Law Commons^™

Foreign Exchange Sales And The Law Of Contracts: A Case For Analogy To The Uniform Commercial Code, Michael L. Manire

Vanderbilt Law Review

The purpose of this Note is not only to benefit lawyers and judges who must confront these problems in litigation, but also to provide participants in the foreign exchange market with both an understanding of the legal significance of their procedures for making foreign exchange contracts and an appreciation of the possible legal consequences of the mistakes that inevitably result from fol-lowing these procedures.

Disclosure And Civil Use Of Immunized Testimony, Elizabeth J. Schwartz

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Recent Development examines the current conflict among the circuits. This study first explores the rationales under-lying use immunity and contrasts them with the guidelines formulated by the Supreme Court for controlling judicial disclosure of grand jury testimony. Second, this Recent Development examines the analyses used by the federal courts in determining whether to release immunized grand jury testimony for civil use's and the effect of disclosure on a witness' claim of fifth amendment privilege.This study submits that in their effort to promote civil discovery,several courts have misconstrued the scope and effect of the disclosure power and have usurped the …

Book Review: Unlikely Heroes By Jack Bass, David B. Filvaroff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Unlikely Heroes is designed for both the lawyer and the general reader. It does not purport to offer careful legal analysis of constitutional doctrine or to measure the Fifth Circuit's actions during this era against any articulated concept of the proper role of the judiciary in a federal system. To the extent that Bass raises any questions about the propriety of the judges' conduct or decisions, he appears to conclude that they were fully justified by the nature of the issues presented and by the demands of the times.Whatever its intended audience, however, the book would have benefited from a …

Municipalities And The Antitrust Laws: Home Rule Authority Is Insufficient To Ensure State Action Immunity, David J. White

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Recent Development first considers the evolution of the Parker doctrine in a variety of contexts-with special attention to the Supreme Court's decision in Lafayette and the Court's rationale in Boulder. After discussing the recent lower federal court decisions that based the availability of the Parker exemption upon the existence of general home rule authority under the respective state's constitution, this Recent Development examines the problems posed by the Boulder decision for cities and states contemplating economic regulation tailored to particular local concerns. This Recent Development then analyzes the competing policy interests in the question of a home rule municipality's …

"Legal History" Or The History Of Law: A Primer On Bringing The Law's Past Into The Present, Stephen B. Presser

Vanderbilt Law Review

The increasing opportunities to teach legal history in law schools and the lamentable decline of positions available to historians in undergraduate institutions have resulted in more historians either teaching in law schools or combining graduate training in history with graduate training in law. As a result, several methodologies or approaches to legal history have emerged. Although legal history has generated a great deal of comment, few have written about how this spate of scholarship and criticism might affect law school teaching. This Article attempts to categorize and to review,therefore, the kinds of insights that American legal history currently offers both …

Punishment And Juvenile Justice: A Conceptual Framework For Assessing Constitutional Rights Of Youthful Offenders, Martin R. Gardner

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article attempts to provide an analytical framework for identifying the punitive aspects of the juvenile justice system. The Article proposes a framework that is extrapolated from Supreme Court cases which define punishment in contexts outside the juvenile area. Several commentators have criticized the Court's definitional efforts, some because of perceived inadequacies in the developed definitions, others because of the belief that the very enterprise of defining constitutional rights in terms of the presence or absence of punishment is misguided . Although many of these criticisms of the Court's record are understandable, the alleged defects are less detrimental to an …

Back Pay In Employment Discrimination Cases, James L. Hughes, David R. Jennings, Charles D. Maguire, Jr., Betsy G. Shain, Jay L. Tobin, Jay F. Whittle, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Special Project examines the back pay decisions and analyzes the problems that have confronted the courts dealing with this remedy for employment discrimination in the context of Title VII and section 1981. Because of the enormity of the issues that have arisen in Stage I of the proceedings, however, and the extensive coverage given those problems by the courts and commentators, the Special Project will deal only with the recovery stage, or Stage II, of the litigation. Consequently, the reader should assume that liability for employment discrimination has already been established in each of the cases discussed below. Before …

Federal Limitations On State And Local Taxation, William R. Anderson

Vanderbilt Law Review

Federal Limitations on State and Local Taxation presents a central question about how usefully and how legitimately courts have dealt with the issues of state taxing powers. The United States Supreme Court has assumed a role as the principal architect of this component of federalism. State legislatures and tax officials have, of course, played roles, but they have always operated under the shadow of judicial doctrine. While Congress has not been wholly inactive, its role has been derivative, interstitial, and hesitant. Perhaps Congress' fact-finding role has been larger than its legislative role.'

