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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Effect Of State Conviction Relief On Federal Deportation Law, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

The Effect Of State Conviction Relief On Federal Deportation Law, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

Federal statute requires deportation of any alien drug offender convicted under federal or state law. An offender may have his conviction set aside, however, under federal or state provisions which authorize relief from the penalties and disabilities resulting from a conviction. Use of the relief conferred by these statutes presents the issue of whether the alien remains "convicted" and therefore deportable under federal law. In Kolios v. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and Rehman v. INS, the First and Second Circuits reached apparently conflicting resolutions of this problem. The Kolios and Rehman decisions illustrate the confusion regarding the proper …

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A Statutory Proposal To Remove Divorce From The Courtroom, Stephen R. Feldman Apr 2025

A Statutory Proposal To Remove Divorce From The Courtroom, Stephen R. Feldman

Maine Law Review

Over the past decade the divorce rate in the United States has more than doubled. Although the reasons suggested for this rapid rise are varied, the resultant impact on the judicial system is clear: divorce cases greatly overburden the courts. Presently they account for about one half of all civil cases filed. Unlike most other civil suits of which nearly half are dismissed or settled, divorce requires a court decree for relief unless the parties reconcile and abandon their suits. In addition to the actual granting of the divorce decree, court time is needed for pre-divorce motions for temporary support …

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Liability For Maritime Oil Pollution: A Comparison Of The Maine Coastal Conveyance Act With Federal Liability Provisions, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Liability For Maritime Oil Pollution: A Comparison Of The Maine Coastal Conveyance Act With Federal Liability Provisions, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

The increasing involvement of coastal states in the regulation of oil pollution within their territorial waters has raised serious questions about the constitutional validity of state legislation imposing liability on parties responsible for unlawful oil discharges. The admiralty clause of the United States Constitution provides that the judicial power of the United States extends to "all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction." This grant to federal courts of original jurisdiction over all admiralty or maritime cases has been construed to be more than a grant of judicial competence. The United States Supreme Court has interpreted the admiralty clause to incorporate …

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"Jurisdictional" Indictments, Informations And Complaints: An Unnecessary Doctrine, Peter G. Ballou Apr 2025

"Jurisdictional" Indictments, Informations And Complaints: An Unnecessary Doctrine, Peter G. Ballou

Maine Law Review

In the majority of jurisdictions in the United States, including the federal courts and Maine, a sufficient indictment, information or complaint is deemed an absolute prerequisite to a valid conviction. This right to a sufficient charging instrument is not subject to waiver and may be asserted at any time, even though not raised before or during trial or on direct appeal from a conviction. This characteristic of nonwaivability, probably unique among the rights belonging to a criminal defendant, has led some courts, including the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, to characterize the requirement of a sufficient indictment as "jurisdictional." When an …

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Withholding Tax On Wages: Central Illinois Public Service Co. V. United States, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Withholding Tax On Wages: Central Illinois Public Service Co. V. United States, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

Section 3402 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 requires every employer to deduct and withhold a tax upon wages paid to its employees. The term "wages" is defined in section 3401(a) as all remuneration for services performed by an employee for his employer. Despite apparent simplicity, the process of defining "wages" has generated conflicting interpretations. In Central Illinois Public Service Co. v. United States, the Seventh Circuit confronted the issue of whether meal reimbursements constitute wages for withholding purposes. The meaning of "wages" in section 3401(a) depends upon an assessment of the policy objectives underlying income tax withholding. In …

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Shellfish Regulation: Conservation And Discrimination, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Shellfish Regulation: Conservation And Discrimination, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

The economy of many coastal states depends heavily upon the shellfish industry. Shellfish such as lobsters and clams are an especially important marine resource for these states. In recent years, however, the supply of shellfish has experienced substantial declines. State laws that permit the harvesting of lobsters prior to sexual maturity, for example, have made the lobster industry dependent on the yearly additions to the lobster supply. The increasing demands for shellfish as well as the pollution of areas such as coastal clamflats have also contributed to the serious depletion of the shellfish resources in many areas. Despite the possible …

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The Validity Of The Restrictions On The Modern Advisory Opinion, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

The Validity Of The Restrictions On The Modern Advisory Opinion, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

In 1831 the Maine House of Representatives, relying on its constitutional authority to request advisory opinions, sought the counsel of the Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court regarding voting requirements for the election of state officers. Because the House was about to adjourn, it requested that the Justices forward their answers to the Governor for publication. The Justices, without mentioning any constitutional limitation on their power to answer questions propounded by the Governor or the Legislature, complied with this request. One hundred and forty years later, the Senate requested the Justices' advice regarding the reapportionment of the House of Representatives. …

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The Precedential Weight Of Summary Dispositions Of Appeals, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

The Precedential Weight Of Summary Dispositions Of Appeals, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

