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Full-Text Articles in Law

Legal Indeterminacy: Its Cause And Cure, Gary S. Lawson Jan 1996

Legal Indeterminacy: Its Cause And Cure, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Legal indeterminacy--the extent to which any particular legal theory cannot provide knowable answers to concrete problems is one of the principal themes of modern jurisprudence. Indeterminacy plays an important role in debates concerning interpretation, the nature of legal obligation, and the character and possibilities of the rule of law. Indeterminacy looms particularly large in debates concerning originalism as a method of constitutional interpretation. Some scholars insist that originalism resolves too few problems to be of much use, while others argue that originalism's indeterminacy is often overstated.


Federal Evidentiary Hearings Under The New Habeas Corpus Statute, Larry Yackle Jan 1996

Federal Evidentiary Hearings Under The New Habeas Corpus Statute, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutional claims invariably turn on the underlying historical facts. In order to adjudicate claims presented in habeas corpus petitions, accordingly, the federal courts must somehow ascertain the facts. In some instances, the factual record can be augmented via discovery or expansion of the record under the federal habeas corpus rules.' Otherwise, disputed factual issues typically must be determined on the basis of previous litigation in state court or in independent federal evidentiary hearings.


The Distinction Between Crime And Tort In The Early Common Law, David J. Seipp Jan 1996

The Distinction Between Crime And Tort In The Early Common Law, David J. Seipp

Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers and judges in English royal courts between 1200 and 1500 drew a distinction between crime and tort. Each type of lawsuit-each writ or action-had its own form and nature. Medieval English lawyers grouped these individual actions into categories such as real actions and personal actions, writs of possession and writs of right.' The lawyers recognized categories that later acquired the labels crime and tort, although those were not the names for them in the early common law. Crimes were prosecuted by actions known as indictments and appeals of felony. Torts were remedied by writs of trespass alleging use of …


A Primer On The New Habeas Corpus Statute, Larry Yackle Jan 1996

A Primer On The New Habeas Corpus Statute, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (Pub. L. 104-132), signed into law on April 24, 1996, represents Congress' attempt to deal with the problems deemed to beset federal habeas corpus for state prisoners. This new statute addresses many important aspects of habeas law and practice and, as to them, now occupies the field to the exclusion of previous arrangements-whether developed as a construction of preexisting statutes or as interstitial decisional law. On the whole, however, Pub. L. 104-132 presupposes the basic framework now in place. This matter-of-fact point (that the new statute takes the preexisting habeas landscape as its …