Law Commons^™

Domestic Terror (The Sniper Suspect's Divorce Records Show Patterns Of Power And Control And Missed Opportunities By The System To Intervene.), Jane C. Murphy

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Over the past few months, we have learned much about the violent, troubled life of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad. Whether or not he pulled the trigger - some recent reports have pointed to his 17-year-old companion Lee Boyd Malvo as the main shooter - there is no doubt in the minds of domestic-violence experts that this adult is responsible for these deaths.

While many pundits conclude that we will never know what motivated the sniper suspect, to domestic violence experts his is an all-too-familiar story of a man whose relationships with the women and children - possibly including Malvo …

Justice And Reasonable Care In Negligence Law, Richard W. Wright

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The academic literature generally assumes that an aggregate-risk-utility test is employed to determine whether conduct was reasonable or negligent. This aggregate-risk-utility test is a transparent implementation of the basic impartiality and aggregation principles of utilitarianism and the most popular (Kaldor-Hicks) interpretation of economic efficiency. Thus, the test's assumed prevalence as the criterion of reasonableness in negligence law has been highlighted by legal economists as confirmation of the utilitarian efficiency foundations of tort law, while those, including Ronald Dworkin, who think that the law, including tort law, is or should be grounded on principles of justice have sought to demonstrate that, …

Negligence In The Courts: Introduction And Commentary, In Symposium, Negligence In The Courts: The Actual Practice, Richard W. Wright

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This article is an introduction to and commentary on the contributions to a "Symposium on Negligence in the Courts: the Actual Practice." The contributors all conclude that the tests of negligence that are actually employed by the courts differ from the aggregate-risk-utility test that is generally assumed in the academic literature, including the Restatement of Torts. Patrick Kelley and Laurel Wendt's survey of all the standard jury instructions on negligence in the United States finds only one instruction, in Louisiana, that mentions a risk-utility or cost-benefit test of negligence, and that instruction merely suggests, as a discretionary option, the weighing …

Disability, Reciprocity, And 'Real Efficiency': A Unified Approach, Amy L. Wax

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The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires private employers to offer reasonable accommodation to disabled persons capable of performing the core elements of a job. Some economists have attacked the statute as ill-advised and inefficient. In examining the efficiency of the ADA, this article analyzes its cost-effectiveness against the following social and legal background conditions: First, society will honor a minimum commitment to provide basic support to persons - including the medically disabled - who, through no fault of their own, cannot earn enough to maintain a minimally decent standard of living. Second, legal and pragmatic factors, including "sticky" or …

Ub Viewpoint – Dissolving The Shadows, Eric Easton

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No abstract provided.

The War On Terrorism And The Constitution, Michael I. Meyerson

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Discussion of civil liberties during wartime often omit the fact that there can be no meaningful liberty at all if our homes and offices are bombed or our loved ones are killed or injured by acts of terror. The Government must be given the tools necessary to accomplish its vital mission. The first priority must be to win the war against terrorism. There are, however, other priorities. The United States, in its just battle for freedom, must ensure that freedom is preserved during that battle as well. Moreover, care must be taken so that an exaggerated cry of “emergency” is …

Copyright Preemption And The Right Of Publicity, Jennifer E. Rothman

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This article addresses the conflict between an ever-expanding right of publicity and the federally guaranteed rights provided by copyright law. This conflict is highlighted in the Wendt v. Host International case in which the actors George Wendt and John Ratzenberger from Cheers used the right of publicity to prevent the show's creators from licensing the use of the Norm and Cliff characters in the decor of a chain of airport bars. Even though the licensing of the characters was explicitly allowed under copyright law, the Ninth Circuit held that the right of publicity prevented the creators from doing so. Similarly, …

A Community Of Courts: Toward A System Of International Criminal Law Enforcement, William W. Burke-White

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No abstract provided.

Proposal To Reform The Like Kind And Involuntary Conversion Rules In Light Of Fundamental Tax Policies: A Simpler, More Rational, And More Unified Approach, Fred B. Brown

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Almost from the beginning of the federal income tax, the law has contained two nonrecognition provisions that have undergone relatively little change: the like kind rule and the involuntary conversion rule. Commentators have questioned the policy grounds for the like kind rule in general, and for some of its particular features, such as the exchange requirement. Congress and its staffers have also noted the complexity caused by certain aspects of the rule and have enacted or proposed remedial changes in this regard. The involuntary conversion rule also contributes to the complexity of the tax system given the fact-intensive analysis that …

A Test For Competition, Robert H. Lande

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No abstract provided.

