Law Commons^™

Gender Bias In The Classroom, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Aids And The Right To Health Care, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Appellate Justice Bureaucracy And Scholarship, William M. Richman, William L. Reynolds

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tort Liability In France For The Act Of Things: A Study Of Judicial Lawmaking, Edward A. Tomlinson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Update On The Legal Chameleon: Florida's Homestead Exemption And Restrictions, Donna Litman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Informed Decision-Making And The Law Of Torts: The Myth Of Justiciable Causation, Neil B. Cohen, Aaron D. Twerski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Copyright Protection Of Fictional Characters In Japan, Kenneth L. Port

Faculty Scholarship

There is a renewed interest in the United States in Japanese Copyright law. Specifically, new attention has been focused on the protection of computer software under the Japanese Copyright Act, but only a cursory attempt has been given in English language literature to the issue of whether fictional characters can be protected using copyright law in Japan independent of the original work. The objective of this Comment is to fill this void. First the Comment presents the fundamental concepts of American copyright law needed as background knowledge to understand the issue. The Comment then explores the existing satiation in Japan …

From The Editor: Who We Are And What We Do, Richard A. Danner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Harmless Constitutional Error, A. Kimberley Dayton

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the increasing role of the Chapman Rule and its effect on the harmless error doctrine and outlines a coherent doctrine of constitutional error responsive to the purposes of the various constitutional protections afforded criminal defendants. Part I evaluates the Court's existing harmless error jurisprudence. Part II proposes a harmless error doctrine that, unlike the Court's approach, responds to constitutional values unrelated to truth determination. The last two parts of the Article address two problems precipitated by the use of outcome-oriented rules to define and remedy constitutional error. Part III discusses when such a rule should be used …

Products Liability Law In Minnesota: Design Defect And Failure To Warn Claims, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

The Minnesota law of products liability underwent significant changes in the 1980s. The courts filled in gaps left open since the Minnesota Supreme Court initially adopted strict liability in McCormack v. Hankscraft Co.' in 1967, but they also raised new issues and left other issues open. This Article analyzes these developments in Minnesota products liability law. The broad focus is on standards in design and warning cases. In the course of the analysis, the Article focuses on the issues that had been left unsettled in Minnesota law in those areas. The Article first addresses the elements of a strict liability …

Introduction Symposium: Can The International Securities Markets Be Regulated, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reforming The Mining Law: Problems And Prospects, John D. Leshy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Are Rifle Shot Transition Rules And Other Ad Hoc Tax Legislation Constitutional?, Lawrence A. Zelenak

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Public Safety Exception To Miranda Careening Through The Lower Courts, Daniel B. Yeager

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Accountable Accountants: Is Third-Party Liability Necessary?, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Should accountants be liable to third parties if they conduct an audit in negligent manner? A half century ago, in Ultramares Corporation v. Touche, Niven & Co., Cardozo argued that they should not, unless their performance could be characterized as fraud. In recent years, courts in a minority of jurisdictions have concluded that Cardozo's argument is no longer compelling and they have found that "foreseeable" third parties could bring a tort action for ordinary negligence against the accountants. In addition to being subject to tort actions, accountants may also be liable under federal and state securities laws.

Suits against …

Corporate Takeovers: Who Wins; Who Loses; Who Should Regulate, John C. Coffee Jr., Joseph A. Grundfest, Roberta Romano, Murray L. Weidenbaum

Faculty Scholarship

On December 3, 1987, during its 11th Annual Policy Conference in Washington, DC, the American Enterprise Institute convened a panel discussion on "Corporate Takeovers and Insider Trading: Who Should Regulate?" The panelists were John C. Coffee, Jr., professor of law at Columbia University; Joseph A. Grundfest, commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission; Roberta Romano, professor of law at Yale Law School; and Murray L. Weidenbaum, Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor and director of the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University. The panel was moderated by Christopher C. DeMuth, president of AEI. The following discussion is drawn …

The First Amendment And The Ideal Of Civic Courage: The Brandeis Opinion In Whitney V. California, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

"[T]he working class and the employing class have nothing in common ....” So began the Preamble to the Constitution of the I.W.W., the Industrial Workers of the World. "Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the World organize as a class, take possession of the earth, and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system." Nicknamed the Wobblies, this group advocated a form of militant unionism built around the ideal of One Big Union embracing all industries. The I.W.W. enjoyed its strongest appeal among the miners, loggers, agricultural laborers, and construction workers of …

Lessons Of The Iran-Contra Affair: Are They Being Taught?, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

The issues I am going to talk about today vary from the very straightforward to the somewhat complicated. One thing ties them together – my dismay at how little the fundamental constitutional issues of the Iran-contra affair seem to have been brought to the surface, either by the hearings, or by the commentary in the press, or even by the schools that led us to this affair in the first place.

I want to talk about three issues which represent the failure of civics education in this country. The three questions are: 1) what is wrong with pursuing secret …

An Astonishing Political Innovation: The Origins Of Judicial Review, Barbara Aronstein Black

Faculty Scholarship

It is a very great honor to be here today participating in the Third Circuit Judicial Conference and in the celebration of our two hundred years of government under the remarkable document that we call the Constitution of the United States. Philadelphia is indeed today the center of the universe and I am delighted to be here.

In addressing the topic assigned to me, "The Origins of Judicial Review," I will take my cue, in fact my text, from Judge Pollak, who, in a letter to me, suggested that I "draw in broad strokes the legal historical landscape in which …

The Role Of The Market Model In Corporate Law Analysis: A Comment On Weiss And White, Merritt B. Fox

Faculty Scholarship

In a recent article, Elliott Weiss and Lawrence J. White sought to establish that seven decisions of the Delaware courts concerning corporation law had little value in predicting the future conduct of courts and corporations under the Delaware Corporations Law. Weiss and White relied, in part, on a statistical analysis of changes in the prices of publicly traded shares in Delaware corporations to show that the seven studied decisions had no statistically significant market impact.

