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Full-Text Articles in Law
Ordinary Clients, Overreaching Lawyers, And The Failure To Implement Adequate Client Protection Measures, Leslie C. Levin
Ordinary Clients, Overreaching Lawyers, And The Failure To Implement Adequate Client Protection Measures, Leslie C. Levin
Faculty Articles and Papers
Every year, thousands of individual clients are victimized by overreaching lawyers who overcharge clients, refuse to return unearned fees, or steal their money. For more than forty years, the American Bar Association (ABA) has considered, and often proposed, client protection measures aimed at protecting clients from overreaching lawyers. These measures include requirements that lawyers use written fee agreements in their dealings with clients and rules relating to fee arbitration, client protection funds, insurance payee notification, and random audits of trust accounts. This Article examines what happened to these ABA recommendations when the states considered them and assesses the current state …
The Politics Of Bar Admission: Lessons From The Pandemic, Leslie C. Levin
The Politics Of Bar Admission: Lessons From The Pandemic, Leslie C. Levin
Faculty Articles and Papers
No abstract provided.
The Politics Of Lawyer Regulation: The Case Of Malpractice Insurance, Leslie C. Levin
The Politics Of Lawyer Regulation: The Case Of Malpractice Insurance, Leslie C. Levin
Faculty Articles and Papers
This Article examines the politics of lawyer regulation and considers why some states will adopt lawyer regulation that protects the public, when others will not. It uses the debates over how to regulate uninsured lawyers as a lens through which to examine the question. Clients often cannot recover damages from uninsured lawyers who commit malpractice, even when those lawyers cause serious harm. Yet only two states require that lawyers carry malpractice insurance. This Article uses case studies to examine the ways in which six states recently have addressed the issue of uninsured lawyers to understand this regulatory failure. It uses …
The End Of Mandatory State Bars?, Leslie C. Levin
The End Of Mandatory State Bars?, Leslie C. Levin
Faculty Articles and Papers
The country’s thirty-one mandatory state bar associations are facing an existential threat following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. ACSME, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018). In Janus, the Court considered the constitutionality of compelling public employees to pay agency fees to a labor union. In the process, the Court effectively upended the reasoning of earlier Supreme Court precedent that enabled mandatory state bars to compel bar dues payments from objecting lawyers and expend dues to fund traditional bar functions. Mandatory state bars—which function both as regulators and as traditional bar associations—are now defending themselves against claims in several …
The Monopoly Myth And Other Tales About The Superiority Of Lawyers, Leslie Levin
The Monopoly Myth And Other Tales About The Superiority Of Lawyers, Leslie Levin
Faculty Articles and Papers
The legal profession’s control of much of the market for legal services is justified by the claim that only licensed lawyers can effectively and ethically represent clients. This article challenges that claim. A review of a number of studies suggests that experienced nonlawyers can provide competent legal services in certain contexts and in some cases, can seemingly do so as effectively as lawyers. There is also little evidence that lawyers’ legal training, the bar admission requirements, or lawyers’ psychological characteristics make them more trustworthy than nonlawyer legal services providers. The article considers some recent initiatives, such as Washington’s approval of …
An Assessment Of Affirmative Action In Business, Jordan A. Kennedy
An Assessment Of Affirmative Action In Business, Jordan A. Kennedy
Honors Scholar Theses
Affirmative action has become an inevitable aspect of the employment hiring process. It has been put into place to assist in eradicating the institutionalized discrimination that inherently exists in such practices. On the surface, affirmative action may appear to be something that is beneficial to both the hiring institution and the individual; it seems to be a win-win situation because the business is creating a more diverse workplace and the individual is getting a job that they desired. However, the way that affirmative action is practiced may prevent its overall effectiveness. For example, there are several fundamental flaws with this …
Class Action In The Age Of Twitter: A Dispute Systems Approach, Jeremy Mcclane
Class Action In The Age Of Twitter: A Dispute Systems Approach, Jeremy Mcclane
Faculty Articles and Papers
No abstract provided.
Liability Insurance And Gun Violence, Peter Kochenburger
Liability Insurance And Gun Violence, Peter Kochenburger
Faculty Articles and Papers
No abstract provided.
The Jury And Participatory Democracy, Alexandra Lahav
The Jury And Participatory Democracy, Alexandra Lahav
Faculty Articles and Papers
Citizens directly participate in the civil justice system in three ways. They can be sued, they can sue another, and they can serve on a jury. Beyond that involvement, the court system is peopled by professionals: judges, lawyers, clerks, and administrators. This Essay considers the reasons our society might want citizens to directly participate as adjudicators in the third branch.
