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Full-Text Articles in Law

Moral Discourse, Bioethics, And The Law, Carl E. Schneider Nov 1996

Moral Discourse, Bioethics, And The Law, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Dan Callahan follows a distinguished tradition when he uses the phrase "moral discourse" to describe the law's work. The frequency with which that image is deployed suggests its resonance and even rightness: When we think about the way society considers moral issues and develops moral positions, it can be useful to imagine the law as one of many social institutions that contribute to a social discussion. Nevertheless, this image is misleading. At least for our (graying and balding) genera- tions, the law is regarded as a worthy participant in American moral discourse preeminently because of its part in the civil …


Copyright Law And Electronic Access To Information, Jessica D. Litman Oct 1996

Copyright Law And Electronic Access To Information, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

At the same time as we have been discovering the Internet’s enormous potential to enhance access to information and revolutionize the ways libraries do business, the Internet’s high profile in popular media has made it the focus of a wide spectrum of fears about the future. This paper focuses on pending proposals to amend copyright law to enhance the control copyright owners wield over the appearance of their works on digital networks. These proposals would stifle libraries’ use of the Internet. Libraries and their supporters must participate in the copyright debate, and think creatively about new models for copyright. The …


Toward A Tax-Based Explanation Of The Liability Insurance Crisis, Kyle D. Logue Sep 1996

Toward A Tax-Based Explanation Of The Liability Insurance Crisis, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

The so-called liability insurance crisis of 1985 and 1986 transformed the way we think about tort law and about liability insurance markets. The crisis phenomena, which first appeared in late 1984 and lasted until mid-1986, consisted of enormous increases in liability insurance premiums and alarming reductions in the availability of certain types of liability coverage. In the two principal liability lines of insurance (Other Liability and Medical Malpractice), premiums increased by hundreds (in some cases thousands) of percentage points in a matter of months. At the same time, the availability of liability insurance contracted sharply. The liability policies that were …


Intellectual Property Issues In Genomics, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Aug 1996

Intellectual Property Issues In Genomics, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

Controversy over intellectual property rights in the results of large-scale cDNA sequencing raises intriguing questions about the roles of the public and private sectors in genomics research, and about who stands to benefit (and who stands to lose) from the private appropriation of genomic information. While the US Patent and Trademark Office has rejected patent applications on cDNA fragments of unknown function from the National Institutes of Health, private firms have pursued three distinct strategies for exploiting unpatented cDNA sequence information: exclusive licensing, non-exclusive licensing and dedication to the public domain.


Fundamental Justice And The Deflection Of Refugees From Canada, James C. Hathaway Jun 1996

Fundamental Justice And The Deflection Of Refugees From Canada, James C. Hathaway

Articles

Canada is preparing to implement a controversial provision of the Immigration Act that will deny asylum seekers the opportunity even to argue their need for protection from persecution. Under a policy labelled "deflection" by the authors, the claims of refugees who travel to Canada through countries deemed safe, likely the United States and eventually Europe, will be rejected without any hearing on the merits. Because deflection does not require substantive or procedural harmonization of refugee law among partner states, it will severely compromise the ability of genuine refugees to seek protection.


Judicial Selection In Michigan - Time For A Change?, John W. Reed Jan 1996

Judicial Selection In Michigan - Time For A Change?, John W. Reed

Articles

How are we to choose those who judge us? To whom do we entrust the responsibility of protecting our liberties and the power to determine our rights and liabilities? We look for men and women of integrity, diligence, legal ability, and judicial temperament, chosen by methods that balance judicial independence and public accountability.1


Why Hard Cases Make Good (Clinical) Law, Paul D. Reingold Jan 1996

Why Hard Cases Make Good (Clinical) Law, Paul D. Reingold

Articles

In 1992, when the University of California's Hastings College of Law decided to offer a live-client clinic for the first time, its newly hired director had to make several decisions about what form the program should take.1 The first question for the director was whether the clinic should be a single-issue specialty clinic or a general clinic that would represent clients across several areas of the law. The second question, and the one that will be the focus of this essay, was whether the program should restrict its caseload to "easy" routine cases or also accept non-routine, less controllable litigation. …


Bouquets For Jerry Israel, Yale Kamisar Jan 1996

Bouquets For Jerry Israel, Yale Kamisar

Articles

As it turned out, of those asked to write a few words for an issue of the Michigan Law Review honoring Jerry Israel, I was the last to do so. And when I submitted my brief contribution to the Law Review I took the liberty of reading what the four others who paid tribute to Jerry had written. As a result, I feel like the fifth and last speaker at a banquet who listens to others say much of what he had planned to say.


