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Full-Text Articles in Law

Textualism, The Unknown Ideal?, William N. Eskridge Jr. May 1998

Textualism, The Unknown Ideal?, William N. Eskridge Jr.

Michigan Law Review

In May 1997, the New York Knickerbockers basketball team was poised to reach the finals of its division in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Knicks led the rival Miami Heat by three games to two and needed one more victory to win the best-of seven semifinal playoff series. Game six would be in New York; with their star center, Patrick Ewing, playing well, victory seemed assured for the Knicks. A fracas during game five changed the odds. During a fight under the basket between Knicks and Heat players, Ewing left the bench and paced in the middle of the …


Amending The Constitution, Erwen Chemerinsky May 1998

Amending The Constitution, Erwen Chemerinsky

Michigan Law Review

The ultimate measure of a constitution is how it balances entrenchment and change. On the one hand, a constitution differs from all other laws in that it is much more difficult to revise. For example, the next session of Congress can amend or repeal a statute, but altering the U.S. Constitution requires a complex process involving supermajorities of both houses of Congress and the states. A constitution thus reflects a desire to place a society's core values of governance - such as the structure of government and the rights of individuals - in a document that is hard to revise. …


Picking Federal Judges: A Mysterious Alchemy, Michael D. Schattman May 1998

Picking Federal Judges: A Mysterious Alchemy, Michael D. Schattman

Michigan Law Review

I have twice been nominated to the federal bench by President Clinton. The first nomination, in December 1995, lapsed at the end of the 104th Congress. I was renominated in March 1997. I have never had a hearing and never had a letter from the Senate Judiciary Committee requesting additional information. In 1995 and again in 1997 the White House precleared my nomination with my two home-state Republican senators. Originally, I was nominated before the scheduled retirement date of the judge I was named to replace, which gives knowledgeable readers an idea of the lack of controversy surrounding my appointment. …


How Serious Is The Threat Of Impeachment? And To Whom?, Harold Baer Jr. May 1998

How Serious Is The Threat Of Impeachment? And To Whom?, Harold Baer Jr.

Michigan Law Review

While a slender volume, The Federal Impeachment Process offers the reader a variety of different insights on this topic, beginning with the debates at the Constitutional Convention and running to the modem-day practice of impeachment trials by committee rather than by the full senate. Impeachment is valuable reading, not just for those of us interested in American history, or those of us who are public officers of the United States, but for every American who wants to understand his or her morning newspaper better. Not only does it lift the veil of darkness surrounding the impeachment process, it provides a …


Review Of What Are Freedoms For?, By John H. Garvey, Scott D. Pomfret May 1998

Review Of What Are Freedoms For?, By John H. Garvey, Scott D. Pomfret

Michigan Law Review

In 1988, Jeffrey Kendall and Barbara Zeitler Kendall were married. Though Jeffrey was Catholic at the time and Barbara was Jewish, the couple agreed to raise their children in Barbara's faith. In 1991, Jeffrey joined Boston Church of Christ, a fundamentalist Christian church. The tenets of that faith include a belief that those who do not accept Jesus Christ are damned to Hell, where there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth." Barbara's faith also underwent a change during the marriage: she became an Orthodox Jew. Citing irreconcilable differences, the Kendalls sought a divorce in November, 1994. Before their marriage …


Guerrillas In Our Midst: The Assault On Radicals In American Law, Daria Roithmayr May 1998

Guerrillas In Our Midst: The Assault On Radicals In American Law, Daria Roithmayr

Michigan Law Review

On October 9, 1997, radicals everywhere celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Che Guevara, the revered Cuban and South American rebel known as much for his guerrilla manifestos as for his scraggly facial hair and the black beret positioned slightly askance. At the same time Latin Americans and revolutionaries were marking the death of their beloved Che, Professors Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry were publishing their long-awaited book, Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law. The professors' timing was, unintentionally, quite appropriate. Like many of Che's manifestos, the book sounds an ideological call to …


Lawyers, Judges, And The Public Interest, John M. Payne May 1998

Lawyers, Judges, And The Public Interest, John M. Payne

Michigan Law Review

Chares Haar, the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law Emeritus at the Harvard Law School and a certified elder statesman of the housing and land-use community, was one of those scholar-politicians of the 1960s who spun out innovative theories in law reviews and then moved into government to see them applied. His generation inspired mine to pursue law as a means to serve the public interest. But the days of the Kennedy brothers' Camelot are long past. Today, big government and "big courts" alike are seen as parts of the problem. In the more austere political climate of the 1990s, …


