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Risk, Rents, And Regressivity: Why The United States Needs Both An Income Tax And A Vat, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In this article, Prof. Avi-Yonah argues that the legal academic debate about fundamental tax reform from 1974 onward has been skewed by the assumption that a consumption tax must replace the income tax. He addresses three of the major issue in recent writings on the income/consumption tax debate, and shows how none of the arguments in favor of the consumption tax are conclusive. Avi-Yonah also addresses the various consumption tax proposals that have been made and shows that they are all deficient in comparison with a VAT, as well as failing to achieve the goals of an income tax. Finally, …

Foreseeing Greatness? Measurable Performance Criteria And The Selection Of Supreme Court Justices, James J. Brudney

The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Working Paper Series

This article contributes to an ongoing debate about the feasibility and desireability of measuring the "merit" of appellate judges--and their consequent Supreme Court potential--by using objective performance variables. Relying on the provocative and controversial "tournament criteria" proposed by Professors Stephen Choi and Mitu Gulati in two recent articles, Brudney assesses the "Supreme Court potential" of Warren Burger and Harry Blackmun based on their appellate court records. He finds that Burger's appellate performance appears more promising under the Choi and Gulati criteria, but then demonstrates how little guidance these quantitative assessments actually provide when reviewing the two men's careers on the …

Property As Legal Knowledge: Means And Ends, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article takes anthropologists’ renewed interest in property theory as an opportunity to consider legal theory-making as an ethnographic subject in its own right. My focus is on one particular construct – the instrument, or relation of means to ends, that animates both legal and anthropological theories about property. An analysis of the workings of this construct leads to the conclusion that rather than critique the ends of legal knowledge, the anthropology of property should devote itself to articulating its own means.

Judicial Power & Civil Rights Reconsidered, David E. Bernstein, Ilya Somin

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

Michael Klarman's "From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality" is an important contribution to the scholarly literature on both the history of the civil rights struggle and judicial power more generally. Klarman argues that for much of the twentieth century, the Supreme Court was very reluctant to rule in favor of African American civil rights claimants, and had little impact when it did.

Klarman is right to reject traditional accounts that greatly exaggerated the Supreme Court's willingness and ability to protect minorities. However, he overstates his case. The Court's views on the …

A Culturally Correct Proposal To Privatize The British Columbia Salmon Fishery, D. Bruce Johnsen

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

Canada now faces two looming policy crises that have come to a head in British Columbia. The first is long-term depletion of the Pacific salmon fishery by mobile commercial ocean fishermen racing to intercept salmon under the rule of capture. The second results from Canadian Supreme Court case law recognizing and affirming “the existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada” under Section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982. This essay shows that the economics of property rights provides a joint solution to these crises that would promote the Canadian commonwealth by way of a privatization auction …

The Situational Character: A Critical Realist Perspective On The Human Animal, Jon Hanson, David Yosifon

Faculty Publications

This Article is dedicated to retiring the now-dominant "rational actor" model of human agency, together with its numerous "dispositionist" cohorts, and replacing them with a new conception of human agency that the authors call the "situational character." This is a key installment of a larger project recently introduced in an article titled

The Situation: An Introduction to the Situational Character, Critical Realism, Power Economics, and Deep Capture. That introductory article adumbrated, often in broad stroke, the central premises and some basic conclusions of a new approach to legal theory and policy analysis. This Article provides a more complete version of …

The Death Penalty As Delineated By The Old Testament: From Adam And Eve To Cain And Abel To Noah And The Flood To Abraham And Sodom To Moses And The Ten Commandments, Biblical Passages Trace The Roots For How Modern Society Deals With The Execution Of Killers, Robert Blecker

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

The Origins Of American Felony Murder Rules, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Contemporary commentators continue to instruct lawyers and law students that England bequeathed America a sweeping default principle of strict liability for all deaths caused in all felonies. This Article exposes the harsh "common law" felony murder rule as a myth. It retraces the origins of American felony murder rules to reveal their modern, American, and legislative sources, the rationality of their original scope, and the fairness of their original application. It demonstrates that the draconian doctrine of strict liability for all deaths resulting from all felonies was never enacted into English law or received into American law. This Article reviews …

Curriculum Development At A New Law School: Dismantling The Walls Of Separation, Jeffrey C. Tuomala

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Implementing Brown: A Lawyer’S View, Robert A. Sedler

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Fall 2004

Bill of Particulars

No abstract provided.

Statutory Interpretation In Econotopia, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

Much of the debate in the recent revival of interest in statutory interpretation centers on whether or not courts should use legislative history in construing statutes. The consensus in favor of this practice has come under sharp attack from public choice critics who argue that traditional models of legislative intent are positively and normatively incoherent. This paper argues that in actual practice, courts look at a fairly narrow subset of legislative history. By thinking about the power to write that legislative history as a property right and legislatures as markets, it is possible to use Coase's Theorem and the concept …

The Tenuous Case For Conscience, Steven D. Smith

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

If there is any single theme that has provided the foundation of modern liberalism and has infused our more specific constitutional commitments to freedom of religion and freedom of speech, that theme is probably “freedom of conscience.” But some observers also perceive a progressive cheapening of conscience– even a sort of degradation. Such criticisms suggest the need for a contemporary rethinking of conscience. When we reverently invoke “conscience,” do we have any idea what we are talking about? Or are we just exploiting a venerable theme for rhetorical purposes without any clear sense of what “conscience” is or why it …