In this Comment, Professor Fox takes issue with the explanation Weiss and White give for their data. Although the absence of an observed market impact …

The Truth About Tax Reform, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 has been widely heralded as the most important tax legislation since the income tax was converted to a tax on the masses during the Second World War. Since his favorite proposal for a constitutional amendment – the one calling for a balanced budget – was not adopted, the 1986 Tax Reform Act clearly will be the major domestic achievement of Ronald Reagan's presidency. This law even produced the new Internal Revenue Code of 1986; no more Internal Revenue Code of 1954, as amended. It took until the very end of 1987 until we were …

The Rule Of Recognition And The Constitution, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is about ultimate standards of law in the United States. Not surprisingly, our federal Constitution figures prominently in any account of our ultimate standards of law, and a discussion of its place is an apt jurisprudential endeavor for the bicentennial of the constitutional convention. Although in passing I offer some comments on constitutional principles, this essay is not about how the Constitution, or indeed other legal materials, should be understood and interpreted. Rather, it attempts to discern the jurisprudential implications of widespread practices involving the Constitution and other standards of law.

Foreword, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

In 1987, I was honored to write the Foreword for a special issue on the National Black Law Journal. The special issue featured papers on race, racism and democracy written by students in a UCLA seminar that I had tailored to facilitate the production of publishable work by students. The state of legal education for African American students at the time was far from idyllic. Indeed, the Foreword was inspired by a host of events that I had witnessed both as a student and as a colleague that underscored the varied and subtle ways that race continued to marginalize students …

Toward A Race-Conscious Pedagogy In Legal Education, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

It is both an honor and a pleasure to write the Foreword for this issue of the National Black Law Journal. This project represents the culmination of a joint effort involving the NBLJ, Dean Susan Westerberg Prager and me. The project grew out of discussions that began in the Spring of 1987 in which we explored various ways that the law school could support the production of publishable student material for the Journal. I initially considered sponsoring interested students in independent research projects; however, a high level of student interest, an obvious overlap between proposed student topics, and my …

Children's Preference In Adjudicated Custody Decisions, Elizabeth S. Scott, N. Dickon Reppucci, Mark Aber

Faculty Scholarship

Historically, courts usually paid little attention to the child's wishes in deciding which parent should have custody upon divorce. Today, statutes in many states direct courts to consider the child's preference, often as one among several factors that guide decisionmaking. With some exceptions, the law gives only general guidance and does not specify under what circumstances and to what extent the child's desire should affect the decision. Little is known about how important this factor is, what variables influence the weight accorded the child's preference, or how courts obtain and evaluate evidence about the child's wishes.

This Article began as …

Impossibility And Related Excuses, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

In the first section I present an e of why reasonable businessmen would choose to excuse performance for some changed circumstances, but not others. In the remainder of the paper I will analyze specific problems that have arisen in the impossibility case law and literature. The explanation forwarded in Section 1 will play a prominent role in much of that discussion. Largely because their paper stimulated my thoughts on the problem, I will contrast my analysis of some of the specific cases to that of Posner and Rosenfield [1977]. I will not, except in passing, critique the case law, the …

A Reply To Michael Goldsmith, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

I am grateful for Professor Michael Goldsmith's response to my discussion of RICO. It is always gratifying to find that one's writings have stimulated thought and debate.

Professor Goldsmith's criticisms of my discussion come in three parts. First, he claims that I have misread the history of RICO's adoption. Second, he objects to my criticisms of its scope. Third, he argues that the statute as now drafted serves prosecutorial purposes that would not be captured by the proposals I make for its replacement. Professor Goldsmith's arguments are not persuasive.

Mental Impairments And The Rehabilitation Act Of 1973, David Allen Larson

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the question of whether an asserted mental disorder should be regarded as a statutory impairment. The article begins by outlining the Rehabilitation Act and by discussing the diagnostic difficulties that exist in the mental health field. It then surveys specific cases arising under the Rehabilitation Act. Selected cases reviewing state statutory language are also examined. The article provides a broad discussion of the questions and concerns that must be considered when formulating a nondiscrimination policy protecting mentally impaired persons. It concludes by suggesting an approach for handling cases alleging discrimination due to a mental impairment.

Unions And Urinalysis, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Faculty Scholarship

Many private employers seem to be busy deciding whether and how to test employees for drug use. Presumably most of these decisions are made by management acting alone. However, in unionized workplaces—one out of five private sector employees are represented by unions—federal labor law prescribes a different method. That method features collective bargaining by unions and management to set the rules, the use of a private third-party neutral to resolve disputes which arise under those rules (arbitration), and relatively little involvement by the government (the National Labor Relations Board, legislatures, and the courts). This system that labor law prescribes for …

Aids And The Law: Setting And Evaluating Threshold Standards For Coercive Public Health Intervention, Eric S. Janus

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines in detail an example of legislation that redefines the scope of permissible public health intervention and provides procedural protections compatible with modern precedent—the Minnesota Health Threat Procedures Act. This Act is an appropriate subject for close study because it is intended to be responsive to the general concerns raised by the commentators: the narrowing redefinition of the scope of coercive public health intervention and the addition of suitable procedural protections. Coercive public health legislation merits close attention because it inevitably invokes a clash of three important values. The purpose of the legislation is the protection of the …