Foreword, G. Michael Mccrossin,

Vanderbilt Law Review

One of the primary goals of the American criminal justice system is to protect the civil liberties of accused persons while at the same time ensuring the security of citizens' persons and property. Recently, some people have begun to argue that the pursuit of these dual purposes has resulted in a dangerous imbalance, and that our criminal justice system now focuses far too heavily on the rights of the accused. These people have perceived an alarming upswing in the incidence of violent crime and have attributed that upswing to a breakdown in the legal profession's administration of the criminal law.

The Limits Of Law Enforcement, Hans Zeisel

Vanderbilt Law Review

Society will not be able to solve the crime problem before it has solved the problems of the ghettos. Such an undertaking is a big task, on which society thus far has worked with little diligence.Even if efforts are increased beyond their present level, the task will take a long time. Nevertheless, the question must be ad-dressed, and the statistics point precisely to where the endeavor must begin. Crime typically starts early in life, therefore, radical efforts should be made to reach these crime-prone youths before their life style is fixed. One particular statistic illuminates the problem and suggests a …

How Serious Is Serious Crime?, Albert J. Reiss, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article examines the information systems that are available to the American public. Part H of the Article discusses crime information sources and limitations arising from their excessive dependence upon the same sources of information. Parts III and IV of the Article focus on the information and methods that American society depends upon to determine the amount and seriousness of"serious" crime. These parts of the Article criticize society's present modes of crime assessment by evaluating public perceptions of crime under several standards for determining the amount of harm that results from different criminal acts. In part V, the Article examines …

Youth Crime And Urban Policy: A View From The Inner City, Diana R. Gordon

Vanderbilt Law Review

One does not expect to be mesmerized by a book entitled Youth Crime and Urban Policy: A View from the Inner City. Yet this volume, compiled from the proceedings of a May 1980 conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) proves to be a powerful testament to the plight of the dweller in America's crime-plagued inner-city neighborhoods. Because Robert Woodson has edited the comments of the conference's participants with a light hand, the book gives the reader the power of voices from the street-voices of people who are trying daily to stem the tide of …

The Expert As Educator: A Proposed Approach To The Use Of Battered Woman Syndrome Expert Testimony, Meredith B. Cross

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Recent Development proposes that courts should permit the use of battered woman syndrome expert testimony, but restrict its use to informing juries of the peculiar mental and emotional state of battered women. This role of the expert as educator would serve to dispel a jury's misconceptions about battered women and, at the same time, draw the focus of the testimony away from the implication which troubled the Buhrle court--that the battered woman syndrome represents a new defense to murder.The Advisory Committee explains in a note that rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence suggests the use of expert …

Deterrence, Death, And The Victims Of Crime: A Common Sense Approach, Frank G. Carrington

Vanderbilt Law Review

The concept of deterrence is one of the most important in the formulations of the victim advocate, primarily because of two essential premises that underlie the entire field of victim advocacy.The first, but not necessarily the most important, of these premises concerns the policy that favors assuaging the plight of persons after they have been victimized. This relief can be provided in a number of different ways: compensation to innocent victims from the states; restitution to victims as a condition of granting probation to the criminal; victim counselling; and victim/witness assistance programs.' The second premise of victim advocacy, namely,preventing victimization …

The Decline Of The Rehabilitative Ideal: Penal Policy And Social Idea, Louis A. Jacobs

Vanderbilt Law Review

In his most recent contribution Professor Francis Allen suggests that the rehabilitative ideal can flourish only in a particular kind of society. He observes that today's American society lacks the nourishing characteristics that once fed that ideal; consequently, the ideal has withered. This argument is concisely and precisely constructed in The Decline of the Rehabilitative Ideal, a book derived from the 1979 Starrs Lectures on Jurisprudence at Yale Law School. Rather than describe the extent of the decline, Professor Allen focuses on the nexus raised in the book's subtitle--penal policy and social purpose. As social purpose evolved (perhaps "devolved"is more …

Double Jeopardy And Prosecutorial Appeal Of Sentences: Di Francesco, Bullington, And The Criminal Code Reform Act Of 1981, Ronald P. O'Hanley, Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Recent Development first traces the evolution of the double jeopardy doctrine. The Recent Development then focuses on the recent sentence modification cases as well as the proposed revisions to the Federal Criminal Code. Finally, this Recent Development attempts to develop a coherent double jeopardy rationale and concludes that, under this proposed rationale, unilateral government appeal of sentences is unconstitutional.

