Law Commons^™

The Hydra, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Almost nobody favors long consent forms for prospective research subjects. Almost everybody thinks they interfere with informed consent's purpose-good decisions. Nevertheless, almost everybody believes consent forms have long been getting longer. Years ago, Paul Appelbaum lamented the "tendency to cram ever more information into consent forms." Weeks ago, Ilene Albala and her colleagues (one of them Appelbaum) reported in IRE: Ethics & Human Research that the length of one institutional review board's forms "increased roughly linearly by an average of 1.5 pages per decade. In the 1970s, the average consent form was less than one page long and often only …

Raising The Bar: Standards-Based Training, Supervision, And Evaluation, Adele Bernhard

Articles & Chapters

In this short Article, I sketch the methodology my colleagues and I at Pace Law School use to incorporate practice standards into our clinical teaching and reflect on how a standards-based teaching paradigm could be adapted to the training, supervision, and evaluation of public defenders. Then, I briefly consider how standards and standards-based teaching assist in the administration of assigned counsel plans and in the evaluation of the performance of public defender organizations. Although this Article does not cover any of these topics in depth, my goal is to introduce the reader to a standards-based approach to teaching and suggest …

Legal Ethics In China, Judith Mcmorrow

Judith A. McMorrow

No abstract provided.

Attorney Fees And Expenses In Class Action Settlements: 1993–2008, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

We report on a comprehensive database of 18 years of available opinions (1993–2008, inclusive) on settlements in class action and shareholder derivative cases in state and federal courts. An earlier study, covering 1993–2002, revealed a remarkable relationship between attorney fees and class recovery size: regardless of the methodology for calculating fees ostensibly employed by the courts, the class recovery size was the overwhelmingly important determinant of the fee. The present study, which nearly doubles the number of cases in the database, confirms that relationship. Fees display the same relationship to class recoveries in both data sets and neither fees nor …

The Inevitability Of Theory, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

I wrote this Article in response to an invitation to deliver the keynote address at Berkeley Law School’s Jurisprudence and Social Policy conference Building Theory Through Empirical Legal Studies. Lauren Edelman, the intellectual mother of the conference, gently brushed aside my suggestion that I present one of my own attempts to synthesize the results of empirical research to generate theory, and asked that I directly address the conference topic. I am glad that she did.

My Conference Experience: Boulder & Aall, 2010, Meg Butler

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Helpful Smartphone Applications For Legal Professionals, Emily Janoski-Haehlen

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Imputed Liability For Supervising Prosecutors: Applying The Military Doctrine Of Command Responsibility To Reduce Prosecutorial Misconduct, Geoffrey S. Corn, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Law Of Surrogacy, Alan Minuskin

Alan D. Minuskin

Professionals who work with elders, as well as elders themselves, need to know fundamentally what devices are available under local law to help protect and advance the rights of a potentially unavailable or incapacitated person. The law on these matters is clear, but the ethical implications are messy.

A Synergistic Pedagogical Approach To First-Year Teaching, Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The First “Colonial Frontier” Legal Writing Conference, held at Duquesne University School of Law, focused on Engendering Hope in the Legal Writing Classroom: Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Attitude. This conference built on the foundational work of Allison Martin and Kevin Rand in which these scholars call for educators to engender hope in law students to prepare them for practice. Martin and Rand conclude that hope is a predictor of students’ academic performance and psychological health during the first semester of law school and recommend that law professors “maintain and creat[e] hope in law students” by embracing five core principles. Martin and …

Volume 34, Issue 1 (Spring 2010)

Transcript

No abstract provided.

Spring 2010 Magazine

Ergo

No abstract provided.

The Soul Of The Profession, Mario M. Cuomo

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Not Since Thomas Jefferson Dined Alone: For Geoff Hazard At 80, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review: For The Common Good: Principles Of American Academic Freedom, By Matthew W. Finkin And Robert C. Post, Lauren M. Collins

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom (2009), law professors Matthew W. Finkin (University of Illinois) and Robert C. Post (Yale) "articulate basic principles of American academic freedom" (p.6) as a means of grounding the ongoing debate over the concept. The authors succeed in providing an account that is both comprehensive and surprisingly concise. Though slow starting, their book aptly sets the scene for all who wish to participate in a continuing conversation about the state of academic freedom.

Transnational Legal Practice 2009, Laurel S. Terry, Carole Silver, Ellyn S. Rosen

Faculty Scholarly Works

This article identifies some of the most important U.S. and international developments in transnational legal practice and provides citations for further research. The article begins by briefly reviewing the impact of the recession on legal services. The second section focuses on international developments. It identifies some of the ongoing efforts to implement the 2007 U.K. Legal Services Act, including the issuance of the influential Hunt and Smedley reports. It also provides information about law reform initiatives in France, Scotland and Korea. This section of the article also provides information about Canadian and Australian developments regarding admission of foreign applicants and …

Leaks, Lies, And The Moonlight: Fiduciary Duties Of Associates To Their Law Firms, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium article examines the fiduciary duties of law firm associates. After applying agency principles to the firm-associate relationship, the article analyzes specific duties and discusses cases involving alleged breaches of fiduciary duties by associates. It explores associate duties in the current legal, organizational, and socio-technological environment in which associates practice. The article closes with observations on the importance of firm principals considering the effect of firm culture on associate attitudes and conduct.

