Law Commons^™

Unmet Expectations: Undue Restriction Of The Reasonable Expectations Approach And The Misleading Mythology Of Judicial Role, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

A complete and open embrace of the pure version of the doctrine as enunciated in Judge Keeton's famous article--which expressly provides for finding coverage consistent with the objectively reasonable expectations of the policyholder even where those expectations are contradicted by apparently clear policy language --is viewed by much of the legal and political mainstream as too inconsistent with the prevailing American paradigm of judicial restraint, strict construction of disputed texts, and minimal government involvement in market activity. Some of this resistance to reasonable expectations is the product of an unrealistic reification of the prevailing American politico-legal philosophy of judicial restraint. …

A More Complete Look At Complexity, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The ability of courts to successfully resolve complex cases has been a matter of contentious debate, not only for the last quarter-century, but for most of the twentieth century. This debate has been part of the legal landscape at least since Judge Jerome Frank's polemic book from which this Symposium derives its title, and probably since Roscoe Pound's famous address to the American Bar Association. During the 1980s and 1990s in particular, the battlelines of the pro-and anti-court debate have been brightly drawn. Some commentators, most reliably successful plaintiffs' counsel and politically liberal academics, defend the judicial track record in …

Reason And Pollution: Construing The "Absolute" Pollution Exclusion In Context And In Light Of Its Purpose And Party Expectations, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Responding to the flurry of environmental coverage litigation over the application of the “sudden and accidental” pollution exclusion, the insurance industry during the mid-1980s largely adopted new standard pollution exclusion language for commercial general liability (CGL) policies. Since the mid-1980s, the standard form CGL has included the so-called absolute pollution exclusion, which provides that the insurance does not apply to bodily injury or property damage “arising out of the actual, alleged or threatened discharge, dispersal, seepage, migration, release, or escape of pollutants.” A “pollutant” is defined as “any solid, liquid, gaseous or thermal irritant or contaminant, including smoke, vapor, soot, …

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Recent case developments in Insurance Law in years 1998 and 1999.

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Recent case developments in Insurance law in the year 1998.

Mandatory Pre-Dispute Arbitration: Steps Need To Be Taken To Prevent Unfairness To Employees And Consumers, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

Courts, arbitral organizations and governmental agencies are increasingly recognizing that mandatory binding arbitration can be used both to disadvantage employees and consumers, and to evade legal requirements. Over the last decade, private parties such as employers, manufacturers and financial organizations began using binding arbitration agreements to skirt the public law, and public juries, with increasing intensity. As so often happens, overreaching may once again be giving way to retrenchment, as the tide seems to be turning away from the “anything goes” approach of the earlier 1990s.

Transcript Of The Florida Tobacco Litigation Symposium - Fact, Law, Policy And Significance, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

On November 17, 1997, Professors Jeffrey W. Stempel and Jean R. Sternlight joined a group of colleagues specializing in litigation at the Florida State University College of Law Review's Symposium on the tobacco litigation settlement reached between the State of Florida and five leading tobacco manufacturers that same year. The professors appeared on a panel to discuss the the relationship among the legal system, public health concerns, and tobacco. This is a transcript of those preceedings.

Forum Shopping For Arbitration Decisions: Federal Courts' Use Of Antisuit Injunctions Against State Courts, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

Arbitration clauses, which are supposed to do away with litigation, have ironically spawned many complicated and expensive court fights. Some of the most complex cases involve both forum shopping by the parties and jurisdictional turf battles between federal and state courts. Federal courts have, on quite a few occasions, actually gone so far as to enjoin a state court from continuing to consider a pending case because the federal court concluded that the matter ought to be arbitrated. The Supreme Court, however, has never ruled on whether or when such "arbitral antisuit injunctions" are permissible. In Moses H. Cone Memorial …

Comparativist Ruminations From The Bayou On Child Custody Jurisdiction: The Uccja, The Pkpa, And The Hague Convention On Child Abduction, Christopher L. Blakesley

Scholarly Works

Interstate and international jurisdictional problems are often vexing. They are worse in matters of child custody. In the past, jurisdiction to obtain custody or to modify a custody decree required only presence or domicile. The United States population is transient and custody decisions are subject to modification. The volatility of child custody disputes and the tendency of parents to move to different and separate jurisdictions traditionally caused and continue to cause difficult problems for children, parents, and the legal system. Before the promulgation of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA) and the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act (PKPA), it was …

The Process And The Product: A Bibliography Of Scholarship About Legal Scholarship, Linda H. Edwards, Mary Beth Beazley

Scholarly Works

This bibliography of scholarship about legal scholarship was originally prepared for the 1997 Conference of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. The Conference explored the rapidly developing area of scholarship by legal writing professors and the ways in which this important scholarship can be encouraged. Characteristically, when writing teachers turn their attention to a particular kind of writing project, they begin by examining both the genre and the creative activity the genre employs—that is, the process and the product. This bibliography is one result of that study. The authors hope that it will prove helpful to anyone interested in legal …

Foreigners In Their Own Land: Cultural Land And Transnational Corporations---Emergent International Rights And Wrongs, Martin A. Geer

Scholarly Works

Unique and vital components of human culture and the environment are struggling for survival in the Amazon River basin. The rain forest of Amazonia is shared by indigenous peoples and an immensely diverse tropical flora and fauna. This unique culture and physical ecology, however, is threatened by transnational oil corporations which are irreparably devastating Amazonia and its native cultures through oil production activities.

