Law Commons^™

Evidentiary Inequality, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Publications

Federal employment discrimination law is rife with evidentiary inequality. Courts allow employers to draw from a broad palette of evidence to defend against discrimination claims, while highly restricting the facts from which plaintiffs can prove their claims. This Article draws from hundreds of cases to show how judges favor the employer's evidence and disfavor the plaintiff's evidence across multiple dimensions, such as time, witnesses, documents, relevance, and reliability. Judges have created a host of named doctrines that severely restrict the evidence plaintiffs are allowed to use to prove their discrimination claims. At the same time, a host of unnamed, and …

"Yogi-Isms" In The Courts, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

The versatility of Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra, a native of St. Louis,5 appears unparalleled in the annals of professional sports. His stellar on-the-field performance earned him election to the Hall of Fame in 1972, and his vast collection of off-the-field sayings earned him a secure place in American folklore. Some Yogi-isms are cited and quoted in federal and state judicial opinions. Topping the judicial ledger is “It’s déjà vu all over again,” which appears in Shurtleff and a few dozen other decisions.

It's None Of Your Business: State Regulation Of Tribal Business Undermines Sovereignty And Justice, Robin M. Rotman, Sam J. Carter

Faculty Publications

The U.S. Constitution grants the federal government plenary power over American Indian affairs, yet states are increasingly attempting to assert regulatory and tax jurisdiction over tribal businesses. This overreach threatens tribal sovereignty and contravenes the terms of treaties entered between the United States and American Indian tribes. This Article begins by examining the legal foundations of federal, state, and tribal relations. It then examines recent cases across four business sectors - gaming, tobacco sales, petroleum sales, and online lending - in order to illustrate the pervasive jurisdictional challenges faced by courts in cases involving tribal businesses. This Article offers three …

Eleven Observations About Legal Writing, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

This Article collects 11 observations about legal writing that I have shared with law students since I began teaching in the late 1970s.

Realigning The Clean Water Act: Comprehensive Treatment Of Nonpoint Source Pollution, Robin M. Rotman, Ashley A. Hollis, Kathleen M. Trauth

Faculty Publications

Nonpoint source pollution is the biggest threat to water quality in the United States today. This Article argues for stronger federal controls over nonpoint source pollution. It begins by examining the history of water quality regulation in the United States, including the passage and amendment of the Clean Water Act and the evolving definition of “navigable waters” over time. The Article then discusses recent rulemaking and litigation developments, including the Clean Water Rule, the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, and the County of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund case. It offers three recommendations. First, the Article calls for a congressional …

An Extended Essay On Church Autonomy, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

The doctrine of church autonomy has its own exclusive line of precedent running from Watson v. Jones (1872) through Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral (1952) - where the doctrine was first recognized as having First Amendment stature - and culminating with renewed vigor for religious institutional autonomy in the unanimous decision of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC (2012). Attention to church autonomy has expanded rapidly since the Supreme Court’s decision in Hosanna-Tabor, and its scope is much disputed as it pushes aside other claims and interests. In its most familiar form—the “ministerial exception” - it is …

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: Some Valedictory Reflections Twenty Years After Apprendi, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article reflects on the author's professional experience and intellectual evolution in relation to federal sentencing policy and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines before and after the Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey.

The account begins with the author's first encounters with the Guidelines when he was a zealous Assistant U.S. Attorney, continues through his transition to teacher, scholar, policy advocate, and occasional sentencing consultant, and concludes with the author pessimistic about the prospects of meaningful federal sentencing reform.

The utility, if any, of these musings will lie partly in the fact that the author has been deeply involved …

Shakespeare In The Courts, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

This article continues the theme of recent “Writing It Right” articles in the Journal of the Missouri Bar. These articles describe how federal and state judges today frequently accent their opinions’ substantive or procedural rulings with references to cultural markers that can resonate with the advocates, parties, and judges who comprise the opinions’ readership. The courts’ broad array of cultural references demonstrates versatility. Some of my early articles in the Journal profiled judicial opinions that referenced terminologies, rules, and traditions of baseball, football, and other sports. Together these sports’ mass audiences help define American culture.

Later my Journal articles profiled …

On The Cusp Of The Next Medical Malpractice Insurance Crisis, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

Medical malpractice claims are dwindling. Total payouts are far lower than during the 2002 crisis. Yet, insurance industry profits have been sinking for a decade and are nearly in the red. After a dozen years with a “soft” insurance market, we are now on the cusp of yet another malpractice insurance crisis.

How can profits be in peril if claims have dwindled and payouts are historically low?
Answering that question requires an understanding of the insurance cycle. The cycle periodically transforms gradual increases in costs and gradual decreases in revenue into explosive increases in premiums.

The industry’s financial statistics today …

The Odious Intellectual Company Of Authority Restricting Second Amendment Rights To The “Virtuous”, Royce De R. Barondes

Faculty Publications

To the woes of the victims of American over-criminalization, we can add deprivation of the suitable tools for self-defense during national emergency and civil unrest. Federal law disarms “unlawful users” of controlled substances (including medical marijuana), and imposes a permanent firearms ban on substantially all those with prior felony convictions. A notable exception is made for white-collar criminals with felony violations of antitrust and certain business practice statutes.

