Law Commons^™

A Primer For The First-Time Law Dean Candidate, Robert H. Jerry Ii

Faculty Publications

This article identifies fourteen principles of which the first-time dean candidate should be mindful. The prescriptions are aspirational in nature, and the article suggests the reader engage in some introspection about which of the fourteen items are most applicable on a personal level.

Practical Magic: A Few Down-To-Earth Suggestions For The New Sentencing Commission, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

Most of the contributions to this outpouring of advice to the new Sentencing Commissioners have to do with the substance of the Guidelines. What follows here is far more prosaic - some suggestions not about what the Commission should do, but about how the Commission should work. I make these suggestions with some trepidation, recognizing the difficulty of the task the new members have undertaken. However, I hope the perspective of one who practiced before and after the Guidelines as a federal prosecutor, participated in the internal workings of the Commission as Special Counsel in 1995-96, and has been a …

High Crimes And Misdemeanors: Defining The Constitutional Limits On Presidential Impeachment, Frank O. Bowman Iii, Stephen L. Sepinuck

Faculty Publications

This Article had its genesis in a statement by the authors submitted to the House Judiciary Committee during its proceedings regarding the impeachment of President Clinton. This final much expanded version appears after the conclusion of the Clinton impeachment proceedings in the Senate, and it is certainly informed by the course those proceedings took. Strictly speaking, however, this is not an article “about” the Clinton impeachment. Although this Article draws some conclusions from the treatment by the House and Senate of the fundamental allegations against President Clinton, it does not address in detail the specific facts underlying those allegations. The …

(Seven Principles For Good Practice In Legal Education): Principle 5: Good Practice Emphasizes Time On Task, R. Lawrence Dessem

Faculty Publications

Time plus energy equals learning. Efficient time-management skills are critical for students and professors alike. Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for faculty. How an institution defines time expectations for students, faculty, administrators, and other professional staff can establish the basis for high performance for all. The fifth principle for good practice in undergraduate education is almost a truism: good practice emphasizes time on task. In their original statement of the seven principles, Arthur W. Chickering and Zelda F. Gamson expressed this as a mathematical formula: “Time plus energy equals learning.” Time on …

The Pendulum Swings Again, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

Mandatory arbitration provisions in contracts of adhesion expose the difficult tension between individual contractual rights and collective contractual needs. The question is where we draw the line. The law of adhesion contracts has traditionally used the doctrine of unconscionability to draw that line, and cases like Graham v Scissor-Tail more precisely instruct us to draw it at the reasonable expectations of the parties. By presumptively refusing to enforce cram-down arbitration provisions for consumer claims, absent evidence of knowing and voluntary waiver, we will restore those reasonable expectations, and, in the words of the case law, ensure minimum levels of integrity …

Court Issues Major Ruling On Mediation Confidentiality, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

A prominent federal court judge has issued an important ruling on mediation confidentiality, one that promises to influence both doctrinal and legislative development.

The case is Olan v Congress Mortgage Co., 1999 WL 909731 (N.D.Cal.), and in it, federal Magistrate Judge Wayne Brazil ultimately compels testimony by a California mediator, despite California's categorical exclusion of evidence arising from mediations. The lengthy opinion is most scholarly, and well worth taking the time to read.

Why In-House Live Client Clinics Won't Work In Romania: Confessions Of A Clinician Educator, Rodney J. Uphoff

Faculty Publications

Romanians eat our Big Macs, wolf down pizza slices at Pizza Hut, and guzzle Coca-Cola. They wear baseball caps, Nike clothing, and tennis shoes. They listen to American rap and pop music, see American movies with Romanian subtitles, and watch all of our old television shows. Romanians of all ages, but especially the young, hunger and thirst for all things Western, particularly from the United States. Doesn't it follow, then, that Romanian law schools ought to have - and, indeed, Romanian law professors would want - that symbol of an innovative, modern American law school curriculum: a live client clinical …

Departing Is Such Sweet Sorrow: A Year Of Judicial Revolt On "Substantial Assistance" Departures Follows A Decade Of Prosecutorial Indiscipline (Prosecution Law Symposium), Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

the first section of this essay is devoted to demonstrating the courts' errors. Nonetheless, considered together, these opinions are perhaps an understandable reflection of judicial unease with an important component of the federal sentencing system — the longstanding, but increasingly common, practice of making deals with criminal defendants to reduce their sentences in return for testimony against their accomplices. This Article's second section will consider the most common criticisms of the system of bargaining for testimony under the United States Sentencing Guidelines (the Guidelines) to determine whether Singleton and Sealed Case may be good policy even if they are bad …

Defending Substantial Assistance: An Old Prosecutor's Meditation On Singleton, Sealed Case, And The Maxfield-Kramer Report, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This essay begins with a brief analysis of the panel and en banc opinions in Sealed Case and Singleton, and then turns to the more arresting question of whether the panel decisions were transitory aberrations or something more. Particularly if one considers Singleton and Sealed Case together with the Sentencing Commission's staff report on substantial assistance practice (the “Maxfield - Kramer Report”), it is difficult to escape the conclusion that unease with the current substantial assistance regime is growing. Unlike many observers, I view §5K1.1 as a very good thing, an invaluable prosecutorial tool against group criminality, but a tool …

Successive Causes And The Enigma Of Duplicated Harm, David A. Fischer

Faculty Publications

Some of the most intriguing brain teasers in tort law involve the valuation of damages for harm arising from wrongfully inflicted injury to person or property. Consider the following example: A wrongdoer shoots and instantly kills a person in the path of an avalanche that would have killed the person a few seconds later. The person's survivors bring a wrongful death action against the shooter, seeking compensation for the loss of support they would have received from the decedent if she had lived. Should the court require the shooter to pay for loss of support beyond the time that the …

Major Step Forward: Proposed Uniform Mediation Act Goes Public For Comments, Richard C. Reuben, Nancy H. Rogers

Faculty Publications

The move toward a simplified and uniform law for mediation takes an important step forward this summer, with the release of the first integrated draft of the proposed Uniform Mediation Act. The act is being drafted by cooperating committees of the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution and the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. If enacted and adopted uniformly, it would replace the hundreds of pages of complex and often conflicting statutes across the country with a few short pages of simple, accessible, and helpful rules.

