Law Commons^™

Table Of Contents - Volume 55, Number 1, Winter 2017

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Insuring Bias: Does Evidence Of Common Insurance Demonstrate Relevant Expert Witness Bias In Medical Negligence Litigation?, Marc D. Ginsberg

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Patients Battle The Fda, Robert D. Clark Jr.

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sb-277 Calls The Shots: How California Can Mend The Divide Between Proponents And Opponents Of Mandatory Vaccination Laws, Jennifer Yeung

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Teaching The Art And Craft Of Drafting Public Law: Statutes, Rules, And More, J. Lyn Entrikin, Richard K. Neumann Jr.

Duquesne Law Review

For centuries, lawyers have been notorious for long-winded writing filled with legalese, hyper-technical expression, and convoluted sentence structure. Legal writing in memos and briefs has been characterized as wordy, unclear, pompous, and just plain dull. Legal drafting, defined as the specialized skill of creating legal rules, is even more fraught with problems. In particular, no standardized, consistently used methodology exists in the United States for drafting federal and state statutes, agency regulations, and court rules.

In 1954, the late Professor Reed Dickerson observed, "It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of knowing how to prepare an adequate legal instrument. …

Experiential Learning And Assessment In The Era Of Donald Trump, Jamie R. Abrams

Duquesne Law Review

Law teaching is turning a critical corner with the implementation of new ABA accreditation standards requiring greater skills development, experiential learning, and student assessment. Years of debate and discourse preceded the adoption of these ABA Standards, followed by a surge in programming, conferencing, and listserv activity to prepare to implement these standards effectively. Missing from the dialogue about effective implementation of standards has been thoughtful consideration of how implementing these requirements will intersect with the challenges, realities, opportunities, and complexities of political divisiveness and polarization so prevalent in society and university campuses today.

Law schools are notably implementing these pedagogical …

Writing The Law: Developing The 'Citizen Lawyer' Identity Through Legislative, Statutory, And Rule Drafting Courses, Ann L. Schiavone

Duquesne Law Review

At the time of the American Founding, Thomas Jefferson, among others, viewed lawyers as the class of citizens most suited to lead the American institutions of government, as well as preserve and protect them. Jefferson valued the ideal of the "Citizen Lawyer" who would have a broad liberal education, experiential learning, and be capable of using knowledge of the law to promote the public good.

In more recent years, American law schools have been criticized for failing to achieve many of these goals first envisioned by Jefferson. Particularly, law schools have often failed to promote strong public service identities in …

Teaching Public Policy Drafting In Law School: One Professor's Approach, Lisa A. Rich

Duquesne Law Review

This article provides an overview of the Drafting for Public Policy course offered at the Texas A&M University School of Law. The article addresses the theoretical and pedagogical underpinnings of the course, including how such a course easily encompasses the teaching of cultural context and awareness, as well as professional identity, and encourages students to engage deeply in the policymaking process. It also explores the continued relevance of the work of Harold D. Lasswell, as well as that of Myres McDougal and Anthony Kronman. These works, from 1943 and 1993 respectively, resonate now because they called on law schools to …

Capital Lawyering & Legislative Clinic, Rex D. Frazier

Duquesne Law Review

This article outlines an approach for teaching law students about advocacy beyond the judicial branch, with particular emphasis on legislative advocacy. Given the long and well-documented shift away from the judicial branch as the primary source of original public law, it is critical to teach law students that legislative advocacy is more than just an "alternative"o r "non-traditional" legal career option and, instead, is one which regularly involves "real lawyering." Just as law students learn practical trial skills through moot court, shouldn't they learn practical legislative advocacy skills through simulated legislative hearings? Further, can law students move beyond traditional approaches …

Adjusting The Bright-Line Age Of Accountability Within The Criminal Justice System: Raising The Age Of Majority To Age 21 Based On The Conclusions Of Scientific Studies Regarding Neurological Development And Culpability Of Young-Adult Offenders, Carly Loomis-Gustafson

Duquesne Law Review

The criminal justice system determines a criminal actor's liability based primarily on the age of the actor at the time of the offense, adhering to a rule instituted by arbitrary designation of adulthood at the age of eighteen. Solely, this line determines the degree of treatment a criminal defendant will receive within the system, with more punitive measures being reserved for adult offenders and greater rehabilitative efforts made for juvenile offenders. Despite the many concessions made within the criminal system, this rule is concrete and rarely questioned.

However, studies of neurological development show that the part of the brain directly …

Don't Go Near The Water: Following The Fate Of The Clean Water Rule, Elizabeth R. Mylin

Duquesne Law Review

On August 28, 2015, the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers released their hotly debated Clean Water Rule (the Rule) redefining what are federally protected jurisdictional "waters of the United States." The Rule clarifies, and attempts to resolve, years of different interpretation and confusing rulings by the Supreme Court on which waterways are under the jurisdiction of the federal government and therefore subject to regulations under the Clean Water Act. This article addresses which waters are explicitly covered under the Rule and how opponents of this definition are distorting the plain language of the Rule. …

The "Charitable" Privilege: Evaluating The Status Of Property Tax Exemptions For Institutions Of Purely Public Charity In Pennsylvania, Rebecca L. Traylor

Duquesne Law Review

Pennsylvania has historically exempted institutions of purely public charity from paying property taxes, though that practice is currently under fire from critics who argue many charities no longer warrant this exemption. Adding to this tension is a struggle between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and Pennsylvania Supreme Court over who has the power to define "institutions of purely public charity, " which has culminated in the introduction of Senate Bill 4, a proposed constitutional amendment which purports to give that power solely to the legislature. This article explores the evolution of institutions of purely public charity in Pennsylvania and explores the …

Fifth Colonial Frontier Legal Writing Conference Drafting Statutes And Rules: Pedagogy, Practice, And Politics, Jan M. Levine

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents - Volume 55, Number 2, Summer 2017

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Law And Economics Critique Of The Law Review System, Timothy T. Lau

Duquesne Law Review

The law review system prizes placement of articles in highlyranked journals, and the optimum method to ensure the best placement, which many scholars have intuited, is a saturation submission strategy of submitting articles to as many journals as possible. However, there has neither been an explanation as to what incentivizes this submission strategy nor any analysis as to what happens to scholars who cannot afford this strategy. This article uses a law and economics approach to study the incentive structures of the law review system, and identifies two features of the system that encourage saturation submission and punishes the poorly-resourced: …

Mountain Or Molehill?, Steven Baicker-Mckee

Duquesne Law Review

The 2015 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were the latest maneuver by the conservative Supreme Court to protect big corporations, and will result in a meaningful restriction of access to justice for individuals and those with limited means. Or, perhaps, they were nothing more than minor language tinkering that leaves judges free to continue their passive bystander approach to case management-tinkering that does little to curb the abusive discovery that leads defendants to make substantial settlement payments to resolve meritless cases simply to avoid exploding litigation costs. Stakeholders reading the same text and the same Advisory Committee …