Law Commons^™

The Department Of Health And Human Services Vs. Attorneys: Will The Federal Courts Tame An Agency Run Amuck, Anne M. Rife

Anne M Rife

The Department of Health and Human Services vs. Attorneys – Can and Will the Federal Courts Tame an Agency Run Amuck? ABSTRACT Medicare has been a system destined for financial trouble arguably since its creation in 1965. For years, Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services (“DHHS”) have passed legislation, regulations, and implemented procedures to try to save it. But, when DHHS decided to protect Medicare by suing attorneys, it took its role too far and placed attorneys in an ethical and procedural maelstrom. In Haro v. Sebelius, the United States District Court of Arizona recently addressed DHHS’s …

Rethinking Regulation And Innovation In The U.S. Legal Services Market, Ray W. Campbell

Ray W Campbell

For decades, academics have argued that the US system for regulating the practice of law inhibits innovation. Despite that academic consensus, we live in an age of unparalleled innovation in the way legal services are provided to clients in the United States. What gives? How can we live in a regulatory environment that prevents innovation, and have such an abundance of it? Where is this innovation coming from, and from whence might more innovation come? The answers are neither simple nor obvious. Understanding this changing landscape requires a close look both at how innovations take root and at the US …

Law Firm Ethics In The Shadow Of Corporate Social Responsibility, Christopher J. Whelan

Christopher J Whelan

Corporate clients, and in particular global corporations, are gaining influence and control of law firm practices in ways that would have been unthinkable in the past. Through various mechanisms, such as ‘Outside Counsel Guidelines,’ ‘Codes of Practice’ and the like, corporate clients set standards which lawyers are expected to follow. We have examined over 20 sets of Guidelines and conducted over 20 interviews with outside, in-house and general counsel.

The topics incorporated in the guidelines vary to a great extent. However, while some clearly protect the direct and immediate interests of the client – provisions relating to billing and conflicts …

The Duty To Advise The Lorax: Environmental Advocacy And The Risk Of Reform, Keith Rizzardi

Keith Rizzardi

Lawyers have an ethical duty to advise their clients on moral, economic, social and political matters. When applied to the changing field of environmental law, this abstract notion becomes provocative. Lawyers should advise their environmental advocacy clients of the possibility that their efforts to apply statutes or rules might initially succeed, but subsequent legislative reactions might defund, reform or repeal the laws the client’s case relied upon. As a client’s sophistication decreases, or as the risk of adverse reactions to the client’s environmental advocacy increases, the lawyer’s duty to advise the client of these risks can shift from discretionary to …

Justice John Marshall Harlan I, Richard Maloy

Richard Maloy

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Regulation And Innovation In The U.S. Legal Services Market, Ray W. Campbell

Ray W Campbell

For decades, academics have argued that the US system for regulating the practice of law inhibits innovation. Despite that academic consensus, we live in an age of unparalleled innovation in the way legal services are provided to clients in the United States. What gives? How can we live in a regulatory environment that prevents innovation, and have such an abundance of it? Where is this innovation coming from, and from whence might more innovation come? The answers are neither simple nor obvious. Understanding this changing landscape requires a close look both at how innovations take root and at the US …

Where You Stand Depends On Where You Sit: Bureaucratic Incorporation Of Immigrants In Federal Workplace Agencies, Ming H. Chen

Ming H Chen

Abstract. This article integrates legal scholarship on immigrant workers with social science theory about the role of bureaucracies in the construction of rights. More specifically, it contends that immigrants’ rights can be protected when workplace agencies integrate immigrants into their law enforcement activities, in accordance with their professional ethos and without regard to personal politics. Building on the concept of bureaucratic incorporation, I argue that regulatory agencies will resist contractions of workers’ rights when their staff’s commitments as civil servants and lawyers clash with judicial interpretations of immigrants’ rights. The implication is that strongly pro-immigrant politics are not necessary for …

What We Can Learn About The Art Of Persuasive From Candidate Abraham Lincoln: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Three Speeches That Propelled Lincoln Into The Presidency, Michael W. Loudenslager

Michael W. Loudenslager

Abraham Lincoln is renowned as an impressive orator and writer, and historians have long studied his speeches and writings. However, commentators largely have not focused upon the persuasive techniques utilized by Lincoln in his speeches. Lincoln was an experienced litigator, and over the course of his legal career, he tried a voluminous number of cases, was involved in several appeals before the United States Supreme Court, and argued numerous times before the Illinois Supreme Court. These experiences helped Lincoln cultivate various manners of persuading judges and juries. Similarly, one major goal of Lincoln’s speeches, as with any politician, was to …

How Legislative Bans On Foreign And International Law Obstruct The Practice And Regulation Of American Lawyers, David Nersessian

David Nersessian

Thirty-two state legislatures have introduced (and five have enacted) “blocking” initiatives that prohibit foreign or international law in state judicial decisions. Some states, such as Oklahoma, extend this ban to religious tenets, notably Sharia law. Scholarly discourse to date has focused principally upon how such legislation discriminates against minority religious groups. The academic community has yet to consider the serious collateral (and apparently unintended) impact of such laws on American lawyers, which is the subject of this article.

