Law Commons^™

Democratic Formalism, A Matter Of Interpretation, Cass R. Sunstein

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No abstract provided.

Why Basic Liberties Are Bilateral, James W. Nickel

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The Right To Farm: Hog-Tied And Nuisance-Bound, Alexander A. Reinert

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Thinking Like A Lawyer Or Acting Like A Judge: A Response To Professor Simon, David Yellen

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Professor William Simon argues that the principal professional responsibility of all lawyers should be to "seek justice."' He defines this as pursuing the client's rights, but not the client's interests, if those interests are incompatible with the "truth." As a concrete example of this approach, Professor Simon states that it would normally be inappropriate for a lawyer to subject a vulnerable, but accurate, witness to cross examination intended to create the impression that the witness' testimony was mistaken.

In my view, Professor Simon's position would not really further "justice" at all. In these brief comments, by focusing on the likely …

The Abiding Relevance Of Federalism To U.S. Foreign Relations, Jack L. Goldsmith, Curtis A. Bradley

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A Behavioral Approach To Law And Economics, Cass R. Sunstein, Christine Jolls, Richard H. Thaler

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Economic analysis of law usually proceeds under the assumptions of neoclassical economics. But empirical evidence gives much reason to doubt these assumptions; people exhibit bounded rationality, bounded self-interest, and bounded willpower. This article

The Problematics Of Moral And Legal Theory, Richard A. Posner

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In these Holmes Lectures, delivered a century after the publication of Oliver Wendell Holmes's great essay The Path of the Law, Judge Posner argues for an essentially Holmesian conception of the proper relations among modern normative moral philosophy ("academic moralism"), morality, and law. Academic moralism, he argues, lacks either the intellectual cogency or the emotional power to change people's beliefs or behavior; the power to do so resides in "moral entrepreneurs," which academic moralists emphatically are not. Academic moralism's lack of cogency disqualifies it to guide judicial decisionmaking even - in fact, especially - in cases involving controversial moral issues, …

Hard Cases, Carl E. Schneider

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Robert Latimer was born in 1953 on a farm on the prairies of Saskatchewan and grew up to own a 1,280-acre farm. In 1980 he married, and that year Tracy, the first of four children, was born. During her birth, Tracy's brain was terribly damaged by lack of oxygen, and severe cerebral palsy ensued. By 1993 Tracy could laugh, smile, and cry, and she could recognize her parents and her siblings. But she could not understand her own name or even simple words like "yes" and "no." She could not swallow well and would so often vomit her parents kept …

The Constricted Meaning Of "Community" In Community Policing, Mary I. Coombs

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Judicial Reform In Brazil, Keith S. Rosenn

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Judicial reform is currently a hotly debated topic in Brazil. The call for reform of the Brazilian judiciary, however, is anything but new. The Brazilian judiciary has been in a state of crisis since colonial days, and despite numerous attempts at reform, it remains in crisis. With the privatization of Brazil's state-owned enterprises, the growth of Mercosur, the urgent need to make Brazilian firms competitive in world markets, the emphasis upon attracting foreign investment, and the opening of Brazil's economy to foreign competition, Brazilian political leadership began to focus upon ways to reform Brazil's malfunctioning judicial system. Unfortunately, the proposed …

Alejandre V. Republic Of Cuba [Cuban Liability For Shooting Down Civil Aircraft], Stephen J. Schnably

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Race Trials, Anthony V. Alfieri

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Reflections On Teaching In Chile, Janet Stearns

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Out Of The Shadow: Marking Intersections In And Between Asian Pacific American Critical Legal Scholarship And Latina/O Critical Legal Theory, Elizabeth M. Iglesias

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Capital Jury And Absolution: The Intersection Of Trial Strategy Remorse And The Death Penalty, Scott E. Sundby

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An Ode To Probable Cause: A Brief Response To Professors Amar And Slobogin, Scott E. Sundby

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Religion, Gender, Sexuality, Race And Class In Coalitional Theory: A Critical And Self-Critical Analysis Of Latcrit Social Justice Agendas, Elizabeth M. Iglesias, Francisco Valdes

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Observations On The Interpretation And Application Of Article 43 Of Unclos With Particular Reference To The Straits Of Malacca And Singapore, Bernard H. Oxman

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Afterword Beyond Sexual Orientation In Queer Legal Theory: Majoritarianism, Multidimensionality, And Responsibility In Social Justice Scholarship Or Legal Scholars As Cultural Warriors, Francisco Valdes

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Domestic Violence In Black And White: Racialized Gender Stereotypes In Gender Violence, Zanita E. Fenton

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Light On A Darkling Plain: Intercircuit Conflicts In The Perspective Of Time And Experience, Arthur D. Hellman

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The time has long passed when the Supreme Court resolved every intercircuit conflict properly brought before it in a petition for certiorari. Is that a problem we should be concerned about? Three decades ago, Congress asked the Federal Judicial Center, the research arm of the federal judiciary, to conduct a study to ascertain “the number and frequency of conflicts among the judicial circuits … that remain unresolved because they are not heard by the Supreme Court.” Congress further requested that the Center determine the extent to which the unresolved conflicts are “intolerable.” The Center asked me to design and conduct …

