Law Commons^™

Cognitive Biases And Heuristics In Tort Litigation: A Proposal To Limit Their Effects Without Changing The World, John E. Montgomery

Faculty Publications

Behavioral studies indicate that individuals do not always make objective decisions about risk. Various cognitive biases and heuristics-- mental shortcuts everyone uses consciously or subconsciously to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty--introduce error and subjectivity. At one level, these studies merely confirm the obvious: individuals make decisions based on both reason and emotions. At another level, they may introduce serious complications into some types of legal analysis, which are based on the assumption that individuals are rational actors. The potential effects of erroneous decisions about risk are of particular concern in the area of tort law. Laboratory studies establish that …

Child Marriage And Guardianship In Tanzania: Robbing Girls Of Their Childhood And Infantilizing Women, Aparna Polavarapu

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Understanding The Unrest Of France’S Younger Workers: The Price Of American Ambivalence, Joseph Seiner

Faculty Publications

The youth of France refer to themselves as the “throwaway generation,” in part because they perceive that their value to the labor market is simply disregarded by the government. Against this backdrop, young French workers recently took to the streets in riot to protest a newly enacted employment law that stripped employees under the age of twenty-six of many of their employment protections. The protests persisted after the French Constitutional Council held that the law did not violate France's constitution. The continued violent opposition ultimately forced French President Jacques Chirac to abandon the law, resulting in an embarrassing defeat for …

Using Fact-Finding To Combat Violence Against Women In Ghana, Uganda, And The United States: Lessons Learned As A Clinic Student, Clinic Supervisor, And Practitioner, Lisa V. Martin

Faculty Publications

Gender-based violence threatens the lives and livelihood of women throughout the world. Despite this reality, the laws and policies of many states fail to offer women effective relief and protection from violence. To develop policy reforms effective to combat gender-based violence in a particular community, advocates must first obtain a clear understanding of the nature of the problem in that community. Fact-finding is a critical tool that can enable women’s rights advocates to gain a clear understanding of women’s experience of violence in a particular community by facilitating the documentation of individual human rights abuses and the identification of patterns …

The Contradiction Between Equal Protection's Meaning And Its Legal Substance: How Deliberate Indifference Can Cure It, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

This Article highlights the inherent ambiguities of racial antidiscrimination’s core legal language: “equal protection under the law” and “discrimination based on race.” It then analyzes how and why the Court has never answered fundamental questions regarding the meaning of these terms. Thus, this Article answers these fundamental questions itself by exploring the original intent behind the Equal Protection Clause. Against this backdrop, this Article reveals how the Court’s standard for assessing discrimination claims, the intent doctrine, assumes a meaning for equal protection that is inconsistent with its original meaning. Rather than reflecting equal protection’s meaning, the standard lacks any basis …

The Rehnquist Court: Nineteen Years Of Tax Decisions, F. Ladson Boyle

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Official Indiscretions: Considering Sex Bargains With Government Informants, Susan S. Kuo

Faculty Publications

This article addresses an alarming new investigatory practice employed by law enforcement officials: requiring arrestees to carry out sexual tasks as confidential informants. Requiring arrestee informants to engage in sexual activities in exchange for a reduction or possible elimination of criminal penalties they might otherwise incur raises constitutional concerns. Informants can and do accept a variety of investigative assignments. But, as this article shows by drawing on sociological research, sex tasks differ fundamentally from more conventional informant undertakings. The importance of this distinction is that while adult individuals undoubtedly can provide consent to sexual matters, the validity of such consent …

Core Principles For Effective Banking Supervision: An Enforceable International Financial Standard?, Duncan E. Alford

Faculty Publications

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision serves as an international forum to discuss international bank supervision issues. Because of the gravity and frequency of banking crises since the demise of the Bretton Woods System in the early 1970s, international financial standards have emerged as a method to minimize these crises. In 1998, the Basel Committee issued a comprehensive standard on bank super vision that built upon its work over the previous two and a half decades. In this Article, the author analyzes this comprehensive standard the Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision-and assesses its implementation in the European Union, the …

Applicants Laid Bare: The Privacy Economics Of University Application Files, Martin Mcwilliams

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Medicare Should, But Cannot, Consider Cost: Legal Impediments To Sound Policy, Jacqueline R. Fox

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

European Union Legal Materials: An Infrequent User's Guide, Duncan E. Alford

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Why Annie Gets To Keep Her Gun: An Analysis Of Firearm Exemptions In Bankruptcy Proceedings, Marcia A. Yablon-Zug

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Special Defenses In Products Liability Law, David G. Owen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Shock To The System: Analyzing The Conflict Among Courts Over Whether And When Excited Utterances May Follow Subsequent Startling Occurrences In Rape And Sexual Assault Cases, Colin Miller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Nirvana Fallacy In Law Firm Regulation Debate, Elizabeth Chambliss

Faculty Publications

Most commentators would agree that large law firms have outgrown collegial management and self-regulation. Yet lawyers generally have been slow to recognize the benefits of bureaucratic management, and traditionally have resisted and lamented the move toward more bureaucratic forms. Many lawyers view the infrastructure of bureaucratic management - that is, formal policies and procedures and specialized managerial personnel - as necessarily undermining professional ethics and individual accountability within firms.