Misunderstanding Lawyers' Ethics, Monroe H. Freedman, Abbe Smith

Michigan Law Review

The title of Daniel Markovits's book, A Modern Legal Ethics, gives the impression that it is a comprehensive treatise on contemporary lawyers' ethics. The contents of the book, however, are both more limited and more expansive than the title suggests. Markovits's treatment of lawyers' ethics concerns itself with what he conceives to be the pervasive guilty conscience of practicing lawyers over their "professional viciousness" (p. 36), and how lawyers can achieve a guilt-free professional identity "worthy of ... commitment" (p. 2). Markovits's goal in the book is to "articulat[e] a powerful and distinctively lawyerly virtue" (p. 2), one that …

Challenges In Mediating Landlord-Tenant Disputes, Alan Minuskin

Alan D. Minuskin

Mediating landlord-tenant disputes presents many of the same mixture of interpersonal, legal, factual, strategic, and ethical dimension as other community-leve disputes, like family and employment mediation. The law is complex, the relationships between the parties are ongoing and may survive the dispute. A special skill set is needed to perform this work effectively.

The Why Of It: Langdell's Generation Speaks To Today's Law Sudents, David S. Dehorse

David S. DeHorse

I belive this portrayal of the Case System of Legal Study will be invaluable to every student entering law school, and most of those who have completed their 1L year. Frankly, most practicing lawyers would probably benefit by a reading. I've been told it's a "good read." Hope you'll agree.

The Effect Of Legal Professionalization On Moral Reasoning: A Reply To Professor Vischer And Professor Wendel, Michael Hatfield

NULR Online

I am grateful to Professor Vischer and Professor Wendel for their responses to my essay, Professionalizing Moral Deference; I learned a great deal from each piece. I also appreciate their patience in enduring my finalization of the essay and am indebted to them both for their personal indulgence and intellectual stimulation.

The aim of my earlier essay was to open a new discussion of lawyers and morality through my reflections on the so-called “Torture Memo.” Specifically, my essay focuses on the effect of legal training and practice on lawyers’ moral reasoning. It explores the ways in which we, as …

Pining For Sustainability, Timothy M. Mulvaney

University of Richmond Law Review

In the legal academic community, there are significant positive signs demonstrating attention to sustainable practices, from course offerings to many day-to-day operations. Scholarly research also reflects this positive trend. Much of this recent scholarship assesses sustainability-focused regulatory and normative efforts to address the impacts associated with a warming planet in marked detail, and there is an additional plethora of writing on the many topics beyond the changing climate that raise sustainability questions.

Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel In Plea Bargain Negotiations , Paul J. Sampson

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Fool For A Client: Competency Standards In Pro Se Cases , Reed Willis

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal Education Prepares Students To Weather Tough Times, Tara L. Casey

Law Faculty Publications

The author discusses how law students are facing a daunting problem—a competitive job market in the midst of an economic recession. But because of the training they receive both inside and outside of the classroom, law students are uniquely poised to weather this storm.

Judicial Disqualification: An Analysis Of Federal Law, Second Edition, Charles G. Geyh

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

Judicial Disqualification: An Analysis of Federal Law (second edition) outlines the statutory framework of federal judicial disqualification law under the statutes, 28 U.S.C. §§ 455, 144, 47, and 2106. The monograph substantially revises and expands on the first edition, and analyzes the case law, with a focus both on substantive disqualification standards and procedural requirements. It features a revised organizational structure and includes new material, as well as updated cases.

Crowdsourcing And Open Access: Collaborative Techniques For Disseminating Legal Materials And Scholarship, Timothy K. Armstrong

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This short essay surveys the state of open access to primary legal source materials (statutes, judicial opinions and the like) and legal scholarship. The ongoing digitization phenomenon (illustrated, although by no means typified, by massive scanning endeavors such as the Google Books project and the Library of Congress's efforts to digitize United States historical documents) has made a wealth of information, including legal information, freely available online, and a number of open-access collections of legal source materials have been created. Many of these collections, however, suffer from similar flaws: they devote too much effort to collecting case law rather than …

Lrw Program Design: A Manifesto For The Future, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

All of us have, at one time or another, had occasion to consider, or reconsider, our program model. The trigger may have been a new dean; the prospect of a sabbatical inspection; a budget crisis or financial windfall; a faculty champion or saboteur; some-thing we learned at a Legal Writing Institute (LWI) or Association of Legal Writing Directors conference; or merely the cycle of bureaucratic reorganization. Those reconsiderations have led to a great diversity of Legal Research and Writing (LRW) program models: two-, three-, four-, and all-semester programs; adjunct-, contract-, and tenure-track staffing; and directors, co-directors, and no directors. Reconsiderations …

Cost And Fee Allocation In Civil Procedure, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

Court costs in American civil procedure are allocated to the loser ("loser pays") as elsewhere in the civilized world. As Theodor Sedgwick, America's first expert on damages opined, it is matter of inherent justice that the party found in the wrong should indemnify the party in the right for the expenses of litigation. Yet attorneys' fees are not allocated this way in the United States: they are allowed to fall on the party that incurs them (the ''American rule," better, the American practice). According to Albert Ehrenzweig, Austrian judge, emigre and then prominent American law professor, the American practice is …

The Pedagogy Of "Yes We Can": Teaching Reformative Legal Justice In The Age Of Obama, Leroy Pernell

Journal Publications

These brief comments, delivered as part of the 5th Annual Fred Gray Sr. Civil Rights Symposium, Faulkner University, Thomas Goode Jones School of Law October 21, 2009, do not challenge whether law schools and the profession sufficiently make the case for public service and commitment to societal good; admittedly most existing standards and curricula do. Rather, these comments address the opportunity for legal education to tap, and expand on, a heightened psychological and emotional commitment that might be engendered in law students following the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.