Law Commons^™

Debating Immigration Restriction: The Case For Low And Slow, Amy L. Wax

All Faculty Scholarship

This article critiques our current politics of immigration, which is dominated by moralized and sentimental rhetoric. It argues for a more honest and balanced discussion of the merits of the status quo. A more mature debate would take into account many factors that now receive insufficient attention from politicians, academics, and the mainstream media, including the interests of voters and citizens as well as newcomers, legitimate nationalistic concerns both economic and cultural, the need for unity, stability, and cohesion through assimilation to a common culture, the primacy of American sovereignty through the maintenance of secure borders, and the integrity of …

Solving Ethical Puzzles To Unlock University Technology Transfer Client Work For An Intellectual Property Legal Clinic, Cynthia L. Dahl

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Intellectual property (IP) and technology legal clinics are experiencing an unprecedented surge in popularity. Before 2000 there were only five such clinics, but by 2016 there were seventy-four, with fifty added since 2010 alone. As law schools are approving new IP clinics and as practitioners are developing syllabi, there is an increasing need to share knowledge about models that work and how to avoid pitfalls.

One potentially fertile – but traditionally underutilized -- source of client work for an IP and technology clinic is the university technology transfer office (“TTO”), the department that protects, markets, and licenses all university intellectual …

Gideon And The Effective Assistance Of Counsel: The Rhetoric And The Reality, David Rudovsky

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There is general agreement that the “promise” of Gideon has been systematically denied to large numbers of criminal defendants. In some cases, no counsel is provided; in many others, excessive caseloads and lack of resources prevent appointed counsel from providing effective assistance. Public defenders are forced to violate their ethical obligations by excessive case assignments that make it impossible for them to practice law in accordance with professional standards, to say nothing of Sixth Amendment commands. This worsening situation is caused by the failure of governmental bodies to properly fund indigent defense services and by the refusal of courts to …

A New Player In The Boardroom: The Emergence Of The Independent Directors' Counsel, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., Edward B. Rock

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Over the last thirty years, the independent directors have occasionally been represented by independent counsel. Instances include: special litigation committees reviewing derivative suits; independent committees in parent subsidiary mergers and MBOs; and internal investigations of misconduct. We predict that, with the additional legal requirements imposed on independent directors by the Sarbanes Oxley Act and related changes to SEC rules and Stock Exchange listing requirements, the independent directors, especially those on the Audit Committee, increasingly will be represented on a continuing basis by independent legal counsel. Out of this will emerge a new figure in the board room: the Independent Directors' …

Attorney Fact-Finding, Ethical Decision-Making And The Methodology Of Law, Robert Rubinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the significance, challenges, and complexities of attorney fact-finding in ethical decision-making. Almost all discourse about legal ethics, from the pedagogical to the scholarly to the practical, takes facts for granted in order to focus on issues about ethical rules. The factual dimension of ethical decision-making, however, is critical to the decision-making process and can be subjected to rigorous and systematic study. Indeed, it is lawyers in a situation who engage in ethical decision-making, and such a situation entails the assimilation and interpretation of many sources of information. Such a process necessarily includes the motivations and ambivalence of …