The constitutionality of these restrictions typically is founded on the view that one is tainted as “non-virtuous” for any serious criminal conviction, which includes any felony conviction. Using extensive sampling, this article …

Beyond Stress Reduction: Mindfulness As A Skill For Developing Authentic Professional Identity, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

Mindfulness is often touted in the legal field for its capacity to help reduce stress and improve focus through the management of distractions. However, the potential contributions of mindfulness practice for the legal profession extend beyond stress reduction' and include great promise for helping lawyers understand who they are as members of the legal profession - that is, their professional identity. This knowledge is empowering because it allows lawyers facing ethical quandaries to make choices that better align their professional values with their personal values, rather than aligning their personal values with professional values and societal expectations of success. In …

Book Review: Social Media And Democracy: The State Of The Field And Prospects For Reform, Cynthia W. Bassett

Faculty Publications

Social Media and Democracy illuminates the empirical social science research done to date to tease apart the effects social media has had on representative democracies. It is a collection of essays by academic social scientists researching the intersection of social media and democracy from a variety of angles.

Eight Strategies That Enhance Legal Writing, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

A few years ago, I spoke about legal writing at an annual forum of Missouri’s appellate judges, held at the University of Missouri School of Law in Columbia. The hour-long presentation advanced eight strategies that enable judges and practicing lawyers to sharpen their writing. These eight strategies appear below in this article.

The Establishment Clause: Its Original Public Meaning And What We Can Learn From The Plain Text, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Modern times in church-state relations began in 1947 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Everson v. Board of Education. The justices in both the majority and dissent said they were interpreting the Establishment Clause based on the intent of the founding generation. However, rather than looking to Congress’s lawmaking in the summer of 1789 that led to the First Amendment, the justices relied on the Virginia disestablishment from four years prior, as well as the efforts of just two statesmen, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.

For the next half century, the High Court’s search was for events and prominent …

The Paradox Of Exclusive State-Court Jurisdiction Over Federal Claims, Thomas B. Bennett

Faculty Publications

Standing doctrine is supposed to ensure the separation of powers and an adversary process of adjudication. But recently, it has begun serving a new and unintended purpose: transferring federal claims from federal to state court. Paradoxically, current standing doctrine assigns a growing class of federal claims - despite Congressional intent to the contrary - to the exclusive jurisdiction of state courts. Even then, only in some states, and only to the extent authorized by state law.

This paradox arises at the intersection of three distinct areas of doctrine:

(1) a newly sharpened requirement of concrete injury under Article III that …

References To Aesop's Fables In Judicial Opinions And Written Advocacy, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

In several “Writing It Right” articles over the past few years, I have described how federal and state judges frequently accent their opinions' substantive or procedural points with careful references to cultural markers familiar to many Americans. This article continues traveling the literary lane by turning to Aesop’s Fables. By invoking a Fable, the Friends of Animals district court continued a tradition that began in 1823, when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court cited Aesop in a will contest.

Wage Enslavement: How The Tax System Holds Back Historically Disadvantaged Groups Of Americans, David Gamage, Goldburn P. Maynard Jr.

Faculty Publications

Despite the importance placed on equality of opportunity within United States political culture, the existing tax system inhibits historically disadvantaged groups from building wealth or catching up with historically more privileged groups. This effectively then traps many members of historically disadvantaged groups into a continued cycle of dependence on tax-disfavored wage and salary income, a phenomenon that we metaphorically label as “wage enslavement.” This Article explains this phenomenon and then calls for reform.

Tough Conversations About Race: Let The Book Start The Discussion, Cynthia W. Bassett, Kara Phillips

Faculty Publications

Discussing racism is difficult, both for those who have experienced it and those who are seeking to understand its effect on others. The authors suggest that book discussion groups can help lawyers and students to have these difficult conversations.

Arbitration In The Age Of Covid: Examining Arbitration's Move Online, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

Arbitration has been moving online over time with the growth of the Internet and Online Dispute Resolution (“ODR”), which includes use of technology to assist online negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and variations thereof. Online Arbitration (“OArb”) is nonetheless a unique subset of ODR because it usually culminates in a final and binding award by a neutral third party that is enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”). Indeed, I have written about OArb on prior occasions, due to its unique status under the FAA and other arbitration laws. However, OArb was relatively limited until the COVID-19 pandemic sparked the acceleration of …

Arbitration In The Age Of Covid: Examining Arbitration's Move Online, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

Arbitration has been moving online over time with the growth of the Internet and Online Dispute Resolution ("ODR"), which includes use of technology to assist online negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and variations thereof Online Arbitration ("OArb ") is nonetheless a unique subset of ODR because it usually culminates in a final and binding award by a neutral third party that is enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act ("FAA"). Indeed, I have written about OArb on prior occasions, due to its unique status under the FAA and other arbitration laws. However, OArb was relatively limited until the COVID-19 pandemic sparked the acceleration …

Ignoring Drug Trademarks, Erika Lietzan

Faculty Publications

If you walk into a pharmacy with a prescription for Merck’s ZOCOR, which contains simvastatin, the pharmacist will probably give you a product containing simvastatin made by another company. The pharmacist will dispense a “generic” simvastatin product. State generic substitution laws, passed in the 1970s to help the government save money by switching patients to cheaper generic drugs, either permit or require this substitution. But drug brand names -- such as ZOCOR -- are trademarks. Like other trademarks, they distinguish goods in the market from others, and they signal the source of the goods. These state laws essentially treat the …

So Many Have Died: Covid-19 In America's Nursing Homes, David M. English

Faculty Publications

As of the date of this writing in late September 2020, over 77,000 residents and staff of long-term care facilities have died of COVID-19 with more to come. This article will describe the reasons for this mass wave of death and provide practical suggestions for attorneys who represent a resident or family members of residents.