Panel Remarks Civil Rights Division Association Symposium: The Civil Rights Division At Forty, Michael A. Middleton

Faculty Publications

Welcome to all of you to the second of our Symposia. This is the fortieth year of the Civil Rights Division. Our focus this morning will be the Division's past and where it should be going in the future.

Harming Future Persons: Obligations To The Children Of Reproductive Technology, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

Two paradigms dominate contemporary ethical and legal debate about the risks posed to children who owe their lives to reproductive technology. One asks whether the children have lives so tragic that life itself is harmful. The other approach asks whether children so conceived are likely to enjoy a minimally decent existence. Although the two approaches have quite different analytic foundations, they share one crucial trait. Each concludes that children who owe their lives to reproductive technology are harmed only when that technology causes genuinely catastrophic injuries.Because these conventional paradigms define harmful conduct exclusively by reference to the magnitude of the …

Labor Law Access Rules And Stare Decisis: Developing A Planned Parenthood-Based Model Of Reform, Rafael Gely, Leonard Bierman

Faculty Publications

This article deals with labor law access rules, particularly the rights of unions to gain access to employers' private property for organizing purposes. Professors Gely and Bierman provide a comprehensive analysis of the access issue and identify two major problems with the manner in which the Supreme Court has approached this area. First, the Supreme Court has dealt piecemeal with the various aspects of this problem without attempting to develop a coherent framework. Second, the Court has been reluctant to analyze the access issue within the context of today's workplace.Professors Gely and Bierman attribute the Supreme Court's flawed approach to …

Hindsight Bias And Tort Liability: Avoiding Premature Conclusions, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

Cognitive psychologists know that judgments made in hindsight are distorted by two cognitive heuristics-hindsight bias and outcome bias. Hindsight bias makes bad outcomes seem more predictable in hindsight than they were ex ante. Outcome bias induces us to assume that people who cause accidents have been careless. Because of these biases, individuals who know that a bad outcome has occurred tend to evaluate prior conduct more harshly than they would if they were unaware of the actual outcome. In negligence actions, defendants are supposed to be judged by the reasonableness of their conduct, not by its outcome. Jurors are asked …

Myths, Miscues, And Misconceptions: No-Aid Separationism And The Establishment Clause, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

In neutrality theory the recipients of vouchers, grants, and purchase-of-service contracts are eligible to participate as providers in government social service programs without regard to their religious character. Indeed, religious beliefs and practices are prohibited bases for screening out those who want to be welfare program providers. Notable examples of congressional social service legislation conforming to the rule of religious neutrality are the ‘charitable choice‘ feature imbedded in the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 and the Community Services Block Grant Act of 1998, as well as the provision allowing issuance of child care vouchers to indigent parents in the Child …

Digital Recording Of Real Estate Conveyances, Dale A. Whitman

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to describe how such a revolutionary change in the recording system can take place, and to identify and discuss the major policy issues that must be resolved in order to accomplish it. This change ought to happen. Failure to update the system will result in the continued imposition of unnecessary costs and delays on those who buy, sell, or mortgage real estate in America.

Tax Exemptions And The Establishment Clause, Erika Lietzan

Faculty Publications

Churches are exempted from a variety of taxes collected by the various levels and jurisdictions of government in the United States. For instance, they are almost always exempt from payment of property tax at the local level and from payment of income tax to both state and federal government. They are often exempt from payment of state sales tax on the products they sell. A person making a contribution to a religious organization is usually entitled to deduct the contribution from his income when calculating both his state and his federal income taxes at the end of the taxable year. …

Toward Adding Further Complexity To The Internal Revenue Code: A New Paradigm For The Deductibility Of Capital Losses, Michelle A. Cecil

Faculty Publications

This article examines problems inherent in the current loss limitation system, arguing that it is ill-equipped to meet parallelism concerns and that cherrypicking is not a problem that a loss limitation scheme should address. The article also argues that the current system is both fundamentally unfair to taxpayers and promotes economic inefficiency in the marketplace. It proposes an alternative system for the tax treatment of capital losses that would allow such losses to offset all types of income, but only up to the tax rate that would have been imposed had the losses instead been capital gains. The article concludes …

Ada Mediation After Sutton, Murphy And Albertson, James Levin

Faculty Publications

Judith Cohen's summary of the Interim ADA Mediation Standards in the last issue of The Journal of Alternative Dispute Resolution in Employment acknowledges the "skyrocketing" number of cases mediated under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). The United States Supreme Court's recent opinions in Sutton v. United Airlines, Inc., Murphy v. United Parcel Service, Inc., and Albertson, Inc. v. Kirkingberg surprised many in the disability community by explicitly excluding an individual from ADA coverage if she mitigates her mental or physical impairment and the impairment as mitigated no longer substantially limits a major life activity. Will the Supreme Court's narrowing …