Law Commons^™

Bourdieu And American Legal Education: How Law Schools Reproduce Social Stratification And Class Hierarchy, Lucille Jewel

Scholarly Works

The American legal profession has long been organized along hierarchical lines, and in many instances, status inequalities between attorneys are based on perceived differences in attorneys' educational credentials. Relying upon the theories of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this essay will discuss how American legal educational institutions operate to reproduce the stratification within the legal profession and within society as a whole.

American law schools are not equalizing institutions that erase all class differences among students to create a profession that awards all of its members a monolithic class status. By allocating professional status based on a system of educational tiers, …

Queer Teens And Legislative Bullies: The Cruel And Invidious Discrimination Behind Heterosexist Statutory Rape Laws, Michael J. Higdon

Scholarly Works

Most states make an exception to their statutory rape laws for sexual acts involving an adolescent victim, who is below the age of consent, when the defendant is close in age to the victim (i.e., generally no older than three or four years). However, a few states explicitly limit such exceptions (commonly referred to as Romeo and Juliet exceptions) to only those situations involving teens who are of the opposite gender. Thus, adolescents in these states who have sex with someone below the age of consent, and who are also the same gender as the defendant, cannot avail themselves to …

Sense And Sensibility In Securitization: A Prudent Legal Structure And A Fanciful Critique, Thomas E. Plank

Scholarly Works

This article responds to a recent critique that the securitization of receivables is a legally shaky financial product that survives only because it is too big to fail. This critique argues that securitization's success in avoiding the costs that the Bankruptcy Code imposes on secured credit, including a bankruptcy trustee's ability to use the cash collateral from the receivables, is a type of fraud that hinders or delays the creditors of the originators of receivables. The critique, however, fails. The cases cited for the author's fraud analysis do not support its thesis. Further, the critique fails to demonstrate that securitization's …

Negotiating The Mega-Rebuilding Deal At The World Trade Center: An Introduction, Gregory M. Stein

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Return Of Reasonableness: Saving The Fourth Amendment From The Supreme Court, Melanie Wilson

Scholarly Works

The Supreme Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has been oft criticized. The criticism is not surprising or undeserved. After all, the express language of the Fourth Amendment requires that the government act reasonably whenever it intrudes on a person's privacy, liberty or dignity by conducting a search or seizure. But the Court's Fourth Amendment opinions have authorized conduct that looks anything but reasonable.

This Article contends that the unreasonableness of the Court's Fourth Amendment decisions is advanced by the Court's poor allocation of mixed issues - those asking someone to determine whether the historical facts in the case satisfy the constitutional …

Congressional Roundtable On College Endowments - Restricted Gifts Testimony, Iris Goodwin

Scholarly Works

Restricted purpose gifts potentially bear upon that portion of the university's endowment that can be used toward undergraduate financial aid and other tuition relief. In these remarks, I describe what a restricted gift is, the requirement under state common law that such restrictions obtain in perpetuity, the grounds for relief under the common law, and the grounds for relief and other relevant provisions of UPMIFA. The provisions of UPMIFA that are applicable to restricted gifts were drafted against the background of the common law doctrine and under UPMIFA common law relief is still available.

Is There A Correlation Between Law Professor Publication Counts, Law Review Citation Counts, And Teaching Evaluations? An Empirical Study, Benjamin H. Barton

Scholarly Works

This empirical study attempts to answer an age-old debate in legal academia: whether scholarly productivity helps or hurts teaching. The study is of an unprecedented size and scope. It covers every tenured or tenure-track faculty member at 19 American law schools, a total of 623 professors. The study gathers four years of teaching evaluation data (calendar years 2000-03) and correlates these data against five different measures of research productivity/scholarly influence.

The results are counter-intuitive: there is either no correlation or a slight positive correlation between teaching effectiveness and any of the five measures of research productivity. Given the breadth of …

Better Competition Advocacy, Maurice Stucke

Scholarly Works

Today's competition advocacy censures governmental restraints that diminish competition. But such advocacy glosses over four fundamental questions: First, what is competition? Second, what are the goals of a competition policy? Third, how does one achieve, if one can, the objectives of such desired competition? Fourth, how does one know if the economy is progressing toward these goals? This Article outlines the conventional wisdom underlying today's competition advocacy. It examines what is meant by competition, and what is being valued. It examines the goals of competition, as expressed by various governmental agencies, and the structural mechanisms that the government can provide …

Second Panel: Labor Markets, Income Inequality And Globalization, Fran Ansley

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Judges, Lawyers, And A Predictive Theory Of Legal Complexity, Benjamin H. Barton

Scholarly Works

This Article uses public choice theory and the new institutionalism to discuss the incentives, proclivities, and shared backgrounds of lawyers and judges. In America every law-making judge has a single unifying characteristic, each is a former lawyer. This shared background has powerful and unexplored effects on the shape and structure of American law. This Article argues that the shared characteristics, thought-processes, training, and incentives of Judges and lawyers lead inexorably to greater complexity in judge-made law. These same factors lead to the following prediction: judge-created law will be most complex in areas where a) elite lawyers regularly practice; b) judges …

Judicial Campaign Oversight Committees' Complaint Handling In The 2006 Elections: Survey And Recommendations, Penny White

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

What Your Lender And Mortgage Broker Didn't Tell You: A Call For Disclosure Of Loss Of The Section 580b Anti-Deficiency Protection Upon Refinancing, George Kuney

Scholarly Works

California Code of Civil Procedure § 580b protects a California homeowner from a deficiency judgment when the homeowner’s purchase-money lender forecloses upon the home after default. In other words, if the price the lender realized at the foreclosure sale is less than the outstanding amount of the debt, the homeowner will not be liable for the deficiency. Section 580b was enacted to discourage the purchase money lenders from over-valuing real property by requiring a lender to look solely to the collateral’s value for recovery in the event of foreclosure, and to prevent the aggravation of an economic downturn caused by …

Bills Of Sale In Tennessee: An Annotated Model Tennessee Bill Of Sale, Joan Macleod Heminway

Scholarly Works

The coauthors have constructed a model bill of sale for use in connection with acquisitions, annotated with footnotes on substantive law and legal drafting issues. This model is intended to serve as a research piece, teaching tool, and practitioner resource. This instrument is part of a series of acquisition agreements and related ancillary contracts and instruments published by Transactions: Tennessee Journal of Business Law beginning in 2003.