Tying The Knot: Determining The Legality Of Same-Sex Marriage And The Courts’ Responsibilities In Defining The Right, Eva Cerreta
Tying The Knot: Determining The Legality Of Same-Sex Marriage And The Courts’ Responsibilities In Defining The Right, Eva Cerreta
Honors Scholar Theses
Ambiguous terms and phrases in the United States Bill of Rights have caused a great deal of controversy throughout United States history over what rights truly exist and which branch of government should be responsible for determining those rights. These questions are currently being debated in states throughout the country concerning the right to same-sex marriage. This thesis answers these questions of legality and responsibility concerning the right to same-sex marriage. The thesis uses case law of the doctrinal development of the Equal Protection Clause and the right to privacy to suggest that the Equal Protection Clause provides the soundest …
Moral Turpitude, Julia Simon-Kerr
Moral Turpitude, Julia Simon-Kerr
Faculty Articles and Papers
Moral turpitude is a legal standard used in areas of American law as diverse as torts, immigration, professional licensing, and evidence. Although the standard has a profound effect on a wide array of privileges, entitlements, and liabilities, scholars have devoted scant attention to it. The few who have studied it have echoed the courts in arguing that the standard is vague. This Article argues, in contrast, that the problem with moral turpitude is that it has too much meaning, not too little. Moral turpitude imports into our legal system an outdated nineteenth century honor code that reflects republican virtues: oath …
Region Codes And Human Rights, Molly Land
Region Codes And Human Rights, Molly Land
Faculty Articles and Papers
This essay considers what Professor Peter Yu’s article on DVD region coding, “Region Codes and the Territorial Mess,” illustrates about the challenges associated with using human rights law to respond to limitations on access to knowledge. The kind of activity that Professor Yu points to — the decisions of corporate actors pursuing their own interests that have significant unanticipated effects on individual rights — presents a recurring and thorny problem for those concerned about expression and culture today. At what point do these burdens constitute a human rights violation that can and should be regulated by the state? The essay …
Some Thoughts On Health Care Exchanges: Choice, Defaults, And The Unconnected, Brendan Maher
Some Thoughts On Health Care Exchanges: Choice, Defaults, And The Unconnected, Brendan Maher
Faculty Articles and Papers
One feature of the ACA that appealed to observers across the political spectrum was the creation of health insurance “exchanges.” Among other things, exchanges are intended to aid consumers in making simple and transparent choices regarding the purchase of health insurance. This Article considers how exchanges might benefit from the use of “default” options — both online and off. Given the significant number of Americans that have limited or no Internet access, offline defaults may be an attractive way to promote coverage of the “unconnected.”
The Once And Future Networked Self, Steven Wilf
The Once And Future Networked Self, Steven Wilf
Faculty Articles and Papers
No abstract provided.
Criminal Law’S Tribalism, Molly Townes O'Brien
Criminal Law’S Tribalism, Molly Townes O'Brien
Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal
No abstract provided.
A Look At In Re Fabian A.: Examining The Extension Of Due Process Protections And Failure To Object As Waiver In The Juvenile Justice System, Elizabeth Bannon
A Look At In Re Fabian A.: Examining The Extension Of Due Process Protections And Failure To Object As Waiver In The Juvenile Justice System, Elizabeth Bannon
Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal
Vol. 11, No. 1
Coalition, Cross-Cultural Lawyering, And Intersectionality: Immigrant Identity As A Barrier To Effective Legal Counseling For Domestic Violence Victims, Jessica H. Stein
Coalition, Cross-Cultural Lawyering, And Intersectionality: Immigrant Identity As A Barrier To Effective Legal Counseling For Domestic Violence Victims, Jessica H. Stein
Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal
Vol. 11, No. 1
Copyright And Social Movements In Late Nineteenth-Century America, Steven Wilf
Copyright And Social Movements In Late Nineteenth-Century America, Steven Wilf
Faculty Articles and Papers
The cultural turn in copyright law identified authorship as a rhetorical construct employed by economic interests as a mechanism to establish claims to property rights. Grassroots intellectual property political movements have been seen as both a means of countering these interests’ ever-expanding proprietary control of knowledge and establishing a more public regarding copyright system. This Article examines one of the most notable intellectual property political movements, the emergence of late nineteenth-century agitation to provide copyright protection for foreign authors as a social movement. It places this political and legal activism within the larger framework of Progressive Era reform. During this …
Constituent Authority, Richard Kay
Constituent Authority, Richard Kay
Faculty Articles and Papers
The force of a constitution, like the force of all enacted law, derives, in significant part, from the circumstances of its enactment. Legal and political theory have long recognized the logical necessity of a “constituent power.” That recognition, however, tells us little about what is necessary for the successful enactment of an enduring constitution. Long term acceptance of a constitution requires a continuing regard for the process that brought it into being. There must be, that is, recognition of the “constituent authority” of the constitution-makers. This paper is a consideration of the idea of “constituent authority” drawing on a comparison …
Two Views Of Class Action, Alexandra Lahav
Two Views Of Class Action, Alexandra Lahav
Faculty Articles and Papers
No abstract provided.