Public Choice Revisited, Daniel A. Farber, Philip P. Frickey May 1998

Public Choice Revisited, Daniel A. Farber, Philip P. Frickey

Michigan Law Review

Although not the first book on public choice_ for a legal audience, Max Stearns's Public Choice and Public Law is the first full-scale textbook for law school use. An ambitious undertaking by a rising young scholar, the book provides law students with a comprehensive introduction to public choice. Public choice - essentially, the application of economic reasoning to political institutions - has become a significant aspect of public law scholarship. Indeed, in his Foreword, Saul Levmore hails public choice as "[t]he most exciting intellectual development in law schools in the last decade" (p. xi). Be that as it may, the …


Public Choice Theory And The Fragmented Web Of The Contemporary Administrative State, Jim Rossi May 1998

Public Choice Theory And The Fragmented Web Of The Contemporary Administrative State, Jim Rossi

Michigan Law Review

Since World War II, public choice theory - defined broadly as the application of the assumptions and methodology of microeconomics to describe or predict the way public officials exercise power - has grown from a fledgling movement, gaining mainstream acceptance and respect for its insights into voting behavior, judicial decisionmaking, and other public actions. Although a theory first explored by economists and political scientists, public choice's normative insights have earned credibility in recent years in academic legal literature. Public choice's acceptance in the law school curriculum is demonstrated by the recent publication of course material on the topic. However, despite …


Chicago Hope Meets The Chicago School, Gail B. Agrawal May 1998

Chicago Hope Meets The Chicago School, Gail B. Agrawal

Michigan Law Review

Twenty-five years after the enactment of the Federal Health Maintenance Organization Act and nearly five years after the failure of proposed federal health care reform, managed care has come to dominate the medical marketplace. As a result, the relationships among patients, payers, and physicians have changed fundamentally and dramatically. In this market-driven environment, health care - how much it costs, who receives treatment, and who pays for it - may have surpassed the weather as a topic of everyday conversation at dinner tables and water coolers across the country. In the popular press, reports concerning managed care, usually derogatory, are …


How Many Libertarians Does It Take To Fix The Health Care System?, Thomas L. Greaney May 1998

How Many Libertarians Does It Take To Fix The Health Care System?, Thomas L. Greaney

Michigan Law Review

There's an old joke about a Southern preacher who is asked whether he believes in the sacrament of infant baptism. "Believe in it?" thunders the preacher. "Hell, son, I've seen it done." In Mortal Peril: Our Inalienable Right to Health Care?, Richard Epstein gives testimony that markets should be left unfettered to distribute health care services. Arguing from first principles, he aims to persuade that the messy, confusing business of health care is best dealt with by simple legal rules: permit free contracting, countenance no government-induced subsidies, recognize no positive rights. One leaves this particular revival tent feeling he …


The Erotics Of Torts, Carol Sanger May 1998

The Erotics Of Torts, Carol Sanger

Michigan Law Review

"What kind of feminist would be accused of sexual harassment?" asks Jane Gallop (p. 1). Gallop quickly provides her own challenging answer: "the sort of feminist . . . that . . . do[es] not respect the line between the intellectual and the sexual" (p. 12)." Gallop is firm and unrepentant about not respecting this line: "I sexualize the atmosphere in which I work. When sexual harassment is defined as the introduction of sex into professional relations, it becomes quite possible to be both a feminist and a sexual harasser" (p. 11). Figuring out what this means - and what …


Review Of Caring For Justice, By Robin West, Michael T. Cahill May 1998

Review Of Caring For Justice, By Robin West, Michael T. Cahill

Michigan Law Review

If the sexes are indeed from different planets, as the title of a recent bestseller informs us, one wonders that those planets were like before their inhabitants made the trek to Earth. Did the citizens of the all-female Venus structure their lives, work, moral commitments, and political systems differently from the males over on Mars? If so, what happened when these cultural worlds collided to form our own? Does our culture represent a synthesis of these two separate systems into a new and better, or perhaps worse, one, or is it the result of one planet's wholesale conquest of the …


The Future Of Enterprise Organizations, Eric W. Orts May 1998

The Future Of Enterprise Organizations, Eric W. Orts

Michigan Law Review

Both the law and business schools at the University of Michigan offer a basic course in Enterprise Organization. This tradition owes to the influence of Professor Alfred Conard, one of the leading scholars of his generation, who taught during most of his career at the University of Michigan Law School. The tradition persists in part because Enterprise Organization suggests an appropriately broad view of its topic, unlike more common course titles such as Corporations or Business Associations. We live in a world populated not only by people but also the organized legal entities we create. Business firms and nonprofit organizations …


Character, Conscience, And Destiny, G. Gordon Liddy May 1998

Character, Conscience, And Destiny, G. Gordon Liddy

Michigan Law Review

In authoring the definitive biography of Archibald Cox, Professor Ken Gormley has also favored us with a study of character, its formation, and its effect upon history. What is more, he has demonstrated once again that while events may present men with opportunity, men make history and not vice versa. Into the bargain, Mr. Gormley offers yet more proof of the correctness of Heraclitus's dictum, "character is destiny." As the author is human, the book has its faults. They range from the mere erroneous use of language (misusing "smells" for "odors" (pp. 59, 307), misusing "anxious" for "eager" (p. 46), …


