Law Commons^™

Injunctive Relief: A Charming Betsy Boomerang, Harold C. Wegner

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Electronically Stored Information: The December 2006 Amendments To The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Kenneth J. Withers

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Rule 37(F) Meets Its Critics: The Justification For A Limited Preservation Safe Harbor For Esi, Thomas Y. Allman

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

No abstract provided.

Coercion And Choice Under The Establishment Clause, Cynthia V. Ward

Faculty Publications

In recent Establishment Clause cases the Supreme Court has found nondenominational, state-sponsored prayers unconstitutionally "coercive" -although attendance at the events featuring the prayer was not required by the state; religious dissenters were free to choose not to say the challenged prayers; and dissenters who so chose, or who chose not to attend the events, suffered no state-enforced sanction. Part I of this Article lays out the historical background that gave rise to the coercion test, traces the development of that test in the Court's case law, and isolates the core elements in the vision of coercion that animates the test. …

Expecting Too Much And Too Little Of Lawyers, Eugene R. Gaetke

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The regulation of lawyers' behavior remains a controversial topic. Over the past hundred years, the organized bar has engaged in a number of efforts to generate rules governing lawyers' conduct. Still, prominent lawyers and jurists, the public media, and legal scholars perceive an ongoing decline in the profession's ethics.

Bar leaders tend to respond to the problem by calling for greater "professionalism" among practicing lawyers. Drawing on professional images from earlier times, they urge lawyers to look beyond the rules and to be more virtuous, selfless, independent of clients, and dedicated to justice.

A number of commentators go further. These …

Cognitive Dissonance In The Classroom: Rationale And Rationalization In The Law Of Evidence, Julie A. Seaman

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Taxation Of Aquaculture In Canada: A Comparison With The Taxation Of Agriculture And Its Policy Implications, Faye Woodman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In Canada, at both the federal and the provincial government levels, the tax rules applicable to agricultural producers under the Income Tax Act and other taxing statutes often apply with relatively few modifications to the aquaculture sector. The agriculture rules differ in significant aspects from those applied to other taxpayers. They also tend to be more generous. Thus, the aquaculture sector operates under regimes of taxation in Canada that may be characterized as preferential, but may also have been developed with the needs and circumstances of agriculture, not aquaculture, in mind. This chapter will examine the rationales underlying the various …

Applying The Laws Of Logic To The Logic Of Laws, Hillel Bavli

Fordham Urban Law Journal

The article begins by discussing the difficulties of proving consistency within a formal legal system generally. After establishing the importance of a formalized legal model as a prerequisite of rigorous examination of consistency, it proceeds to investigate issues intrinsic to the current system of law that may prevent formalization of a just legal system as currently conceived. The article argues that flexibility inherent in a just legal system may foreclose the possibility of legal formalization or any comprehensive model thereof. The article concludes, however, that a model whose purpose is the examination of consistency within a system need not necessarily …

The Past, Present, And Future Of Violent Crime Federalism, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

The history of the federal involvement in violent crime frequently is told as one of entrepreneurial or opportunistic action by presidential administrations and Congress. The problem with this story, however, is that it treats state and local governments as objects of federal initiatives, not as independent agents. Appreciating that state and local governments courted and benefited from the federal interest is important for understanding the past two decades, but also for understanding the institutional strains created by the absolute priority the feds have given to counterterrorism since September 11, 2001. Intergovernmental relations are at a crossroads. For two decades, the …

Legal Pluralism And Human Agency, Jeremy Webber

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Much legal-pluralist scholarship tends to naturalize "the law of the context," treating that law as though it were inherent in social interaction, emerging spontaneously, without conscious human decision. This view overstates the role of agreement in human societies and mischaracterizes the nature of law, including non-state law. All law is concerned with establishing a collective set of norms against a backdrop of normative disagreement, not agreement. It necessarily contains mechanisms for bringing contention to a provisional close, imposing a collective solution. This article presents a theory of legal pluralism that takes human disagreement seriously. The theory retains four themes crucial …

Trade, Law And Product Complexity, Katharina Pistor, Daniel Berkowitz, Johannes Moenius