This article questions the empirical basis for such concerns. I argue that the fear that centralized management controls will undermine individual accountability rests on an implicit comparison to a nostalgic, collegial …

The Constitutional Failing Of The Anticybersquatting Act, Ned Snow

Faculty Publications

Eminent domain and thought control are occurring in cyberspace. Through the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), the government transfers domain names from domain-name owners to private parties based on the owners' bad-faith intent. The owners receive no just compensation. The private parties who are recipients of the domain names are trademark holders whose trademarks correspond with the domain names. Often the trademark holders have no property rights in those domain names: trademark law only allows mark holders to exclude others from making commercial use of their marks; it does not allow mark holders to reserve the marks for their own …

Racial Threat, Urban Conditions And Police Use Of Force: Assessing The Direct And Indirect Linkages Across Multiple Urban Areas, Karen F. Parker, John M. Macdonald, Wesley G. Jennings, Geoffrey P. Alpert

Faculty Publications

Traditionally explanations of police use of force have relied on a racial threat perspective. Tests of this perspective, however, typically offer a single indicator of threat (the relative size of the black population) and fail to adequately take into account the complex relationship between racial threat and police use of force. Drawing on racial threat, social disorganization, and police use of force literature, this study hypothesizes that macro-level patterns in police use of force are embedded in the racial and structural composition of cities and the organizational climate of local politics and police departments. The present study examines these relationships …

Proving Negligence In Products Liability Litigation, David G. Owen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Culture Clash: Teaching Cultural Defenses In The Criminal Law Classroom, Susan S. Kuo

Faculty Publications

In the law school classroom, the Socratic method of legal analysis removes a dispute at issue in a given case from its sociocultural context and takes the cultural backgrounds of the parties into account only when they serve the legal argument. The language of the law commands law students to siphon off the emotional and cultural content because of the enduring belief that the law is neutral and impartial. Accordingly, cultural conflicts are deemed irrelevant to legal analysis because laws are unbiased and culture-blind. This detached outlook has been termed perpectivelessness to denote a neutral, odorless, colorless non-perspective.

This essay …

Reappraising T.L.O.'S Special Needs Doctrine In An Era Of School-Law Enforcement Entanglement, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

This essay presents one doctrinal method for lawyers to defend children accused of criminal charges in juvenile or adult court: attacking the applicability of the twenty-year old case, New Jersey v. T.L.O., to most school searches. T.L.O. based its application of a lower standard for searches of students by school officials on the presumption that firm gates separate public school from law enforcement and criminal justice institutions. Later administrative search cases inside and outside of the school context show that tee lower standard of T.L.O. depends entirely on programmatic purposes that distinguish school systems and ordinary law enforcement. Porous schoolhouse …

The Puzzle Of Comment J, David G. Owen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Property Rights And Sacred Sites: Federal Regulatory Responses To American Indian Religious Claims On Public Land, Marcia A. Yablon-Zug

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Toward A Better Benchmark: Assessing The Utility Of Not-At-Fault Traffic Crash Data In Racial Profiling Research, Geoffrey P. Alpert, Michael R. Smith, Roger G. Dunham

Faculty Publications

As studies on racial profiling and biased policing have begun to proliferate, researchers are debating which benchmark is most appropriate for comparison with police traffic stop data. Existing benchmark populations, which include populations estimated from census figures, licensed drivers, arrestees, reported crime suspects, and observed drivers and traffic violators, all have significant limitations. This article offers a new, alternative benchmark for police traffic stops, a benchmark that has not been previously applied or tested in a racial profiling research setting. The analysis presented compares traffic observation data, gathered at selected, high volume intersections during an ongoing racial profiling study in …

Instruct The Jury: Crane's Serious Difficulty Requirement & Due Process, Kenneth Gaines

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Banishment From Within And Without: Analyzing Indigenous Sentencing Under International Human Rights Standards, Colin Miller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Chevron Two-Step And The Toyota Sidestep: Dancing Around The Eeoc's Disability Regulations Under The Ada, Lisa A. Eichhorn

Faculty Publications

The definition of "disability" is among the most frequently litigated issues under the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") because the statute protects only individuals with disabilities. The ADA defines a disability, in part, as an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity, and the EEOC has issued a regulation further defining the term "substantially limits" for purposes of the Act's employment-related provisions. Although the EEOC's regulation is the product of a valid rulemaking process and is entitled to a high degree of deference under settled administrative law principles, the Supreme Court, in Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. v. Williams, …

Bringing In The State: Toward A Constitutional Duty To Protect From Mob Violence, Susan S. Kuo

Faculty Publications

Mob violence can inflict devastating costs. Although typically wrought by private individuals, the incidence of riot as well as extent of riot harm often turn on the adequacy of police preparation and planning. Under the English common law, local governments were responsible for providing riot protection for their denizens. In keeping with the English tradition, early state laws in the United States also provided for communal riot responsibility, and when the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, state obligations in the riot context were well-established. Despite the common law underpinnings of the governmental duty to protect citizens from mob violence, however, …

The Ethics Of Using Judges To Conceal Wrongdoing, John P. Freeman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Who Bears The Costs Of A Lawyer's Mistakes? -- Against Limited Liability, Martin Mcwilliams

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Bringing In The State: Toward A Constitutional Duty To Protect From Mob Violence, Susan S. Kuo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.