Law Commons^™

Construction Law, Frank O. Brown Jr.

Mercer Law Review

This Article focuses on noteworthy decisions by Georgia appellate courts and Georgia federal district courts between June 1, 2018 and May 31, 2019, that are relevant to the practice of construction law.

• Arbitration
• Contract Disclaimers
• Indemnification Provisions
• Witness Value Testimony
• Acceptance Doctrine
• Apportionment of Damages
• Liquidated Damages
• Statute of Repose

Labor & Employment Law, W. Melvin Haas Iii, W. Jonathan Martin Ii, Alyssa K. Peters, Patricia-Anne Brownback

Mercer Law Review

This Article surveys revisions to the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (O.C.G.A.)1 and decisions interpreting Georgia law from June 1, 2018 to May 31, 2019,2 that affect labor and employment relations for Georgia employers.

1. Recent Legislation
2. Wrongful Termination
3. Respondeat Superior
4. Business Torts

Legal Ethics, Patrick Emery Longan

Mercer Law Review

This Survey covers the period from June 1, 2018–May 31, 2019.1 The Article discusses attorney discipline, ineffective assistance of counsel, bar admission, judicial ethics, malpractice, several miscellaneous cases involving legal ethics, and actions of the Formal Advisory Opinion Board.

• Lawyer Discipline
• Ineffective Assistance of Counsel
• Bar Admission
• Judicial Conduct
• Malpractice
• Miscellaneous Cases
• Formal Advisory Opinions

Product Liability, Franklin P. Brannen Jr., Marcus Strong, Sean P. Robinson

Mercer Law Review

This Article surveys developments in Georgia product liability law between June 1, 2017 and May 31, 2019.1 It covers noteworthy cases decided during this period by the Georgia Supreme Court, Georgia Court of Appeals, and the United States district courts located in Georgia.

• Product Liability Claims
• Elements
• Defenses
• Spoilation
• Expert Testimony—The Daubert Standard

State And Local Taxation, Brian Sengson, Diandria Green, David Greenberg

Mercer Law Review

This Article surveys the most critical and comprehensive changes in Georgia law occurring between June 1, 2017, and May 31, 2019.1 In addition to noteworthy cases decided in state and federal courts, this Article details legislation enacted during the survey period that affects Georgia tax law.

• State Constitutional Changes
• Georgia Sales and Use Taxation
• Georgia Income Taxation
• State Tax Credits
• State Tax Controversy

Torts, Jarome E. Gautreaux

Mercer Law Review

This Article addresses recent cases decided during the two-year survey period in the area of torts. It includes cases in most of the areas of tort law, including medical malpractice, and addresses defenses such as immunity.

• Immunity
• Ante Litem Notices
• Food Poisoning
• Premises Liability
• Medical Negligence
• Wrongful Death

Zoning And Land Use Law, Newton M. Galloway, Steven L. Jones

Mercer Law Review

With the close of the survey period for the seventy-first (71st) volume of the Mercer Law Review, development throughout the State of Georgia continued to thrive. While traditional brick-and-mortar commercial development is evolving, residential and industrial development remains steady. As a result, zoning challenges continued to present issues for resolution by Georgia’s appellate courts. This Article identifies important zoning and land use decisions of the Georgia Supreme Court (supreme court) and Georgia Court of Appeals (court of appeals) issued between June 1, 2018 and May 31, 2019.

Generally, the decisions by Georgia’s appellate courts in zoning related cases continued the …

Under Kemp’S Eye: Analyzing The Constitutionality Of The Heartbeat Restriction In Georgia’S Life Act And Its Potential Impact On Abortion Law, Brittney A. Sizemore

Mercer Law Review

The current state of women’s right to bodily autonomy in the United States has eerily begun to resemble that of the dystopian society depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale. While abortion rates have steadily declined over the last decade, the attempts by state legislatures to restrict or completely take away women’s right to abortion have exponentially increased. In the first six months of 2019 alone, five states passed laws placing restrictions on abortion. These restrictions range from limiting the time frame in which a woman may obtain an abortion to when a fetal heartbeat has been detected—normally around six weeks—to a …

The Lgbtq Equality Gap And Federalism, Nancy J. Knauer

American University Law Review

LGBTQ people in the United States live with an Equality Gap that seems to grow wider with each legislative session. The majority of states do not have nondiscrimination protections in place for LGBTQ people. In the absence of blanket federal non-discrimination protections, a same-sex couple can be denied service by bakers, catering halls, and photographers while trying to exercise their constitutionally protected right to marry. A transgender person can be denied access to a public bathroom that matches their gender identity. A federally funded adoption agency can refuse to work with LGBTQ persons who wish to adopt. In addition, many …

Development Disasters: Accountability And Remedy In International Development Projects, Kate E. Morrow

