Law Commons^™

Speaking Truth To Power: The Jurisprudence Of Julia Cooper Mack, Walter J. Walsh

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In 1975, upon her appointment to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, Julia Cooper Mack broke the double barrier of race and gender by becoming the first woman of color ever appointed to any American court of last resort. Over the last two decades, Judge Mack has authored hundreds of opinions articulating a powerful critical jurisprudence previously unheard on the highest level of our judiciary. In the pages that follow, several scholars join the Editors of the Howard Law Journal in suggesting that Judge Mack's life and work warrant careful scrutiny. This symposium explores the roots, development, and substance …

The Rhythms Of Hope And Disappointment In The Language Of Judging (St. John's University School Of Law: Rededication Symposia), James Boyd White

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I want to talk today about a certain aspect or dimension of the language of judging. From one point of view the quality I mean can be seen as a kind of idealism inherent in legal lan­guage; from another, as a kind of fundamental hypocrisy; from still another, as a simultaneously tragic and comic element in le­gal life.

Denaturalizing The Lawyer-Statesman (Book Review), Anthony V. Alfieri

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No abstract provided.

Four Views Of Japanese Attorneys, Daniel H. Foote

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The four articles translated below appeared in a special collection entitled: Bengoshi--san Monosatari-or, A Tale of Lawyers. This collection was No. 198 in the Bessatsu Takarajma series, a series that contains such other tides as: How to Develop Brain Power (Noryoku toreningu no gijutsu, No. 41), The Court Game (Salban gemu, No. 169), and The Dark Side of Real Estate (Fudosan no ura, No. 177). As these titles ·reflect, publications in the series are aimed at the mass market. not the world of academics. A further caveat is thatr as with the majority …

Defending Racial Violence, Anthony V. Alfieri

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No abstract provided.

The Challenge Of Asian Law, Whitmore Gray

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Several years ago, when U.S. trade across the Pacific finally surpassed that across the Atlantic, a small group of U.S. lawyers were already responding to the challenge of representing clients in transactions in Asia. While few had had the opportunity to take courses dealing with Asian law during their law school years, many entered the field because of undergraduate language and area studies courses. A few had taught courses dealing with Asia before beginning their law studies.

Practicing Community (Book Review), Anthony V. Alfieri

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No abstract provided.

Authority, Credibility, And Pre-Understanding: A Defense Of Outsider Narratives In Legal Scholarship, Marc A. Fajer

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No abstract provided.

Responding To Gender Bias In The Courts: Progress Without Accountability, Suellyn Scarnecchia

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On December 19, 1989, we received the final report of the Michigan Supreme Court Task Force on Gender Issues (task force report). The task force made 91 recommendations, plus an additional 18 joint recommendations with the Task Force on Racial/Ethnic Issues in the Courts. The Michigan Supreme Court, the State Bar of Michigan and other individuals and organizations have made much progress in responding to the recommendations, with one glaring omission-Although jointly recommended by both task forces as "essential to the realization of the goals envisioned in the goals envisioned in the reports," the Supreme Court has failed to appoint …

In Pursuit Of The Counter-Text: The Turn To The Jewish Legal Model In Contemporary American Legal Theory, Suzanne Last Stone

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Beginning with Professor Robert Cover's Nomos and Narrative, contemporary American legal scholars have increasingly turned, implicitly or more directly, to the Jewish legal tradition as an example of a legal system in which law is defined not by reference to the authority and power of the State, but rather by the commitment of a legal community to voluntarily-accepted legal obligations. These scholars depict the Jewish legal system as having successfully confronted - and resolved - several central dilemmas currently facing American law by maintaining a coherent legal system while accepting behavioral and interpretive pluralism. In this Article, Professor Stone shows …

