "divorceless …

International Issues In Common Law Choice Of Law, Harold G. Maier

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In the year 1274, Sir Hugh LaPape, knight, vassal, and retainer of his liege lord, Edward the First of England, stood on a hill outside the city of Florence, Italy, and wept. Four years before, Sir Hugh had set off for the Holy Land at the call of his king, leaving behind him a beautiful palace with tall towers, shining in the morning sun. Now he surveyed the remains of that palace, a pile of rubble, in growing anger. Although a vassal of the English king, Sir Hugh had some years before removed himself from England to Florence, Italy, where …

The Movement Toward Statute-Based Conspiracy Law In The United Kingdom And The United States, Kenneth A. David

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

A single criminal charge of conspiracy, because it simultaneously involves an inchoate as well as a substantive offense, is characterized by a duality that for years has created confusion and uncertainty as to the proper prosecution and punishment for the crime. The author of this Note places responsibility for this confusion primarily on the judges whose rulings have produced a highly incoherent body of common law and secondarily on the complacent legislatures that have allowed judicial interpretation to shape conspiracy law in a haphazard manner.

The Note compares the approaches to conspiracy law taken by the United Kingdom and the …

Structuring The Ethics Of Prosecutorial Trial Practice: Can Prosecutors Do Justice?, Fred C. Zacharias

Vanderbilt Law Review

Codes of professional responsibility take a very different approach to civil and criminal trials. In civil litigation, the codes presume that good outcomes result when lawyers represent clients aggressively. In criminal cases, the codes do not rely as fully on competitive lawyering. They treat prosecutors as advocates, but also as "ministers" having an ethical duty to "do justice."

Although the special prosecutorial duty is worded so vaguely that it obviously requires further explanation, the codes provide remarkably little guidance on its meaning. In effect, code drafters have delegated to prosecutors the task of resolving the special ethical issues prosecutors face …

The Common Law As Cricket, David F. Partlett

Vanderbilt Law Review

Cricket and baseball are the summer national pastimes of England and America. They both involve players, one of whom propels a hard leather ball toward another with the intent of getting that other "out."The hitter tries to avoid getting out and attempts to hit the ball as far as possible. Umpires preside. Despite all these and other common factors, the games are different. Baseball is brash and dusty, and umpires endure frequent abuse; cricket is restrained and village greenish, and umpires rarely suffer abuse. Both games draw from history and culture.Where transplanted the games assume a different guise. In the …

The Impact Of Freedom Of Information Legislation On Criminal Discovery In Comparative Common Law Perspective, Michael Taggart

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article examines the effect of freedom of information legislation on criminal discovery in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. While all of these countries share the common law tradition and have comparable freedom of information legislation, Professor Taggart notes that the impact of that legislation on the law and practice of criminal discovery varies in each country.

The United States courts generally have resisted attempts by criminal defendants to gain access to a wider range of material under the Freedom of Information Act than available by conventional discovery. So far the courts are unwilling to allow that …

Books Received, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In Common Law in Southern Africa, Kutner surveys the judgments that are published in South African Law Reports and the official law reports of other southern African states from 1947 to the present. English language commentaries on the cases and statutes discussed in the text are cited in the notes. A Table of Statutes, Table of Cases, Conflict of Laws Index and Torts Index also are provided.

Lender Liability: A Survey Of Common-Law Theories, Frances E. Freund

Vanderbilt Law Review

Lender liability litigation has increased dramatically over the past several years. The increase in claims is hardly surprising when one considers recent multimillion dollar recoveries.' Such well-publicized verdicts against lenders serve to encourage borrowers to defend even routine collection claims by striking out at the lender.

Most often borrowers bring lender liability suits following commercial loan defaults. These suits are based on a number of common-law theories for liability including: breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty,' and breach of good faith, as well as fraud, duress, interference, and negligence. Some suits also raise statutory claims under the bankruptcy laws, …

Concealing Legislative Reform In The Common-Law Tradition: The Advancements Doctrine And The Uniform Probate Code, Mary L. Fellows

Vanderbilt Law Review

This essay first sets forth the doctrine of advancements and includes a discussion of its suitability for a study of statutory reform and the purpose and origin of the doctrine. The essay then demonstrates how a presumption against finding an advancement that can be rebutted only by a writing showing a contrary intent operates as a practical repeal of advancements. Next, the essay explores the rationales of the drafters of the Uniform Probate Code(UPC) in repealing the advancements doctrine by subterfuge and analyzes the costs of reform by subterfuge. Finally, the essay recommends an alternative approach to reforming the advancements …