Tax Transitions, Opportunistic Retroactivity, And The Benefits Of Government Precommitment, Kyle D. Logue Jan 1996

Tax Transitions, Opportunistic Retroactivity, And The Benefits Of Government Precommitment, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

What if the current federal income tax laws were repealed and replaced with a simple flat tax? What if the entire Internal Revenue Code (with its graduated rates and countless deductions, exclusions, and credits) were scuttled in favor of a broad-based consumption tax? Only a few years ago, such proposals would have seemed radical and extremely unlikely to be adopted. But times are changing. Calls for a drastic overhaul of the Internal Revenue Code have become commonplace, even at the highest levels in the tax-policy community. In addition, proposals that would replace the income tax with a flat-rate broad-based consumption …


Capture And Counteraction: Self- Help By Environmental Zealots (Allen Chair Symposium 1996: The Future Of Environmental And Land-Use Regulation), James E. Krier Jan 1996

Capture And Counteraction: Self- Help By Environmental Zealots (Allen Chair Symposium 1996: The Future Of Environmental And Land-Use Regulation), James E. Krier

Articles

Self-help is a largely neglected topic in American legal studies.1 With the exception of a survey by a group of law students published a dozen years ago,2 there appears to be little, if anything, in our legal literature that confronts the subject in a systematic way.3 This is so, at least, if one defines self-help as I do. To me, the term refers to any act of bypassing the formal legal system in order to get what one wants.


Rule 23: Challenges To The Rulemaking Process (Symposium: The Institute Of Judicial Administration Research Conference On Class Actions), Edward H. Cooper Jan 1996

Rule 23: Challenges To The Rulemaking Process (Symposium: The Institute Of Judicial Administration Research Conference On Class Actions), Edward H. Cooper

Articles

Three decades have elapsed since Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure last underwent revision. Taking a cue from proposed amendments prepared by the Civil Rules Advisory Committee, Professor Cooper asks whether now is the appropriate time to revise Rule 23. In this Articl e he identifis three potential "big changes" to the Rule. subsantially curtailing class actions; accommodating the needs of mass-tort actions; and recognizing the class as an entity, distinct from Its representatives. After outlining and critiquing the Advisory Committee's draf4 Professor Cooper raises a host of questions about many aspects of Rule 23 and suggests …


Public Research And Private Development: Patents And Technology Transfer In Government-Sponsored Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 1996

Public Research And Private Development: Patents And Technology Transfer In Government-Sponsored Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

This article revisits the logical and empirical basis for current government patent policy in order to shed light on the competing interests at stake and to begin to assess how the system is operating in practice. Such an inquiry is justified in part by the significance of federally-sponsored research and development to the overall U.S. research effort. Although the share of national expenditures for research and development borne by the federal government has declined since 1980, federal funding in 1995 still accounted for approximately thirty-six percent of total national outlays for research and development' and nearly fifty-eight percent of outlays …


Meaning In The Life Of The Lawyer, James Boyd White Jan 1996

Meaning In The Life Of The Lawyer, James Boyd White

Articles

First let me say what a pleasure it is to be here on such an occasion. Dean Kronman is an old and valued friend, and I am very glad to be able to visit your school, of which I have heard many good things. In the remarks that follow I shall respond to Dean Kronman's eloquent and elegiac account of "civility" in our culture, and in the law, not so much by marking agreement or disagreement as by offering a few loosely connected reflections on the topics he raises.


Internationale Handelsgessellschaft Mbh V.Einfuhrund Vorratsstelle Für Getreide Und Futtermittel (Favorite Case Symposium), James E. Krier Jan 1996

Internationale Handelsgessellschaft Mbh V.Einfuhrund Vorratsstelle Für Getreide Und Futtermittel (Favorite Case Symposium), James E. Krier

Articles

The idea of a "favorite judicial opinion" had never occurred to me until the Texas Law Review planted it in my head; the Journal of the American Dental Association could as well have asked me to express some sentiments about my favorite toothache. I was at a loss to think of even a single candidate for what, until the event, I had apparently regarded as a nonexistent office. Why then did I decide to accept the Review's invitation? The answer is, in a word, curiosity: Never mind that the editors of a law review in Texas wanted to know what …


Virtual Taxation: Source-Based Taxation In The Age Of Derivatives, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 1996

