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Class Of 2008 Incoming Il Law Students, St. Mary's University School Of Law, St. Mary's University School Of Law

Incoming 1L Photos (Facebooks)

Photographs of incoming law students for the St. Mary’s University School of Law, class of 2008

Lawnotes, The St. Mary's University School Of Law Newsletter, St. Mary's University School Of Law

Law Notes

No abstract provided.

Lawnotes, The St. Mary's University School Of Law Newsletter, St. Mary's University School Of Law

Law Notes

No abstract provided.

Take The Money Or Run: The Risky Business Of Acting As Both Your Client's Lawyer And Bail Bondsman, Dayla S. Pepi

Faculty Articles

The American Bar Association strongly discourages lawyers from being bondsmen due to the conflicts that can arise when a criminal defense attorney acts as their client's bail bondsman. These same ethical dilemmas can also be encountered in posting a bond for a client in civil matters such as probate, family law, and appeals. In Texas, lawyers are exempt from the requirements of licensure as a bondsmen, including the requirement to maintain a particular level of security to underwrite the bonds. Nonetheless, lawyers are still required to conform to the requirements regulating the practice of bondsmen.

It is not enough for …

The Court Of Appeals For The Fifth Circuit 2003-2004 Insurance Decisions: A Survey And An Empirical Analysis, Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided twenty-four insurance-related appeals between the survey period of June 2003 through May 2004. Those cases originated in nine federal district courts. The overwhelming majority of appeals concerned the interpretation and enforcement of insurance contracts. Barring one case of first impression, most involved very familiar procedural and substantive conflicts.

This year, federal preemption questions and conflicts over subject matter jurisdiction appeared in several cases. The Fifth Circuit also decided six class-action or class-certification cases, and the court decided two conflicts involving allegedly widespread racial and ethnic discrimination in the sale and marketing of various …

The Ethics Of Copyrighting Ethics Rules, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

The American Bar Association’s (“ABA”) practice of requiring students to purchase the Model Rules of Professional Conduct is exploitative and unethical. The ABA uses its role in training lawyers to create a situation which all but requires law students and bar applicants to purchase the organization’s own Model Rules. The fact that the Model Rules constitute a substantial revenue stream for the ABA is due less to lawyers’ desire to brush up on Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which are not laws, than to the ABA's direct role in approving law schools and its indirect role in licensing lawyers.

Law …

Erisa: Fumbling The Limitations Period, George Lee Flint Jr

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court designed the LMRA rule, adopted in 1966, based on legislative history suggesting that the LMRA lacked a need for uniformity in litigating employee benefit plan matters. Congress changed this conclusion when it adopted ERISA in 1974. Thus, Congress preempted state law insofar as it relates to employee benefit plans. The Supreme Court has specifically stated that this need for uniformity extends to ERISA causes of action and awards under them. The Supreme Court spelled out a three-step process to determine whether to use a uniform federal statute of limitations: (1) whether the federal cause of action demands …

Cybersecurity, Identity Theft, And The Limits Of Tort Liability, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

Tort law is the best vehicle for allocating the risks and spreading the costs of database intrusion. It can incentivize database possessors (“possessors”) and data subjects to minimize the harm associated with breaches of database security while also balancing each party’s interests. Life is built upon computerized databases and the information of those databases is subject to hackers and other cyber-threats, which can cause catastrophic damage. It is hard to identify hackers; however, a better object for recovery is likely the possessors who fail to prevent or reveal a security breach.

The law governing database possessors’ liability is far from …

Justice Tom C. Clark’S Legacy In The Field Of Legal Ethics, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

Justice Tom C. Clark served as this nation’s Attorney General and as a Supreme Court Justice during a pivotal time in this nation’s history; however, his greatest legacy is the tremendous impact he and the Clark Report, whose development he oversaw, has in the area of lawyer discipline and ethics. Prior to the Clark Report, there existed a “scandalous situation” with respect to lawyer discipline; however, in the subsequent decades, revolutionary change has occurred. That change is largely attributable to Justice Clark, whether directly or indirectly, as was found in 1992 by the American Bar Association in its McKay Report. …

Ethics In Government At The Local Level, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

Efforts to foster ethics in government should begin at the local, rather than state or national, level. City officials and employees make a broad range of decisions that affect the welfare of citizens in many ways. Those actions determine to a large extent whether, on an everyday basis, people have equal access to the benefits and opportunities that government provides. Focusing efforts on city government ethics may also be the best way to build public support for high standards of conduct at all levels of government. If the public comes to expect (and demand) fair treatment and ethical conduct from …

