Law Commons^™

Random Thoughts By A Distant Collaborator, Wayne R. Lafave

Michigan Law Review

A Tribute to Jerry Israel

The Limits Of Legal Language: Decisionmaking In Capital Cases, Jordan M. Steiker

Michigan Law Review

To make the case for the proposed changes, I will first describe briefly in Parts I and II the structure of pre- and post-Furman capital decisiorurtaking and the weaknesses of those approaches. I then will set forth in Part III the specific rationales for each proposed reform.

The scheme I propose raises a significant constitutional question. Can the death penalty be retained as a punishment if we abandon the pretense of providing meaningful guidance through detailed sentencing instructions? Would the reestablishment of relatively unstructured penalty phase deliberations similar to, but also importantly different from, those characteristic of pre-Furman …

A Tribute To Professor Jerold Israel--My Teacher, My Co-Author, My Good Friend, Paul D. Borman

Michigan Law Review

A Tribute to Jerry Israel

A Tribute To Jerry Israel: A Friend With A Messy Office, Debra Ann Livingston

Michigan Law Review

A Tribute to Jerry Israel

A Peculiar Privilege In Historical Perspective: The Right To Remain Silent, Albert W. Alschuler

Michigan Law Review

Supreme Court decisions have vacillated between two incompatible readings of the Fifth Amendment guarantee that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." The Court sometimes sees this language as affording defendants and suspects a right to remain silent. This interpretation - a view that countless repetitions of the Miranda warnings have impressed upon the public - asserts that government officials have no legitimate claim to testimonial evidence tending to incriminate the person who possesses it. Although officials need not encourage a suspect to remain silent, they must remain at least neutral toward …

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of Books received by Michigan Law Review.

Juror Delinquency In Criminal Trials In America, 1796-1996, Nancy J. King

Michigan Law Review

This article examines two aspects of the jury system that have attracted far less attention from scholars than from the popular press: avoidance of jury duty by some citizens, and misconduct while serving by others. Contemporary reports of juror shortages and jury dodging portray a system in crisis. Coverage of recent high-profile cases suggests that misconduct by jurors who do serve is common. In the trial of Damian Williams and Henry Watson for the beating of Reginald Denny, a juror was kicked off for failing to deliberate; Exxon, Charles Keating, and the man accused of murdering Michael Jordan's father all …

Counter-Revolution In Constitutional Criminal Procedure? Two Audiences, Two Answers, Carol S. Steiker

Michigan Law Review

For the purposes of my argument, I adapt Professor Meir Dan-Cohen's distinction (which he in turn borrowed from Jeremy Bentham) between "conduct" rules and "decision" rules. Bentham and Dan-Cohen make this distinction in the context of substantive criminal law; for their purposes, "conduct" rules are addressed to the general public in order to guide its behavior (for example, "Let no person steal") and "decision" rules are addressed to public officials in order to guide their decisionmaking about the consequences of violating conduct rules (for example, "Let the judge cause whoever is convicted of stealing to be hanged"). But as any …

Children Of A Lesser God: Gdr Lawyers In Post-Socialist Germany, Inga Markovits

Michigan Law Review

In this essay, I want to investigate German vetting policies by looking at one particular subgroup of examinees: GDR lawyers. In Germany, no other former socialist elite has been submitted to so thorough an ideological cleansing process as the legal profession. After reunification, all GDR judges and prosecutors hoping to remain in office had to undergo investigations that by March 1994 had left only 9.2% of their former numbers in permanent positions. Virtually all East German law professors were removed from their university posts. More than 5000 attorneys in Germany's eastern half are currently being examined for former contacts with …

When Discretion Leads To Distortion: Recognizing Pre-Arrest Sentence-Manipulation Claims Under The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Jeffrey L. Fisher

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that sentence manipulation should be a legally viable partial defense - a defense that does not warrant complete exoneration, but does warrant a reduced sentence when the government's investigative techniques place a quantity of drugs before the court that overrepresents the defendant's culpability, or individual blameworthiness. Part I describes the policies and objectives that underlie the Guidelines, but then demonstrates how the rigid application of quantity-based sentencing provisions can lead to sentence manipulation that thwarts these goals, particularly the goal of sentencing according to culpability. Part II describes how courts have responded to sentence manipulation claims. It …

