Law Commons^™

Enough: The Failure Of The Living Will, Angela Fagerlin, Carl E. Schneider

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Enough. The living will has failed, and it is time to say so. We should have known it would fail: A notable but neglected psychological literature always provided arresting reasons to expect the policy of living wills to misfire. Given their alluring potential, perhaps they were worth trying. But a crescendoing empirical literature and persistent clinical disappointments reveal that the rewards of the campaign to promote living wills do not justify its costs. Nor can any degree of tinkering ever make the living will an effective instrument of social policy. As the evidence of failure has mounted, living wills have …

A Positive Right To Protection For Children, Tamar Ezer

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Concepts that are useful in other areas of human rights break down in the context of children. Because children are dependent on adults for their development, they are an anomaly in the liberal legal order, which views negative rights as implying fully rational, autonomous individuals that can exercise free choice. This Article argues for a positive right to protection for children, rooted in dignity, by probing the problematic nature of the positive/negative rights duality and exploring alternate legal approaches to protecting children 's rights in both international and comparative law. The adoption of positive rights for children would help assure …

'A Flame Of Fire': The Fourth Amendment In Perilous Times, John Burkoff

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The important questions we need to ask and to answer in the perilous times in which we live is whether the Fourth Amendment applies in the same fashion not just to run of the mill criminals, but also to terrorists and suspected terrorists, individuals who are committing or who have committed B or who may be poised to commit B acts aimed at the destruction of extremely large numbers of people? Professor Burkoff argues that we can protect ourselves from cataclysmic threats of this sort and still maintain a fair and objective application of Fourth Amendment doctrine that respects our …

The Pervasiveness Of Culture In Conflict, Pat K. Chew

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Law faculty and scholars are increasingly cognizant of the role of culture in dispute resolution. This essay offers a beginning roadmap for exploring the cultural context of conflict. It begins by considering how to assess our own cultural profiles, highlighting some useful social science constructs for this purpose. It then discusses how our interactive perception of others' cultural profiles makes a difference. The essay also explores the tensions between, on one hand, the pervasiveness of culture in conflict and, on the other hand, American legal traditions that appear contrary to the incorporation of culture into dispute resolution processes.

Racism As 'The National Crucial Sin': Theology And Derrick Bell, George H. Taylor

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The Article probes a paradox that lies at the heart of the work of critical race scholar Derrick Bell. Bell claims on the one hand that racism is permanent, and yet on the other he argues that the fight against racism is both necessary and meaningful. Although Bell's thesis of racism's permanence has been criticized for rendering action for racial justice unavailing, the Article advances an understanding of Bell that supports and defends the integrity of his paradox. The Article draws upon the work of Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and Niebuhr's paradox that social action is both necessary and meaningful …

Free Speech And Valuable Speech: Silence, Dante, And The 'Marketplace Of Ideas', James Boyd White

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This Essay is a slightly expanded version of the inaugural Mellinkoff Lecture in Law and Humanities, presented at the UCLA School of Law last April in honor of the memory of Professor David Mellinkoff, the distinguished author of ground-breaking work on the nature of legal language. It addresses four related questions. What is the nature of the kind of speech and expression that realizes most completely the human capacity for finding and expressing meaning? How does our own world of public speech measure up to that standard? How, indeed, does our own talk in the law measure up, especially our …

Teaching Ethics/Doing Justice, Anthony V. Alfieri

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No abstract provided.

Delivery Of Legal Services To Children In The Boston Area, Tamar Ezer

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No abstract provided.

A Law And Social Work Clinical Program For The Elderly And Disabled: Past And Future Challenges, Toby Golick, Janet Lessem

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This Article tells the story of our effort to establish an interdisciplinary law and social work program at Cardozo Bet Tzedek Legal Services (“CBT”), a law clinic at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. The program is predicated on the belief that law and social work collaboration will benefit clients as well as students. The Article is primarily descriptive—telling what we did, why we did it, why we were disappointed with it, and how we changed the program. The Article also attempts to continue a constructive critique, on the assumption that even if something is not broken, it can be …

The Narratives Of Cyberspace Law (Or, Learning From Casablanca), Michael J. Madison

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Cyberspace scholars have wrestled extensively with the question of the "right" metaphorical approach to the Internet, in order to guide legal and policy decisions. Literary theorists have wrestled with the perception that cyberspace undermines conventional ideas about narrative. This Essay suggests that each group could learn from the other. Cyberspace tells a better story than literary scholars believe, and the lawyers should pay more attention to the narrative attributes of cyberspace. To illustrate the argument, the Essay proposes a specific story framework for cyberspace: the film Casablanca.

A Global Convention On Choice Of Court Agreements, Ronald A. Brand

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This article reviews the work of the Special Commission of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, which meet during the first nine days of December 2003 to consider a Draft Text on Choice of Court Agreements. Negotiations originally sought a rather comprehensive convention on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments, with a preliminary draft convention being prepared in October 1999, and further revised at the first part of a Diplomatic Conference in June 2001. When it became clear that some countries, particularly the United States, could not agree to the convention being considered, negotiations were redirected at …

Courts As Forums For Protest, Jules Lobel

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For almost half a century, scholars, judges and politicians have debated two competing models of the judiciary's role in a democratic society. The mainstream model views courts as arbiters of disputes between private individuals asserting particular rights. The reform upsurge of the 1960s and 1970s led many to argue that courts are not merely forums to settle private disputes, but can also be used as instruments of societal change. Academics termed the emerging model the hein"public law" or "institutional reform" model.

