Law Commons^™

Privacy And National Politics: Fingerprint And Dna Litigation In Japan And The United States Compared, Dongsheng Zang

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Drawing cases from two related areas of law-fingerprint and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) data-this Article proposes a modified framework, built on the Balkin-Levinson emphasis on national politics: First, national politics understood as partisan rivalry cannot account for what I call doctrinal lock-in in this Article, where I will demonstrate that in different stages of American politics-the Lochner era, the New Deal era, and Civil Rights era-courts across the nation ruled predominantly in favor of public data collectors-state and federal law enforcement in fingerprint cases. From the 1990s, when DNA data became hot targets of law enforcement, the United States Supreme Court …

Circumcision: Immigration, Religion, History, And Constitutional Identity In Germany And The U.S., David Abraham

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A four-year-old Muslim boy was brought to a local Cologne emergency room by his mother, who was concerned about minor bleeding around the site of a circumcision. A District Court there found that circumcision, notwithstanding parental consent or religious motivation, constituted a criminal bodily injury and child abuse. Ultimately, on July 19, 2012 the Bundestag resolved that "Jewish and Muslim religious life be viable in Germany," and in December a bill was passed that legislatively overrode the ruling of the District Court and recognized circumcision as a non-punishable undertaking when undertaken for religious reasons by someone professionally trained. Two years …

Rethinking Merger Efficiencies, Daniel A. Crane

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The two leading merger systems-those of the United States and the European Union-treat the potential benefits and risks of mergers asymmetrically. Both systems require considerably greater proof of efficiencies than they do of potential harms if the efficiencies are to offset concerns over the accumulation or exercise of market power The implicit asymmetry principle has important systemic effects for merger control. It not only stands in the way of some socially desirable mergers but also may indirectly facilitate the clearance of some socially undesirable mergers. Neither system explicitly justifies this asymmetry, and none of the plausible justifications are normatively supportable. …

Decentralizing Family: An Inclusive Proposal For Individual Tax Filing In The United States, Anthony C. Infanti

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The debate in the United States over individual versus joint federal income tax filing is at something of a crossroads. For decades, progressive - and, particularly, feminist - scholars have urged us to abolish the joint return in favor of individual filing. On the rare occasion when scholars have described what such an individual filing system might look like, the focus has been on the ways in which the traditional family must be accommodated in an individual filing system. These descriptions generally do not take into account - let alone remedy - the tax system’s ongoing failure to address the …

Exporting Legal Education: Lessons Learned From Efforts In Transition Countries, Ronald A. Brand

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A convergence of inward and outward-looking processes in US law schools creates both risk and potential reward in the development of legal education. As law faculties engage in the current process of changing the traditional law school curriculum, they should carefully coordinate a desire for internal goals with an understanding of external impact, realizing that this process is likely to affect not just US law schools, but legal education across the globe. Changes in the curriculum at US law schools should be responsive, not only to concerns about the legal marketplace in the United States, but also to the impact …

Constitutional Patriotism, Citizenship And Belonging In America And Germany, David Abraham

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No abstract provided.

The Nondischargeability Of Student Loans In Personal Bankruptcy Proceedings: The Search For A Theory, John A. E. Pottow

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In fiscal year 2002, approximately 5.8 million Americans borrowed $38 billion (USD) in federal student loans. This was more than triple the $11.7 billion borrowed in 1990. As a rule of thumb, tuition has been increasing at roughly double the rate of inflation in recent years. This troubling trend of accelerating tuition, coupled with the fact that real income has stagnated for men and increased only modestly for women over the past two decades, means that more and more students are going to need to turn to borrowed money to finance their degrees absent a radical restructuring of the postsecondary …

Federalism And The Allocation Of Sovereignty Beyond The State In The European Union, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

Any discussion of federalism necessarily runs headlong into concepts of sovereignty, with both terms being subject to Tocqueville's statement that, in discussing federalism, "the human understanding more easily invents new things than new words." Thus, just as systems previously considered to have been "federal" at the dawn of the United States of America were something much different from what was developed for our nation at that time, so is the "federal" system of today's United States different from anything to which we make comparisons.

This article reviews a paper by Professor Peter Tettinger's, and extends his analysis. As Professor Tettinger …

Civilizing The Savages: A Comparison Of Assimilation Laws And Policies In The United States And Australia, Craig J. Trocino

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No abstract provided.

The Challenge Of Asian Law, Whitmore Gray

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Several years ago, when U.S. trade across the Pacific finally surpassed that across the Atlantic, a small group of U.S. lawyers were already responding to the challenge of representing clients in transactions in Asia. While few had had the opportunity to take courses dealing with Asian law during their law school years, many entered the field because of undergraduate language and area studies courses. A few had taught courses dealing with Asia before beginning their law studies.

The American Advantage: The Value Of Inefficient Litigation, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

In a recent article, The German Advantage in Civil Procedure,1 Professor John Langbein claims that the German system of civil litigation is superior to the American; in an earlier article he makes a parallel claim about German criminal procedure.2 Roughly, Professor Langbein argues that by comparison to the German process, American litigation is overly complex, expensive, slow, and unpredictable - in short, inefficient.3 Professor Langbein is not the first and will not be the last to criticize American legal institutions in these terms, but he expresses this criticism particularly well: he is concise and concrete, he describes American practice by …

Corruption In Mexico: Implications For U.S. Foreign Policy, Keith S. Rosenn

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No abstract provided.

Some Non-Religious Views Against Proposed 'Mercy-Killing' Legislation Part Ii, Yale Kamisar

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There have been and there will continue to be compelling circumstances when a doctor or relative or friend will violate The Law On The Books and, more often than not, receive protection from The Law In Action. But this is not to deny that there are other occasions when The Law On The Books operates to stay the hand of all concerned, among them situations where the patient is in fact ( 1 ) presently incurable, ( 2) beyond the aid of any respite which may come along in his life expectancy, suffering ( 3 ) intolerable and ( 4) …

Some Non-Religious Views Against Proposed 'Mercy-Killing' Legislation Part I, Yale Kamisar

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In essence, Williams' specific proposal is that death be authorized for a person in the above situation "by giving the medical practitioner a wide discretion and trusting to his good sense." This, I submit, raises too great a risk of abuse and mistake to warrant a change in the existing law. That a proposal entails risk of mistake is hardly a conclusive reason against it. But neither is it irrelevant. Under any euthanasia program the consequences of mistake, of course, are always fatal. As I shall endeavor to show, the incidence of mistake of one kind or another is likely …

The Teaching Of Practice And Procedure In Law Schools, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

Procedure is merely the means of co-ordinating effort, of harmonizing differences, of offering every one equality of opportunity in offense and defense before the law. Without it there would be confusion, favoritism, and injustice. If the subject were viewed in this fundamental way, and were studied conscientiously as an incident and aid to the development and determination of the merits of controversies, the criticisms now so fiercely directed against it would largely disappear. In its use it is indispensable, in its abuse only does it cause trouble. A professional conscience to curb that abuse, and professional learning and skill to …