Law Commons^™

Waiting With Brother Thomas, Chris Sagers

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In this Essay, Christopher Sagers argues that those schools of thought that could be called "doubtful"—that is, those predicated on suspicion of belief to some degree—share a range of similarities and, more importantly, are attacked through a set of common criticisms. He argues that the fundamental criticism of these "doubtful" schools of thought—that doubt leads us to nihilism and therefore must be bad—is a non sequitur. Furthermore, he continues, we reject doubt not because it is bad, but because it is difficult. Ultimately, he suggests ways to face the problems of nihilism or, rather, ways of understanding them as other …

Plain English Part Vi: Negatives Or The Power Of Positives, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This column is the last in a series' describing six"clear writing techniques" set out by the SEC in proposed rules to require that disclosures be written in Plain English. This last writing tip is to avoid "negative sentences and multiple negatives."

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.

Contents Of Legal Information On The Internet: U.S. Perspectives, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

This article examines the contents of legal data and information on the Internet, with a special focus on the United States. It then evaluates the quality of the data, its impact on legal research and access to legal information, and addresses some issues raised by the digital medium, such as its reliability and permanent access concerns.

The Value Of Narrative In Legal Scholarship And Teaching, Jean C. Love

Faculty Publications

Storytelling-particularly storytelling written from an "outsider's" perspective-is a new form of legal writing that appears with increasing frequency on the pages of law reviews and specialized legal journals. At the same time, critics are questioning whether storytelling deserves to be classified as a form of legal scholarship. Perhaps storytellers are to be regarded as talented and creative writers, but do they truly deserve to be called legal scholars? At first, the debate was local, arising in the context of the deliberations of appointments committees and tenure committees. Now the debate is national, and it is being conducted on the pages …

Book Review: Lillich & Magraw Eds., The Iran-United States Claims Tribunal: Its Contribution To The Law Of State Responsibility, Charles H. Brower Ii

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Professional Responsibility: 1998 Survey Of Florida Law, Timothy P. Chinaris, Elizabeth Clark Tarbert

Law Faculty Scholarship

Continuing a trend, 1998 included a number of important developments in the area of professional responsibility law in Florida. Significant appellate court decisions, rule changes, and disciplinary actions potentially affect the practices of more than 58,000 members of The Florida Bar. This article reports and summarizes those developments by placing them in the framework of the various relationships in which lawyers typically operate. Part II looks at decisions affecting what must be viewed as the central relationship in this context: the relationship between lawyer and client. Part III examines developments pertaining to what may be the dominant relationship: the lawyer's …

A Computer-Assisted Legal Research And Writing Course, Jocelyn Downie, Michael Deturbide, Laura Fraser

Dalhousie Law Journal

In this paper, the authors describe and assess their experience with the use of WebCT (a computer program that facilitates the creation and management of courses using the Internet) in the Dalhousie Legal Research and Writing Program. They explain what WebCT is, why they decided to use it, and how they used it. They assess its inaugural use and conclude that, despite some difficulties, the pilot project was a success and WebCT can be a useful tool for other teachers of legal research and writing.

Abstracting The Record, Terry Crabtree

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Books Received, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.

Preface, Philip Girard

Dalhousie Law Journal

The foreword to the first issue of the Dalhousie Law Journal (September 1973) stated that the editors commenced the enterprise "without lofty pretensions." If the newjournal' s existence served "to encourage creative research and writing among law teachers, among students, and generally among the legal profession and related disciplines, that may be justification." The editors nonetheless concluded with a lofty enough mission statement: "we shall be endeavouring to produce a stimulating journal exemplifying those qualities that most people would characterize as scholarly, among them thoroughness, precision of thought, independence of judgment." The Editorial Board believes that the Journal has fulfilled …

Plain English Part V: Go Aggro Over Argot, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The SEC has set out six "dear writing techniques" to require that disclosures be written in Plain English. Previous columns have addressed the first four techniques. This column addresses the fiflh: replacing jargon and legalese with short common words.

Researching Cases On The Web, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.

Plain English Part Iv: Keep It Straight, Tabulate, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This column addresses tabular presentation of complex material, which is the fourth of six "clear writing techniques" set out in the SEC's proposed rules to require that disclosures be written in Plain English.' The first three of these techniques were discussed in the January, March, and May 1998 Scrivener articles.

Holmes's Good Man: A Comment On Levinson And Balkin, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

Sanford Levinson and J.M. Balkin's paper ("L & B") is refreshing in the attention it pays to Holmes's oft-neglected "good [man], who finds his reasons for conduct, whether inside the law or outside of it, in the vaguer sanctions of conscience."¹ The good man provides a heuristic foil for Holmes's "bad man" whose conduct is motivated only by the potential material consequences, and thus L & B's analysis should help shed light on what is a puzzling metaphor in the folklore surrounding Holmes's The Path of the Law. L & B provide some interesting observations on the implications of …

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.