The Scholar As Advocate, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

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Academic freedom in this country has been so closely identified with faculty autonomy that the two terms are often used interchangeably, especially by faculty members who are resisting restraints on their freedom to do as they please. While there may be some dispute as to whether or how far academic freedom protects the autonomy of universities or of students, the autonomy of faculty members seems to lie close to the core of the traditional American conception of academic freedom. As elaborated by the American Association of University Professors, this conception of academic freedom calls for protecting individual faculty members from …

Letter To Judge Harry Edwards, James J. White

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Dear Harry: I write to second your statements concerning the disjunction between legal education and the legal profession and also to quibble with you. By examining the faculty, the curriculum, and the research agenda at Michigan, your school and mine, I hope to illustrate the ways in which you are right and to suggest other ways in which you and your clerk informants may be too pessimistic.

Harry Edward's Nostalgia, Paul D. Reingold

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Until fairly recently, the work of people who thought and wrote about the law in its broadest cultural sense, and the work of those who thought and wrote about the law as it was practiced, did not intersect very much. The broad cultural issues tended to be the province of philosophers or political theorists or other academic social critics, while traditional legal scholarship - as it appeared in law school journals - remained firmly rooted in lawyers' questions. This is not to suggest that legal academics wrote nothing but practice manuals, but it is true that until the last twenty …

Coordinating Sanctions For Corporate Misconduct: Civil Or Criminal Punishment, David Yellen, Carl J. Mayer

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No abstract provided.

Stances, Anthony V. Alfieri

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No abstract provided.

Identifying The Best Interests Of The Child In Protection Proceedings: Nine Guidelines For The Child Advocate., Donald N. Duquette

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Increasingly, judges appoint court appointed special advocates (CASAs) to represent children in child abuse and neglect proceedings. Like lawyers, CASAs are charged with looking out for the "best interests" of the child. Unfortunately, although the phrase "best interests" sounds noble, it provides little practical guidance for the child advocate.

Translation As A Mode Of Thought, James Boyd White

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I think that Clark Cunningham's article, The Lawyer as Translator, is a wonderful piece of work, full of life and interest and originality. I especially admire: his ability to make vivid to the reader the ways in which languages do truly differ, and differ beyond our efforts to bridge them-as he shows when he imagines an attempt to translate our most common professional terms into Chinese; his recoguition of the kind of force that our languages have over our minds, both as we see the world and as we tell stories about it; his sense that what we think of …

Evidentiary Rules And Rulings: The Role Of Treatises, Richard D. Friedman

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I have devoted large gobs of time to work on a multi-author treatise on the law of evidence.' And before even one volume is published, I will devote further multiple gobs of time to the project-which, perhaps audaciously and perhaps merely foolishly, but with heredity and precedent on our side,2 we are calling The New Wigmore. Accordingly, I found the question posed by this symposium-Does Evidence Law Matter?-rather disquieting. If it is doubtful even whether the law of evidence matters, then how much can a treatise on the law of evidence matter, and how worthwhile can such a work be? …

The Burdens Of Educational Loans: The Impacts Of Debt On Job Choice And Standards Of Living For Students At Nine American Law Schools, David L. Chambers

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American law students are borrowing large sums of money. For graduates at many schools, cumulative debts of $40,000 from college and law school have become the norm, and debts of $50,000, $60,000, and even more are common. The sums students are borrowing are much larger today than they were ten years ago, even after adjusting for increases in the cost of living. They have risen at a considerably faster pace than the starting salaries at small law firms and government agencies. They have even risen at a faster pace than the starting salaries in many large firms. The new pattern …

Generalization In Interpretive Theory, Joseph Vining

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There are arguments at large about the nature of legal interpretation, proceeding from an implicit proposition that interpretation is the same phenomenon or experience whatever its setting. An assumption that there is one phenomenon can be found in discussions among lawyers of interpretation and in discussions among nonlawyers of legal interpretation-and as often in the work of those who would deny there is any significance to theorizing about interpretation, as of those who think persuasion to a particular theory will have the utmost consequence for law and society. Proceeding from such a proposition, rather than toward it, raises the risk …

The Inside Counsel Movement, Professional Judgment And Organizational Representation, Robert Eli Rosen

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No abstract provided.