The failure of public international law to address the post World War II emergence of transnational corporations (TNCs) as a major international force has been the subject of significant review by scholars and policy makers. TNCs, often …

Race, Angst And Capital Punishment: The Burger Court's Existential Struggle, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

This article chronicles the Burger Court's inability to fashion a suitable remedy for racism in the discretionary system of capital sentencing. The article discusses the Court's initial response, “remedial paralysis,” which is evident, not only in McGautha v. California, where the Court refused to find that the Due Process Clause was violated by standardless death sentencing, but also in Furman v. Georgia, where the Court decided to abolish the death penalty. The article further explores the Court's reinstatement of the death penalty, and two of the Court's forays into “bad faith” denial that sustained the death penalty, particularly the Court's …

Toward Understanding Global Governance: The International Law And International Relations Toolbox, Charlotte Ku, Thomas George Weiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law And Economics And Tort Law: A Survey Of Scholarly Opinion, Andrew P. Morriss, John C. Moorhouse, Robert Whaples

Faculty Scholarship

Recent litigation brought against cigarette manufacturers, software companies over potential year 2000 computer problems, and a fast food restaurant for serving coffee that was allegedly too hot reminds us of the importance and dynamic nature of tort law in the United States. Judging from ongoing coverage by newspapers and television, tort law is newsworthy. Yet, as with other legal issues, it is within the covers of law reviews and specialty journals in economics that much of the debate over the social utility of various tort rules and their reform takes place. In that debate law and economics exercises great influence. …

Miners, Vigilantes & Cattlemen: Overcoming Free Rider Problems In The Private Provision Of Law, Andrew P. Morriss

Faculty Scholarship

Law is a good like food, insurance, or housing. Like other goods, it can and often should be provided by private entities. Yet law is usually regarded as the quintessential public good, so obviously public in nature that we need not even discuss its provision by anyone but the State. As Bruce Benson observed "[a]nyone who would even question the 'fact' that law and order are necessary functions of government is likely to be considered a ridiculous, uninformed radical by most observers." Even William Landes and Richard Posner, hardly apologists for the State, have concluded that law often must be …

Decius S. Wade's The Common Law, Andrew P. Morriss

Faculty Scholarship

Decius S. Wade played important roles in Montana's legal history as Chief Justice of the Territorial Supreme Court (1871- 1887), member of the Code Commission (1890-1895), and prominent lawyer. Wade wrote The Common Law sometime in late 1894 or early 1895 for a February 1895 address to Helena bar members celebrating the 1895 passage of the Civil, Political, Penal, and Civil Procedure Codes by the Montana Legislature. Although I disagree with much of Wade's analysis, his manuscript deserves attention now for two reasons.

First, Wade played a critical role in the development of Montana's legal system and his views on …

Charting The Influences On The Judicial Mind: An Empirical Study Of Judicial Reasoning, Gregory C. Sisk, Michael Heise, Andrew P. Morriss

Faculty Scholarship

In 1988, hundreds of federal district judges were suddenly confronted with the need to render a decision on the constitutionality of the Sentencing Reform Act and the newly promulgated criminal Sentencing Guidelines. Never before has a question of such importance and involving such significant issues of constitutional law, mandated the immediate and simultaneous attention of such a large segment of the federal trial bench. Accordingly, this event provides an archetypal model for exploring the influence of social background, ideology, judicial role and institution, and other factors on judicial decisionmaking. Based upon a unique set of written decisions involving an identical …

Implications Of Second-Best Theory For Administrative And Regulatory Law: A Case Study Of Public Utility Regulation, Andrew P. Morriss

Faculty Scholarship

Compared to early twentieth century policy analysts, we have available today extensive tools of "comparative institutional analysis,'' increasingly sophisticated economic models,3 vastly increased and widely distributed computing power, and gigabytes of data. Despite all this, we simply have not come to grips with the implications of second-best theory for regulatory interventions. Moreover, policy must address not only the economic implications of second-best theory but the legal and political implications as well: policymakers must consider the interaction of potential shortcomings of the legal and political tools available when they design the solutions to be implemented with those tools.

The failure to …

Introduction, Ugo Mattei

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Functions Of Trust Law: A Comparative Legal And Economic Analysis, Ugo Mattei

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ruminations On In Re Kasinga: The Decision's Legacy, Karen Musalo

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

In Re Fauziya Kasinga: Brief For The Respondent, Karen Musalo

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Character At The Crossroads, Roger C. Park

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Hearsay, Dead Or Alive?, Roger C. Park

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Author Of Roe, Radhika Rao

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reconceiving Privacy: Relationships And Reproductive Technology, Radhika Rao

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Contract Interpretation In California: Plain Meaning, Parol Evidence And Use Of The "Just Result" Principle, H.G. Prince

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Developing Jurisprudence On Amnesty, Naomi Roht-Arriaza, Lauren Gibson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act And Human Rights Violations: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?, Naomi Roht-Arriaza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Truth Commissions And Amnesties In Latin America: The Second Generation, Naomi Roht-Arriaza

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.