Law Commons^™

Community Supervision Of Sex Offenders - Integrating Probation And Clinical Treatment, Mike Jenuwine, Ronald Simmons, Edward Swies

Journal Articles

The common reaction to the criminal acts committed by sex offenders includes disgust, anger, and a feeling of increased vulnerability. Not surprisingly, many people feel that convicted sex offenders should be locked up indefinitely, castrated, or put to death. In reality, however, nearly 60 per- cent of convicted sex offenders live in our communities under conditional supervision. The inherent problem with releasing convict- ed sex offenders into the community is the likelihood that they will repeat their crimes. To address this problem, intensive treatment programs for sex offenders have been developed to be used in combination with traditional measures such …

Right To Write - Free Expression Rights Of Pennsylvania's Creative Students After Columbine, Barbara Brunner

Faculty Scholarship

This comment analyzes the current state of students' free speech rights in the context of creative writing assignments and examines potential First Amendment applications to the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), a statewide, mandatory, standards-based exam administered to Pennsylvania public school students. The PSSA, which currently contains a writing assessment for students in sixth, ninth, and eleventh grades requiring students to write essays in response to prompts, is scored anonymously by private entities under contract with the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Those private subcontractors have "red-flagging" procedures in place to identify essays containing imagery or themes that indicate imminent …

The Case For Tax Sparing Along With Expanding And Limiting The Subpart F Regime, Samuel C. Thompson Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Cultural Tour Of The Legal Landscape: Reflections On Cardinal George's Law And Culture, Charles E. Rice

Journal Articles

When a ruling of the supreme court meets with Congressional disfavor there are several remedies available to Congress. If the decision is not on a constitutional level, a later statutory enactment will suffice to reverse or modify the ruling. If, however, the Court's decision is an interpretation of a constitutional mandate, such as the requirement of the fourteenth amendment that legislative districts be apportioned according to population, then a statute could not reverse the decision because the statute itself would be subject to that constitutional mandate as defined by the Court.

The obvious method of reversing a Supreme Court interpretation …

New Opportunities For Obtaining And Using Litigation Reserves And Disclosures, Matthew J. Barrett

Journal Articles

Following the publication of Opportunities for Obtaining and Using Litigation Reserves and Disclosures, which highlighted the helpful information about litigation reserves that a litigator can often detect or discover from an opponent's financial statements, accounting books and records, tax returns, public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC), and auditor, two important regulatory developments occurred in early 2003 that create additional opportunities to obtain information about an opponent's assessments of (i) expected liability in the underlying case or (ii) obligations or settlements in similar cases. First, pursuant to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the SEC issued final regulations …

Quis Vadit Cum Vobis, Galileo?, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

With the decision early 2002 to develop Galileo, the second generation European GNSS-system, and to have it fully operational by 2008, the member states of the European Union (EU) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have taken a large step forward. The question "Quo vadis, Galileo?' has therefore, by and large, been answered - 'Into orbit!' However, many legal parameters for the future system have yet to be defined; amongst those one of the most important is the definition and establishment of the institutional structure which should bring Galileo there and make sure it remains there, in a safe, sensible …

Towards One Captain On The European Spaceship— Why The Eu Should Join Esa, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

The current European Convention, aimed at shaping the future of the EU, is considering inclusion of “space” as an area of competence in the EU treaties, in order to strengthen the position of Europe in space. While the Commission in this context has contemplated turning ESA into a “space agency of the EU,” a much more fruitful approach would be the other way around: for the EU to become a member of ESA. As argued, this solution would have a few interesting precedents, be relatively easy and quick to implement, and kill a number of birds with one stone.