Federal Rule Of Evidence 803(3) And The Criminal Defendant: The Limits Of The Hillmon Doctrine, Thomas A. Wiseman, Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note has examined the use of the common-law Hillmon doctrine and rule 803(3) in a limited context. Several approaches are available to a court that considers whether to admit a Hillmon statement. A court in a jurisdiction that still applies the common-law hearsay rule may adhere to the status quo. Ample authority exists to permit this approach. Nevertheless, because admission of a Hillmon statement risks certain inherent dangers, a common-law court should avoid a perfunctory application of the exception. Instead, the court must examine carefully each Hillmon statement to ensure that it does not prejudice the defendant's right to …

The Crime Controversy: Avoiding Realities, David L. Bazelon

Vanderbilt Law Review

Speaking before the nation's police chiefs last fall, President Reagan said, "The frightening reality is that for all the speeches by those of us in Government-for all the surveys, studies, and blue ribbon panels--for all the 14-point programs and the declarations of war on crime--crime has continued its steady, upward climb and our citizens have grown more and more frustrated, frightened,and angry."'I must concur with the President's depressing picture. In the thirty-two years that I have been on the bench, the "war against crime" has been a high national priority. Nevertheless, crime--and the fear of crime--seem worse today than ever …

The Acquisition Of Evidence For Criminal Prosecution: Some Constitutional Premises And Practices In Transition, H. Richard Uviller

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article isolates only two of the many aspects of the Court's labors affecting the acquisition of evidence for criminal prosecution. The first concerns the allocation of primacy among the values that the exclusionary response to the illegal acquisition of evidence serves: a theoretical choice that may carry some notable practical consequences. The second requires are examination of the role of the trial court in supervising the preaccusatory search for evidence in a way that suggests the possible obsolescence of the Supreme Court's ruling credo in the Stewart era.

Criminal Law: The Missing Element In Sentencing Reform, Michael H. Tonry

Vanderbilt Law Review

The thesis of this Article is that the substantive criminal law is the missing element in sentencing reform. If comprehensive sentencing reform strategies are to have lasting effect, legislatures must reintroduce the criminal law to the sentencing process. This step will require a rekindled interest in a moral analysis of the substantive criminal law and the enactment of greatly reduced statutory sentence maximums, along with more conventional institutional changes to structure discretion and increase official accountability.

Objections to American sentencing procedures range from the principled to the practical. Part II of this Article summarizes the basic objections that have influenced …

Colloquy, Mr. Wiseman, Professor Uviller, Ms. Rosen, Professor Zeisel, Professor Reiss, Mr. Washington, Mr/ Carrington, Ms. Collins, Professor Tonry, Mr. Hishta

Vanderbilt Law Review

At present, our system of criminal law administration has a considerable Rube Goldberg quality to it. Once the system decides to imprison a particular defendant--if we except from the generalization the couple of states that recently changed their laws in fundamental respects--the judge naturally asks himself what will happen when this man goes to prison. The answer is that the convicted offender will sit in prison for as long as the parole board wants him to. The judge must next consider whether any constraints exist on the parole board's decisions on when to release people from prison. In a third …

The Andragogical Basis Of Clinical Legal Education, Frank S. Bloch

Vanderbilt Law Review

Clinical legal education offers law students the opportunity to work together with faculty on cases that present the types of problems which law students want to learn how to solve. Andragogical theory holds that adult learners such as law students should be taught through mutual inquiry between teacher and student, through the use of actual experience, and with the recognition that students are ready and oriented to learn about that which they perceive to be relevant to their current social roles and professional goals. The clinical method of law teaching adds an important andragogical component to professional legal education; at …

Warrantless Aerial Surveillance: A Constitutional Analysis, Kurt L. Schmalz

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Recent Development endorses the qualified open view approach, but proposes a new list of considerations to be applied when evaluating an aerial surveillance case. This proposed analysis rejects the open fields doctrine. Instead, courts should apply the Katz test to aerial surveillance. The per se open view approach,however, which holds that no reasonable expectation of privacy can exist in any open area visible from the air, is too narrow to ensure protection of the public's privacy rights. A broader view of the open view approach, which will subject government air surveillance to the warrant requirement in certain circumstances, strikes …