Virtual Taxation: Source-Based Taxation In The Age Of Derivatives, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

What are the implications of the explosive growth in the market for derivative financial instruments for international taxation? As Rosenbloom (1996) has pointed out, derivatives do not pose a particular international tax problem as long as one focuses on residence-based taxation. In that context, the issues raised by derivatives are the same as in a purely domestic context, which have been discussed extensively elsewhere (e.g., Warren, 1993). However, when the focus is on source-based taxation, and in particular source-based taxation of passive income (i.e., withholding taxes), the rise of derivatives has far-reaching implications. In 1994, then U.S. International Tax Counsel …


Civil Forfeiture And The War On Drugs: Lessons From Economics And History, Donald J. Boudreaux, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 1996

Civil Forfeiture And The War On Drugs: Lessons From Economics And History, Donald J. Boudreaux, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

This Article uses economic analysis to show how civil forfeiture’s role in the war on drugs creates contrary incentives for law enforcement officials and encourages abuses. The Article then reviews the history of civil forfeiture and the Supreme Court’s forfeiture jurisprudence, which seems incoherent. The Authors warn that the judiciary should be skeptical of civil forfeiture and its importance to the war on drugs. The Article proposes a constitutional framework, grounded in economics and history, to limit forfeiture abuses.


American Bar Association Section Of International Law And Practice Standing Committee On World Order Under Law Report To The House Of Delegates: International Monetary Fund And The World Bank Group, Michael A. Heller, H. Francis Shattuck Jr. Jan 1996

American Bar Association Section Of International Law And Practice Standing Committee On World Order Under Law Report To The House Of Delegates: International Monetary Fund And The World Bank Group, Michael A. Heller, H. Francis Shattuck Jr.

Articles

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group are the subjects of this report. The report, with its accompanying recommendation, is one of several reports on selected United Nations specialized agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The report has been developed by the Section of International Law and Practice, International Institutions Committee, through its Working Group on UN Specialized Agencies. This is a contribution to the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations in fulfillment of the American Bar Association's Goal VIII-to advance the rule of law in the world. The accompanying recommendation addresses issues of an enhanced …


The Structure Of International Taxation: A Proposal For Simplification, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 1996

The Structure Of International Taxation: A Proposal For Simplification, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The article explains the structure of the international tax regime and offers suggestions for improvement.


The Rhythms Of Hope And Disappointment In The Language Of Judging (St. John's University School Of Law: Rededication Symposia), James Boyd White Jan 1996

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

Articles

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.


Why I Write, James Boyd White Jan 1996

Why I Write, James Boyd White

Articles

It is a great honor for me to speak to you on this occasion, celebrating the publication of such an original and important book. It is a pleasure of a different kind as well, for Lash LaRue is an old and good friend, and I welcome the chance to join with others in congratulating him.


Don't Try: Civil Jury Verdicts In A System Geared To Settlement, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud Jan 1996

Don't Try: Civil Jury Verdicts In A System Geared To Settlement, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

Articles

If it is true, as we often hear, that we are one of the most litigious societies on earth, it is because of our propensity to sue, not our affinity for trials. Of the hundreds of thousands of civil lawsuits that are filed each year in America, the great majority are settled; of those that are not settled, most are ultimately dismissed by the plaintiffs or by the courts; only a few percent are tried to a jury or a judge. This is no accident. We prefer settlements and have designed a system of civil justice that embodies and expresses …


The Cosmological Question: A Response To Milner S. Ball's 'All The Company Of Heaven', Joseph Vining Jan 1996

The Cosmological Question: A Response To Milner S. Ball's 'All The Company Of Heaven', Joseph Vining

Articles

We do not disagree, and I do not doubt, that legal processes are sources of injustice, violent oppression, crushing of the spirit, destruction of lives, actual death. I have only to look at The Trial1 again. Nor do we disagree that there are strings of words, statements, put out by officials, lawyers, and lawyer-academics, often called "rules," that cannot be taken into oneself and that by their very nature evoke manipulation in response, avoidance if they cannot be ignored. In their name violent imposition of pure will occurs all the time, and power is exercised by those who can secure …


Theorists' Belief: A Comment On The Moral Tradition Of American Constitutionalism, Jospeh Vining Jan 1996

Theorists' Belief: A Comment On The Moral Tradition Of American Constitutionalism, Jospeh Vining

Articles

The Moral Tradition of American Constitutionalism is one of those rare works that leads us to face, at the center of law and legal thought, the largest questions about human life and human purpose. There is a special reader's shudder, a certain gestural shift in the chair, reserved for that moment of realizing where one is being led-not to the edge, but to the center, so that the questions become insistent, and whatever we and others say and do in the face of them becomes our response to them.


