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Full-Text Articles in Law

Book Review: Decreeing Women's Equality: Using Women's History To Create Legal Parity, Denise D. J. Roy Jan 2003

Book Review: Decreeing Women's Equality: Using Women's History To Create Legal Parity, Denise D. J. Roy

Faculty Scholarship

This article critiques the feminist view Ute Gerhard offers in “Debating Women's Equality: Toward a Feminist Theory of Law from a European Perspective”. Throughout Debating Women's Equality, Gerhard appears to have three ambitious objectives in mind: (1) to decry the paucity of research into women's legal history while beginning to do the needed work, focusing primarily on Germany but also broadly exploring European trends, (2) to demonstrate that German/European women's legal history ultimately vindicates reliance on “equal rights” as a political strategy for women, and (3) to develop an understanding of legal equality that can serve as a meaningful tool …


Midwifery: Strategies On The Road To Universal Legalization, Laura Hermer Jan 2003

Midwifery: Strategies On The Road To Universal Legalization, Laura Hermer

Faculty Scholarship

Multiple studies have shown that direct-entry midwifery is just as safe, if not safer than, medical care in low-risk childbirth. Most births using direct-entry midwives require fewer interventions than those attended by physicians, yet yield excellent results. The results of these studies indicate that we should return to midwifery for normal births, rather than continuing to rely primarily on medicine. This option, however, has been significantly curtailed by many state legislatures and courts, despite decades of attempts to make incursions on the traditional paradigm of hospital births attended by obstetricians. As a result, where midwifery is more readily available, it …


Part-Time Legal Education: It‘S Not Your Parents’ Old Oldsmobile, Edwin J. Butterfoss Jan 2003

Part-Time Legal Education: It‘S Not Your Parents’ Old Oldsmobile, Edwin J. Butterfoss

Faculty Scholarship

When I am asked to name my accomplishments as dean,' the one that often piques the listener's interest is "starting a weekend law program." Their reaction usually is along the lines of, "A weekend law program? That's different." But depending on to whom I am talking, that "uniform" response needs to be interpreted based on the tone of voice, facial expression, and other body language of the listener If I happen to be talking to a faculty member from another school, the translation is, "I hope my dean doesn't get a crazy idea like that and make me work on …


From The Clinic To The Classroom: Or What I Would Have Learned If I Had Been Paying More Attention To My Students And Their Clients, Peter B. Knapp Jan 2003

From The Clinic To The Classroom: Or What I Would Have Learned If I Had Been Paying More Attention To My Students And Their Clients, Peter B. Knapp

Faculty Scholarship

This past year, two experiences related to clinical teaching—one a moment of personal epiphany and the other, a conversation with a colleague—have caused the author to spend more time thinking about what he should be learning in the clinic and applying in the classroom.


Not Mere Rhetoric: On Wasting Or Claiming Your Legacy, Justice Scalia, Marie Failinger Jan 2003

Not Mere Rhetoric: On Wasting Or Claiming Your Legacy, Justice Scalia, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

The thesis of the article is that the Court’s enterprise is centered on preserving community through an ethics of warranted trust, and that Scalia’s rhetoric often rejects such an ethic. A modern democratic citizen, along with his whole community, instead finds himself in the situation of necessary trust in democratic institutions like the Supreme Court. The willingness of a political community ultimately to place its trust in authority is partially dependent on that authority’s commitment to, and skill at, creating a convincing argument. The practice of rhetoric recognizes the dynamics of a relation of trust: the rhetor must put his …


Privacy As A Legal Principle Of Identity Maintenance, Jonathan Kahn Jan 2003

Privacy As A Legal Principle Of Identity Maintenance, Jonathan Kahn

Faculty Scholarship

This article considers how existing literature on privacy recognizes, constructs and otherwise implicates something the Anglo-American legal tradition recognizes as 'identity'. Integral to this concern is approaching privacy as a regulative principle for constructing and managing relations between the individual and three primary spheres of engagement: society, the market, and the state. Contemporary analyses of privacy tend to concentrate of how privacy protects the individual from state tyranny or the prying eyes of social busy bodies. Much less attention has been paid, however, to privacy as a principle for demarcating a space beyond the reach of market forces. As privacy …


Red Owl's Legacy, Gregory M. Duhl Jan 2003

Red Owl's Legacy, Gregory M. Duhl

Faculty Scholarship

In the early 1960s, Joseph Hoffman, a high school graduate, baker and father of seven, sought to obtain a Red Owl grocery store franchise in Wisconsin. He entered into negotiations with Red Owl Stores, Inc. after the franchisor assured him that the $18,000 he had to invest in the franchise was sufficient. Over the course of the negotiations, Red Owl encouraged Hoffman to sell his bakery, buy a small grocery store to gain experience in the grocery business, sell his grocery store three months later, and move his family to the desired location for his Red Owl franchise. The negotiations …


Minnesota's Sex Offender Commitment Program: Would An Empirically-Based Prevention Policy By More Effective?, Eric S. Janus Jan 2003

Minnesota's Sex Offender Commitment Program: Would An Empirically-Based Prevention Policy By More Effective?, Eric S. Janus

Faculty Scholarship

Minnesota’s sex offender commitment scheme is not just a bad idea; it likely has bad consequences. It is a huge and disproportionate sink for resources that ight be put to more effective use in the fight against sexual violence. Worse, its demand for resources will continue to grow, thus predetermining to a large extent how prevention and treatment dollars are spent. It is very possible that a more rational allocation of these resources would actually prevent more violence than the allocation that is automatically produced by the sex offender commitment scheme. At the very least, the fight against sexual violence …