Imagination And Choice, Anne Dailey
Imagination And Choice, Anne Dailey
Faculty Articles and Papers
Contemporary behavioral legal scholarship on individual decisionmaking draws primarily from cognitive psychology. This Article argues that the field of behavioral legal scholarship should be broadened to include modern psychoanalytic ideas about the processes of individual decisionmaking. As explained here, the basic perspective of psychoanalytic psychology is largely compatible with recent cognitive research on decisionmaking. However, a psychoanalytic perspective adds valuable nuance and complexity by exposing for scholarly examination certain essential attributes of individual decisionmaking that have so far been overlooked. As a first step in bringing modern psychoanalytic ideas to the attention of contemporary behavioral legal scholars, this Article examines …
The Invention Of Legal Primitivism, Steven Wilf
The Invention Of Legal Primitivism, Steven Wilf
Faculty Articles and Papers
This Article addresses a different sort of legal transplant - one in which outside legal doctrines are imported in order to be cabined, treated as normative counterpoints, and identified as the legal other. Legal primitivism is a kind of anti-transplant. It heightens the persistent differences between a dominant legal system and its understanding of primitive rules. An often ignored legal literature depicting legal primitivism emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century. Mapping the differences between America’s modern legal system and its antecedents, this immense literature, which included works by Oliver Wendell Holmes, …
Upping The Ante: Collective Litigation In Latin America, Ángel Oquendo
Upping The Ante: Collective Litigation In Latin America, Ángel Oquendo
Faculty Articles and Papers
This work contends that Latin America has launched a true revolution on collective rights: moving beyond the paradigm of group entitlements, which concern a determinate — though potentially enormous — collectivity, to that of diffuse entitlements, which generally pertain to society as a whole. Latin American jurisdictions have created innovative procedural mechanisms in this area: the collective writ of protection for the realization of group rights, the popular action for the civic vindication of diffuse entitlements, and the public civil action for the official enforcement of both kinds of rights. The U.S. legal order has much to learn from a …
Straight From The Mouth Of The Volcano: The Lowdown On Law, Language, And Latin@S, Ángel Oquendo
Straight From The Mouth Of The Volcano: The Lowdown On Law, Language, And Latin@S, Ángel Oquendo
Faculty Articles and Papers
No abstract provided.
Irony, Ángel Oquendo
Unchaste And Incredible: The Use Of Gendered Conceptions Of Honor In Impeachment, Julia Simon-Kerr
Unchaste And Incredible: The Use Of Gendered Conceptions Of Honor In Impeachment, Julia Simon-Kerr
Faculty Articles and Papers
This paper demonstrates that the American rules for impeaching witnesses developed against a cultural background that equated a woman's honor, and thus her credibility, with her sexual virtue. The idea that a woman's chastity informs her credibility did not originate in rape trials and the confusing interplay between questions of consent and sexual history. Rather, gendered notions of honor so permeated American legal culture that attorneys routinely attempted to impeach female witnesses by invoking their sexual histories in cases involving such diverse claims as title to land, assault, arson, and wrongful death. But while many courts initially accepted the notion …
Judicial Policy - Making And The Peculiar Function Of Law, Richard Kay
Judicial Policy - Making And The Peculiar Function Of Law, Richard Kay
Faculty Articles and Papers
While the nature of legal systems is a perpetually contested question, it is fairly uncontroversial that each must contain certain essential characteristics. First, each must suppose some picture of the appropriate way for human beings subject to it to live together in society. Second, to secure that proper arrangement, each must employ, to a greater or lesser degree, the device of general rules of conduct. Finally, in all but the simplest systems, the effectiveness of those rules must be guaranteed by some process of adjudication. The relationships among these three factors - social values, legal rules and judging - comprise …
Recovering The Social Value Of Jurisdictional Redundancy, Alexandra Lahav
Recovering The Social Value Of Jurisdictional Redundancy, Alexandra Lahav
Faculty Articles and Papers
This essay, written for the Tulane Law Review Symposium on the Problem of Multidistrict Litigation, argues that the focus of proceduralists on centralization as a solution to the problems posed by modern litigation is misplaced. It is time to refocus on the social value of the multiple centers of authority that jurisdictional redundancy permits. This essay presents the case for multi-centered litigation with particular focus on the potential uses of the Multidistrict Litigation Act to realize pluralist values. The descriptive claim put forward by the essay is that jurisdictional redundancy is imbedded in our federalist system and our preference for …
Case For Less Secrecy In Lawyer Discipline, The, Leslie Levin
Case For Less Secrecy In Lawyer Discipline, The, Leslie Levin
Faculty Articles and Papers
This article looks at the problems created by a lawyer discipline process that continues to be conducted mostly in secret. The vast majority of the 125,000 discipline complaints received annually are disposed of without an opportunity for the public to observe the process or the outcome of complaints. Heavy reliance on confidential dispositions - either through private sanctions or diversion programs - keeps most information about lawyer misconduct a secret from the public. As a result, clients are often injured by lawyers who have previously engaged in misconduct, little is known about the extent of recidivism among disciplined lawyers, and …
Developing Citizens, Anne Dailey
Developing Citizens, Anne Dailey
Faculty Articles and Papers
The Supreme Court has known for over a half century that the survival of our constitutional polity ultimately depends on the proper cultivation of children's hearts and minds. This idea was expressed most directly in Brown v. Board of Education, where a unanimous Supreme Court concluded that segregated schooling affects the hearts and minds of African-American schoolchildren in a way that undermines the very foundation of good citizenship. On many other occasions as well, the Justices have formulated constitutional doctrine to foster democratic skills of mind in future citizens. Yet for all the normative force of this idea, courts and …