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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Torrens System In Singapore: 75 Years From Conception To Commencement, Alvin W. L. See
The Torrens System In Singapore: 75 Years From Conception To Commencement, Alvin W. L. See
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
This article tells the story of how the Torrens system of land titles registration came to be adopted in Singapore. From conception to commencement, the entire process took over 75 years, far longer than any other law reform the country has experienced. Particular attention is paid to why the Australian model was preferred despite the significant influence of English law in colonial Singapore. Although as with anything, much of what happened could be attributed to chance, a great deal can be learned from this story, which details the socio-economic and political forces that have shaped the law into what it …
Lost In Transplantation: Modern Principles Of Secured Transactions Law As Legal Transplants, Charles W. Mooney Jr.
Lost In Transplantation: Modern Principles Of Secured Transactions Law As Legal Transplants, Charles W. Mooney Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
This manuscript will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming edited volume published by Hart Publishing, Secured Transactions Law in Asia: Principles, Perspectives and Reform (Louise Gullifer & Dora Neo eds., forthcoming 2020). It focuses on a set of principles (Modern Principles) that secured transactions law for personal property should follow. These Modern Principles are based on UCC Article 9 and its many progeny, including the UNCITRAL Model Law on Secured Transactions. The chapter situates the Modern principles in the context of the transplantation of law from one legal system to another. It draws in particular on Alan Watson’s pathbreaking …
An American Approach To Social Democracy: The Forgotten Promise Of The Fair Labor Standards Act, Kate Andrias
An American Approach To Social Democracy: The Forgotten Promise Of The Fair Labor Standards Act, Kate Andrias
Articles
There is a growing consensus among scholars and public policy experts that fundamental labor law reform is necessary in order to reduce the nation’s growing wealth gap. According to conventional wisdom, however, a social democratic approach to labor relations is uniquely un-American—in deep conflict with our traditions and our governing legal regime. This Article calls into question that conventional account. It details a largely forgotten moment in American history: when the early Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) established industry committees of unions, business associations, and the public to set wages on an industry-by-industry basis. Alongside the National Labor Relations Act, …
Securities Law In The Sixties: The Supreme Court, The Second Circuit, And The Triumph Of Purpose Over Text, Adam C. Pritchard, Robert B. Thompson
Securities Law In The Sixties: The Supreme Court, The Second Circuit, And The Triumph Of Purpose Over Text, Adam C. Pritchard, Robert B. Thompson
Articles
This Article analyzes the Supreme Court’s leading securities cases from 1962 to 1972—SEC v. Capital Gains Research Bureau, Inc.; J.I. Case Co. v. Borak; Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co.; Superintendent of Insurance v. Bankers Life & Casualty Co.; and Affiliated Ute of Utah v. United States—relying not just on the published opinions, but also the Justices’ internal letters, memos, and conference notes. The Sixties Court did not simply apply the text as enacted by Congress, but instead invoked the securities laws’ purposes as a guide to interpretation. The Court became a partner of Congress in shaping the securities laws, rather …
The Pragmatic Court: Reinterpreting The Supreme People’S Court Of China, Taisu Zhang
The Pragmatic Court: Reinterpreting The Supreme People’S Court Of China, Taisu Zhang
Faculty Scholarship
This Article examines the institutional motivations that underlie several major developments in the Supreme People's Court of China's recent policy-making. Since 2007, the SPC has sent off a collection of policy signals that escapes sweeping ideological labeling: it has publically embraced a populist view of legal reform by encouraging the use of mediation in dispute resolution and popular participation in judicial policy-making, while continuing to advocate legal professionalization as a long-term policy objective. It has also eagerly attempted to enhance its own institutional competence by promoting judicial efficiency, simplifying key areas of civil law, and expanding its control over lower …
Chuck And Steve's Peccadillo (Symposium: Threats To Secured Lending And Asset Securitization), James J. White
Chuck And Steve's Peccadillo (Symposium: Threats To Secured Lending And Asset Securitization), James J. White
Articles