Comment On Frederick Schauer's Prediction And Particularity Comment, Gerald F. Leonard

Faculty Scholarship

Ignorance of the law is generally no excuse. I say generally because the century since the publication of The Path of the Law has brought a small but increasing number of exceptions to the rule. In Oliver Wendell Holmes's day, however, exceptions to the rule were nearly nonexistent, much to Holmes's satisfaction.1 In The Common Law, Holmes said that the law requires persons "at their peril to know the teachings of common experience, just as it requires them to know the law." 2 He did not, of course, actually think that common experience was perfectly knowable or judicial interpretation perfectly …

The Process And The Product: A Bibliography Of Scholarship About Legal Scholarship, Mary Beth Beazley, Linda H. Edwards

Mercer Law Review

This bibliography of scholarship about legal scholarship was originally prepared for the 1997 Conference of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. The Conference explored the rapidly developing area of scholarship by legal writing professors and the ways in which this important scholarship can be encouraged. Characteristically, when writing teachers turn their attention to a particular kind of writing the genre employs-that is, the process and the product. This bibliography is one result of that study. We hope that it will prove helpful to anyone interested in legal scholarship, especially to law faculty in the early stages of their scholarly careers. …

Legal Writing: Its Nature, Limits, And Dangers, Douglas Litowitz

Mercer Law Review

Lawyers have a unique and highly technical manner of writing, one that differs significantly from standard English. Legal education involves an indoctrination into this new discourse, a process that ends when one awakens to find oneself writing in a manner that once seemed impossibly obscure. Of course, the mastery of legal language reflects a paradigm shift in thought, sometimes called "learning to think like a lawyer" or "seeing things from a legal perspective." The conceptual scheme and language of the law are so different from the ordinary way of thinking that Lord Coke was perhaps correct when he characterized the …

The Book Review Issue: An Owner's Guide, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

Law reviews have short memories. Other institutions count on long-term managers and well-kept files to preserve the experience of the past. But there is no remembrance of things past in an institution whose officers serve - fileless and frantic - for a single year. I want to use the opportunity this volume's editors have kindly given me to contribute to the Michigan Law Review's institutional memory. Editors past, present, and future may be curious about when and why the book review issue was conceived and born. I will briefly tell that story. More significantly, however, I want to relate the …

Plain English Part Iii: Choosing The Right Words, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

In an effort to provide investors with full and fair disclosures in language they can understand, the SEC has proposed rules to require that disclosures be written in Plain English.' These rules outline six "clear writing techniques": (1) active voice; (2) short sentences; (3) definite, concrete, everyday language; (4) tabular presentations; (5) no jargon; and (6) no multiple negatives. The January and March 1998 Scrivener article addressed the first two techniques; this article addresses the third.

Notre Dame Lawyer - Spring 1998, Notre Dame Law School

Notre Dame Lawyer

Digital Legal Information: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Plain English Part Ii: Shorter Sentences And Lighter Luggage, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

January's column addressed the first of six specific "clear writing techniques to communicate information" set out in the SEC's proposed rules for plain English-the active voice. This column addresses the SEC's second technique-shorter sentences.

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.

The Right To Participate, Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan, Richard H. Pildes

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following essay is excerpted and adapted from The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process, © The Foundation Press, Inc., Westbury, NY (1998). Publication is by permission.

Constitutions are often viewed today as constraints on majoritarian power in the service of minority interests. But constitutional ground rules also create the possibility of ongoing democratic self-government; constitutions establish relatively stable and non-negotiable precommitments that enable generally accepted structures of political competition to emerge and endure.

Despite the centrality of this role for the American Constitution , however, there is paradoxically little that the text or its history offers …

A Critique Of The Proposed Tobacco Resolution And A Suggested Alternative, Jon D. Hanson, Kyle D. Logue

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following essay is adapted from testimony presented to the Senate Democratic Task Force on Tobacco in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 9 1997, which in turn is based on the authors' forthcoming article, "The Costs of Cigarettes: The Economic Case for Ex Post Incentive-based Regulation," 107 Yale Law Journal (March 1998)

If the goal of cigarette regulation is either to reduce substantially the public health problem created by cigarette smoking or to allocate the costs of smoking more equitably, there are significantly better alternatives to the regulatory regime than would be created by the state attorneys general's Proposed Tobacco Resolution. …

Upstream Patents = Downstream Bottlenecks, Michael A. Heller, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following text is excerpted from "Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons in Biomedical Research" and is reprinted with permission from 280 Science 698-701 (May 1998). © 1998 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Thirty years ago in Science, Garrett Hardin introduced the metaphor "tragedy of the commons" to help explain overpopulation, air pollution, and species extinction. People often overuse resources they own in common because they have no incentive to conserve. Today, Hardin's metaphor is central to debates in economics, law, and science and powerful justification for privatizing commons property. While the metaphor highlights the cost of overuse …