Law Commons^™

Recovering The Original Fourth Amendment, Thomas Y. Davies

Michigan Law Review

Claims regarding the original or intended meaning of constitutional texts are commonplace in constitutional argument and analysis. All such claims are subject to an implicit validity criterion - only historically authentic assertions should matter. The rub is that the original meaning commonly attributed to a constitutional text may not be authentic. The historical Fourth Amendment is a case in point. If American judges, lawyers, or law teachers were asked what the Framers intended when they adopted the Fourth Amendment, they would likely answer that the Framers intended that all searches and seizures conducted by government officers must be reasonable given …

A Defense Of Analogical Reasoning In Law, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article defends the practice of reasoning by analogy on the basis of its epistemic and institutional advantages. The advantages identified for analogical reasoning include that it produces a wealth of data for decisonmaking; it represents the collaborative effort of a number of judges over time; it tends to correct biases that might lead judges to discount the force of prior decisions; and it exerts a conservative force in law, holding the development of law to a gradual pace. Notably, these advantages do not depend on the rational force of analogical reasoning. Rather, the author contends that, as open-ended reasoning …

Unpublished Opinions: A Comment, Richard S. Arnold

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

The Honorable Richard S. Arnold gives a federal appellate judge’s perspective of the unpublished opinions debate.

Whether The Federal Rules Of Evidence Should Be Conceived As A Perpetual Index Code: Blindness Is Worse Than Myopia, Edward J. Imwinkelried

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Evidence Myopia: The Failure To See The Federal Rules Of Evidence As A Codification Of The Common Law, Glen Weissenberger

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Elusive Identity Of The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Glen Weissenberger

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Common Law In Cyberspace, Tom W. Bell

Michigan Law Review

Wrong in interesting ways, counts for high praise among academics. Peter Huber's stirring new book, Law and Disorder in Cyberspace, certainly merits acclaim by that standard. The very subtitle of the book, Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm, announces the daring arguments to follow. A book so bold could hardly fail to make some stimulating errors, the most provocative of which this review discusses. Thanks to his willingness to challenge musty doctrines of telecommunications law and policy, moreover, Huber gets a great deal right. Law and Disorder in Cyberspace argues at length that the Federal Communications …

Subversive Thoughts On Freedom And The Common Good, Larry Alexander, Maimon Schwarzschild

Michigan Law Review

Richard Epstein is a rare and forceful voice against the conventional academic wisdom of our time. Legal scholarship of the past few decades overwhelmingly supports more government regulation and more power for the courts, partly in order to control businesses for environmental and other reasons, but more broadly in hopes of achieving egalitarian outcomes along the famous lines of race, gender, and class. Epstein is deeply skeptical that any of this is the shining path to a better world. Epstein's moral criterion for evaluating social policy is to look at how fully it allows individual human beings to satisfy their …

The Erie Doctrine Revisited: How A Conflicts Perspective Can Aid The Analysis, Joseph P. Bauer

Journal Articles

I have taught Civil Procedure for the past twenty-five years. Having returned to teaching Conflict of Laws last year, after not having taught that course since the mid-1980s, I was interested in re-examining the Erie doctrine from the vantage point of both of these subject areas. My goal was to see whether a combination of learning from these two related disciplines would introduce additional coherence into the analysis of this topic.

In one sense, the Erie doctrine and traditional choice of law determinations present analogous questions, since they both involve making a selection between competing legal rules. Choice of law …

Franchisor Liability For The Torts Of Its Franchisees: The Case For Substituting Liability As A Guarantor For The Current Vicarious Liability, John L. Hanks

Faculty Articles

The author reviews the justifications for applying the law of vicarious liability in the franchising context and concludes that its application is often inefficient and arbitrary. He argues that the employee-independent contractor dichotomy used by courts to determine franchisor liability is not well-suited to franchising, where the relationship encompasses both concepts. He proposes that vicarious liability not be applied in the franchising context. Instead, the courts by case law or state legislatures by statute should impose a guarantor status on franchisors that would expose them to liability for the torts of the franchisees only if the franchisee was unavailable to …

In Defense Of The Good Samaritan, Hanoch Dagan

Michigan Law Review

In the year 1880, in Dalles City, Oregon, a large and valuable load of lumber fell into the Columbia River and was about to be carried away by the river's waters. Since Savage, the owner of this lumber, was absent from the scene, Glenn - who, at that time, was doing construction work for Savage - "furnished help and did service" in saving the lumber "from being washed away and lost." Seven years later, the Supreme Court of Oregon rejected Glenn's claim that Savage owed him "the reasonable value" of his services as well as of the services of the …

Dust Bowl Blues: Saving And Sharing The Ogallala Aquifer, Robert R.M. Verchick

Robert R.M. Verchick

No abstract provided.

