Law Commons^™

Young Associates In Trouble, William D. Henderson, David Zaring

Michigan Law Review

Large law firms have reputations as being tough places to work, and the larger the firm, the tougher the firm. Yet, notwithstanding the grueling hours and the shrinking prospects of partnership, these firms perennially attract a large proportion of the nation's top law school graduates. These young lawyers could go anywhere but choose to work at large firms. Why do they do so if law firms are as inhospitable as their reputations suggest? Two recent novels about the lives of young associates in large, prestigious law firms suggest that such a rational calculation misapprehends the costs. Law professor Kermit Roosevelt's …

When Is Fiction Just Fiction? Applying Heightened Threshold Tests To Defamation In Fiction, Mark Arnot

Fordham Law Review

Whenever a work of fiction can be reasonably read as stating actual facts about a real person, courts allow juries to decide whether the work actually conveys a defamatory meaning. As a result, current defamation law essentially forces fiction authors to write about unidentifiable people or unbelievable events. This Note examines the jurisprudence surrounding defamation in fiction and, for comparison, defamation by implication. After surveying policy arguments, the Note concludes that current defamation law is inconsistent, inefficient, and burdensome as applied to fiction. Finally, the Note suggests that courts apply a heightened threshold test to defamation in fiction claims, similar …

Keeping Time Machines And Teleporters In The Public Domain: Fiction As Prior Art For Patent Examination, Daniel Harris Brean

Daniel Harris Brean