Law Commons^™

Corpus Linguistics As A Tool In Legal Interpretation, Lawrence Solan, Tammy Gales

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

From Common Core To Charter: The Economic Remedy To Nc Education, Hunter B. Winstead

Senior Honors Theses

Although numerous factors contribute to the decline of North Carolina’s economic prosperity, one of the most prevalent is the waste that occurs through the ineffective funding of education. In the last century, this system has become progressively centralized and bureaucratized which restricts the presence of diversity and hinders economic choice. The purest evidence of this movement is demonstrated through the state’s adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), an initiative designed to serve as a basis for federal entanglement in education. Proponents of CCSS claimed that the system would accomplish a variety of rigorous educational goals; however, none of …

Persona Non Grata: The Marginalization Of Legal Scholarship In Criminology And Criminal Justice Journals, Brenda I. Rowe, Wesley S. Mccann, Craig Hemmens

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Recently, concern has been voiced within the academy regarding the marginalization of legal scholarship within the criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) discipline. Although conventional wisdom and anecdotal evidence indicate that it is difficult to get legal scholarship published in CCJ journals, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on the representation of legal scholarship in CCJ journals. The present study assesses the representation of legal scholarship in 20 CCJ journals from 2005 through 2015, examining both trends over time and variation across journals. Findings indicate legal scholarship comprises a very small portion of articles published, there has been a steep …

Law Library Blog (November 2016): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Enhancing The Effectiveness Of Your Legal Writing, Jason G. Dykstra

Articles

This article focuses on areas where busy practitioners can aspire for plain English and not only improve their writing but possibly avoid a few pitfalls. As Justice Brandeis once remarked, "There is no such thing as good writing. There is only good rewriting" So here are three areas to focus on as you rewrite: minimizing initialisms, acronyms, and defined terms; losing legal jargon and cutting clutter; and balancing legal terms and precision.

Polishing Makes Perfect . . . Or Maybe Not, Melissa N. Henke

Law Faculty Popular Media

This column offers some tips and strategies that can improve the proofreading process you use. To be clear, I use the term proofreading to refer to the final stage of editing. Of course proofreading can never take the place of earlier stages of rewriting or revising for organization, content, clarity, or conciseness. But this final stage of editing is crucial, because it is where you identify and fix any problems with spelling, grammar, and punctuation that leave your document looking less than polished.

Using Advanced Conflict Waivers To Teach Drafting, Ethics, And Professionalism, Edward R. Becker

Articles

On a substantive and ethical level, I tell my students to take on faith that if you were to do all of this and take all this into account, if you were to apply the conflict of interest and the disqualifications rules, it could make it extremely difficult or many of the firms involved in these matters to avoid being conflicted out; especially, if the parties and the kind of firms involved were not dealing with these conflicts and issues until a problem arose. The question I ask my students again at this point is what could be done. What …

Brief Amici Curiae Of Professors Of History, Political Science, And Law In Support Of Respondent, Kristin Collins, Catherine E. Stetson, Jessica K. Jacobs

Faculty Scholarship

Sex-based laws premised on archaic presumptions about the proper roles of men and women run afoul of established constitutional principles, especially when they interfere with the parent-child relationship. Amici write to explain the history of the federal government’s use of sex-based classifications in the regulation of citizenship. In its regulation of intergenerational and interspousal citizenship transmission, the federal government has perpetuated outdated gender-based norms concerning proper parental roles, even when those norms have been rejected in other legal and social contexts. In addition, the laws governing derivative citizenship have significantly encumbered the ability of American fathers to transmit citizenship to …

The Corpus Juris Civilis: A Guide To Its History And Use, Frederick W. Dingledy

Library Staff Publications

The Corpus Juris Civilis is indispensable for Roman law research. It is a vital pillar of modern law in many European nations, and influential in other countries. Scholars and lawyers still refer to it today. This valuable publication, however, may seem impenetrable at first, and references to it can be hard to decipher or detect. This guide provides a history of the Corpus Juris Civilis and the forms it has taken, states why it is still an important resource today, and offers some tips and tools for research using it.

Series Llcs Part 1 — Current Status, Multi-State Issues And Potential Uniform Limited Liability Company Protected Series Act, Alberto R. Gonzales, J. Leigh Griffith

Law Faculty Scholarship

The Series Limited Liability Company (“Series LLC”), a variation of the traditional limited liability company (LLC), is the newest entity enterprise on the business scene today. Within this legal entity, separate “series” or “cells” can be created and established under the umbrella of a single LLC. Despite being under one “umbrella,” each of these cells has characteristics that make it both separate from one another as well as from the Series LLC itself. There is not yet a common term for these distinct units although the term series or cell is often used. The Drafting Committee for the Limited Liability …

Law Library Blog (October 2016): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Breaking Bad Facts: How Intriguing Contradictions In Fiction Can Teach Lawyers To Re-Envision Harmful Evidence, Cathren Koehlert-Page

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Of Plain English And Plain Meaning, Virginia C. Thomas

Library Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

A Call For Strengthening The Role Of Comparative Legal Analysis In The United States, Irene Calboli

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay highlights the importance of comparative legal analysis with particular emphasis on the role that this methodology could play for intellectual property scholarship in the United States. In particular, this Essay suggests that U.S. scholars could consider turning with more frequency to comparative legal analysis as an additional methodology to use in their research. Yet, the objective of this Essay is not to suggest that U.S. scholars should engage in comparative legal analysis in lieu of other types of research methodologies. Instead, this Essay simply supports that comparative legal analysis could play a larger role compared to the one …

The Legal Research Plan And The Research Log: An Examination Of The Role Of The Research Plan And Research Log In The Research Process, Caroline L. Osborne

Law Faculty Scholarship

This paper reviews the current status of the concept of the legal research plan. It summarizes the basic elements of the legal research plan, reviews the current literature and recommends a design of a plan for use in first year legal research programs and by novice researchers. Also, it considers the use of the research log in the research process.