Are investors in securitized receivables to be treated as the owners of an asset whose sale has taken it beyond the reach of the trustee in bankruptcy of their sellers? O are they to be treated as holders of a security interest in the transferred asset who have left behind an interest in the sellers' hands that would cause the asset to be subject to claims and interference by the sellers' grasping trustee? By adopting contrasting-arguably conflicting-statements in two subsections of a single section, the drafters of 1999 Article 9 have thrust this issue in the faces of courts and …
"Can (Did) Congress 'Overrule' Miranda?, Yale Kamisar
"Can (Did) Congress 'Overrule' Miranda?, Yale Kamisar
Articles
I think the great majority of judges, lawyers, and law professors would have concurred in Judge Friendly's remarks when he made them thirty-three years ago. To put it another way, I believe few would have had much confidence in the constitutionality of an anti-Miranda provision, usually known as § 3501 because of its designation under Title 18 of the United States Code, a provision of Title II of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (hereinafter referred to as the Crime Act or the Crime Bill), when that legislation was signed by the president on June 19, …
Freeing The Tortious Soul Of Express Warranty Law, James J. White
Freeing The Tortious Soul Of Express Warranty Law, James J. White
Articles
I suspect that most American lawyers and law students regard express warranty as neither more nor less than a term in a contract, a term that is subject to conventional contract rules on formation, interpretation, and remedy. Assume, for example, that a buyer sends a purchase order to a seller and the purchase order specifies the delivery of 300 tons of "prime Thomas cold rolled steel." The acknowledgment also describes the goods to be sold as "prime Thomas cold rolled steel." Every American lawyer would agree that there is a contract to deliver such steel and furthermore would conclude that …
Review Of The Province Of Legislation Determined: Legal Theory In Eighteenth-Century Britain, Thomas A. Green
Review Of The Province Of Legislation Determined: Legal Theory In Eighteenth-Century Britain, Thomas A. Green
Reviews
David Lieberman's lucid and sure-footed reinterpretationof late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century jurisprudence is original, thoughtful, analytically acute, and a pleasure to read. Lieberman argues that Bentham's law reform ideas must be viewed in relation to earlier (and contemporary) reform traditions. Bentham's views were more complex than the long-held myth would have it, partly because they were more derivative, at least in his early enterprises, combining as they did a reception of earlier notions with the novelty for which he is usually credited. Blackstone and Mansfield, on this account, were not the match stick figures they are sometimes made out to be; the …
Ex Proprio Vigore, James J. White
Ex Proprio Vigore, James J. White
Articles
The National Conference of the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) is a legislature in every way but one. It drafts uniform acts, debates them, passes them, and promulgates them, but that passage and promulgation do not make these uniform acts law over any citizen of any state. These acts become the law of the various states only ex proprio vigore - only if their own vitality influences the legislators of the various states to pass them.
Absolute Priority And New Value, James J. White
Absolute Priority And New Value, James J. White
Articles
This paper is based on a lecture given on December 6, 1990 ast the Second Annual Robert E. Krinock Lecture. The absolute priority rule is a specific application of the broader doctrine that reorganization plans must be "fair and equitable." Both have their origins in the railroad reorganization cases of the early 20th century. The general doctrine is now codified in section 1129(b)(2) of the Bankruptcy Code and the rule is codified in subsection 1129(b)(2)(B)(ii) which provides that the debtor must pay a nonconsenting class of unsecured creditors in full or "the holder of any claim or interest that is …
Copyright Legislation And Technological Change, Jessica D. Litman
Copyright Legislation And Technological Change, Jessica D. Litman
Articles
Throughout its history, copyright law has had difficulty accommodating technological change. Although the substance of copyright legislation in this century has evolved from meetings among industry representatives whose avowed purpose was to draft legislation that provided for the future,6 the resulting statutes have done so poorly. The language of copyright statutes has been phrased in fact-specific language that has grown obsolete as new modes and mediums of copyrightable expression have developed. Whatever copyright statute has been on the books has been routinely, and justifiably, criticized as outmoded.7 In this Article, I suggest that the nature of the legislative process we …
Promise Fulfilled And Principle Betrayed, James J. White
Promise Fulfilled And Principle Betrayed, James J. White
Articles