Globalisation Of Contract Law: Rules For Commercial Contracts In The 21st Century, Whitmore Gray Jan 1996

Globalisation Of Contract Law: Rules For Commercial Contracts In The 21st Century, Whitmore Gray

Articles

This is a paper given at the Asia-Pacific Lawyers Association meeting held in Bangkok in November 1995. The author describes the principles of international commercial contracts published in 1994 by the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law. Professor Gray sees a new era of harmonisation of contract law. An appendix gives an abstract of a contract law decision given by an Austrian Court in 1994.


The Reasons So Many People Support Physician-Assisted Suicide - And Why These Reasons Are Not Convincing, Yale Kamisar Jan 1996

The Reasons So Many People Support Physician-Assisted Suicide - And Why These Reasons Are Not Convincing, Yale Kamisar

Articles

It would be hard to deny that there is a great deal of support in this country-and ever-growing support-for legalizing physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Why is this so? I believe there are a considerable number of reasons. In this article, I shall discuss five common reasons and explain why I do not find any of them convincing.


Faculty Spotlight - Kyle D. Logue, Kyle D. Logue Jan 1996

Faculty Spotlight - Kyle D. Logue, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

Most of my teaching and research efforts are currently spent in two general fields of law - taxation and insurance. Which raises an interesting question: Why would a rational person decide to devote a good portion of his academic career to areas of law that many people - lawyers and nonlawyers alike - find painfully boring and unreasonably complicated? The ta and insurance lawyers in the audience, of course, already know the answer - that ta ation and insuran e are e ceptionally interesting topics and that, if one wants to understand how the real world works (in particular, the …


Intellectual Property At The Public-Private Divide: The Case Of Large-Scale Cdna Sequencing, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 1996

Intellectual Property At The Public-Private Divide: The Case Of Large-Scale Cdna Sequencing, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

The Human Genome Project provides fertile ground for studying the role of intellectual property at the wavering boundary between public and private research science. It involves a major commitment of both public and private research funds in an area that is of significant interest both to research scientists working in university and government laboratories and to commercial firms. It thus provides a wealth of new scientific discoveries that are simultaneously potential candidates for commercial development and inputs into further research. Its obvious implications for human health raise the stakes of getting the balance between private property and public access right, …


The Risks Of Death: Why Erroneous Convictions Are Common In Capital Cases (Symposium: The New York Death Penalty In Context), Samuel R. Gross Jan 1996

The Risks Of Death: Why Erroneous Convictions Are Common In Capital Cases (Symposium: The New York Death Penalty In Context), Samuel R. Gross

Articles

As the Supreme Court has said, time and again, death is different: It is "different in kind from any other punishment imposed under our system of criminal justice;"1 it "differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year sentence differs from one of only a year or two;"' 2 and so forth. Traditionally, this observation has justified special procedural protections for capital defendants. Justice Harlan put it nicely nearly forty years ago: "I do not concede that whatever process is 'due' an offender faced with a fine or a prison sentence necessarily satisfies the requirements of the Constitution in a capital …


Reply To Daniel Polsby (Symposium: The New York Death Penalty In Context), Samuel R. Gross Jan 1996

Reply To Daniel Polsby (Symposium: The New York Death Penalty In Context), Samuel R. Gross

Articles

I'd like to offer a few words in response to Professor Polsby's articulate, forceful and amusing essay in favor of capital punishment.


Sanctuary, Redlight Districts, And Washington, D.C.: Some Observations On Neuman's Anomalous Zones (Symposium: Surveying Law And Borders), William I. Miller Jan 1996

Sanctuary, Redlight Districts, And Washington, D.C.: Some Observations On Neuman's Anomalous Zones (Symposium: Surveying Law And Borders), William I. Miller

Articles

The claim is often made that boundaries obviate disputes if they are clear. But boundaries are inseparable from disputes; they seem to invite them as much as obviate them. Note how natural the collocations "disputed boundary" and "boundary dispute" are. The conventional view that one hears a lot in law schools is that once a bright line is drawn then a boundary is "settled." But that supposes that a clear boundary need not be defended or continually justified or that internal changes in the entity it circumscribes and in some ways defines do not affect the integrity of the boundary. …