Critical Space Theory: Keeping Local Geography In American And European Environmental Law, Robert R.M. Verchick

Robert R.M. Verchick

Recently, legal scholars have begun to explore the meaning and significance of geographic space in law within the United States and internationally, a project highlighted in a 1996 Stanford Law Review symposium. Much of this discussion draws implicitly and explicitly on critical legal theory in approaching geographic themes -- suggesting the beginning of what the author calls "Critical Space Theory." This article uses Critical Space Theory to address the legal significance of geography in relation to two environmental issues in the United States and the European Union: (1) transborder waste transportation and (2) judicial standing. Each issue raises questions of …

Commercial Common Law, The United Nations Convention On The International Sale Of Goods, And The Inertia Of Habit, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This Article develops a model of judicial behavior that rests on the idea that a judge's decision is a function of her attitudes and role orientations and these, in turn, are heavily influenced by her law school education. The result is an intellectual stubbornness that may lead judges to reject not only optional innovations that may present themselves, but may also cause them to construe mandatory provisions as if no change had occurred. This model and the Convention on the International Sale of Goods illustrate situations in which the emerging international commercial code may play an important role in the …

Law's Territory (A History Of Jurisdiction), Richard T. Ford

Michigan Law Review

Pop quiz: New York City. The United Kingdom. The East Bay Area Municipal Utilities District. Kwazulu, South Africa. The Cathedral of Notre Dame. The State of California. Vatican City. Switzerland. The American Embassy in the U.S.S.R. What do the foregoing items have in common? Answer: they are, or were, all territorial jurisdictions. A thesis of this Article is that territorial jurisdictions - the rigidly mapped territories within which formally defined legal powers are exercised by formally organized governmental institutions - are relatively new and intuitively surprising technological developments. New, because until the development of modern cartography, legal authority generally followed …

Federal Common Law In Admiralty: An Introduction To The Beginning Of An Exchange, Joel K. Goldstein

All Faculty Scholarship

Most scholars and practitioners of admiralty law have long relied upon two central assumptions regarding their subject. First, they have understood that uniformity was a requisite of maritime law such that, generally speaking, national, rather than state, law governed most maritime events and transactions. Second, they have believed that in order to preserve the uniformity of maritime law, federal admiralty courts are empowered to fashion federal common law.[1] The commitment to these related propositions has been attested to or illustrated by a collection of Supreme Court decisions.[2] For instance, in Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen,[3] the case that stands as …

The Precedent Setters: De Facto Stare Decisis In Two Adjudication (Part Two Of A Trilogy), Raj Bhala

Florida State University Journal of Transnational Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The Public Trust Doctrine: A Tragedy Of The Common Law, James R. Rasband

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Common Law And Statutes, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

Controversies about statutory interpretation and the proper roles for judges in interpretation are particularly noticeable in the Supreme Court but have penetrated downward throughout the judicial system. What I mean to explore here are some implications of our common law heritage and the presuppositions of a common law system for these controversies, that seem rarely noticed in the ongoing debates. I mean by this not only common law judging, but also what we might call common law legislating – that is, the practice of creating statutes to achieve marginal changes in existing law in response to perceived deficiencies, rather than …

Confrontation Confronted, Richard D. Friedman, Margaret A. Berger, Steven R. Shapiro

Articles

The following article is an edited version of the amicus curiae brief filed with the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1998, in the case of Benjamin Lee Lilly v. Commonwealth of Virginia (No. 98-5881). "This case raises important questions about the meaning of the confrontation clause, which has been a vital ingredient of the fair trial right for hundreds of years," Professor Richard Friedman and his co-authors say. "In particular, this case presents the Court with an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between the confrontation clause and the law of hearsay." On June 10 the …