Why Do Juries Get A Bum Rap: Reflections On The Work Of Valerie Hans, Richard O. Lempert

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The paper by Professor Valerie Hans that I have been asked to comment on examines the widespread expectation that jurors are prepared to hold businesses responsible in tort actions when they would not hold individual actors similarly responsible.1 Two reasons are commonly offered for this expectation. The first is that jurors naturally sympathize with individuals (like themselves) when people sue businesses, either because they identify with the plaintiffs as individuals or because they hold antibusiness attitudes. The second is that because businesses are often wealthy, a "deep pockets" effect exists such that jurors in negligence cases will find for undeserving …

U.S. Notice 98-11 And The Logic Of Subpart F: A Comparative Perspective, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

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In this report, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah argues that the dichotomy between active and passive income that underlies subpart F and Notice 98-11 is obsolete, and should be replaced with an explicit link to source tax rates, as most of our trading partners do in similar legislation.

The (Cloudy) Future Of Class Actions, Edward H. Cooper

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The past, both proximate and remote, is often consulted in attempts to predict the future. Of course extrapolation from past to future is at best an uncertain art. Extrapolation, however, is not the only problem. Lessons from the recent past are distorted by lack of perspective. Lessons from the distant past are distorted by distance. The first step is to choose which of the competing pasts to consult. Selfishly, I choose to consult the recent past, as it continues through the present and on into the near-term future, from the perspective of the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of …

Logic And Elements. (Premises And Conclusions: Symbolic Logic For Legal Analysis)." , Richard D. Friedman

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We may happily agree with Holmes that logic is not the life of the law' and yet contend that logic should play a significant role in legal discourse. Logic cannot demonstrate the truth of premises, and so by itself it cannot demonstrate the merits of a legal argument. Moreover, even given the premises, it may be that a leap of faith, or intuition, has an irreducible role at least in some good legal arguments.2 But at least a sound legal argument will not be an illogical one. An argument will not be persuasive if it appears to violate basic principles …

Make-Believe: The Rules Excluding Evidence Of Character And Liability Insurance (Symposium: Truth And Its Rivals: Evidence Reform And The Goals Of Evidence Law), Samuel R. Gross

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Article IV of the Federal Rules of Evidence includes several rules that prohibit the use of specified types of information as evidence of particular propositions. Subsequent remedial measures are inadmissible to prove negligence (but admissible to show ownership, control, et cetera),' settlement offers are inadmissible to prove liability (but admissible to show bias or prejudice, or for other purposes),2 and so forth. Any exclusion of relevant evidence involves some distortion of reality in the sense that the picture presented to the trier of fact includes less information than the available total. That will be true whether the evidence is kept …

On The Meaning And Impact Of The Physician-Assisted Suicide Cases. (Symposium: Physician-Assisted Suicide: Facing Death After Glucksberg And Quill), Yale Kamisar

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I read every newspaper article I could find on the meaning and impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's June 1997 decisions in Washington v. Glucksberg' and Vacco v. Quill.2 I came away with the impression that some proponents of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) were unable or unwilling publicly to recognize the magnitude of the setback they suffered when the Court handed down its rulings in the PAS cases.

Freeing The Tortious Soul Of Express Warranty Law, James J. White

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I suspect that most American lawyers and law students regard express warranty as neither more nor less than a term in a contract, a term that is subject to conventional contract rules on formation, interpretation, and remedy. Assume, for example, that a buyer sends a purchase order to a seller and the purchase order specifies the delivery of 300 tons of "prime Thomas cold rolled steel." The acknowledgment also describes the goods to be sold as "prime Thomas cold rolled steel." Every American lawyer would agree that there is a contract to deliver such steel and furthermore would conclude that …

The Costs Of Cigarettes: The Economic Case For Ex Post Incentive-Based Regulation, Jon D. Hanson, Kyle D. Logue

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Cigarette smoking causes over 420,000 deaths annually in the United States, roughly twenty percent of all U.S. deaths, making cigarettes the single greatest preventable cause of death in this country. Indeed, tobacco kills more people every year than alcohol, illicit drugs, automobile accidents, violent crime, and AIDS combined. And not only are cigarettes deadly to smokers; they kill nonsmokers as well. According to a recent report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the "sidestream" or "passive" smoke from cigarettes - so-called environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) - is responsible annually for approximately 3000 lung cancer deaths, between 150,000 and 300,000 lower …

The Death Of A Friendly Critic, James J. White

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Our colleague, Andy Watson, died April 2. Andy was one of the handful of preeminent law professor/psychiatrists. In that role he wrote dozens of articles and several important books, including Psychiatry for Lawyers, a widely used text. I do not write to remind us of his scholarly work, of his strength as a clinical and classroom teacher, or of his prominence as a forensic psychiatrist. I write to remind us of his powerful criticism of our teaching. On the occasion of his death, it is right to recognize his influence on the law school curriculum and to consider whether his …