Law Commons^™

Contemplating The Meaning Of "The Rule Of Law", Rodney A. Smolla

Scholarly Articles

Not available.

Questioning The Wisdom Of Patent Protection For Tax Planning, Brant J. Hellwig

Scholarly Articles

The topic of federal patent protection for tax planning strategies has received considerable recent attention, much of it from a tax bar whose overall incredulity concerning the patentability of tax advice has been transformed into anxiety and disgust by the prospect of infringement actions. In their article Patents, Tax Shelters, and the Firm, Dan Burk and Brett McDonnell approach the subject from a broader perspective by employing theory of the firm principles to evaluate the effects of stronger intellectual property protection in the tax planning arena. While conceding that the possible effects are complex and ambiguous, the authors predict that …

Roger Groot, Legal Historian, David K. Millon

Scholarly Articles

A tribute to Professor Roger Groot.

Roger, Lyman P.Q. Johnson

Scholarly Articles

A tribute to Professor Roger Douglas Groot.

Roger Douglas Groot: A Personal Memoir, Ann Maclean Massie

Scholarly Articles

A tribute to Professor Roger Douglas Groot.

A Man Standing High, November 15, 2005, Andrew W. Mcthenia

Scholarly Articles

A tribute to Professor Roger Douglas Groot.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences, Margaret Howard

Scholarly Articles

My purpose is to talk about the 2005 Amendments and how things are going with the new provisions. But where do you start, with a bad law? We could start with the enactment process, but that's old news now. And besides,you've already heard the line: "Some members of Congress could not be bought; for everyone else there was MasterCard." We could talk about the policy choices, and the 2005 Amendments clearly represent a shift in that respect--perhaps in the category of "seismic" or "cataclysmic."

The Expressive Value Of Prosecuting And Punishing Terrorists: Hamdan, The Geneva Conventions, And International Criminal Law, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the military commissions that had been proposed by the Executive to prosecute a small number of detainees captured in the 'war on terror' could not proceed. In response to the Hamdan decision, Congress enacted a new military commission structure in the 2006 Military Commissions Act (MCA), which President Bush signed on October 17, 2006. The MCA establishes military commissions for aliens classified as unlawful enemy combatants. It lists the crimes chargeable by such commissions. The MCA also amends domestic legislation - for example, the War Crimes Act - initially …

(Not) Advising Corporate Officers About Fiduciary Duties, Lyman P.Q. Johnson, Robert V. Ricca

Scholarly Articles

This Article explores the intersection of an important, unresolved corporate law issue and an overlooked professional responsibility issue persistently arising in the corporate milieu. The corporate law question currently unaddressed in Delaware law is whether the fiduciary duties of corporate officers, as agents, are the same as, or different from, the fiduciary duties of corporate directors. A related question is whether, in reviewing officer conduct, courts will apply the business judgment rule in the same broad (and protective) manner in which it is applied to assessing director behavior.

The professional responsibility issue concerns whether, and how well, lawyers are advising …

The Massachusetts Health Plan: Public Insurance For The Poor, Private Insurance For The Wealthy, Self-Insurance For The Rest?, Timothy Stoltzfus Jost

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Shifting Risk Of Ruin To Consumers: The Role Of Tax Law In American Health Policy, Timothy Stoltzfus Jost

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Having The Fiduciary Duty Talk: Model Advice For Corporate Officers (And Other Senior Agents), Lyman P.Q. Johnson

Scholarly Articles

Countless legal materials address the fiduciary duties of corporate directors. These include extensive decisional law, numerous institutes and continuing legal education seminars, several treatises and casebooks, and the well-known Corporate Director's Guidebook, recently released in its fifth edition. By contrast, legal materials on the fiduciary duties of corporate officers - key actors and agents in any company - are quite sparse. Case law is meager and undeveloped, with even such a baseline issue as the applicability of the business judgment rule lacking resolution. Treatises, institutes, and other legal materials frequently lump officer fiduciary duties with those of directors or treat …

Motives For Idealizing The Pragmatic, Lewis H. Larue

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Piercing The Corporate Veil, Financial Responsibility, And The Limits Of Limited Liability, David K. Millon

Scholarly Articles

Veil-piercing is the most heavily litigated issue in corporate law, yet legal doctrine in this area is notoriously incoherent. In this article, I argue that the only way to make sense of veil-piercing is through an accurate understanding of the policy underlying limited liability. Once that is appreciated it then becomes possible to make sense of the appropriate limits on limited liability. Piercing the corporate veil can then serve the useful function of distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate reliance on statutory limited liability.

After surveying efficiency rationales for limited liability and finding them unpersuasive, I propose that the best way to …

Criminalization Of Corporate Law: The Impact On Shareholders And Other Constituents, David K. Millon

Scholarly Articles

None available.

The Trial Judge's Equitable Discretion Following Ebay V. Mercexchange, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

None available.