Lessons From The Fall, Andrea D. Lyon May 1998

Lessons From The Fall, Andrea D. Lyon

Michigan Law Review

This book is both better and worse than one would expect. It is the story of Sol Wachtler, former Chief Judge of New York State Court of Appeals. Wachtler had an extramarital affair with a woman for whom he had been appointed executor, and after the breakup he stalked her with letters, phone calls, and threats. Eventually he was convicted of extortion and sent to prison. His fall from power is what fascinates us, of course, but that is not what is valuable about this book. It answers an outsider's questions about the prison experience, seems to reflect accurately the …


The Book Review Issue: An Owner's Guide, Carl E. Schneider May 1998

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 …


The Color Line Of Punishment, Jerome H. Skolnick May 1998

The Color Line Of Punishment, Jerome H. Skolnick

Michigan Law Review

If "the color line," (in W.E.B. Du Bois's 1903 phrase and prophecy) was to be the twentieth century's greatest challenge for the domestic life and public policy of the United States, the law has had much to do with drawing its shape. No surprise, this. By now, legal theorists accept that law does not advance in preordained fashion, immune from the sway of political interest, belief systems and social structure. Still, it is hard to exaggerate how powerfully the law has shaped the life chances of Americans of African heritage, for good or ill, and in ways that we scarcely …


The Anatomy Of Disgust In Criminal Law, Dan M. Kahan May 1998

The Anatomy Of Disgust In Criminal Law, Dan M. Kahan

Michigan Law Review

My goal in this review is to call attention to a defect in the dominant theories of criminal law and to identify a resource for remedying it. The defect is the absence of a sophisticated account of how disgust does and should influence legal decisionmaking. The corrective resource is William Miller's The Anatomy of Disgust. To make my claims more vivid, consider two stories. Both involve men who were moved to kill by disgust toward homosexuality.


Review Of The Appearance Of Impropriety: How The Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business, And Society, By Peter W. Morgan And Glenn H. Reynolds., Jordan B. Hansell May 1998

Review Of The Appearance Of Impropriety: How The Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business, And Society, By Peter W. Morgan And Glenn H. Reynolds., Jordan B. Hansell

Michigan Law Review

Rameshwar Sharma needed cash to continue his research on two proteins, alpha2A and alpha2GC, so he turned to the federal government. At the time he submitted his grant application, Sharma had completed a good deal of work on alpha2A but very little on alpha2GC At some point while typing his forty-six page grant application, Sharma realized that repeatedly typing alpha2A and alpha2GC was annoying. To ease his pain, he created macro keys that he could hit whenever he wished to type either protein. Big mistake. On page twenty-one he hit the wrong key, inserting alpha2GC where alpha2A should have been. …


Toward A Constitutional Kleptocracy: Civil Forfeiture In America, Stephan B. Herpel May 1998

Toward A Constitutional Kleptocracy: Civil Forfeiture In America, Stephan B. Herpel

Michigan Law Review

Leonard Levy, the legal historian who has written a number of highly regarded historical studies on various provisions of the United States Constitution, has added to his impressive oeuvre a new study of civil and criminal forfeiture. A License to Steal brings together a discussion of English legal history, a review of a number of Nineteenth Century and late Twentieth Century Supreme Court forfeiture decisions, accounts of actual applications of civil and criminal forfeiture, and a summary and critique of legislative proposals that have been made for reform of the civil forfeiture provisions of the federal drug statute. There is …


Takeover: German Reunification Under A Magnifying Glass, Mathias Reimann May 1998

Takeover: German Reunification Under A Magnifying Glass, Mathias Reimann

Michigan Law Review

My first personal experience with the unification of my home country was an unlikely encounter in an unlikely place. In July 1990, I was strolling across the Ponte Vecchio in Florence when I saw something so bizarre that it stopped me in my tracks. At the southern end of the bridge, deep in the pedestrian zone - off limits to automobiles - and right in the middle of the tourist crowd, was a lonely car, occupied by four obviously disoriented people. It was not just any car but a small, drab, and amusingly antiquated vehicle puffing bluish smoke from a …


An Outsider's View Of Common Law Evidence, Roger C. Park May 1998

An Outsider's View Of Common Law Evidence, Roger C. Park

Michigan Law Review

same line by a Newton. There have been improvements since Bentham's jeremiad. But Anglo-American evidence law is still puzzling. It rejects the common-sense principle of free proof in favor of a grotesque jumble of technicalities. It has the breathtaking aspiration of regulating inference by rule, causing it to exalt the foresight of remote rulemakers over the wisdom of on-the-spot adjudicators. It departs from tried-and-true practices of rational inquiry, as when it prohibits courts from using categories of evidence that are freely used both in everyday life and in the highest affairs of state. Sometimes it seems to fear dim light …