The Chaotic Pseudotext, Paul F. Campos

Michigan Law Review

This article tries to get away from the traditionally epistemological (and instrumental, and normative) focus of the case method. In what follows, I will introduce two interrelated ideas designed to elucidate the problematic nature of contemporary legal interpretation: the concept of law as a chaotic discourse, and the problem of the legal pseudotext. These ideas will be presented and explored while we undertake a close reading of an appellate court opinion; however, the purpose of this reading is not the traditional one of attempting to determine if the case · is "correctly decided." Rather we will consider various questions that …

Directorial Fiduciary Duties In A Tracking Stock Equity Structure: The Need For A Duty Of Fairness, Jeffrey J. Hass

Michigan Law Review

Part I of this article briefly describes the key distinctions between a tracking stock corporation and a conventional corporation. It then touches on the reasons why corporations have adopted tracking stock equity structures. Part II articulates the unique legal challenges presented by a tracking stock equity structure. Part III discusses the disclosure that tracking stock corporations have made with respect to these challenges. Part IV briefly summarizes the fiduciary duties of care and loyalty and explores why these duties are ill-equipped to address these challenges. Part V presents the duty of fairness and discusses the duty's elements in detail. In …

Positivism And The Separation Of Law And Economics, Avery Wiener Katz

Michigan Law Review

The goal of this essay is to explain this problem and to translate the meaning of positivism between legal and economic cultures, in order to show economists and lawyers why much of the debate about the jurisprudential merits of law and economics misses the mark. My thesis is that it is positivism, and the way economic culture treats the positive-normative distinction, that is responsible for much of the gulf between law and economics - but that it is also positivism that makes economics so appealing to so many lawyers and legal scholars. For a positivist approach can be useful to …

The First Amendment Status Of Commercial Speech: Why The Fcc Regulations Implementing The Telephone Consumer Protection Act Of 1991 Are Unconstitutional, Deborah L. Hamilton

Michigan Law Review

This Note considers the constitutionality of the FCC's regulations implementing the no-recorded-message provision of the 1991 TCPA and concludes that they violate the First Amendment because they impermissibly distinguish between commercial and noncommercial speech. Part I explains the structure of the FCC's recorded-message regulations and demonstrates that the regulations explicitly distinguish commercial recorded messages from other recorded messages. Part II examines First Amendment protection for commercial speech in light of three 1993 Supreme Court decisions that restructured commercial speech doctrine by holding that the government can single out commercial speech for regulation only in response to a distinct harm arising …

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A List of Books Received by Michigan Law Review.

Whose Alien Nation?: Two Models Of Constitutional Immigration Law, Hiroshi Motomura

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster

Is There A Principle Of Religious Liberty?, John H. Garvey

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Jesse H. Choper, Securing Religious Liberty: Priniples for Judicial Interpretation of the Religion Clauses and Steven D. Smith, Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom

David Shapiro's Adversary Statement On Federalism, Patrick E. Higginbotham

Michigan Law Review

A Review of David L. Shapiro, Federalism: A Dialogue

Words That Bind: Judicial Review And The Grounds Of Modern Constitutional Theory, John A. Drennan

Michigan Law Review

A Review of John Arthur, Words That Bind: Judicial Review and the Grounds of Modern Constitutional Theory

The Real Ethic Of Death And Dying, Norman L. Cantor

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Peter Singer, Rethinking Life and Death

Why Is This Man A Moderate?, Richard A. Epstein

Michigan Law Review

A Review of William A. Fischel, Regulatory Takings: Law, Economics, and Politics

Searching For Positivism, Philip Soper

Michigan Law Review

A Review of W.J. Waluchow, Inclusive Legal Positivism

All The Company Of Heaven, Milner S. Ball

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Joseph Vining, From Newton's Sleep

Statutory Interpretation And The Idea Of Progress, Daniel A. Farber

Michigan Law Review

A Review of William N. Eskridge, Dynamic Statutory Interpretation

Post Constitutionalism, Lawrence Lessig

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Robert C. Post, Constitutional Domains: Democracy, Community, Management

Progress And Constitutionalism, Robert F. Nagel

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Robin West, Progressive Constitutionalism: Reconstructing the Fourteenth Amendment

Reading The Legal Process, Anthony J. Sebok

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in eh Making and Application of Law

Whose Justice? Which Victims?, Lynne Henderson

Michigan Law Review

A Review of George Fletcher, With Justice for Some: Victim's Rights in Criminal Trials

Gossip And Metaphysics: The Personal Turn In Jurisprudential Writing, Michael Ansaldi

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Neil Duxbury, Patterns of American Jurisprudence and John Henry Schlegel American Legal Realism and Empirical Social Science

Stories About Property, William W. Fisher Iii

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Carol M. Rose, Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory, and Rhetoric of Ownership