Blocking laws make it all but impossible for practicing lawyers to fulfill their ethical obligations in legal matters abroad, which forces them …

I Didn’T Go To Law School To Become A Salesperson – The Development Of Marketing In Law Firms, Silvia Hodges

Silvia Hodges

The legal profession has undergone greater transformations during the past few decades than in the last few centuries. Deregulation and liberalization, increasing consumer expectations, new information technology, as well as a growing global marketplace have resulted in a significantly changed, increasingly competitive marketplace. Services that were once considered highly specialized are being treated today more and more like commodities. Most lawyers no longer have the luxury of waiting for business to come to them. ‘Technical’ competence alone is insufficient or not a guarantee of success in winning new business or keeping existing clients.

There is general recognition in business and …

Rodrigo's Riposte: The Mismatch Theory Of Law School Admissions, Richard Delgado

Richard Delgado

The chronicle proceeds as a dialogue between the fictional alter ego, Rodrigo Crenshaw, and an older professor. After meeting in Rodrigo’s city, the two friends, joined later by “Giannina,” go out to dinner. Rodrigo, who is on his law school’s admissions committee, has been thinking about affirmative action. Prompted by his conservative colleague “Laz,” Rodrigo has formulated a several-pronged attack on Sander’s premise that “stairstep” admissions (and, later, law firm hiring) just hurts the cause of black lawyers. The professor presses Rodrigo to defend his views, and the arrival of Giannina requires him to articulate them even more. You will …

A Way Forward: Transparency At American Law Schools, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch

Kyle P McEntee

Law school has long been thought of as an investment in human capital inherently worth consuming. This is a dated view. Today, entering the legal profession through law school requires an increasingly significant financial investment. Yet very little information about the value of a legal education is available for prospective law students. In fact, much of the information tends to mislead rather than inform aspiring lawyers.

This Article surveys the available information with respect to one important segment of the value analysis: post-graduation employment outcomes. It then proposes a new standard for the presentation of post-graduation outcomes, "The LST Proposal." …

Team-Based Learning In Law, Margaret Sova Mccabe, Sophie Sparrow

Margaret Sova McCabe

Used for over thirty years in a wide variety of fields, Team-Based Learning is a powerful teaching strategy that improves student learning. Used effectively, it enables students to actively engage in applying legal concepts in every class -- without sacrificing coverage. Because this teaching strategy has been used in classes with over 200 students, it also provides an efficient and affordable way to provide significant learning. Based on the principles of instructional design, Team-Based Learning has built-in student accountability, promotes independent student preparation, and fosters professional skills. This article provides an overview of Team-Based Learning, reasons to adopt this teaching …

Competing Conceptions Of Legal Objectivity: An Ignored Publicity Versus A Surprisingly Unhelpful Naturalism, Kenneth K. Ching

Kenneth K Ching

Law’s legitimacy depends on law’s objectivity. But before we can ask whether law is objective, we need to define legal objectivity. This article argues for a reason-based conception of legal objectivity that is probative of law’s legitimacy.

Judge Richard Posner and Dr. Brian Leiter claim that legal objectivity cannot be reason-based. They say legal objectivity should be based on empirical science. They argue law should be naturalistic. This article argues that naturalism is the wrong approach to legal objectivity for at least four reasons: (1) the lack of good reason to privilege scientific epistemology over a reason-based epistemology, (2) naturalism’s …

The Corporate Gatekeeper In Ethical Perspective, Christopher T. Hines

Christopher T Hines

The fallout from the financial crisis continues to inform the development of corporate and securities law, and the new regulatory landscape for economic activity within the United States is beginning to take form. This evolutionary process, however, has been anything but stable or certain. As might be expected, in concert with such momentous change in law and policy, recriminations for and associated investigations of past activity continue to affect competent regulators as well as market participants. Nevertheless, while many of the underlying causes of the financial crisis are now better understood by both policy makers and scholars, the question remains—given …

When The Emperor Has No Clothes Iii: Personnel Policies And Conflicts Of Interest In Prosecutors’ Offices, Carrie Leonetti