The Search Interest In Contract, Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Scholarly Articles

Parties often do not negotiate for contract terms. Instead, parties search for the products, terms, and contractual counterparties they desire. The traditional negotiation centered view of contract continues to lead courts to try to construe the meaning of the parties where no meaning was negotiated, and to waste time determining the benefits of bargains that were never struck. Further, while courts have ample tools to validate specifically negotiated contract terms, courts lack the tools to respond to searched-for terms. Although the law and literature have long recognized that there is a disconnect between the legal fictions of negotiation and the …

The American Right-Wing Policy Agenda, Timothy Stoltzfus Jost

Scholarly Articles

Right-wing health policy is alive and well in the United States. Pro-business and libertarian health policy advocacy groups, generously funded by right-wing foundations (and, in some instances, by the health care industry), produce a continuous stream of press releases, policy-statements, books, articles, and symposia, as well as testimony before legislative and administrative bodies. Their positions are taken very seriously by the American media, who make certain that right-wing policy experts are represented in any discussion of current health policy issues.

Exercises In The Regulation Of Hate Speech, Rodney A. Smolla

Scholarly Articles

Not available.

Reviewing Charlotte Ku And Harold Jacobson (Eds.), Democratic Accountability And The Use Of Force In International Law, Russell A. Miller

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Diamonds On The Souls Of Her Shoes: The Kimberly Process And The Morality Exception To Wto Restrictions, Karen E. Woody

Scholarly Articles

This Article analyzes the events predicating the Kimberley Process and examines the validity of the Kimberley Process in relation to international trade obligations. Part I describes the background of conflict diamonds and their role in African wars. The section outlines the need for regulation in the diamond industry and examines how other attempted measures at curbing the illicit diamond trade have fallen short. Part II details the Kimberley Process and its guidelines. This section analyzes the relevant U.S. legislation passed in 2003, the Clean Diamond Trade Act. Part II also suggests that because the Kimberley Process ("KP") is predicated upon …

Birth Of An Institution: Horace Gray And The Lost Law Clerks, Todd C. Peppers

Scholarly Articles

In a vault hidden away in a downtown Boston bank rests a large silver loving cup. The cup was presented to Associate Justice Horace Gray on March 22, 1902 by his law clerks, and engraved on its tarnished surface are the names of the nineteen Harvard Law School graduates who served as Justice Gray’s law clerks. While the details surrounding the presentation of the cup have been lost to history, the gift was likely prompted by the failing health of Justice Gray and his future departure from the Supreme Court. The loving cup is still held by the Gray family, …

The Etiology Of The Occurrence Of En Banc Review In The U.S. Court Of Appeals, Micheal W. Giles, Virginia A. Hettinger, Christopher Zorn, Todd C. Peppers

Scholarly Articles

The U.S. Courts of Appeals, working principally through three-judge panels, constitute important final arbiters of the meaning of the federal constitution, laws, and regulations and, hence, significant policymakers within the federal system. En banc rehearing-reconsideration of the decision of a three-judge panel by the full complement of judges appointed to the circuit-is an institutional device that ensures circuit decisions are in line with the established preferences of the circuit. The use of en banc varies in frequency across circuits and within circuits over time. Drawing on legal, attitudinal, and strategic perspectives of judicial behavior, we develop and test a set …

Researching Legal Ethics, Stephen E. Young

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Symposium On Reexamining The Law Of War, Marshall J. Breger, Marc D. Stern

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

The Revitalization Of Ake: A Capital Defendant’S Right To Expert Assistance, Cara H. Drinan

Scholarly Articles

Under Ake v. Oklahoma, indigent capital defendants are entitled to a wide array of expert assistance at both the conviction and sentencing phases of trial. Historically, the Ake entitlement has been under-utilized for both structural and normative reasons. However, today Ake is in the process of being revitalized. Recent Supreme Court decisions and the revised American Bar Association (ABA) Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases offer the hope that the theoretical entitlement of Ake will be fully realized. Moreover, if that occurs, one of two outcomes is likely to ensue at the state …

Defense Access To A Prosecution Witness’S Psychotherapy Or Counseling Records, Clifford S. Fishman

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Pope John Paul Ii And The Law: Foreword, Elizabeth Kirk

Scholarly Articles

Given John Paul II's significant presence on the world stage, it is appropriate to ask what his impact might be on particular fields of inquiry or professional vocations. As lawyers, then, we might ask: what were John Paul II's thoughts on the nature of law and jurisprudence? What will be his legacy in terms of the civil law? How can we, as civil lawyers, best mine the rich lode of his intellectual legacy? To begin to answer these questions and to suggest a way forward under the guidance of John Paul II, it is fitting that the Notre Dame Journal …

Externship Demographics Redux, J.P. "Sandy" Ogilvy, Robert Seibel

Scholarly Articles

Professors Ogilvy (Catholic University) and Seibel (California Western) report on the results of a national survey of externship programs at American Law Schools and compare many of the data points to previous surveys of externship programs to chart the growth of legal externships in 1) number of schools with externship programs as part of their curriculum, 2) number of discrete courses within programs, and 3) the increasing sophistication and complexity of the pedagogy associated with legal externships. Some of the data discussed include the average number of credits allowed for participation in externships, the average number of hours of fieldwork …

Post-Realist Blues: Formalism, Instrumentalism, And The Hybrid Nature Of Common Law Jurisprudence, Marin Roger Scordato

Scholarly Articles

At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was widely believed that appellate courts determined the outcome of disputed issues of law predominately by the application of pre-existing precedent and time honored legal maxims. The primary work of the common law courts was thought to be this distinctive identification, maintenance, inductive development and case specific deductive application of the body of precedent in its jurisdiction, sometimes known as formalism.

Starting with the influence of the legal realists in the 1920s, a profound shift took place in the dominant conception of the nature of common law jurisprudence. Here, at the beginning …