Estudio Comparativo De La Formacion De Contratos Electronicos En El Derecho Estadounidense Con Referencia Al Derecho International Y Al Derecho Mexicano, Roberto Rosas

Faculty Articles

The author presents the underlying fundamental contractual principles in American law, and in this respect, tire Uniform Commercial Code, with particular emphasis in how electronic transactions are regulating, and therefore in the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, and the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act. Concerning international law, the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods and concerning Mexican law, with reference to the Commerce Code and the Federal Civil Code.

Deterrence And Origin Of Legal System: Evidence From 1950-1999, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

This article offers evidence on legal systems' deterrence of acts that may cause harm, which extends law—and finance—literature comparing common law and civil code systems. Fatality rates from two causes are used to gauge deterrence: (1) motor vehicle accidents and (2) accidents other than motor vehicle. Both vary significantly across countries classified by origin of legal system. The data cover 50 years, offering evidence on evolution of differences over time. Findings for accidents other than motor vehicle are evidence on legal system flexibility, as the diffuse set of causes increases the difficulty of specifying harmful actions ex ante.

Curiouser And Curiouser: Involuntary Medications And Incompetent Criminal Defendants After Sell V. United States, Dora W. Klein

Faculty Articles

The government should not place a defendant to whom it is administering involuntary medications in front of a jury. The test the Supreme Court created in Sell v. United States will likely result in the administration of involuntary medications to incompetent defendants in more than rare instances. Given the importance of the right to a fair trial, and the threat to this right posed by administering involuntary medications, the Supreme Court understandably cautions in its decision in Sell that the instances in which the government will be justified in administering such medications for the purpose of rendering a defendant competent …

Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Water: Evaluating Water As A Human Right And The Duties And Obligations It Creates, Amy Hardberger

Faculty Articles

The Right to Water should be an independent, explicit human right. As such, the status of the right to water would be raised to the status of customary international law (jus cogens), imposing an affirmative, obligatory duty an all nations. Historically the right to water has been included in the right to life, limiting the right; however, that approach undermines the essential importance of water and causes enforcement problems that would be avoided by regarding water as an independent right.

Landmark international agreements, treatises, and the work of various international entities and other non-governmental organizations have made tremendous strides in …

Law Fragments, Emily A. Hartigan

Faculty Articles

The contrast between the portrayal of Christianity and the treatment of earth-based religions by dominant legal discourse is illustrated throughout history. The true images of “saturated auratic [or] sacred elements-become-images” accompanies the division of history into fragments. The fragmented image is particularly important when it arises from a suppressed history or marginalized persons—these fragments are necessary to resist totalitarianism.

One way to see the call for “explosive fragments” is to acknowledge that the culture in the United States is already in ruins. Part of that dissolution is the loss of hegemony by white-male-European culture which can be seen in the …

Military Justice At Abu Ghraib, Jeffrey F. Addicott

Faculty Articles

Previous efforts to denigrate the credibility of U.S. war policies in the War on Terror pale in the wake of the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib. Photographic evidence of American soldiers abusing detainees created a firestorm of allegations concerning illegal interrogation practices and threatened to derail fundamental legal and policy pillars upon which America conducts the War on Terror. It raised the question of whether the prison abuse reflected a systemic policy to illegally obtain information from detainees or isolated acts of criminal behavior by a handful of soldiers. Thanks to several investigative reports, the legal and policy pillars …

Regulating Sars In China: Law As An Antidote?, Chenglin Liu

Faculty Articles

Severe Acute Respiratory Disease (SARS) is caused by a coronavirus, and as of this writing has no known vaccine or cure. Generally, the disease starts with a high fever, headaches, body aches, and mild respiratory symptoms. SARS spreads through respiratory droplets produced by an infected person when he or she coughs or sneezes or through physical contact.

