Law Commons^™

A Partial History Of Umkc School Of Law: The 'Minority Report', Robert C. Downs, Harry D. Pener, Steven D. Gilley

Faculty Works

In the modern era efforts at recruitment, selection, admission and retention of minorities to law school, while not always consistent, began and now continue to emphasize not only the manner in which a truly diverse student body enhances and enriches the learning experience of all students, but also the need to remedy the inequities and indignities visited by past discrimination. Any perspective on this law school's experience in minority recruitment, admissions and retention, necessitates at least an acknowledgment of the historical context in which the law school began and the social-political climate in which it developed. The announcement of the …

My Lai: An American Tragedy, William G. Eckhardt

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Reforming Confession Law British Style: A Decade Of Experience With Adverse Inferences From Silence, Mark Berger

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In response to problems encountered in the administration of justice in Northern Ireland, the British government issued the Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1988 changing the character of how the right to silence and privilege against self-incrimination would apply in criminal justice proceedings occurring within Northern Ireland. In general terms, the Order provided that suspects under interrogation and criminal defendants at trial would be subject to adverse inferences if they failed to answer police questions or refused to testify in court. The Order included some qualifications on when and how adverse inferences would be used, and provided that such use …

Who Stole The Cookie From The Cookie Jar?: The Law And Ethics Of Shifting Blame In Criminal Cases, Ellen Y. Suni

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Denials are a basic and often automatic response to an allegation that we have committed some wrong. Every parent has heard not me more times than he or she wants to acknowledge. The not me response is instinctive in young children, but as we mature, we learn that not me is often followed by the question: If not you, then who? Accordingly, we discover that denial is not nearly as effective unless we shift the blame to someone else. This phenomenon of childhood applies with equal force in criminal cases, where a defendant has been accused of wrongdoing. Where that …

Thoughts On Some Potential Appellate And Trial Court Applications Of Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Steve Leben

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To date, the application of therapeutic jurisprudence principles has been concentrated mainly on specialized trial courts: drug treat­ment courts, domestic violence courts, criminal courts, and juvenile and family courts. Its application to trial courts generally, as well as its application to the appellate courts, remains largely unexplored. This Article considers three areas in which trial and appellate courts may want to consider applying therapeutic jurisprudence.

My conclusions about the application of therapeutic jurispru­dence to the appellate courts are admittedly tentative ones: my day job is sitting as a state general jurisdiction trial judge, not as an appel­late court judge. Although …

The United Tribe Of Shawnee Indians: Resurrection In The Twentieth Century, John W. Ragsdale Jr

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Tribal sovereignty is not necessarily a function of land area, population size or competitive significance. The essence lies in the freedom to make or recognize rules and principals of personal conduct and social order. This essential liberty springs from the community between particular people, their past, future and their sacred land base. The legislative history of the Federal Recognized Indian Tribe List Act of 1994 states that recognition of a tribe is critical, not just to the tribe's interests, but to the legitimacy of federal power, as the Constitution empowers Congress to legislate only with respect to Indian tribes rather …

Stamped With Glory: Lewis Tappan And The Africans Of The Amistad, Douglas O. Linder

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Abolitionism came relatively late to Lewis Tappan. Devotional, benevolent and hardworking are all words that describe Tappan in his twenties and thirties. Social reformer he was not. In 1818, Tappan abandoned the Calvinism of his mother for Unitarianism, then fashionable for a socially ambitious merchant. For the next eight years, Tappan enjoyed the typical life of an upper-middle-class New England merchant. He took his new faith seriously, however, editing a Unitarian journal, and becoming the first treasurer of the American Unitarian Association. In the mid-1820's, America experienced The Great Second Awakening, a widespread revival of religion and religious debate and …

Thinking Critically About Equality: Government Can Make Us Equal, Robert L. Hayman, Nancy Levit

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As kids we called it having to use the old noodle: needing to think real hard about something that was real hard to think about. It was the kind of thinking that would cause your face to get all scrunched up, and if you didn't stop or if someone didn't stop you - it would eventually make your head hurt. The expression came from our families when we figured something out: that's using your old noodle, they'd tell us. The noodle we eventually understood to be our brains, which, we reckon, do look something like noodles, though we were quite …

Salvaging Amistad, Douglas O. Linder

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Moviemakers believe that history can be made more dramatic. They add and subtract characters, invent dialogue and scenes, make heroes more heroic, make villains more villainous, correct incorrectness, make ends happier, and turn shades of gray into black or white. They even tell lies-all in the interest of providing a good show, of course. Steven Spielberg, producer-director of the 1997 historical drama "Amistad," is no exception.

Whether Hollywood's reshaping of history is good or bad depends upon whether one believes it is more important to be thoroughly entertained or to have a clear sense of history. Right now, on this …

Before Brown: Charles H. Houston And The Gaines Case, Douglas O. Linder

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In 1895 in Plessy v. Ferguson the Supreme Court announced the legal principle, separate but equal, that would guide American race relations for over half a century. For Charles Houston, the training of black lawyers was a key to mounting an attack on segregation. While at Harvard, Houston wrote that there must be Negro lawyers in every community and that the great majority of these lawyers must come from Negro schools. It was, he concluded, in the best interests of the United States - to provide the best teachers possible at law schools where Negroes might be trained. After graduating …

A Different Kind Of Sameness: Beyond Formal Equality And Antisubordination Strategies In Gay Legal Theory, Nancy Levit

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Gay legal theory is at a crossroads reminiscent of the sameness/difference debate in feminist circles and the integrationist debate in critical race theory. Formal equality theorists take the heterosexual model as the norm and then seek to show that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals - except for their choice of partners - are just like heterosexuals. Antisubordination theorists attack the heterosexual model itself and seek to show that a society that insists on such a model is unjust. Neither of these strategies is wholly satisfactory. The formal equality model will fail to bring about fundamental reforms as long as sexual …

Without Fear Or Favor: Judge James Edwin Horton And The Trial Of The Scottsboro Boys, Douglas O. Linder

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No abstract provided.