Why Theories Of Law Have Little Or Nothing To Do With Judicial Restraint, Philip E. Soper

Articles

The question I explore here, stated in its broadest form, is this: What is the connection between theory and practice between academic claims about how judges should decide cases and the actual behavior of judges as revealed in the opinions they write? More particularly, do theories about the nature of law have any implications for the question whether a judge should adopt an "activist" or a "restrained" approach to deciding cases? As you might infer from my title, I defend here what I call "the skeptical thesis" in answer to both the general and particular questions. Judges pay little or …

An Accuser-Obligation Approach To The Confrontation Clause, Sherman J. Clark

Articles

This Essay argues that the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment ought to be re-understood as primarily an accuser's obligation rather than primarily as a defendant's right. We demand that those who would perform this potentially dangerous, morally weighty, and symbolically loaded act-the act of accusation-be willing to do so face to face. We impose this requirement not only because out-of-court accusations are unreliable, though they may often be, but also in response to a deep, if inchoate, feeling that it is somehow beneath us inconsistent with our sense of who we want to be as a community-to allow witnesses …

Anger And Intent For Murder: The Supreme Court Decisions In R. V. Parent, Joanne Klineberg

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

In R v. Parent, the Supreme Court of Canada recently held that intense anger alone is not, of itself, a defence to murder, although anger does play a role in reducing murder to manslaughter in connection with the defence of provocation. The Court's brief decision ignores twenty years of contrary jurisprudence and fails to provide detailed reasons for its conclusion, resulting in uncertainty about the scope and application of the decision. In this article, the author explores the relationship between anger and intent for murder, and outlines some possible arguments the Court could have relied on that would have provided …

Introduction Welcome And Opening Remarks: Panel One: Introduction, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Gene Patenting: Do The Ends Justify The Means?, Mark A. Chavez

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

Over the course of the last decade, medical interest and research in the human genome has grown at an exponential rate. As a result, profit-seekers and scientists are turning to patent law to protect their financial and medical interests; recent recipients of patent protection include bacteria, a type of mouse, and even human genes. As these trends in medicine and intellectual property law develop, considerable debates are surging regarding the morality of awarding property rights in biological material, particularly human genes. While both sides of this debate present compelling arguments, if scientists and investors are expected to advance their innovative …

Striking A Balance Between Employer Business Interests And Employee Privacy: Using Respondeat Superior To Justify The Monitoring Of Web-Based, Personal Electronic Mail Accounts Of Employees In The Workplace, Micah Echols

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

Electronic mail ("e-mail") is a convenient and financially beneficial tool in the workplace. Although businesses that take advantage of e-mail have experienced many benefits, these same businesses also face a number of disadvantages. One such disadvantage is the legal liability that employers may face-under a vicarious liability theory-for the e-mail-related actions of their employees. Due to this exposure, nearly eighty percent of employers have turned to various methods of monitoring their employees, including direct e-mail monitoring. Traditionally, this type of monitoring has been limited to company, proprietary e-mail accounts, in which courts have routinely held that an employee has no …

Sometimes What Everybody Thinks They Know Is True, Richard D. Friedman, Roger C. Park

Articles

This essay responds to D. Davis and W. C. Follette (2002), who question the value of motive evidence in murder cases. They argue that the evidence that a husband had extramartial affairs, that he heavily insured his wife's life, or that he battered his wife is ordinarily of infinitesimal probative value. We disagree. To be sure, it would be foolish to predict solely on the basis of such evidence that a husband will murder his wife. However, when this kind of evidence is cobmined with other evidence in a realistic murder case, the evidence can be quite probative. We analyze …

What's In A Label?, James C. Hathaway

Articles

One of the most striking features of the international refugee regime as it has evolved over the last quarter century is the proliferation of labels. Rather than simply assessing the circumstances of applicants against the Convention refugee definition, the governments of most developed states have instead invented a seemingly endless list of alternative statuses - "B" status, humanitarian admission, temporary protected status, special leave to remain, Duldung, and the like. Persons assigned one of these labels have generally been protected against refoulement in line with Article 33 of the Refugee Convention. But in a variety of other ways, they have …

Insuring Against Terrorism -- And Crime, Saul Levmore, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