Discipline Of Clear Expression, Donald L. Burnett Jr.

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No abstract provided.

Nonlawyers In The Business Of Law: Does The One Who Has The Gold Really Make The Rules?, Thomas R. Andrews

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For at least sixty years nonlawyers have been prohibited from offering their nonlegal talents in a business combination with lawyers practicing law. Moreover, when the ABA's new model rules were adopted in 1983, the ABA considered carefully but rejected a proposal that would have lifted the traditional ban on nonlawyer ownership of a law business. Nonetheless, the point of each article was that the relevant restrictions in the ethical rules are on their way out.

Commentators have given considerable attention to the unauthorized practice of law by nonlawyers, and to the offering of legal services by nonprofit institutions. The focus …

Legal Affinities, Joseph Vining

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Not long ago, any question of the kind "How may theology serve as a resource in understanding law?" would have been hardly conceivable among lawyers. When Lon Fuller brought out his first book in 1940, The Law in Quest of Itself, he could think of no better way of tagging his adversary the legal positivist than to note a "parallel between theoretical theology and analytical jurisprudence." Two decades later, in the name of realism, Thurman Arnold dismissed Henry Hart's non-positivist jurisprudence in harsh terms. A master of the cutting phrase, he confidently entitled his attack "Professor Hart's Theology." Two decades …

First Person Singular, John W. Reed

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The hot topic in legal circles is the decline of professionalism. In this often negative age, it ranks right up there with "What's wrong with American schools?" and "Where will we live when the ozone is gone?" and "How can we get a handle on drugs?"-all those terrible things.

Educational Debts And The Worsening Position Of Small-Firm, Government, And Legal-Services Lawyers, David L. Chambers

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Law school operating costs are up. Tuitions are up. The debts of law students are up. What is happening to the students who have borrowed large sums? Are their debts affecting their decisions about the jobs to seek? Once in practice, are they significantly affecting the standard of living they can afford to maintain? What, in particular, is the effect of debts on those who enter-or contemplate entering-small firms, government, legal services, and "public interest" work where salaries are lower than in most other settings in which lawyers work? In the preceding essay, Jack Kramer has performed another extremely valuable …

Accommodation And Satisfaction: Women And Men Lawyers And The Balance Of Work And Family, David L. Chambers

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This study of graduates of the University of Michigan Law School from the late 1970s reports on the differing ways that women and men have responded to the conflicting claims of work and family. It finds that women with children who have entered the profession have indeed continued to bear the principalr esponsibilitiesf or the care of children, but it alsof inds that these women, with all their burdens, are more satisfied with their careers and with the balance of their family and professional lives than other women and than men.

Making Uncle Sam Pay: A Review Of Equal Access To Justice Act Cases In The Sixth Circuit, 1983-1987, Martin Geer, Paul D. Reingold

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Despite the recent admonition of the Supreme Court that a "request for attorneys' fees should not result in a second major litigation,"12 the courts have been frequently called on to interpret the often ambiguous language of the EAJA. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has not been spared this difficult chore. While the 1985 amendments have clarified some provisions of the Act and affected some major decisions in the Sixth Circuit, the recent changes have also left other previously settled areas in a state of flux. This article will review the Sixth Circuit's EAJA decisions from 1983-1987, …

Automatic Generation Of A Legal Expert System From A Normalized Interpretation Of Legal Rules, Layman E. Allen

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No abstract provided.

Law And Enchantment: The Place Of Belief, Joseph Vining

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The question I wish to raise is whether one must believe what one says when one makes a statement of law. The language of belief that we know, and from which moral discourse and the moral never stray far: do judges, lawyers, law participate in it? Any such question is but an aspect of a larger question, indeed issue, of what we may call the objectivity of legal language. It is raised perhaps most acutely by the broad claims now being made for artificial intelligence and in particular for the computer programming of legal advice (as a species of what …