Law Schools Explore Three-Semester Writing Programs, Eric Easton

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No abstract provided.

An Introduction To The Rules Of Evidence Applicable To Collection Cases In Maryland Trial Courts, Lynn Mclain

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This class handout introduces students to the basic concepts of evidence using examples and language from the Maryland Rules of Evidence.

Collusion Over Rules, Robert H. Lande, Howard P. Marvel

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Many instances of anticompetitive collusion are designed not to affect prices and output directly, but rather to shape the rules under which competition takes place. They help to cushion competitors from hard competition through such "rules" as restraints on advertising, sham ethical codes, or bans on discounts, coupons, "free" services, or extended hours of operation. Instead of collusion directly over outcomes, firms attuned to the strategic impact of their activities often agree on ways in which to shape their environments in order to soften competition and to insulate themselves from hard competition in ways that will lead to higher prices. …

Teaching Real Torts: Using Barry Werth's Damages In The Law School Classroom, Tom Baker

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No abstract provided.

Bounded Evaluation: Cognition, Incoherence, And Regulatory Policy, Cary Coglianese

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Cass Sunstein, Daniel Kahneman, David Schkade, and Ilana Ritov have recently advanced a cognitive explanation for incoherence in legal decisionmaking, showing how decision makers tend to make micro-level judgments that make little sense when viewed from a broader perspective. Among other things, they claimed to have discovered striking incoherence in regulatory policy evidenced by varied penalty levels across different statutes, with less serious violations sometimes backed up with higher penalties than more serious violations. This paper comments on Sunstein et al.'s treatment of incoherence in regulatory policy, arguing that the same cognitive limitations that Sunstein et al. argue lead to …

Should The Victims' Rights Movement Have Influence Over Criminal Law Formulation And Adjudication?, Paul H. Robinson

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The victims' rights movement has come into increasing influence in setting criminal justice policy. What can be said about where its influence should be heeded, and where it should not? With regard to substantive criminal law in particular, should the victims' rights movement have influence over its formulation and adjudication? The short answer, on which I'll elaborate below, is that it ought to have influence over criminal law formulation but not necessarily over criminal law adjudication. It ought to have influence over criminal law formulation because there is great benefit in formulations that track shared lay intuitions of justice, and …

The Thirteenth Amendment And Slavery In The Global Economy, Tobias Barrington Wolff

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The globalization of industry has been accompanied by a globalization of labor exploitation. With increasing frequency, U.S.-based multinational corporations are carrying on their foreign operations through the deliberate exploitation of involuntary or slave labor. This development in the foreign labor practices of U.S. entities heralds a new era of challenge and transformation for the Thirteenth Amendment and its prohibition on the existence of slavery or involuntary servitude. It has become necessary to reexamine the range of activities in American industry - and American participation in global industry - that the amendment reaches. I begin that reexamination here. In this article, …

The Virtues Of Restorative Processes, The Vices Of "Restorative Justice", Paul H. Robinson

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This conference and symposium are important for their ability to make better known the great benefits in the use of restorative processes. Below I try to summarize some of the many promising achievements of those processes, by which I mean to include such practices as victim-offender mediation, sentencing circles, and family group conferences to name just the most common. While many people refer to such processes by the name "Restorative Justice," that term and its originators in fact have a more ambitious agenda than simply encouraging the use of such restorative processes. But that agenda is not one that the …

The Rules Of Evidence Applicable In Maryland Trial Courts, Lynn Mclain

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No abstract provided.