The extent to which the Supreme Court's summary dispositions of appeals are entitled to precedential weight presents a serious problem for lower courts confronted with cases involving issues similar to those previously disposed of in a summarily decided appeal. A recent source of confusion in this area was the Supreme Court's 1975 opinion in Hicks v. Miranda. In Hicks, the lower court held a California statute unconstitutional despite the fact that one year earlier the Supreme Court had summarily dismissed an appeal from a decision upholding the constitutionality of the same statute., The Supreme Court reversed, pointing out that its …

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New Policies Bearing On The Negligent Employer's Immunity From Loss-Sharing, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

New Policies Bearing On The Negligent Employer's Immunity From Loss-Sharing, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

The statutory and judicial controls on loss-sharing between third-party tortfeasor and negligent employer must yield in the face of major modern developments in tort law. The third party's tort liability burden has sharply increased both in amount and frequency. New attitudes towards loss-apportionment highlight the imbalance that results from the employer's immunity and subrogation right. Although the situation is ripe for legislative action, courts, in the absence of full-scale systemic reassessment, must attempt some balancing of the competing policy objectives. While this Comment concludes by urging the adoption of a specific remedy allowing the third party to assert the employer's …

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Title Disputes After Probate Or Administration, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Title Disputes After Probate Or Administration, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

Title to realty generally passes by sale, by devise or by descent. Each method of transfer through its respective system of rules and requirements seeks to protect the interests of society as well as the interests of the immediate parties to a transfer of ownership. When a sale, as an inter vivos transfer, follows a transfer of realty by either devise or descent, a gap may appear in the protection afforded to the various parties by each system of rules. Specifically, the purchase of estate realty from a distributee under probate or administration may jeopardize the purchaser's status as owner. …

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Tortious Withholding Of Insurance Benefits: Gibson V. National Ben Franklin Ins. Co., Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Tortious Withholding Of Insurance Benefits: Gibson V. National Ben Franklin Ins. Co., Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

The Maine Workers' Compensation Act provides that an employer's compensation carrier shares the employer's immunity from common law suit. If the carrier delays or withholds benefits owed an injured employee under an approved compensation agreement, the Act imposes a fine on the carrier and permits the employee to recover the overdue compensation payments by invoking the equity powers of the Superior Court. The Act makes no provision for redress when the carrier refuses to pay, a potential limitation recently confronted by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in Gibson v. National Ben Franklin Insurance Company. In reversing the trial court's dismissal …

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The Constitutionality Of The Maine Takeover Bid Disclosure Law, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

The Constitutionality Of The Maine Takeover Bid Disclosure Law, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

With the March 24, 1978 enactment of the Maine Takeover Bid Disclosure Law, more than two-thirds of the states purported to regulate the making of corporate tender offers. The Maine Act, which is by and large typical, requires that persons making tender offers (or takeover bids), by which the offeror attempts to control the target company through purchase of its shares, disclose certain specified information fully and accurately so as to guarantee adequate time for the dissemination and consideration of the disclosed information. During the 1960's, tender offers became a popular method of acquiring control of publicly traded corporations. Sound …

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Maine's Reception Of The Common Law, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Maine's Reception Of The Common Law, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

From the fledgling days of statehood, and throughout the nineteenth century, attorneys and judges frequently invoked the constitutional reception clause in defining Maine law. The clause served the valuable purpose of providing the new state with a transitional system of law. In the words of Prentiss Mellen, first Chief Justice of Maine's Supreme Judicial Court, reception "was evidently designed to prevent confusion consequent upon a suspension of law, and the injury which would thereby result to the community and individuals." After the nineteenth century, as Maine developed an indigenous body of decisional and statutory law, the reception provision increasingly fell …

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Liability Insurer's Duty To Defend: American Policyholders' Ins. Co. V. Cumberland Cold Storage Co., Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Liability Insurer's Duty To Defend: American Policyholders' Ins. Co. V. Cumberland Cold Storage Co., Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

Liability insurance policies generally contain a standardized provision that requires the insurer to defend the insured against all suits alleging bodily injury or property damage covered by the terms of the policy, even if the claims are "groundless, false or fraudulent.” This provision is the basis for the general rule that a liability insurer's duty to defend an insured will arise when the allegations in a complaint against the insured state a claim within the terms of his policy coverage. In addition to creating a duty to defend, this clause generally affords the insurer the exclusive right to control the …

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Santa Fe Industries, Inc. V. Green: An Analysis Two Years Later, Rutheford B. Campbell Jr. Apr 2025

Santa Fe Industries, Inc. V. Green: An Analysis Two Years Later, Rutheford B. Campbell Jr.