My responsibility in this paper is to address three questions. (1) How has the legal realist body of thought affected contract law and its application? (2) How will contract law and its application be affected in the future by realist thinking? (3) If the realist viewpoint were fully accepted, what kind of system would result and how would contract law be affected? Because my focus is upon a principal legislative monument to realism, Article Two of the Uniform Commercial Code (the "U.C.C."), and upon its drafter, Karl Llewellyn, I will not answer any of the three questions explicitly. By focusing …
Copyright, Compromise And Legislative History, Jessica D. Litman
Copyright, Compromise And Legislative History, Jessica D. Litman
Articles
Copyright law gives authors a "property right." But what kind of property right? Indeed, a property right in what? The answers to these questions should be apparent from a perusal of title seventeen of the United States Code-the statute that confers the "property" right.' Courts, however, have apparently found title seventeen an unhelpful guide. For the most part, they look elsewhere for answers, relying primarily on prior courts' constructions of an earlier and very different statute on the same subject. 2
The Regulation Of Labor Unions, Theodore J. St. Antoine
The Regulation Of Labor Unions, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
This year completes exactly a half century in the federalization and codification of American labor law. Before that the regulation of both the internal affairs and external relations of labor organizations was left largely to the individual states, usually through the application of common or nonstatutory law by the courts. One major exception was the railroad industry, whose patent importance to interstate commerce made it an acceptable subject for federal legislation like the Railway Labor Act.
The Distrust Of Politics, Terrance Sandalow
The Distrust Of Politics, Terrance Sandalow
Articles
In this Article, Dean Sandalow considers the justifications advanced by those who favor the removal of certain political issues from the political process by extending the reach of judicial review. He begins by examining the distrust of politics in a different context, discussing the proposals made by the Progressives for reforming municipal government, as a vehicle to expose the assumptions underlying the current debate. His comparison of the two historical settings reveals many similarities between the Progressives' reform proposals and the contemporary justiflcations.[or the displacement of politics with constitutional law. Dean Sandalow concludes that the distrust of politics rests not …
Review Of Wiltshire Gaol Delivery And Trailbaston Trials, 1275-1306, Thomas A. Green
Review Of Wiltshire Gaol Delivery And Trailbaston Trials, 1275-1306, Thomas A. Green
Reviews
Ralph B. Pugh's handsome edition of Wiltshire gaol delivery and trailbaston trial rolls for the reign of Edward I provides a valuable resource for scholars of medieval crime and criminal law. The period covered bridges the era of the infrequent general eyres and that of the frequent circuits to try those being held on criminal charges. This transition period saw the development of various institutions and procedures designed to deal with a decline in social stability and an increase in criminal activity. To date, most scholarship has focused either on the workings of the mid-thirteenth- century eyre or on the …
Need Of A National Incorporation Law, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Need Of A National Incorporation Law, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Articles
When the report of the Committee on Uniformity of legislation was submitted to the last American Bar Association, and consideration of the legal problems growing out of modem commercial combinations, was urged as a matter proper for discussion and action by that association, it was gravely argued by distinguished lawyers present that there was no legal problem to be solved. The Committee on Commercial Law, however, thought otherwise and said:- "The American people look to the American Bar for leadership on this question. Some one must lead. If not the lawyer, then it will be the demagogue."
Materials Of Jurisprudence, James V. Campbell
Materials Of Jurisprudence, James V. Campbell
Articles
This period is marked by rather more strenuous efforts than have been made before in this country, to solve the problem of condensing and simplifying the law. Our own day is peculiar in the endeavors we have seen to evolve what is claimed to be a science of jurisprudence. Some admirable writers have succeeded in dividing the domain of law into its larger or smaller fields, and have shown with more or less fulness the relative positions of these, and their mutual dependence. This is a valuable service; for all lawyers know that, without a reasonably clear perception of the …
The Method Of Electing The President, Thomas M. Cooley, Abram S. Hewitt
The Method Of Electing The President, Thomas M. Cooley, Abram S. Hewitt
Articles
Twice in the history of the United States the nation has been brought to the verge of civil war by difficulties growing out of presidential elections. And yet no system was ever devised with more care to preclude any reasonable complaint.