Faculty Scholarship

How does the quality of national institutions that enforce the rule of law influence international trade? Anderson and Marcouiller argue that bad institutions located in the importer’s country deter international trade because they enable economic predators to steal and extort rents at the importer’s border. We complement this research and show how good institutions located in the exporter’s country enhance international trade, in particular, trade in complex products whose characteristics are difficult to fully specify in a contract. We argue that both exporter and importer institutions affect international as well as domestic transaction costs in complex and simple product markets. …

Learning While They Work: The Use Of Student Assistants In Two Academic Law Libraries, Ronald E. Wheeler, Stephanie Davidson

Faculty Scholarship

At the University of New Mexico School of Law Library (UNM), we are effectively using student assistants to help with the completion of faculty research projects. We find that the volume of faculty research that our library is able to complete is far greater due to the effective use of student assistants. During the calendar year 2005, our library completed over 500 research requests for the law school faculty. With only seven professional librarians, without student help, that volume of faculty research would probably not have been feasible.

Commodification And Contract Formation: Placing The Consideration Doctrine On Stronger Foundations, David Gamage, Allon Kedem

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Under the traditional consideration doctrine, a promise is only legally enforceable if it is made in exchange for something of value. This doctrine lies at the heart of contract law, yet it lacks a sound theoretical justification a fact that has confounded generations of scholars and created a mess of case law.

This article argues that the failure of traditional justifications for the doctrine comes from two mistaken assumptions. First, previous scholars have assumed that anyone can back a promise with nominal consideration if they wish to do so. We show how social norms against commodification limit the availability of …

Trafficking In Persons: The 21st Century Version Of Human Slavery, James Nicholson

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Remarks by R. James "Jim" Nicholson, United States Secretary of Veteran Affairs and Ambassador to the Holy See, entitled "Trafficking in Persons: The 21st Century Version of Human Slavery".

Putting Lives Back Together: Women Helping Women The Italian Experience Of Women Religious, Eugenia Bonetti

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Remarks by Sister Eugenia Bonetti, Consolata Missionary Sister and Coordinator of the Counter-Trafficking Sector, USMI National (Unione Superiori Maggiori d'Italia), entitled by "Putting Lives Back Together: Women Helping Women the Italian Experience of Women Religious".

U.S. Immigration And Customs Enforcement: At The Forefront Of The Fight Against Human Trafficking, John P. Woods

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Remarks by John P. Woods, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Office of Investigations, entitled "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: At the Forefront of the Fight against Human Trafficking".

Addressing The Scourge Of Human Trafficking: The Challenge Ahead, Pati A. Roza

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Remarks by Roza Pati, Executive Director of the Graduate Program in Intercultural Human Rights, at St. Thomas University College of Law.

Strategies For Combating Human Trafficking Within The United States, Canada And Mexico, Dorchen A. Leidholdt

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Remarks by Dorchen A. Leidholdt, Director of the Center for Battered Women's Legal Services at Sanctuary for Families, entitled "Strategies for Combating Human Trafficking within the United States, Canada and Mexico".

Human Security Or State Security - The Overriding Threat In Trafficking In Persons, Mohamed Y. Mattar

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Trafficking in persons is a violation of human rights that mainly affects women and children. For this reason, it should be recognized not only as a crime against the state but as a crime against the individual that poses a threat to human security. This paper will inquire into how national legal systems take into consideration the concept of human security in designing the appropriate legal response to trafficking in persons. This paper will focus on the following issues: personal security and safety versus human security; the methods that can be employed by legislation to protect the rights of a …

Culture In Our Midst, Elaine M. Chiu

Faculty Publications

Culture, like race, class, gender, sexual orientation and wealth is one of many ways in which the law is not neutral. Indeed, culture is a source of law. Yet, as traditional legal positivists have taught us, the law or legal doctrine can prove to be more powerful than culture, often outlasting it. The “mirror image” theory states that the laws of a particular locale reflect the culture of that locale. The law merely serves as enforcement of the common decency, propriety and morality of that culture. Not only is this understanding appealingly simple, it is often invoked by judges and …

Recoiling From Religion, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

This is an essay reviewing Professor Marci A. Hamilton's book, GOD VS. THE GAVEL: RELIGION AND THE RULE OF LAW (Cambridge Univ. Press 2005).