Maine Law Review

It has been nearly two years since the Supreme Court decided Santa Fe Industries, Inc. v. Green. Although the outcome of that decision should have surprised no one, since the trend of the Court clearly had been to constrict the scope of the federal securities legislation, the case was a major decision that will have a substantial impact on the development of corporate law in this country. Indeed, it may turn out to be one of the most significant corporate cases decided by the Supreme Court in recent years. Since by this point the dust has settled from the case, …

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Boundary Delimitation In The Economic Zone: The Gulf Of Maine Dispute, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Boundary Delimitation In The Economic Zone: The Gulf Of Maine Dispute, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

In an ideal world of abundant natural resources, homogeneously distributed among nations, the issue of marine boundary delimitation would have little significance within the international community. However, the realities of randomly concentrated and limited resources, complicated by the political geography of the oceans, have made maritime boundary delimitation a crucial international issue. In a world of more than 130 coastal nations, the determination of standards for allocation of living and non-living ocean resources within the fertile offshore areas has become an issue of widespread economic importance. Nonetheless, the international community has developed few concrete and specific rules for marine boundary …

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Tort Law Developments, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Tort Law Developments, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

Any discussion of recent tort law developments in Maine should begin with the abrogation of sovereign immunity, for in the timing of that far-reaching act the Law Court revealed the essence of its approach to this entire area, at once expanding liability while ensuring its careful limitation. Other progressive changes, such as the judicial creation of a new tort remedy in the cause of action for invasion of privacy, have also been hedged with restrictions. Similarly, in charting the development of legislatively created or enlarged grounds of liability in such realms as products liability or owners' and occupiers' duties to …

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Workmen's Compensation: Compensable Injuries; Awards; Relation Of Court And Commission, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Workmen's Compensation: Compensable Injuries; Awards; Relation Of Court And Commission, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

During Justice Dufresne's term as Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, the court considered over sixty-five cases presenting issues that involved the state Workmen's Compensation Act. These decisions attempted to define both the concept of a compensable injury and the nature of workmen's compensation awards. Examination of the court's treatment of these two major components of the workmen's compensation system reveals the Law Court's attitude toward the system itself, the statutory scheme utilized by the Maine Legislature, and the administrative procedure employed in handling workmen's compensation claims. Consideration of the relationship between the court and the Industrial Accident …

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Stare Decisis, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Stare Decisis, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

Stare decisis, a doctrine fundamental to common law decisionmaking, requires a court to resolve disputes within the framework provided by the rationales and results of prior cases addressed to similar legal and factual relations. It seeks to reconcile the law's two great warring imperatives, that which requires a rational scheme of consistent authority serving the broad social goals of predictability, uniformity, and finality, with that which demands individual results informed by principle and applied with flexibility and discretion—in a word, justice. On the one hand, by focusing on how legal theory has interacted with fact on correlative earlier occasions the …

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Statutory Construction, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Statutory Construction, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

The various rules a court may invoke as the time-worn tests of a statute's meaning reveal little of its institutional approach to statutory construction unless considered in the light of particular cases to which they are applied. Mindful that courts generally have failed to develop consistent approaches to statutory construction, the following survey attempts to rough out the contours of Maine doctrine. The reader should note that any critical evaluations derive from stated preferences for particular approaches to problems of statutory construction, and should recall that opinion on these topics varies widely.

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Standing To Challenge Governmental Action, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Standing To Challenge Governmental Action, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

Perhaps no inquiry reveals so much of a court's sense of identity as does that into justiciability, a concept employed by courts to limit the availability of judicial redress when a litigant's remedy more properly resides with another governmental body. When the subject-matter the litigant seeks to put in issue itself concerns governmental action or policy, the court must address a sensitive problem: to what extent might its resolution of the controversy intrude upon the policymaking function with which the legislative branch has been charged? Slow either to open themselves to claims they function "anti-democratically” or to override the informed …

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Labor Law: Teacher Disputes, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Labor Law: Teacher Disputes, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

The vast majority of labor law issues presented to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court during the previous seven years were rooted in the confusion surrounding the role of collective bargaining in public school teacher disputes. Indicative of the unsettled nature of this area is the tension between the teacher termination statutes and the Municipal Public Employee Labor Relations Law (hereinafter referred to as MPELRL). Despite the later enactment of MPELRL and its more specific provisions, the court has consistently refused to give it wide application in teacher disputes, choosing instead to rely on the more amorphous statutory provisions defining the …

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Administrative Law: Approaches To Delegation, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

Administrative Law: Approaches To Delegation, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

As do most state courts, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court purports to require that legislative delegations of power to administrative agencies be accompanied by legislatively articulated "primary standards" sufficient to prohibit arbitrary exercise of administrative discretion. The requirement is rooted in the non-delegation doctrine, once the principal stumbling-block to the creation of an effective administrative arm of government. Originally a liberalization of the non-delegation rule, the primary standards test can become an unwarranted restraint on legislative discretion, particularly when invoked to nullify delegations necessarily broad in scope. Often, the very reason behind a legislature's choice of administrative means to effectuate …

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The Durfresne Years: A Preliminary Overview, Charles A. Abbott Apr 2025

The Durfresne Years: A Preliminary Overview, Charles A. Abbott

Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review's timely decision to survey the work of the Supreme Judicial Court will enable our Bench and Bar to review past developments, analyze present positions, and, perhaps, chart with greater facility the future course of Maine's legal development. The retirement of Chief Justice Armand A. Dufresne, Jr., provides an excellent occasion for a look back at the Court's accomplishments.