Carrie Leonetti

This Article examines and evaluates an alternate cause of overcharging, one that has not received much attention from courts or in the scholarly literature: the extent to which internal personnel policies in prosecutors’ offices create incentives to overcharge. The number and seriousness of convictions and the amount of punishment are the basic standards by which the success of prosecutors is measured. In order to curb overcharging and other forms of prosecutorial misconduct, courts should disqualify prosecutors whose offices explicitly or implicitly determine their job status, compensation, or advancement on the basis of their conviction or sentencing record on the ground …

When The Emperor Has No Clothes Iii: Personnel Policies And Conflicts Of Interest In Prosecutors’ Offices, Carrie Leonetti

Carrie Leonetti

This Article examines and evaluates an alternate cause of overcharging, one that has not received much attention from courts or in the scholarly literature: the extent to which internal personnel policies in prosecutors’ offices create incentives to overcharge. The number and seriousness of convictions and the amount of punishment are the basic standards by which the success of prosecutors is measured. In order to curb overcharging and other forms of prosecutorial misconduct, courts should disqualify prosecutors whose offices explicitly or implicitly determine their job status, compensation, or advancement on the basis of their conviction or sentencing record on the ground …

When The Emperor Has No Clothes Iii: Personnel Policies And Conflicts Of Interest In Prosecutors’ Offices, Carrie Leonetti

Carrie Leonetti

This Article examines and evaluates an alternate cause of overcharging, one that has not received much attention from courts or in the scholarly literature: the extent to which internal personnel policies in prosecutors’ offices create incentives to overcharge. The number and seriousness of convictions and the amount of punishment are the basic standards by which the success of prosecutors is measured. In order to curb overcharging and other forms of prosecutorial misconduct, courts should disqualify prosecutors whose offices explicitly or implicitly determine their job status, compensation, or advancement on the basis of their conviction or sentencing record on the ground …

When The Emperor Has No Clothes Iii: Personnel Policies And Conflicts Of Interest In Prosecutors’ Offices, Carrie Leonetti

Carrie Leonetti

This Article examines and evaluates an alternate cause of overcharging, one that has not received much attention from courts or in the scholarly literature: the extent to which internal personnel policies in prosecutors’ offices create incentives to overcharge. The number and seriousness of convictions and the amount of punishment are the basic standards by which the success of prosecutors is measured. In order to curb overcharging and other forms of prosecutorial misconduct, courts should disqualify prosecutors whose offices explicitly or implicitly determine their job status, compensation, or advancement on the basis of their conviction or sentencing record on the ground …

Sea Captains And Philosopher Kings: Melville's Billy Budd And Plato's Republic, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

This article shows how Melville’s Billy Budd, rightly one of law and literature’s most widely studied canonical texts, answers Plato’s challenge in Book X of the Republic: Show how “poets” create better citizens, especially better rulers, or banish them from the commonwealth of reasoned law. Captain Vere is a flawed but instructive version of the Republic’s philosopher-king, even as his story is precisely the sort of “poetry” that Plato should willingly allow, by his own republican principles, into the ideal polity. Not surprisingly, the novella shows how law’s agents must be wise, even as their law must be philosophical, if …

When The Emperor Has No Clothes Iii: Personnel Policies And Conflicts Of Interest In American Prosecutors’ Offices, Carrie Leonetti

Carrie Leonetti

This Article examines and evaluates an alternate cause of overcharging in the United States, one that has not received much attention from courts or in the scholarly comparative criminal-procedure literature: the extent to which internal personnel policies in American prosecutors’ offices create incentives to overcharge that do not exist in their counterparts overseas. The number and seriousness of convictions and the amount of punishment are the basic standards by which the success of American prosecutors is measured. In order to curb overcharging and other forms of prosecutorial misconduct in the United States, courts should disqualify prosecutors whose offices explicitly or …

When The Emperor Has No Clothes Iii: Personnel Policies And Conflicts Of Interest In American Prosecutors’ Offices, Carrie Leonetti

Carrie Leonetti

This Article examines and evaluates an alternate cause of overcharging in the United States, one that has not received much attention from courts or in the scholarly comparative criminal-procedure literature: the extent to which internal personnel policies in American prosecutors’ offices create incentives to overcharge that do not exist in their counterparts overseas. The number and seriousness of convictions and the amount of punishment are the basic standards by which the success of American prosecutors is measured. In order to curb overcharging and other forms of prosecutorial misconduct in the United States, courts should disqualify prosecutors whose offices explicitly or …

When The Emperor Has No Clothes Iii: Personnel Policies And Conflicts Of Interest In Prosecutors’ Offices, Carrie Leonetti

Carrie Leonetti

This Article examines and evaluates an alternate cause of overcharging, one that has not received much attention from courts or in the scholarly literature: the extent to which internal personnel policies in prosecutors’ offices create incentives to overcharge. The number and seriousness of convictions and the amount of punishment are the basic standards by which the success of prosecutors is measured. In order to curb overcharging and other forms of prosecutorial misconduct, courts should disqualify prosecutors whose offices explicitly or implicitly determine their job status, compensation, or advancement on the basis of their conviction or sentencing record on the ground …

