Law Commons^™

The Executive Branch And International Law, Arthur M. Weisburd

Vanderbilt Law Review

Public international law, through its rules regulating the dealings between independent nations, purports to impose limits on the actions of all governments, including those of the United States. In this context American lawyers interested in foreign relations may reasonably wonder whether American courts would enforce rules of public international law purporting to bind the United States against the United States government, particularly the executive branch. A fair number of Supreme Court cases have dealt with the enforce ability of treaties in American courts.' Treaties, however, are only one source of international law. The other important source, customary international law, is …

The Role Of Federal Safety Regulations In Products Liability Actions, Teresa M. Schwartz

Vanderbilt Law Review

Product safety is the province of both the regulatory and the tort systems. Each system has come under attack in recent years on both the federal and state levels. Through its regulatory policies, appointments, and budget cuts, the Reagan Administration has weakened the federal regulatory system.' At the same time, the Administration has severely criticized the tort system. State legislatures have enacted a myriad of statutes that weaken the tort system by cutting back on the common-law rights of victims, and additional measures are pending in Congress and in state legislatures across the country.'

For the most part, proponents of …

Expert Testimony On Proximate Cause, Daniel J. Steinbeck, William M. Richman, Douglas E. Ray

Vanderbilt Law Review

Expert testimony is common in tort litigation, especially on issues of standard of care and cause-in-fact. Rule 704 of the Federal Rules of Evidence and its state counterparts abolished the prohibition of testimony on ultimate issues, leading to the possibility of expert testimony on the often crucial issue of proximate cause. The situation is easy to imagine. After counsel has qualified an expert witness and elicited an opinion that the particular act or omission "caused" the injury in question, counsel might very well be tempted to inquire whether the witness has an opinion as to whether the act or omission …

Motivation And Tort Law: Acting For Economic Gain As A Suspect Motive, Martin A. Kotler

Vanderbilt Law Review

The asserted unimportance of the defendant's motive underlying acts giving rise to tort liability is part of the conventional wisdom of most writers of basic tort texts.' Frequently, the irrelevance of the defendant's motivation is considered so obvious that many writers fail to discuss it at all, or discuss it only in the limited context of punitive damages. Virtually all of the literature that considers the significance of motive in tort law deals with either altruism, primarily in the rescue context, or spite, primarily in the punitive damages context. However,little, if any, of the literature considers the legal treatment of …