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Chief Justice Dufresne: An Appreciation, Charles A. Pomeroy Apr 2025

Chief Justice Dufresne: An Appreciation, Charles A. Pomeroy

Maine Law Review

To those of us who worked with him almost daily, the years of Armand Dufresne's stewardship will be best remembered as the years during which the Justices of the Supreme Court grew closer together, both in their professional and social relations, and in the respect and admiration each held for the other and all held for the Chief Justice. I am confident I express the sentiment of my colleagues when I say the Dufresne years were among the happiest years of the Court family, largely because of the leadership Chief Justice Dufresne provided US.

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Predicting What The Law Court Will Do In Fact, Harry P. Glassman Apr 2025

Predicting What The Law Court Will Do In Fact, Harry P. Glassman

Maine Law Review

Over eighty years ago Oliver Wendell Holmes announced what became the manifesto of the legal realists when he stated: "The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law." Legal philosophers and professors of jurisprudence may justifiably quarrel with Holmes' definition of law, but that definition continues to be useful to the practicing attorney engaged in the everyday business of counseling clients and advising them concerning the legality of anticipated activities. It is useful also to the trial court judge, bound by the decisions of an appellate court, who, …

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The Absurd Ballet Of American Indian Policy Or American Indian Struggling With Ape On Tropical Landscape: An Afterword, Rennard Strickland Apr 2025

The Absurd Ballet Of American Indian Policy Or American Indian Struggling With Ape On Tropical Landscape: An Afterword, Rennard Strickland

Maine Law Review

On a recent visit to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C., I was particularly struck by a painting that I encountered. Quite accidentally I came upon an Henri Rousseau primitive painting of a tropical landscape, in which, amidst abundant, lush foliage, was a tiny American Indian wrestling a giant ape. The plate identifying the work read: “‘Tropical Landscape: An American Indian Struggling With An Ape,’ Henri Rousseau, 1910." At that moment it occurred to me that this artist had captured an essential theme underlying the history of American Indian law and policy. This essay reflects upon and …

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The Meaning And Implications Of "Indian Country": State V. Dana, Maine Law Review Apr 2025

The Meaning And Implications Of "Indian Country": State V. Dana, Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

The jurisdictional reach of many federal laws relating to Indians is expressly tied to the term "Indian country.” Where "Indian country" exists, these laws, together with the strong federal policies underlying them, can preempt state jurisdiction. According to 18 U.S.C. § 1151, "Indian country" includes (a) any Indian reservation under the jurisdiction of the United States, (b) all dependent Indian communities within the borders of the United States, and (c) all Indian allotments, the Indian titles to which have not been extinguished. The State of Maine, under the belief that no Indian Country is located within its borders, has throughout …

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A Reexamination Of Passamaquoddy V. Morton, John M.R. Paterson, David Roseman Apr 2025

A Reexamination Of Passamaquoddy V. Morton, John M.R. Paterson, David Roseman

Maine Law Review

In December 1975, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued its historic decision in Joint Tribal Council of the Passamaquoddy Tribe v. Morton. That decision set in motion a sequence of events that only the most prescient of the original participants could have imagined. At its height the litigation that grew out of Passamaquoddy involved a threatened suit by the United States Justice Department on behalf of two Indian groups in Maine against the State of Maine, several of the nation's largest corporations, 350,000 residents, and scores of Maine municipalities. The plaintiffs sought possession of 12,000,000 …

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The Unilateral Termination Of Tribal Status: Mashpee Tribe V. New Seabury Corp., Maine Law Review Apr 2025

The Unilateral Termination Of Tribal Status: Mashpee Tribe V. New Seabury Corp., Maine Law Review

Maine Law Review

Mashpee Tribe v. New Seabury Corp. is the first reported case in which a federal trial court decided the question of an Indian group's existence as a tribe. In Mashpee, the issue of tribal existence arose as a defense to a claim brought by the Mashpee Indians for recovery of lands comprising most of the Town of Mashpee, Massachusetts. At the time of suit, these lands were held by a class of defendants who, according to the Mashpees' complaint, held interests or title acquired without the consent of Congress in violation of the Nonintercourse Act. Based upon the jury verdicts, …

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