Substantial Similarity Between Video Games: An Old Copyright Problem In A New Medium, Steven G. Mcknight

Vanderbilt Law Review

Courts have faced a variety of imaginative arguments advocating that video games not receive copyright protection but unanimously have rejected them. A more difficult copyright issue for courts has been deciding whether one video game illegally has copied another. Of the cases involving illegal video game copying that courts presently have decided, only Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Electric Corp." has found copyright infringement by a video game that was not virtually identical to the original game.

Part II of this Recent Development discusses the requirement in copyright infringement actions that, in proving copying, a defendant's allegedly infringing …

The American Codification Movement, A Study Of Antebellum Legal Reform, Robert W. Gordon

Vanderbilt Law Review

Between 1820 and 1850 American legal commentators became obsessed with whether legislatures should codify, either in whole or in part, the common law of the American states. Indeed, "[a]lmost every law writer after 1825 felt compelled to include his views [on codification] in his works of whatever sort."" The enormous literature that emerged from this period survives today to fascinate modern legal historians, who seem to have developed their own obsession for the "codification" issue. As Lawrence Friedman has said, "The codification movement is one of the set pieces of American legal history." Charles M. Cook's "The American Codification Movement: …

Collateral Estoppel Without Mutuality: Accepting The Bernhard Doctrine, William S. Byassee

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note adopts a more moderate position: the Bernhard doctrine is but a minor alteration of collateral estoppel principles. It has not and will not generate the unfairness and injustice that its critics have predicted. After tracing the development of the principle of collateral estoppel from its origins in early English common law, this Note discusses some suggested justifications for the mutuality requirement and some generally accepted exceptions to its use. It then examines the growth of the Bernhard doctrine and compares how the courts have applied both the mutuality requirement and the Bernhard doctrine. Finally, the Note seeks to …

Federal Rule Of Evidence 803(3) And The Criminal Defendant: The Limits Of The Hillmon Doctrine, Thomas A. Wiseman, Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note has examined the use of the common-law Hillmon doctrine and rule 803(3) in a limited context. Several approaches are available to a court that considers whether to admit a Hillmon statement. A court in a jurisdiction that still applies the common-law hearsay rule may adhere to the status quo. Ample authority exists to permit this approach. Nevertheless, because admission of a Hillmon statement risks certain inherent dangers, a common-law court should avoid a perfunctory application of the exception. Instead, the court must examine carefully each Hillmon statement to ensure that it does not prejudice the defendant's right to …

Case Digest, Journal Staff

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

ADMIRALTY JURISDICTION EXISTS IN CASES STEMMING FROM BOAT COLLISIONS ON NAVIGABLE WATERS REGARDLESS OF THE COMMERCIAL OR NONCOMMERCIAL NATURE OF THE VESSELS INVOLVED--Foremost Insurance Co. v. Richardson, 102 S. Ct. 2654 (1982).

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SHIPOWNER MAY ATTACH CHARACTER'S PROPERTY AS SECURITY FOR BREACH OF A CHARTER CONTAINING A FORUM SELECTION CLAUSE--Polar Shipping, Ltd. v. Oriental Shipping Corp., 680 F.2d 627 (9th Cir. 1982).

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WORKER EMPLOYED ABOARD AN OFFSHORE DRILLING PLATFORM MAY BRING A CLAIM UNDER MARITIME TORT LAW FOR WRONGFUL DISCHARGE--Roberie v. Gulf Oil Corp., No. 820013 (W.D. La.Aug. 4, 1982)

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THE IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION ACT DOES NOT APPLY …

The Uniform Foreign Money-Judgments Recognition Act: A Survey Of The Case Law, Carol C. Honigberg

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Uniform Foreign Money-Judgments Recognition Act's genesis lay in the belief that a state's codification of its rules on the recognition of foreign money-judgments would increase the likelihood that similar judgments rendered by that state would be recognized abroad. The treatment of United States judgments in the courts of foreign nations concerned the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws because United States courts traditionally accord far better treatment to foreign judgments than is accorded United States judgments abroad. The recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, or recognition practice, has long posed special problems because of the vast differences in the various …