American University Law Review

International development projects have a history of creating problems on the ground. Debates about the benefits of top-down development, the need for community buy-in, and the importance of community participation in development have been ongoing and have focused on how to prevent environmental and social harms to local communities. More recently, the conversation has shifted to focus more on the importance of providing remedy for harms, with a focus on development finance institutions (DFIs). DFIs have embraced internal, independent mechanisms to provide a process for accountability when a community suffers harms, but those mechanisms are not externally enforceable. They rely …

Transformation As Desistance Inside: Temporality And Identity Reconstruction Among Men With Life Sentences, Richard Stover

Honors Theses

This thesis is an investigation of destistance strategies among men sentenced to life in prison in a medium security prison in Pennsylvania. Desistance here is defined as the process leading to the cessation of formally deviant behavior. Drawing from life narrative interviews conducted among 22 men, I argue that desistance is intrinsically tied to how inmates conceptualize themselves within the institutional context of the prison and can be expanded to include people who are still incarcerated. I build off of Peggy Giordano and colleagues symbolic interactionist perspective on desistance and expand it to chart how men with life sentences order …

From Corporate Responsibility To Corporate Accountability, Min Yan, Daoning Zhang

UC Law Business Journal

Corporate responsibility, or CSR, which has become a heated topic over recent decades, concerns a broader range of interests than shareholders by focusing on companies’ voluntary approaches to engage with social/environmental issues. In contrast, corporate accountability is more about a confrontational or enforceable framework of influencing corporate behavior through clear means for sanctioning failure. On the ground that voluntary CSR is inadequate to deliver the necessary change and to secure more socially responsible activities, this Article proffers a framework for corporate accountability based on existing institutional systems. Different from the neoclassical version of corporate accountability, this Article argues stakeholders, other …

The Life And Legal Legacy Of Justice Steven L. Zinter, Neil Fulton

Faculty Publications

Justice Steven L. Zinter was a vital part of South Dakota's legal landscape for decades. As a private practitioner, circuit court judge, supreme court justice, and in other official capacities, he forged a powerful legacy in South Dakota. Over the course of his time he worked on cases large and small in many areas of law. He was recognized as a brilliant legal mind, precise writer, and careful thinker. It is a challenge to capture the breadth and depth of such a career. This article takes a look at his personal formation, his legal work in several settings, and how …

The Homesteading Rights Of Deserted Wives: A History, Hannah Haksgaard

Faculty Publications

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the federal government of the United States distributed 270 million acres of land to homesteaders. The federal land-grant legislation allowed single women, but not married women, to partake in homesteading. Existing in a “legal netherworld” between single and married, deserted wives did not have clear rights under the federal legislation, much like deserted wives did not have clear rights in American marital law. During the homesteading period, many deserted wives litigated claims in front of the Department of the Interior, arguing they had the right to homestead. This is the first article …

Mass Seizure And Mass Search, Gregory Brazeal

Faculty Publications

As courts attempt to develop Fourth Amendment doctrine to address the threats to privacy created by digital surveillance technologies, a valuable doctrinal resource has been largely neglected: the law governing the seizure of persons. Just as courts today struggle with the specter of mass search using digital technologies, courts in the 1960s were confronted with the problem of mass seizure through the growing use of stop-and-frisk by police departments. The responses to mass seizure developed by the Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio, 592 U.S. 1 (1968), and its progeny provide lessons for courts today considering how to respond to …

Christian Purpose Trusts, Thomas Simmons

Faculty Publications

Noncharitable purpose trusts are recognized under the Uniform Trust Code and the non-uniform laws of many jurisdictions. In 2019, Oregon enacted a stewardship trust statutory scheme. A stewardship trust is a purpose trust which is designed to hold and preserve corporate stock. Properly drafted, a stewardship trust can soften the indefatigable pursuit of profits that drive corporate entities. A stewardship trust can substitute ethical ideals - at least in part - for shareholder return. The purpose trust statutes of other jurisdictionscould also partially permit ambitions similar to those which motivated the Oregon legislation to be realized. The concept of a …

Saint Paul’S Trial Narrative In Acts: Imperium Rōmānum Vs. Vasileía Tou Theoú, Thomas Simmons

Faculty Publications

Saul of Tarsus (alias Paul) encountered the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus. Thereupon, Paul not only became a follower of "the Way," he went from an aggressive persecutor of early Christians to one of its most intellectual and influential apostles. Towards the end of his life, he went on trial. Saint Paul's trial in first century Judea before Felix and Festus receive a detailed fleshing-out in the Acts of the Apostles. A quasi-prosecutor even briefly appears. But Paul's subsequent legal proceedings in Rome and his execution there are excluded from the narrative. Meanwhile, Acts portrays Christianity as a …

Departing From The Original Goals Of The U.S. Sentencing Guidelines: Drug Sentencing Disparities In The U.S. District Of Maryland, Jeremy Ritter-Wiseman

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

The Trial Of Breaker Morant, Jonathan Van Patten

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Trial Of Jesus, Jonathan Van Patten

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Twenty-Five Propositions For The Practice Of Law, Jonathan Van Patten

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Competency To Decide For Another, Elyn R. Saks

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

Our topic is competency of a Substitute Decisionmaker (SubDM) to make a decision about medical treatment for another who is incompetent himself (the “ward”). While there is Competency to Decide for Another considerable literature on competency to decide for oneself, there is very little on competency to decide for another. Some studies look at a range of things that a SubDM needs to do —for example, seek information on what the ward has said—but there is none on how well a person must understand the relevant issues to be a competent SubDM.