Professor Marci Hamilton has written a forceful and obviously heartfelt book that should give pause to committed champions of religious free exercise. She argues convincingly that religious freedom is too often invoked to shield opprobrious and socially harmful activity, and she describes numerous examples of such abuses that make any civilized person's blood run cold. Her avowed aims are to debunk the “hazardous myth” that religion is “inherently and always good for society” and to increase …

Culture As Justification, Not Excuse, Elaine M. Chiu

Faculty Publications

The wide discussion of cultural defenses over the last twenty years has produced very little actual change in the criminal law. This Article urges a reorientation of our approach thus far to cultural defenses and aspires to move the languishing discussion to a more productive place. The new perspective it proposes is justification. The Article asks the criminal law to make doctrinal room for defendants to argue that their allegedly criminal acts are justified acts, and not excused acts, based on the values and norms of their minority cultures. Currently, the criminal law deals with such acts of minority defendants …

Formalism In American Contract Law: Classical And Contemporary, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

It is a universally acknowledged truth that we live in a formalist era—at least when it comes to American contract law. Much more than the jurisprudence of a generation ago, today's cutting-edge work in American contract scholarship values the formalist virtues of bright-line rules, objective interpretation, and party autonomy. Policing bargains for substantive fairness seems more and more an outdated notion. Courts, it is thought, should refrain from interfering with market exchanges. Private arbitration has displaced courts in the context of many traditional contract disputes. Even adhesion contracts find their defenders, much to the chagrin of communitarian scholars.

This is …

Triptych: Sectarian Disputes, International Law, And Transnational Tribunals In Drinan's "Can God And Caesar Coexist?", Christopher J. Borgen

Faculty Publications

Can international law be used to address conflicts that arise out of questions of the freedom of religion? Modern international law was born of conflicts of politics and religion. The Treaty of Westphalia, the seed from which grew today's systems of international law and international relations, attempted to set out rules to end decades of religious strife and war across the European continent. The treaty replaced empires and feudal holdings with a system of sovereign states. But this was within a relatively narrow and historically interconnected community: Protestants and Catholics, yes, but Christians all. Europe was Christendom.

To what extent …

Law, Ideology, And Strategy In Judicial Decision Making: Evidence From Securities Fraud Actions, Michael A. Perino

Faculty Publications

Legal academics and political scientists continue to debate whether the legal, attitudinal, or strategic model best explains judicial decision making. One limitation in this debate is the high-court bias found in most studies. This article, by contrast, examines federal district court decisions, specifically interpretations of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Initial interpretations of the Act articulated distinct liberal and conservative positions. The data compiled here support the hypothesis that the later emergence of an intermediate interpretation was the result of strategic statutory interpretation rather than simply judges acting consistently with their ideological preferences, although there is some …

The New Religious Prisons And Their Retributivist Commitments, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

The rise of the religious, or "faith-based," prison at the turn of the twenty-first century bears witness to the remarkable resilience of religion in shaping the philosophy of punishment. In the last decade, prisons that incorporate religion in various ways have sprouted around the country and there are some indications, though preliminary, inconclusive, and hotly contested, that inmates who participate in religious instruction and “programming” recidivate at lower rates than those who do not. The early success of these programs (and, some say, the preferential treatment accorded to participants in them) has resulted in high demand and long waiting lists. …

Behavioral Genetics And Crime, In Context, Owen D. Jones

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article provides an introduction to some of the key issues at the intersection of behavioral genetics and crime.

It provides, among other things, an overview of the emerging points of consensus, scientifically, on what behavioral genetics can and cannot tell us about criminal behavior. It also discusses a variety of important implications (as well as complexities) of attempting to use insights of behavioral genetics in legal contexts.

Space, Place, And Speech: The Expressive Topography, Timothy Zick

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Conditional Love: Incentive Trusts And The Inflexibility Problem, Joshua C. Tate

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article examines the contemporary phenomenon of incentive trusts: trusts that use money to encourage or discourage certain behaviors. Using evidence from Internet websites, practitioner articles, and newspaper articles, the Article considers the likely provisions that a typical incentive trust might have, and explains how such trusts might lead to a problem of inflexibility when they are not drafted so as to take into account the possibility of changed circumstances. The Article also examines current law regarding trust modification and termination as well as recent reform proposals, and suggests some alternatives that might better take into account the particular characteristics …

War By Proxy: Legal And Moral Duties Of Other Actors Derived From Government Affiliation, Michael A. Newton

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.