The attacks of September 11th produced staggering losses of life and property. They also brought forth substantial private-insurance payouts, as well as federal relief for the City of New York and for the families of individuals who perished on that day. The losses suffered during and after the attacks, and the structure of the relief effort, have raised questions about the availability of insurance against terrorism, the role of government in providing for, subsidizing, or ensuring the presence of such insurance, as well as the interaction between relief and the incentives for taking precautions against similar losses in the future. …

The Genie And The Bottle: Collateral Sources Under The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, Kenneth S. Abraham, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 (the Fund) was part of legislation enacted just eleven days after the terrorist attacks of September 11th in the wake of extraordinary national loss. It is possible, therefore, that the Fund will always be considered an urgent and unique response to the unprecedented events of September 11th. On that view, the character of the Fund will have little longterm policy significance. It is equally possible, however, that the enactment of the Fund will prove to be a seminal moment in the history of tort and compensation law. The Fund adopts a new …

Legal Transitions, Rational Expectations, And Legal Progress, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

In the literature on legal transitions, the term "transition policy" is generally understood to mean a rule or norm that influences policymakers' decisions concerning the extent to which legal change should be accompanied by transition relief, whether in the form of grandfathering or phase-ins or direct compensation. Legal change within this literature is defined broadly, and somewhat counter-intuitively, to include any resolution of the uncertainty regarding what the law will be in the future or how the law will be applied to future circumstances. Thus, a legal change would obviously include an unexpected repeal of a tax provision, such as …

Strangers And Brothers: A Homily On Transracial Adoption, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

The common law speaks to us in parables. Ours is Drummond v. Fulton County Department of Family and Children's Services. Just before Christmas 1973, a boy named Timmy was born to a white mother and a black father. A month later, his mother was declared unfit, and the Department of Family and Children Services placed Timmy with white foster parents - Robert and Mildred Drummond. The Drummonds were "excellent" and "loving" parents, and Timmy grew into "an extremely bright, highly verbal, outgoing 15-month baby boy." Then the Drummonds asked to adopt Timmy. The Department's reviews of the Drummonds' devotion …

Going To Pot, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

In several earlier columns, I suggested that judges are usually poorly placed to make good biomedical policy, not least because the law so rarely offers them direct and cogent guidance. Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit proffered a new example of this old problem. In 1996, California's voters approved Proposition 215. Its "Compassionate Use Act of 1996" provided -that a patient "who possesses or cultivates marijuana for the personal medical purposes of the patient upon the written or oral recommendation or approval of a physician" committed no crime.

Reinforcing Representation: Enforcing The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments In The Rehnquist And Waite Courts, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

A large body of academic scholarship accuses the Rehnquist Court of "undoing the Second Reconstruction," just as the Waite Court has long been blamed for facilitating the end of the First. This critique captures much of what is meant by those generally charging the Rehnquist Court with "conservative judicial activism." It posits that the present Court wants to dismantle decades' worth of federal antidiscrimination measures that are aimed at the "reconstruction" of public and private relationships at the local level. It sees the Waite Court as having similarly nullified the civil-rights initiatives enacted by Congress following the Civil War to …

Crawford V. Washington, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

On June 9, by granting certiorari in Crawford v. Washington, 02-9410, the Supreme Court signaled its intention to enter once again into the realm of the Confrontation Clause, in which it has found itself deeply perplexed. This time there was a difference, however, because the grant indicated that the Court might be willing to rethink its jurisprudence in this area. Crawford, like Lee v. Illinois, 476 U.S. 530 (1986), and Lilly v. Virginia, 527 U.S. 116 (1999), presents a classic case of what might be called station-house testimony. Michael Crawford was accused of stabbing another man. His wife, Sylvia, was …

A Taxing Settlement, Hanoch Dagan, James J. White

Articles

The following essay is based on the talk "Government, Citizens, and Injurious Industries: A Case Study of the Tobacco Litigation," delivered by Hanoch Dagan last May to the Detroit Chapter of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, and on the article "Governments, Citizens, and Injurious Industries," by Dagan and James J. White, '62, which appeared in 75.2 New York University Law Review 254-428 (May 2000). The authors hold conflicting view on the underlying issue of this topic: tobacco company product liability. Professor Dagan holds the position that tobacco companies are liable for harm done by their products; Professor …