When The Emperor Has No Clothes Iii: Personnel Policies And Conflicts Of Interest In Prosecutors’ Offices, Carrie Leonetti

Carrie Leonetti

This Article examines and evaluates an alternate cause of overcharging in the United States, one that has not received much attention from courts or in the scholarly comparative criminal-procedure literature: the extent to which internal personnel policies in American prosecutors’ offices create incentives to overcharge that do not exist in their counterparts overseas. The number and seriousness of convictions and the amount of punishment are the basic standards by which the success of American prosecutors is measured. In order to curb overcharging and other forms of prosecutorial misconduct in the United States, courts should disqualify prosecutors whose offices explicitly or …

To Testify Or Not To Testify: The Dilemma Facing Children With Multiple Cases Before The Same Judge In Delinquency Court., Katherine I. Puzone

Katherine I. Puzone

In Juvenile Court, children often have more than one case pending, especially children living in group foster homes and those at alternative schools. In many jurisdictions, all of a child’s cases are assigned to the same judge. If the child is arrested at a later time, the new case is also assigned to the same judge. That means that if a child exercises her right to go to trial in each case, the same judge will hear every case. If they are set for trial on the same day, and they often are, the judge will hear each case in …

University Of Baltimore Symposium Report: Debut Of “The Matthew Fogg Symposia On The Vitality Of Stare Decisis In America”, Zena D. Crenshaw-Logal

Zena Denise Crenshaw-Logal

On the first of each two day symposium of the Fogg symposia, lawyers representing NGOs in the civil rights, judicial reform, and whistleblower advocacy fields are to share relevant work of featured legal scholars in lay terms; relate the underlying principles to real life cases; and propose appropriate reform efforts. Four (4) of the scholars spend the next day relating their featured articles to views on the vitality of stare decisis. Specifically, the combined panels of public interest attorneys and law professors consider whether compliance with the doctrine is reasonably assured in America given the: 1. considerable discretion vested in …

Changing The Modal Law School: Rethinking U.S. Legal Education In (Most) Schools, Nancy Rapoport

Nancy B. Rapoport

This essay argues that discussions of educational reform in U.S. law schools have suffered from a fundamental misconception: that the education provided in all of the American Bar Association-accredited schools is roughly the same. A better description of the educational opportunities provided by ABA-accredited law schools would group the schools into three rough clusters: the “elite” law schools, the modal (most frequently occurring) law schools, and the precarious law schools. Because the elite law schools do not need much “reforming,” the better focus of reform would concentrate on the modal and precarious schools; however, both elite and modal law schools …

Judicial Retention Elections, The Rule Of Law, And The Rhetorical Weaknesses Of Consequentialism, Todd E. Pettys

Todd E. Pettys

From Alaska to Florida, the 2010 election season brought the nation an unprecedented number of organized campaigns aimed at denying retention to judges who had ruled in ways that some voters found objectionable. Judges in those and other retention-election states can no longer rest comfortably on the assumption that voters will routinely exempt them from meaningful scrutiny. Anxious judges, state bar officials, and others have responded with a set of deontological and consequentialist arguments aimed at persuading voters not to use retention elections as an opportunity to oust judges who have issued controversial rulings. The deontological arguments posit that ousting …

Prosecutorial Conflicts Of Interest In Post-Conviction Practice, Keith Swisher

Keith Swisher

Prosecutors, our ministers of justice, do not play by the same conflict of interest rules. All other attorneys should not, and cannot, attack their prior work in transactional or litigation matters; nor should other attorneys unquestionably represent clients in matters in which the attorneys themselves face disciplinary, civil, or criminal liability. When prosecutors have likely convicted an innocent person, however, prosecutors are asked to review their own prior work objectively and then to undo it. But they understandably suffer from a conflict between their duty to justice and their duty to themselves — their duty to seek the release of …

Halting The Profession's Female Brain Drain While Increasing The Provision Of Legal Services To The Poor: A Proposal To Revamp And Expand Emeritus Attorney Programs, Claudine Pease-Wingenter

Claudine Pease-Wingenter

Although gender parity has essentially been achieved in the law school and associate ranks for a while, women overall still only represent about a third of the entire legal profession. There are multiple reasons for this continuing underrepresentation, but a significant contributor is the difficulty in simultaneously balancing new careers and young families.

Most lawyers enter the profession in their late twenties. About the same time, women's fertility begins to wane. As a result, there is a lot of pressure for female lawyers to start families while they are still relatively new in their careers. Because women continue to bear …