Yes, No, And Maybe: Informed Decision Making About Divorce Mediation In The Presence Of Domestic Violence, Nancy Ver Steegh Jan 2003

Yes, No, And Maybe: Informed Decision Making About Divorce Mediation In The Presence Of Domestic Violence, Nancy Ver Steegh

Faculty Scholarship

Divorce mediation in the context of domestic violence is one of the most controversial issues in family law today. Some believe that mediation is never appropriate when domestic violence has taken place, and others believe that it is always appropriate and should be mandatory. These views can be reconciled by taking a third approach, that mediation is sometimes appropriate but that this decision must be made on a case-by-case basis in consultation with the abuse survivor. The central premise of this article is that victims of domestic violence should have the opportunity to make an informed choice about which divorce …


Beyond Words: An Empirical Study Of Context In Contract Creation, Deborah A. Schmedemann Jan 2003

Beyond Words: An Empirical Study Of Context In Contract Creation, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Faculty Scholarship

This article reports on an empirical study into how judges interpret contracts. In general, the study demonstrates that key participants do look to context for guidance on issues of contract creation. Part II summarizes the modem legal perspective on these questions, as stated in the Restatement (Second) of Contracts, as posited in the scholarly debate about relational contracts, and as exemplified in case law regarding employment contracts. Part III describes a study designed to capture the thinking on these questions of participants in an employment contract. Part IV presents the results obtained from respondents who represented the parties to the …


Rosalie Wahl's Vision For Legal Education: Clinics At The Heart, Ann Juergens Jan 2003

Rosalie Wahl's Vision For Legal Education: Clinics At The Heart, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

Rosalie Wahl holds a special place in the hearts of Minnesota lawyers. Many women and girls, especially, were gratified when Governor Rudy Perpich appointed her the first woman on the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1977. There were no more than nine other women on supreme courts around the country at the time, and none on the U.S. Supreme Court. She served on the court until 1994, when the law mandating judges’ retirement at age seventy caused her to step down from the bench. This essay highlights the significance of Wahl’s work as a clinical legal educator and activist for legal …


Sorting Through The Soup: How Do Llcs, Llps And Lllps Fit Withing The Regulations And Legal Doctrines?, Daniel S. Kleinberger Jan 2003

Sorting Through The Soup: How Do Llcs, Llps And Lllps Fit Withing The Regulations And Legal Doctrines?, Daniel S. Kleinberger

Faculty Scholarship

In a children' book published in 1946, Ben Ross Berenberg described an imaginary amalgam called the churkendoose - "part chicken, turkey, duck and goose." In 1977, Wyoming invented a business law churkendoose: the limited liability company - part corporation, part general partnership, part limited partnership. That churkendoose has revolutionized the law of business organizations, becoming the vehicle of choice for tens of thousands of ventures every month and causing the IRS to radically overhaul its approach to taxing business entities. This article explores how preexisting regulatory and common law apply to LLCs and the related organizations known as limited liability …


The Sense And Nonsense Of Web Site Terms Of Use Agreements, Sharon Sandeen Jan 2003

The Sense And Nonsense Of Web Site Terms Of Use Agreements, Sharon Sandeen

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the purpose, use and enforceability of TOUs. In so doing it looks beyond the common question of whether TOUs are enforceable to ask whether and under what circumstances TOUs are necessary. This article explores whether the nature of the Internet is so different from the brick-and-mortar world that TOUs are needed for web sites but not for retail stores. A review of many of the existing TOUs reveals that major differences exist in the number and nature of their provisions. On one extreme are the TOUs of companies like Disney, Barnes and Noble and Amazon that apparently …


Clinical Teaching At William Mitchell College Of Law: Values, Pedagogy, And Perspective, Eric S. Janus Jan 2003

Clinical Teaching At William Mitchell College Of Law: Values, Pedagogy, And Perspective, Eric S. Janus

Faculty Scholarship

A retrospective celebrating thirty years of clinical education at William Mitchell College of Law. These courses are nurtured by the key principles that have shaped clinical education at William Mitchell. They embrace the profession of law, but insist on a critical stance. They recognize that values define the practice of law, and that only through intentional choice of pedagogy and perspective can values education be effective and respectful of the autonomy of our students as they work to define the sort of lawyers they wish to become.


The Role Of Primary Assumption Of Risk In Civil Litigation In Minnesota, Michael K. Steenson Jan 2003

The Role Of Primary Assumption Of Risk In Civil Litigation In Minnesota, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

Assumption of risk has presented courts with considerable difficulty in defining its theoretical justification and its relationship to tort duty limitations and to the defense of contributory negligence. In Minnesota and elsewhere, assumption of risk has been applied inconsistently. Sometimes it seems to relate to the duty issue and sometimes it is linked to the defense of contributory negligence, but without a clear differentiation of which issue is involved. In Minnesota specifically, the Minnesota Supreme Court has acknowledged that inconsistency and the difficulty in applying the concept in cases spanning several decades. This article focuses on primary assumption of risk, …


Essay: Pledging Allegiance, Michael K. Steenson Jan 2003

Essay: Pledging Allegiance, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay focuses on the Pledge of Allegiance requirement and its place in public schools. It begins with an analysis of a typical, but certainly not isolated, approach of the Minnesota Legislature, following September 11, in passing a bill that required recitation of the Pledge. This Essay then moves to a discussion of the events surrounding the 1943 United States Supreme Court decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette and how Barnette has subsequently been interpreted. Finally, this Essay discusses the probable impact of the Minnesota Constitution on the Pledge Bill, should it pass in this legislative …