The disease was first identified in a southern province of China in November of 2002, and quickly spread to twenty-seven different countries. In March of 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared SARS a global health threat. In China, the economic and social …

Informal Rules, Transaction Costs, And The Failure Of The “Takings” Law In China, Chenglin Liu

Faculty Articles

The enforcement of China’s new takings law has failed. In the unbalanced tug-of-war between individual homeowners and deep pocketed developers, the government sided with the latter by changing zoning plans to fit commercial development, authorizing forced evictions, deploying judicial police to execute eviction orders, lowering compensation standards, instructing courts not to hear cases involving demolitions, blocking class actions, and more. Many Chinese scholars argue that lackluster enforcement can be remedied by a well-drafted property code. However, applying the New Institutional Economics’ (NIE) theory on institutions to the enforcement failure associated with the takings law draws attention to informal complaints, which …

Questionable Summary Judgments, Appearances Of Judicial Bias, And Insurance Defense In Texas Declaratory-Judgment Trials: A Proposal And Arguments For Revising Texas Rules Of Civil Procedure 166a(A), 166a(B), And 166a(I), Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

Economic necessity, expanding dockets, and judicial bias and unfairness are reasons for removing summary judgement practice from declaratory judgment trials in Texas. The Texas Supreme Court adopted the summary judgment rule primarily to prevent juries from considering arguably groundless causes, to reduce costs, and to increase "the efficient administration of justice." The Texas Supreme Court could prevent summary judgment practice in declaratory judgment cases.

Texas's judges have the power to decide questions of fact and law when considering whether to award declaratory relief, negating the perceived need to entertain motions for summary relief. Trial judges must employ those doctrines to …

Los Nuevos Derechos En El Sistema Jurídico De Estados Unidos, Roberto Rosas, Bill Piatt

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

The Growing Role Of Fortuity In Texas Criminal Law, Gerald S. Reamey

Faculty Articles

Texas’ recent departure from culpability based crimes now means luck plays a bigger role in the punishment for these crimes. Texas has departed from the traditional notion of punishment based on individual fault, and has arrived at a place where these “new” ways of conceptualizing criminal responsibility adequately and satisfactorily account for the interests served by a more restrictive definition of criminal fault. Traditionally, criminal responsibility attached only when mens rea combined with volitional conduct--or the withholding of some required act--to produce a public harm.

In Texas, there seems to be a trend to punish actors for the harm they …

Federal Rules Update: Who Makes The Rules?, David A. Schlueter

Faculty Articles

There are a number of amendments to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and Evidence which were approved and would become effective as of December 1, 2005. The amendment to Criminal Rule 12.2 permits the court to exclude evidence on a defendant’s mental condition if the defense failed to submit a mental examination. The amendment to Criminal Rules 29, 33, and 34 all concern the timing of requests for extensions of time. Criminal Rule 45 will be amended to conform with the changes to Rules 29, 33, and 34. The amendment to Criminal Rule 32.1 provides a right of allocution …

Fattening Foods: Under Products Liability Litigation Is The Big Mac Defective?, Charles E. Cantú

Faculty Articles

Excessive consumption of fast food may produce negative results, but it does not render fast food products, like the McDonald’s Big Mac, defective. While no product is technologically perfect, and any product can cause injury, American jurisprudence has always held purveyors of defective food liable. The question is whether fattening foods, such as the Big Mac, are defective under a strict products liability theory.

The cornerstone of this cause of action requires a product to be defective, which may stem from: (1) mis-manufacturing, where the product enters the stream of commerce in an unintended condition; (2) mis-marketing, where the risks …

Texas Annual Survey: Securities Regulation, George Lee Flint Jr

Faculty Articles

The definition of securities is constantly evolving, and court cases help define this concept. Other cases help illuminate standing to sue. Two courts considered the application of the Texas Securities Acts in multi-state situations.

The State Securities Board amended its hearings rules to give the Director of Inspections and Compliance Division authorization to sign a notice of hearing in administrative cases. The Board initiated numerous enforcement actions against issuers who did not register their securities. It also issued a number of no-action letters dealing with issuers. In addition, the Board amended its rules for registration of dealers several times during …

Fighting Epidemics With Information And Laws: The Case Of Sars In China (Book Review), Vincent R. Johnson, Brian T. Bagley

Faculty Articles

In Chinese Law on SARS, Chenglin Liu recounts the tale of China’s efforts to cope with the recent SARS epidemic. The outbreak of SARS coincided with the full session of the 10th National People’s Congress, which elected a new Central Government in response to governmental failures in dealing with the crisis. The new government’s “proactive” approach to addressing the epidemic was to enact new legislation, republish an important law, and issue authoritative interpretations of existing criminal law provisions.

Liu offers a savvy analysis of why China’s centralized framework initially impeded the fight against SARS, and discusses the new government’s decisions …