Montesquieu's Mistakes And The True Meaning Of Separation, Laurence Claus

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

“The political liberty of the subject,” said Montesquieu, “is a tranquility of mind arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted as one man needs not be afraid of another.” The liberty of which Montesquieu spoke is directly promoted by apportioning power among political actors in a way that minimizes opportunities for those actors to determine conclusively the reach of their own powers. Montesquieu’s constitution of liberty is the constitution that most plausibly establishes the rule of law. Montesquieu concluded that this constitution could …

Real Time: Unwinding Technocratic And Anthropological Knowledge, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

“The Bank of Japan is our mother,” bankers in Tokyo sometimes said of Japan's central bank. Drawing on this metaphor as an ethnographic resource, and on the example of central bankers who sought to unwind their own technocratic knowledge by replacing it with a real-time machine, I retrace the ethnographic task of unwinding technocratic knowledge from those anthropological knowledge practices that critique technocracy. In so doing, I draw attention to special methodological problems—involving the relationship between ethnography, analysis, and reception—in the representation and critique of contemporary knowledge practices.

Two Early Codes, The Ten Commandments And The Twelve Tables: Causes And Consequences, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

Comments on the legal history of the ten commandments and the Roman Twelve Tables, and a comparison of the two legal collections. This paper also discusses the peculiarities in the traditions behind the collection of these laws; and the rules of behavior between humans covered by these laws.

After Bureaucracy, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Enriching The Contracts Course, Robert A. Hillman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

From Petticoats To Briefs: History Of Women At The University Of Missouri-Kansas City School Of Law, Robert C. Downs, Brooke Grant, Elizabeth Sterling

Faculty Works

The story of women in American society has largely been defined and recorded by men and the institutions that men have dominated for most of the past two hundred-odd years. Women have been denied access to education, employment, political power and other benefits of social intercourse by exclusion, intimidation, ridicule and patronization. The experience of women in law school is one part of that experience. Law school is an arduous undertaking whether one is male or female. Gaining admission to modern law schools requires talent and demonstrated academic performance in a competitive environment. But in the nineteenth century, the foremost …

Fifteen Famous Supreme Court Cases From Georgia, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

John Inscoe, UGA professor of history and editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia, invited Hosch Professor Dan T. Coenen to contribute a series of essays on the most significant U.S. Supreme Court cases that originated in the state of Georgia. This article, which proposes an unranked top 15 list, is built on this work.

Critical Race Histories: In And Out, Darren Lenard Hutchinson

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article contributes to the completion of some “unfinished business” within Critical Race Theory by engaging insufficiently examined external and internal critiques of critical race scholarship. The external critique of critical race nihilism and the new insider critique that dichotomizes identity theories and material harm warrant extended reflection because there are critical deficiencies that problematize these arguments. The nihilism critique, for example, falsely associates CRT with more radical forms of postmodernism and overlooks leading works in CRT which demonstrate that Critical Race Theorists inhabit an admittedly contradictory space. Critical Race Theorists radically deconstruct the racial hierarchies that law constitutes and …

Pleas' Progress, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Interview With Leon S. Forman, Jason E. Dymbort, Leon S. Forman, Legal Oral History Project, University Of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Legal Oral History Project

For transcript, click the Download button above. For video index, click the link below.

Leon S. Forman (L'39) was an authority on bankruptcy and creditors' rights. He practiced law for more than sixty years and served as chairman of the Philadelphia Bar Association's corporation, banking and business law section, and as chairman of the Pennsylvania Bar Association's bankruptcy committee. He was a member of the American Law Institute. He taught bankruptcy and creditors' rights at the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania and at Temple University School of Law. He died in 2006.

Overview Of Legal Systems In The Asia-Pacific Region: India, Navoneel Dayanand

Overview of Legal Systems in the Asia-Pacific Region (2004)

This article provides a general description of the legal system of India. It further discusses aspects of legal education and legal practice in that country.

Overview Of Legal Systems In The Asia-Pacific Region: Singapore, Calvin Wl Ho

Overview of Legal Systems in the Asia-Pacific Region (2004)

This article provides a general description of the legal system of Singapore. It further discusses aspects of legal education and legal practice in that country.

Overview Of Legal Systems In The Asia-Pacific Region: Thailand, Ngamnet Triamanuruck, Sansanee Phongpala, Sirikanang Chaiyasuta

Overview of Legal Systems in the Asia-Pacific Region (2004)

This article provides a general description of the legal system of Thailand. It further discusses aspects of legal education and legal practice in that country.

Overview Of Legal Systems In The Asia-Pacific Region: People's Republic Of China, Zengguang (Bill) Huo, Yuhua Shi

Overview of Legal Systems in the Asia-Pacific Region (2004)

This article provides a general description of the legal system of the People's Republic of China. It further discusses aspects of legal education and legal practice in that country.

Overview Of Legal Systems In The Asia-Pacific Region: Indonesia, Yosea Iskandar

Overview of Legal Systems in the Asia-Pacific Region (2004)

This article provides a general description of the legal system of Indonesia. It further discusses aspects of legal education and legal practice in that country.

Overview Of Legal Systems In The Asia-Pacific Region: South Korea, Oh Seung Jin

Overview of Legal Systems in the Asia-Pacific Region (2004)

This article provides a general description of the legal system of South Korea. It further discusses aspects of legal education and legal practice in that country.

Overview Of Legal Systems In The Asia-Pacific Region: Japan, Junko Gono, Mitsutaka Hibino, Koh Hinokawa, Sonosuke Kamiya, Hirofumi Maki, Shigeki Nishiyama, Hirotoshi Osajima, Masahiro Oshima, Yurika Yamauchi

Overview of Legal Systems in the Asia-Pacific Region (2004)

This article provides a general description of the legal system of Japan. It further discusses aspects of legal education and legal practice in that country.