The Paradoxes Of Defensive Medicine, Michael J. Saks, Stephan Landsman

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

For decades, “defensive medicine” has been the leading argument driving reforms of medical malpractice laws throughout the United States. Defensive medicine is the presumed practice of administering excessive tests and treatments as a stratagem for reducing healthcare providers’ risk of malpractice liability, despite the absence of any expected benefit for the patient. The practice is widely believed to exist throughout American healthcare as a response to fears of malpractice litigation, and thought to be enormously wasteful of healthcare dollars. In consequence, it has become a justification for law reforms insulating the healthcare industry from tort liability. These claims are promoted …

The Promise And Failures Of Children's Medicaid And The Role Of Medical-Legal Partnerships As Monitors And Advocates, L. Kate Mitchell

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

For decades we have known that access to early and preventive diagnosis and treatment can dramatically alter the course of a child’s life. Because of this knowledge, immediately after Congress enacted Medicaid, it created the Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment, or EPSDT, program. EPSDT requires broad, holistic, and preventive care to correct or ameliorate health defects identified in Medicaid-eligible children. This coverage currently extends to 2 out of 5 children in the United States, and 47 percent of children with special health care needs. Because of the broad parameters of coverage mandated by EPSDT, Medicaid-eligible children should receive …

The Off-Label Loophole In The Psychopharmacologic Setting: Prescription Of Antipsychotic Drugs In The Nonpsychotic Patient Population, Lisa E. Smilan

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

U.S. physicians have wide discretion in treating patients with off-label medications. Many consider off-label prescription essential in our country’s health care system, and it is wholly supported by FDA and federal courts. Assumptions about physicians’ expertise, judgments, and commitments to beneficence and nonmaleficence undergird laissez-faire policies that allow and support physicians’ novel and innovate uses of FDA-approved drugs for purposes and populations not studied in original, strictly regulated clinical trials. Though sometimes beneficial, off-label prescribing, which flourishes in privatepractice psychiatry, often harms scores of psychiatric patients. Frequently, potential harms are insufficiently disclosed to patients. In the public health sector, officials …

Why The United States Is Failing New Mothers And How It Can Counteract Its Rapidly Climbing Maternal Mortality Rate, Khouloude Abboud

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

No abstract provided.

The Ripple Effects Of Gideon: Recognizing The Human Right To Counsel In Civil Adversarial Proceedings, Jonathan K. Stubbs

Law Faculty Publications

Procedural fairness and equal protection were the core of Gideon’s reasoning for a right to counsel for indigent criminal defendants. Under the same constitutional values, there should be a right to legal assistance of counsel for indigent civil litigants, especially in adversarial proceedings. This Article outlines the constitutional basis for a civil right to counsel. Further, it stresses the need for legislation to address the massive shortfall in legal representation available to indigent persons in the United States. Recognition of civil Gideon as part of the Constitution’s promise of justice accommodates a moral revolution. It exemplifies a shift in …

How Interdisciplinary? Taking Stock Of Decision-Making Research At The Intersection Of Psychology And Law, Lauren E. Clatch

Law Faculty Publications

Contemporary inquiries in psychology and law increasingly cross disciplinary boundaries for inspiration. Our focus is on whether such research is substantive in both directions and whether interdisciplinary psychology-and-law author teams produce more meaningful interdisciplinary work, specifically in decision-making research conducted between 2004 and 2017. We found that interdisciplinary psychology-and-law author teams (a) produce publications that show more cross-disciplinary integration in methods than single-discipline teams,(b) produce publications with more conceptual integration in the introduction and discussion than only law author teams, and (c) elicit more citations than only law or only psychology author teams. When considering a collaborative team approach, we …

Bending (And Breaking) The Cost Curve Of Legal Education, Peter B. Rutledge

Popular Media

Law school graduates will accumulate an average of over $140,000 in debt for their undergraduate and law school studies, and some law schools have reported costs exceeding $100,000 annually. Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge, dean of the University of Georgia School of Law, examines the ever-escalating costs and explains his school’s three-part strategy for dealing with it.

Human Rights And The Impact Assessment Act: Proponents And Consultants As Duty Bearers, Adebayo Majekolagbe, Sara L. Seck, Penelope Simons

Responsible Business Conduct and Impact Assessment Law

This chapter is the pre-publication version of a contribution to a book on the new federal Impact Assessment Act (IAA), and builds upon the research conducted for the SSHRC KSG on responsible business conduct and the IAA. We highlight the role of proponents and their consultants as human rights duty bearers and recommend the integration of human rights approaches into impact assessment processes under the IAA.