Girls In The Juvenile Justice System, Paula Schaefer

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of The Republic Of Tajikistan's Draft Law 'About Freedom Of Conscience And Religious Unions', Robert C. Blitt

Scholarly Works

This article, prepared at the request of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), provides an article-by-article detailed legal analysis of key shortcomings in Tajikistan's draft law About Freedom of Conscience and Religious Unions.

Based on their analysis, the authors provide recommendations for amendments directed at ensuring that the final draft law complies with Tajikistan's international and domestic human rights obligations.

Successor Liability In Illinois, George Kuney

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Successor Liability In Michigan, George Kuney

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Gimme Fiction: Rev. Rul. 99-6, Don Leatherman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Successor Liability In Michigan, George Kuney

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Successor Liability In Illinois, George Kuney

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Gimme Fiction: Rev. Rul. 99-6, Don Leatherman

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Orphans Adopted Eighty-Nine Years After Conception, Or, Cataloging Updating Loose-Leaf Publications, Carol Collins

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

Until the 2002 revision to AACR2 was adopted, cataloging rules for updating loose-leaf publications were orphans—they were excluded from previous Anglo–American rule compilations. To offer guidance to catalogers, over the years the Library of Congress issued a series of rule interpretations and supplemental resources outlining best practices and rules for cataloging loose-leafs. This article chronicles the publication, or lack of practical publication, of cataloging rules for updating loose-leafs and the impact on libraries. Also included is a review of the various organizations instrumental in garnering support for the creation and acceptance of a new paradigm and standards and concepts that …

The Year Of The Gun: Second Amendment Rights And The Supreme Court, Glenn Reynolds, Brannon Denning

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

This Essay looks at issues that the Supreme Court can duck - and those that it can't - in deciding the District of Columbia Second Amendment case, D.C. v. Heller. It also looks at political and institutional pressures placed on the Supreme Court by the Heller case.

Oral Argument And Impression Management: Harnessing The Power Of Nonverbal Persuasion For A Judicial Audience, Michael Higdon

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

In essence, my article utilizes social science research on the topic of nonverbal communication in order to advance our understanding of what makes for effective oral advocacy. Currently, there are no articles that 1) give a comprehensive summary of the relevant social science research within the area of nonverbal persuasion and 2) apply that research specifically to the area of oral argument. My article attempts to fill both of these needs.As you will see in the article, nonverbal communication goes well beyond simple hand gestures, but also encompasses how a person speaks, how a person dresses, a person's facial expressivity, …

A Lexical Examination And (Unscientific) Survey Of Expanded Clinical Experiences In The U.S. Law Schools, Becky Jacobs

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

Definitional challenges pertaining to law school clinical programs arise in several contexts. This Essay focuses on three particular lexical obstacles: How does one (and who should) define a clinical experience, how does one (and who should) organize and label clinical offerings, and how does one (and who should) define clinician?

A Tale Of Two Case Methods, Benjamin H. Barton

Scholarly Works

This essay argues that law schools should adopt the business school case method. Business school cases are generally real life problems. They ask the students to read the files and then perform actual management tasks. The students also generally work in teams and are graded on their actual work throughout the semester. The students thus spend their time learning how to actually manage, instead of only learning dry management theory.

There are several advantages to the business school case method. The business school case method is much more focused on the actual process of being a business manager. By comparison, …

Retaliatory Discharge And The Ethical Rules Governing Attorneys, Alex B. Long

Scholarly Works

In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court held that a deputy district attorney who, as part of his job duties, raised concerns with his superiors about possibly unlawful activity and was allegedly fired in response had no First Amendment retaliation claim. In support of its conclusion, the Court suggested that adequate checks already existed at the state and federal level to curb the behavior of employers who engage in unlawful activity and to protect the employees who seek to prevent or expose such activity. In addition to state and federal whistleblower statutes, the Court singled out the rules of professional …

Legal Advocacy And Education Reform: Litigating School Exclusion, Dean Rivkin

Scholarly Works

School exclusion has existed as a dark side of public education since the creation of America's public schools. Several cases in the United States Supreme Court memorably invalidated State and school system efforts to deny equal educational opportunities to marginalized school children and youth. In these cases, the over-riding multiple values of education were poignantly articulated in the majority decisions.

School exclusion has stubbornly persisted. It takes many forms. This article surveys the most prominent pathways to school exclusion, highlighting what has been called the "School-To-Prison-Pipeline." Various legal challenges are also evaluated. The pros and cons of litigating school exclusion …

Teaching And Learning Negotiation In A Simulated Environment, Becky Jacobs

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

The essay, written by a raving ADR fanatic, discusses several points pertaining to participatory learning in law school negotiation courses.

A Lexical Examination And (Unscientific) Survey Of Expanded Clinical Experiences In U.S. Law Schools, Becky Jacobs

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

Definitional challenges pertaining to law school clinical programs arise in several contexts. This Essay focuses on three particular lexical obstacles: How does one (and who should) define a clinical experience, how does one (and who should) organize and label clinical offerings, and how does one (and who should) define clinician?