The ongoing debate between these two views of the judicial role has obscured a third model of the role …

Where Does Creativity Come From? And Other Stories Of Copyright, Michael J. Madison

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This Commentary on Lydia Pallas Loren, Untangling the Web of Music Copyrights, 53 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 673 (2003), observes that debates over a variety of copyright law issues can be - and in fact, often are - structured in narrative terms, rather than in terms of doctrine, policy, or empirical inquiry. I suggest a series of such narratives, each framed by a theme drawn from a feature film. The Commentary suggests that we should recognize more clearly the role of narrative in intellectual property discourse, and that intellectual property narratives should be examined critically.

Racism's Past And Law's Future, Vivian Grosswald Curran

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Legal scholars, lawmakers and, increasingly, the general public seem to place ever-increasing hope in the potential of law and legal theory, and of enforceable uniform international legal standards. Many appear to believe that identifying and enacting laws and a legal framework that correspond worldwide to human rights will solve the age-old problem of legalized barbarism. The historical propensity of courts, even in democratic states, to legitimate and enable racist policies provides compelling evidence that the current level of faith in law is misplaced.

This Article argues the limitations of law and legal theory, contesting the view that on their own …

A Thirteenth Amendment Framework For Combating Racial Profiling, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

Law enforcement officers’ use of race to single persons out for criminal suspicion (“racial profiling”) is the subject of much scrutiny and debate. This Article provides a new understanding of racial profiling. While scholars have correctly concluded that racial profiling should be considered a violation of the Fourth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, and existing federal statutes, this Article contends that the use of race as a proxy for criminality is also a badge and incident of slavery in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Racial profiling is not only a denial of the right to equal treatment, but …

Tax Protest, A Homosexual, And Frivolity: A Deconstructionist Meditation, Anthony C. Infanti

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In this contribution to a symposium entitled Out of the Closet and Into the Light: The Legal Issues of Sexual Orientation, I recount and then ponder the story of Robert Mueller. Mueller, a gay man, spent more than a decade protesting the discriminatory treatment of gays and lesbians under the Internal Revenue Code. As a result of his tax protest, Mueller was jailed for more than a year, and then was twice pursued by the IRS for taxes and penalties. In pondering Mueller's story, I consider it both as a telling example of the forcible closeting of gay and lesbian …

Foster Care Placement: Reducing The Risk Of Sibling Incest, David J. Herring

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The Westermarck theory maintains that incest avoidance arises from the physical proximity of siblings during a critical period of early childhood. This proximity gives rise to an inhibiting effect on post childhood sexual interest. Two recent studies of sibling relationships have verified and refined the Westermarck theory, indicating that the critical period extends through the first four years of childhood.

The theory and the studies have implications for child welfare laws, policies and practices surrounding the placement of siblings in foster care. Namely, the findings provide powerful reasons for placing siblings together during the critical period in order to minimize …

When Equality Leaves Everyone Worse Off: The Problem Of Leveling Down In Equality Law, Deborah Brake

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This Article addresses the problem of leveling down as a response to discrimination. Existing case law and legal scholarship generally assume that inequality may be remedied in one of two ways: improving the lot of the disfavored group to match that of the most favored group, or worsening the treatment of the favored group until they fare as badly as everyone else. The term "leveling down" refers to the latter response. This Article contends that courts and commentators have overstated the flexibility of equality rights in accepting leveling down as a response to inequality, and proposes a new framework that …

Color/Identity/Justice: Chicano Trials (Book Review), Anthony V. Alfieri

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No abstract provided.

Virtual Worlds, Real Rules, Caroline Bradley, A. Michael Froomkin

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No abstract provided.

Microfinance And Financial Development, Michael S. Barr

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Close to three billion people-half of the world's population-live on less than two dollars a day.' Within these poor communities, one child in five will not live to see his or her fifth birthday. To boost international development, the United Nations (UN) announced the Millennium Development Goals, aimed at eradicating poverty by 2015.? A number of countries responded at the International Conference for Financing International Development in Monterrey, Mexico, by creating action plans to begin to implement the Millennium Development Goals.4 Yet the Millennium Development Goals will prove difficult to achieve.1

Banking The Poor, Michael S. Barr

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Low-income households often lack access to banking accounts and face high costs for transacting basic financial services through check cashers and other alternative financial service providers. These families find it more difficult to save and plan financially for the future. Living paycheck to paycheck leaves them vulnerable to medical or job emergencies that may endanger their financial stability, and lack of longer-term savings undermines their ability to improve skills, purchase a home, or send their children to college. Additionally, high cost financial services and inadequate access to bank accounts may undermine widely shared societal goals of reducing poverty, moving families …

Mercy Lawyers, Anthony V. Alfieri

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No abstract provided.