Law Commons^™

Annotating The News: Mitigating The Effects Of Media Convergence And Consolidation, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay is a personal inquiry into the nature of media technology, law, and ethics in an era marked by the convergence of media that have been largely separate-print, broadcast, cable, satellite, and the Internet-and by the consolidation of ownership in all of these media. What inventions, practices, and norms must emerge to enable us to take advantage of this vast new information-based world, while preserving such important professional values as diversity, objectivity, reliability, and independence?

The right to know belongs not only to individuals, but to the public at large, it can (or, perhaps, must) be vindicated by government …

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall-Winter 2000

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Summer 2000

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Apology And Organizations: Exploring An Example From Medical Practice, Jonathan R. Cohen

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, I focus on injuries committed by members of organizations, such as corporations, and examine distinct issues raised by apology in the organizational setting. In particular, I consider: (i) the process of learning to prevent future errors; (ii) the divergent interests stemming from principal-agent tensions in employment, risk preferences and sources of insurance; (iii) the non-pecuniary benefits to corporate morale, productivity and reputation; (iv) the standing and scope of apologies; and (v) the articulation of policies toward injuries to others.

Of Law, Lawlessness, And Sovereignty : Multinational Peacekeeping And International Law, Antje Mays

Dacus Library Faculty Publications

Laws of war have been carefully defined by individual nations’ own codes of law as well as by supranational bodies. Yet the international scene has seen an increasing movement away from traditionally declared war toward multinational peacekeeping missions geared at containing local conflicts when perceived as potential threats to their respective regions’ political stability. While individual nations’ laws governing warfare presuppose national sovereignty, the multinational nature of peacekeeping scenarios can blur the lines of command structures, soldiers’ national loyalties, occupational jurisdiction, and raise profound questions as to which countries’ moral sense/governmental system is to be the one upheld. Historically increasingly …

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Spring 2000

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Media Law & Ethics Enter The 21st Century, Introduction To Symposium, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

We stand now on the verge of the twenty-first century: an artificial construct yes, but a culturally significant time nonetheless. We are the world the Hutchins Commission foresaw: the world of nations seeking understanding, seeking destiny. We will not predict the future with perfect accuracy, though we will try, because that is out nature. In our effort, we must be mindful that the questions we are asking are not new; they have been asked before and will be asked again. But let us see what we have to say about them today.

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

Faculty Works

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 …

Law, Ethics, And The Good Samaritan: Should There Be A Duty To Rescue?, Kathleen M. Ridolfi

Faculty Publications

The interdependence of law and morality, the circular influences of one on the other, puts us in a position to fear what we want the law to do. We embrace a legal system that promotes morality, that makes better citizens of us, but we worry that the law will cross an elusive line and infringe on individual rights. For this reason we are careful, and should remain so, in limiting enforcement of laws to reflect only those values that emerge from the overall agreement of the community where they will be enforced.

In this paper, I have focused primarily on …

Expressive Theories Of Law: A Skeptical Overview, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

An "expressive theory of law" is, very roughly, a theory that evaluates the actions of legal officials in light of what those actions mean, symbolize, or express. Expressive theories have long played a role in legal scholarship and, recently, have become quite prominent. Elizabeth Anderson, Robert Cooter, Dan Kahan, Larry Lessig, and Richard Pildes, among others, have all recently defended expressive theories (or at least theories that might be characterized as expressive). Expressive notions also play a part in judicial doctrine, particularly in the areas of the Establishment Clause and the Equal Protection Clause.

This paper attempts to provide a …

Dressed For Excess: How Hollywood Affects The Professional Behavior Of Lawyers, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This article discusses two related points: first, that the way in which movies portray lawyers shapes how clients view effective/ineffective lawyer behavior, and second, that the portrayal also helps lawyers to forget appropriate professional behavior.

The Virtues And Limits Of Codes In Legal Ethics, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

In the absence of codified standards of ethics, the ethical quality of law practice would degenerate into inconsistency and unpredictability. The presence of an ethics code can unduly burden and limit the practice of law. However, ethics codes should not be thought of as tools to ensure the law is practiced humanely. Instead, they should be viewed as attempts to ameliorate the impediments to a humane practice and to call lawyers to that goal.

Tom Schaffer, a scholar and professor of Ethics at Notre Dame, lamented the fact that the codification of standards of attorney conduct could induce lawyers to …

Municipal Ethics Remain A Hot Topic In Litigation: A 1999 Survey Of Issues In Ethics For Municipal Lawyers, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Beyond Efficiency And Procedure: A Welfarist Theory Of Regulation, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

Normative scholarship about regulation has been dominated by two types of theories, which I term "Neoclassical" and "Proceduralist." A Neoclassical theory has the following features: it adopts a simple preference-based view of well-being, and it counts Kaldor-Hicks efficiency as one of the basic normative criteria relevant to the evaluation of regulatory programs. A Proceduralist theory is concerned, not solely with the quality of regulatory outcomes, but also with the governmental procedures that produce these outcomes: it gives intrinsic significance to the procedures that regulatory bodies follow. (One example of a Proceduralist theory is the civic republican theory of regulation advanced …

Personal Rights And Rule Dependence: Can The Two Co-Exist?, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutional doctrine is typically "rule-dependent." Typically, a constitutional litigant will not prevail unless she can show that a particular kind of legal rule is in force, e.g., a rule that discriminates against "suspect classes" in violation of the Equal Protection Clause, or that targets speech in violation of the First Amendment, or that is motivated by a religious purpose in violation of the Establishment Clause. Further, the litigant must typically establish a violation of her "personal rights." The Supreme Court has consistently stated that a reviewing court should not invalidate an unconstitutional governmental action at the instance of a claimant …

Ethics, Loyalty And Harm To Third Parties: A Debate Based On Spaulding V. Zimmerman, Lloyd B. Snyder, Scott Rawlings

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This discussion poses the question: should an attorney ever provide information to an opposing party to prevent that party from suffering great harm if the information will have an adverse effect on the attorney's own client? The case that sets the stage for this discussion is Spaulding v. Zimmerman, 243 Minn. 346 (1962).

Rights, Rules And The Structure Of Constitutional Adjudication: A Response To Professor Fallon, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutional doctrine is typically rule-dependent. A viable constitutional challenge typically hinges upon the existence of a discriminatory, overbroad, improperly motivated, or otherwise invalid rule, to which the claimant has some nexus. In a prior article, Prof. Adler proposed one model of constitutional adjudication that tries to make sense of rule-dependence. He argued that reviewing courts are not vindicating the personal rights of claimants, but rather are repealing or amending invalid rules. IN a Commentary in this issue, Professor Fallon now puts forward a different model of constitutional adjudication, equally consistent with rule-dependence. Fallon proposes that a reviewing court should overturn …

Rights And Rules: An Overview, Matthew D. Adler, Michael C. Dorf

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Problematics Of Moral And Legal Theory, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

Reviewing, Richard A. Posner, The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory (1999)

The Rich Have More Money, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Review of Ethics, Equity and Health for All, by Z. Bankowski, J. H. Bryant, and J. Gallagher, eds. (Geneva: CIOMS, 1997)