The Future Of Empirical Legal Scholarship: Where Might We Go From Here?, Kathryn Zeiler

Faculty Scholarship

The number of empirical legal studies published by academic journals is on the rise. Given theory’s dominance over the last few decades, this is a welcome development. This movement, however, has been plagued by a lack of rigor and a failure of editors to require disclosure of data and procedures that allow for easy replication of published results. Law journals, the editorial boards of which are manned solely by law students, might face the toughest hurdles in ensuring publication of only high quality empirical studies and in implementing and enforcing disclosure policies. While scholars in other fields including economics, psychology, …

Law Library Blog (September 2016): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Bridging The Gap: Transitioning Law School Legal Writing Skills To Practicing Law, Jason G. Dykstra

Articles

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Rwu Law Adds Skills Programs And Faculty 8/15/2016, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Dean Yelnosky's Post: Rwu Law Continues To Add Skills Programs And Faculty 08/12/2016, Michael Yelnosky

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

New Wine In Old Wineskins: Metaphor And Legal Research, Amy E. Sloan, Colin Starger

All Faculty Scholarship

We construct our conceptual world using metaphors. Yet sometimes our concepts are flawed and our metaphors do damage. This Article examines a set of metaphors currently doing damage in law – those for legal research. It shows that while technology has radically altered the material world of legal research, our dominant metaphors have remained static, and thus, become outmoded. Conceptualizing today’s reality using old metaphors fails; it is like pouring new wine in old wineskins. To address this problem, this Article first surfaces unwarranted assumptions buried in the metaphors we use when talking about research and then proposes new metaphors …

Gpo’S New Govinfo Site, Paul Birch

Law Faculty Publications

It’s about time. Seven years after its official launch, the Government Printing Office’s rather dated looking FDsys website is soon to have a fresh replacement, https://govinfo.gov. Still in beta testing, the site already bears the rakishly lowercased call-name “govinfo.” Those, like myself, who have been unsure about how to pronounce “FDsys” should be thankful enough for this alone. But GPO has delivered more than just a name change. The forthcoming site is in many ways a vast improvement over its predecessor.

W&L Law Library Annual Report 2015-2016, The Law Library At Washington And Lee University School Of Law

Law Library Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (August 2016): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Law Libraries, Tina M. Brooks, Franklin L. Runge, Beau Steenken

Law Faculty Popular Media

Law libraries are filed with the rules that govern our society, thoughtful scholars, conscientious lawyers, some hard working students, and some procrastinating students. In the past, this required libraries to collect hardbound volumes and loose leafs. Today, the collection is beginning to give way to research platforms filed with those same, or similar, materials and then some; much of the primary legal documentation is even freely available on the web.

While the physical footprint of the library may be smaller as a result of this transition, the amount of legal information that researchers have access to has grown exponentially. We …

References To Television Programming In Judicial Opinions And Lawyers’ Advocacy, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

"Think of the poor judge who is reading ... hundreds and hundreds of these briefs," says Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. "Liven their life up just a little bit. . . with something interesting." Lawyers can "liven up" their briefs with references to television shows generally known to Americans who have grown up watching the small screen. After discussing television's pervasive effect on American culture since the early 1950s, this Article surveys the array of television references that appear in federal and state judicial opinions. In cases with no claims or defenses concerning the television industry, judges often help …

The Final Legal-Writing Class: Parting Wisdom For Students, Joel Atlas, Estelle Mckee, Andrea J. Mooney

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The last class of a legal-writing course is a beginning rather than an end for our students. Soon, they will have the opportunity to employ, in real life, the skills they have learned in the course. And professors want their students not only to succeed, but to excel, in practice. To help realize this goal, and as a fitting finale to the course, a professor may choose to provide students with tips for the immediate and long-term future in their profession.

Due Diligence: Company Information For Law Students, Matthew M. Morrison

Cornell Law Librarians' Publications

Many law students are placed with corporate law firms whose clients are overwhelmingly companies. While many law school courses focus on doctrine, students need to learn company information and where to find it. This article explains why teaching company information is crucial, where to find sources, and how to use these sources.

The State Of Legal Research Education: A Survey Of First-Year Legal Research Programs, Or “Why Johnny And Jane Cannot Research”, Caroline L. Osborne

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Respectful Identifiers, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

The bills teach that respectful legal writing replaces outdated identifiers of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, disability or challenge, or other differences among identifiable groups in American society. As Professors Laurel Currie Oates and Anne Enquist advise, respect normally means identifying a group by a name commonly preferred by its members in everyday communication.