"Charitable Choice" And The Accountability Challenge: Reconciling The Need For Regulation With The First Amendment Religion Clauses, Michele E. Gilman

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Since 1996, Congress has included charitable choice provisions in several social welfare statutes to encourage the participation of religious organizations in administering government-funded social service programs. In this Article, Professor Michele Gilman discusses the lack of accountability to beneficiaries that occurs when public funds are given to religious organizations for secular programs, and she proposes solutions to this problem. As Professor Gilman explains, doctrines that constrain abuses of governmental discretion, such as administrative procedure acts and constitutional restrictions, generally do not apply when public programs are privatized. Moreover, religious organizations are often insulated from public scrutiny because of First Amendment …

After "Hiding The Ball" Is Over: How The Nlrb Must Change Its Approach To Decision-Making, Michael Hayes

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Is the National Labor Relations Board (the NLRB or the Board), the agency that oversees federal labor law, still relevant? When this question is considered, as it frequently is by scholars, lawyers and officials of the NLRB itself, the focus typically is on whether changes in the workplace, the economy and society are diminishing the relevance of the Board. But there is a new and more immediate threat to the relevance of the Board that so far has been mostly ignored - that the Board is in danger of being rendered a superfluous legal institution in the scheme of American …

Giving A Voice To The Silent Mentally Ill Client: An Empirical Study Of The Role Of Counsel In The Civil Commitment Hearing, Donald H. Stone

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In the civil commitment arena, where a mentally ill person is allegedly a danger to the life or safety of themselves or of others and in need of in-patient care or treatment, there are two groups assigned to protect the people: one, the hospital presenter, who is responsible for investigating and presenting evidence and testimony at a hearing to secure admission to a psychiatric facility as an involuntary patient, the other, the lawyer, who represents and defends the allegedly mentally ill person from such involuntary civil commitment confinement. These are their stories.

The attorney representing a mentally ill client at …

Book Review: Limits Of Law, Prerogatives Of Power: Interventionism After Kosovo, By Michael J. Glennon, Charles Tiefer

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The author reviews Michael Glennon's Limits of Law, Prerogatives of Power: Interventionism After Kosovo, discussing Glennon's approach to NATO's 1999 bombing to stop the Milosevic regime's ethnic cleansing of Kosovo in the face of the UN Charter's absolute ban on states using force except in self-defense. Finding Glennon's study at once provocative and readable, the author emphasizes the strength of Glennon's core point - the inability for the Kosovo campaign to be reconciled with the UN charter - but points to the dangers of using one instance (Kosovo) to prove bad law.

Re: Commission's Request For Comments On The Use Of Disgorgement In Antitrust Matters, Robert H. Lande

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This is a submission to the FTC that discusses this agency's use of disgorgement as a remedy in Antitrust matters. It strongly supports the Commission's use of the disgorgement remedy, and gives reasons why the public interest would be enhanced if the agency used this remedy more often. This document was submitted on behalf of the American Antitrust Institute.

The Politics Of Voting Rights And The Legacy Of Baker V. Carr, José F. Anderson

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No abstract provided.

Losses Of Equal Value, Michael I. Meyerson

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No abstract provided.

Entrance, Voice And Exit: The Constitutional Bounds Of The Right Of Association, Evelyn Brody

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Despite the central role of organized groups as intermediary bodies in American society, the constitutional right of association is surprisingly recent and limited. As the Supreme Court struggles to define the bounds of 'the' freedom of association, it is time to take a critical look at a difficult set of questions. First, many private organizations engage in various types of selection criteria, but what subjects the Jaycees to State anti-discrimination laws but insulates the Boy Scouts of America? Second, the typical American nonprofit organization is a corporation that lacks both shareholders and members, so are there any 'associates' whose rights …

The Twilight Of Organizational Form For Charity: Musings On Norman Silber, A Corporate Form Of Freedom: The Emergence Of The Modern Nonprofit Sector (Book Review), Evelyn Brody

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No abstract provided.

Lessons From The Balkans For American Foreign Policy: Building Civil Society Within A Multilateral Framework, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

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No abstract provided.

Extraterritoriality And Political Heterogeneity In American Federalism, Mark D. Rosen

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It is commonly understood that as a matter of federal law, states' substantive policies may diverge in respect of those matters that are not violative of the United States Constitution. As a practical matter, however, what degree of political heterogeneity among states is possible vis-a-vis substantive policies that are not unconstitutional? The answer to the question turns in large part on whether states, if they so choose, can regulate their citizens even when they are out-of-state. If they cannot, citizens can bypass their home state’s laws by simply traveling to a more legally permissive state to do there what is …