Outrageous Fortune And The Criminalization Of Mass Torts, Richard A. Nagareda Mar 1998

Outrageous Fortune And The Criminalization Of Mass Torts, Richard A. Nagareda

Michigan Law Review

The case of the blameworthy-but-fortunate defendant has emerged as one of the most perplexing scenarios in mass tort litigation today. One need look no further than the front page of the newspaper to find examples of mass tort defendants said to have engaged in irresponsible conduct - even conduct that one might regard as morally outrageous in character - but that nonetheless advance eminently plausible contentions that they have not caused harm to others. This issue is not merely a matter for abstract speculation. A now-familiar mass tort scenario involves a defendant that markets a product without informing consumers about …


Plain Meaning, Practical Reason, And Cuplability: Toward A Theory Of Jury Interpretation Of Criminal Statutes, Darryl K. Brown Mar 1998

Plain Meaning, Practical Reason, And Cuplability: Toward A Theory Of Jury Interpretation Of Criminal Statutes, Darryl K. Brown

Michigan Law Review

In one of the few existing recordings of American juries deliberating in an actual criminal case, Wisconsin v. Reed, we observe jurors struggling with how they should apply a statute in a case in which the facts are not in real dispute. The defendant is charged with felon in possession of a gun, and all agree that he has a felony record and owned a pistol until he turned it over to the police upon their request. The statute contains three elements. The defendant must (a) have a felony conviction, (b) have possessed a gun, and (c) have known that …


Process, The Constitution, And Substantive Criminal Law, Louis D. Bilionis Mar 1998

Process, The Constitution, And Substantive Criminal Law, Louis D. Bilionis

Michigan Law Review

Criminal law scholars have pined for a substantive constitutional criminal law ever since Henry Hart and Herbert Packer first embraced the notion in the late 1950s and early 1960s. To this day, scholars continue to search for a theory fhat giv:es content to, in Hart's words, "the unmistakable indications that the Constitution means something definite and spμiething serious when it speaks of 'crime.'" To their dismay, the Supreme Court has - with two exceptions - seemingly resisted the notion. The two exceptions are familiar. First came the 1957 case of Lambert v. California, in which the Court came as close …


Identifying And Valuing The Injury In Lost Chance Cases, Todd S. Aagaard Mar 1998

Identifying And Valuing The Injury In Lost Chance Cases, Todd S. Aagaard

Michigan Law Review

Any plaintiff seeking to recover in tort must prove that the defendant has breached the duty of care. Even after the plaintiff has established the defendant's breach of duty, however, issues of causation and damages remain. These two issues are frequently vexing, both conceptually and in terms of evidentiary demonstration. For example, if a plaintiff proves that a defendant acted negligently, it still may be unclear whether the plaintiff would have been injured even ip the absence of the defendant's negligence. Similarly, in assessing damages, factfinders often :find it difficult to attach a monetary value to a plaintiff's nonpecuniary losses …


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Mar 1998

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

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


The Political Economy Of Cooperative Federalism: Why State Autonomy Makes Sense And "Dual Sovereignty" Doesn't, Roderick M. Hills Jr. Feb 1998

The Political Economy Of Cooperative Federalism: Why State Autonomy Makes Sense And "Dual Sovereignty" Doesn't, Roderick M. Hills Jr.

Michigan Law Review

It is commonplace to observe that "dual federalism" is dead, replaced by something variously called "cooperative federalism," "intergovernmental relations," or "marble-cake federalism." According to this conventional wisdom, state and local officials do not enforce merely their own laws in their distinct policymaking sphere. Rather, as analyzed in a voluminous literature, state and local governments also cooperate with the federal government in many policymaking areas, ranging from unemployment insurance to historic preservation. These nonfederal governments help implement federal policy in a variety of ways: by submitting implementation plans to federal agencies, by promulgating regulations, and by bringing administrative actions to enforce …


Interjurisdictional Preclusion, Howard M. Erichson Feb 1998

Interjurisdictional Preclusion, Howard M. Erichson

Michigan Law Review

Res judicata is hard enough already. Consider it at the interjurisdictional level, and we are asking for headaches. But consider it at that level we must, because litigation trends make interjurisdictional preclusion more important than ever. Lawyers, judges, litigants, and other litigation participants increasingly must contemplate the possibility that a lawsuit will have claim-preclusive or issue-preclusive effect in a subsequent suit in another jurisdiction. With great frequency, multiple lawsuits arise out of single or related transactions or events. Mass tort litigation and complex commercial litigation provide the most emphatic examples, but the phenomenon of multiple related lawsuits extends to every …