Preparing For Climatic Change: The Water, Salmon, And Forests Of The Pacific Northwest, Philip W. Mote, Edward A. Parson, Alan F. Hamlet, William S. Keeton, Dennis Lettenmaier, Nathan Mantua, Edward L. Miles, David W. Peterson, David L. Peterson, Richard Slaughter, Amy K. Snover

Articles

The impacts of year-to-year and decade-to-decade climatic variations on some of the Pacific Northwest’s key natural resources can be quantified to estimate sensitivity to regional climatic changes expected as part of anthropogenic global climatic change. Warmer, drier years, often associated with El Niño events and/or the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, tend to be associated with below-average snowpack, streamflow, and flood risk, below-average salmon survival, below-average forest growth, and above-average risk of forest fire. During the 20th century, the region experienced a warming of 0.8 ◦C. Using output from eight climate models, we project a further warming of …

Behavioral Economics And The Sec, Stephen J. Choi, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

Not all investors are rational. Quite apart from the obvious examples of credulity in the face of the latest Ponzi scheme, there is no shortage of evidence that many investors' decisions are influenced by systematic biases that impair their abilities to maximize their investment returns. For example, investors will often hold onto poorly performing stocks longer than warranted, hoping to recoup their losses. Other investors will engage in speculative trading, dissipating their returns by paying larger commissions than more passive investors. And we are not just talking about widows and orphans here. There is evidence that supposedly sophisticated institutional investors-mutual …

Proposed Patent Local Rules For Adoption By Texas' Federal District Courts, Alfonso Garcia Chan

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

This paper proposes a set of local rules to govern patent cases litigated in Texas' U.S. District Courts. The Proposed Patent Local Rules combine the patent rules implemented by U.S. District Judge T. John Ward of the Eastern District of Texas and the most-recent version of the Patent Local Rules of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The Proposed Patent Local Rules also incorporate comments from the Litigation Committee of the State Bar of Texas Intellectual Property Law Section. The Rules build upon the successes of existing rules in these other courts and can provide trial …

Should Patent Protection Be Considered For Computer Software-Related Innovations?, Elosie Gratton

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

The twentieth century witnessed the development of more significant scientific and technological advances than any other period in history. In today's society computer-related technologies, including software, are at the forefront of change. But at the beginning of the computer age the computer industry overlooked software in favor of more-valuable computer hardware.

The question of software patentability arose during the 1960's and the early 1970's, when the prevailing view of computer suppliers was that software should not be protected by copyright or patent. The industry believed that a system allowing the free exchange and availability of computer programs might stimulate the …

Table Of Contents

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

No abstract provided.

Information Systems Security And Privacy Issues In The Armed Forces, John C. Dolak, Anna E. Dolak

Computer Law Review and Technology Journal

Members of our Armed Forces serve in foreign countries and throughout the United States. Service members and civilian employees working for the military are permitted limited personal use of military computer systems. This limited usage gives, for example, a sailor on a ship a way to communicate with his parents thousands of miles away. It also means that the military must balance the privacy expectations of users against the need to maintain secure computer systems. The military must also ensure that its systems are not used in an illegal fashion or for illegal purposes. Finally, the military must protect its …

Adr Without Borders, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

My task is to assess the ways in which alternative dispute resolution procedures may be adapted to deal with international labor disputes. ADR refers to various methods by which neutral third parties assist persons engaged in a conflict to settle their differences without involving the decision-making power of the state or other sanction-imposing body. Both mediation and arbitration are included. In mediation the neutral seeks to get the parties to agree on a mutually acceptable solution. In arbitration the neutral imposes a solution after presentations by the contending parties. A third term, conciliation, is sometimes used and generally connotes a …