Constitutional Limitations On Governmental Participation In Downtown Development Projects, David M. Lawrence

Vanderbilt Law Review

The purpose of this Article is to investigate the constitutional boundaries that surround the most common forms of governmental participation. Part II of the Article discusses the constitutional limitations on property transactions in which the government either uses its power of eminent domain to condemn land for private downtown development, acquires land for the same purpose through a voluntary sale by the owner of the land, or subsidizes private development by its method of conveying property to the developer. Part III of the Article then discusses the problems that arise when a downtown project includes both public and private facilities, …

Due-On-Sale Clauses: Separating Social Interests From Individual Interests, Joseph Gibson, Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note suggests that courts have failed to articulate properly the relation of the due-on-sale clause to the legal doctrines under which it has been challenged. In particular, courts that have considered the clauses to be restraints on alienation have concentrated on the impact of enforcement or nonenforcement on the borrower, and have ignored almost completely the social interest in the free transferability of land, which has been the traditional rationale for the rule against restraints. Likewise, courts that have considered due-on-sale clauses under equitable principles frequently have failed to articulate whether the inequity arises from an attempt by one …

H.L.A. Hart By Neil Maccormick, Kenneth Henley

Vanderbilt Law Review

English legal positivism began with the clarity of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin, but their clarity sometimes was achieved by sacrificing conceptual subtlety. In 1961 H.L.A. Hart published The Concept of Law" and renewed the positivist tradition with a subtlety that did not sacrifice clarity. It is appropriate, therefore,that Neil MacCormick's study of Hart should begin the monograph series Jurists: Profiles in Legal Theory.'The conceptual separation between law and morals serves as the primary tenet of legal positivism. Although "positive morality"(the moral beliefs prevalent in a particular society) influences the development of law, the law-once formed-exists as a distinct social …

Separating Myth From Reality In Federalism Decisions: A Perspective Of American Federalism--Past And Present, Robert C. Brighton, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note reviews the history of American federalism with particular emphasis on a comparison of the reality of the birth of American federalism with the myth that shrouds that event. The interplay of the several levels of American government in the federal system has been called "cooperative federalism." The Note describes cooperative federalism as a process and criticizes the use of federalism as a rationale for the implementation of policy decisions.' The Note next considers the Supreme Court's current analysis of federalism issues that have arisen when Congress has exercised its powers under the commerce clause and identifies the contradictions …

Limiting The Right To Terminate At Will -Have The Courts Forgotten The Employer?, Charles A. Brake, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note examines the extent to which courts should apply the public policy exception to abrogate the common-law right of an employer to terminate at will. Although some limits must be placed upon employers in order to protect those employees who lack adequate bargaining power, this Note proposes that the courts should strike a balance among the interests of the employer, the employee, and society. This balance can be achieved by limiting the public policy exception to those instances in which an employee is discharged in contravention of a legislatively articulated public policy. This approach would achieve equitable results since …

Business Judgment Dismissal Of Shareholder Derivative Suits By Board Litigation Committees: An Expanded Role For The Courts, David A. Beyer

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Recent Development examines the legal background of the shareholder derivative suit and the business judgment rule and then traces the evolution of the offensive use of the business judgment rule in board of director terminations of stockholder derivative actions. After examining other derivative suit dismissal decisions, the Recent Development analyzes whether Zapata adequately balances the competing interests of the shareholder and the corporate board. Finally, the Recent Development discusses the potential effect of Zapata on future litigation.

Judicial Jurisdiction: From A Contacts To An Interest Analysis, Luther L. Mcdougal L. Mcdougal Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article examines whether the courts should shift their focus to a policy or interest analysis in judicial jurisdiction cases. The Article initially identifies some of the theoretical inadequacies of, and practical difficulties with, the Supreme Court's purposefully availing/minimum contacts approach to jurisdictional problems. The Article then outlines an alternative approach that employs a comprehensive form of interest analysis. After setting forth this proposed framework, the Article proceeds to examine Supreme Court decisions since International Shoe from the standpoint of the outcomes that an interest analysis approach might produce. Finally, the Article appraises these varying results and recommends that the …