Common Law Commons^™

Overcrowding The System: Rethinking Juvenile Justice In Washington State, Mckenna White

Seattle University Law Review

The recent crisis at Green Hill School highlights the detrimental consequences of severe overcrowding in Washington State’s Juvenile Rehabilitation system—a problem exacerbated by the implementation of the JR to 25 legislation. This Note argues that the juvenile rehabilitation system, which is currently struggling to manage a wide age range of offenders, necessitates a fundamental rethinking of juvenile justice practices. By examining neurological research indicating continued brain development into the mid-twenties, along with the high prevalence of trauma among justice-involved youth, this Note proposes the creation of a dedicated third system of care within the Department of Children, Youth, and Families …

The Renaissance Of Private Law, Yotam Kaplan, Adi Libson, Gideon Parchomovsky

Northwestern University Law Review

Crisis is the new normal. Between global warming, the opioid pandemic, bursts of gun violence, and political instability fueled by fake news, it is hard to remember a time when we were not facing a major catastrophe. Still more troubling, there is a growing sense that our political and regulatory institutions are faltering in their ability to offer effective responses to the incoming crises. The rapid pace at which new problems emerge—together with growing political polarization—stymies regulatory and legislative action, resulting in an inability to address contemporary challenges.

Against this gloomy background, we posit an unlikely hero: private law. Recent …

Social Media Harms And The Common Law, Leslie Y. Garfield Tenzer

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article finds fault with the judiciaries' failure to create a set of common law norms for social media wrongs. In cases concerning social media harms, the Supreme Court and lower courts have consistently adhered to traditional pre-social media principles, failing to use the power of the common law to create a kind of Internet Justice.

Part I of this article reviews social media history and explores how judicial decisions created a fertile bed for social media harm to blossom. Part II illustrates social media harms across several doctrinal disciplines and highlights judicial reluctance to embrace the realities of social …

Choice Of Law And The Preponderantly Multistate Rule: The Example Of Successor Corporation Products Liability, Diana Sclar

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Most state rules of substantive law, whether legislative or judicial, ordinarily adjust rights and obligations among local parties with respect to local events. Conventional choice of law methodologies for adjudicating disputes with multistate connections all start from an explicit or implicit assumption of a choice between such locally oriented substantive rules. This article reveals, for the first time, that some state rules of substantive law ordinarily adjust rights and obligations with respect to parties and events connected to more than one state and only occasionally apply to wholly local matters. For these rules I use the term “nominally domestic rules …

Reflections On The Effects Of Federalism On Opioid Policy, Matthew B. Lawrence

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

The Friday Night “Who Is Driving?” Debate Will Soon Come To An End: How Autonomous Vehicles Are Changing Our Lives And Societal Norms, Nicholas Calabria

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ordinary Causation: A Study In Experimental Statutory Interpretation, James Macleod

Indiana Law Journal

In a series of recent split decisions interpreting criminal and tort-like legislation, the Supreme Court has purported to give statutory causation requirements their ordinary, plain meaning. Armed with dictionaries, examples from everyday speech, and commonsense intuitions, the Court’s majority has explained that statutory phrases like “because of” and “results from” entail but-for causation as a matter of ordinary usage. There’s just one problem: The Court’s majority (and the many state and federal courts following its lead) is wrong on the facts—specifically, the facts about how people ordinarily interpret, understand, and use causal language.

This Article considers a novel approach to …

Gun Control: The Gun Violence Epidemic In The U.S., Anna Koduru

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

While holding almost half of all civilian-owned guns around the globe and yet only 4.4 percent of the world’s population, the United States of America is heavily centered around gun rights due to the 2nd amendment in the U.S. Constitution. But gun violence is on the rise as deaths due to gun violence are at its highest rate in nearly 40 years. Americans are divided amongst themselves when it comes to how we must approach this issue. In order to reduce gun violence in the U.S., both Republican and Democrat leaders must come together and make bipartisan moves to implement …

A Government Of Laws Not Of Precedents 1776-1876: The Google Challenge To Common Law Myth, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

The United States, it is said, is a common law country. The genius of American common law, according to American jurists, is its flexibility in adapting to change and in developing new causes of action. Courts make law even as they apply it. This permits them better to do justice and effectuate public policy in individual cases, say American jurists.

Not all Americans are convinced of the virtues of this American common law method. Many in the public protest, we want judges that apply and do not make law. American jurists discount these protests as criticisms of naive laymen. They …

Reading Statutes In The Common Law Tradition, Jeffrey A. Pojanowski

Journal Articles

There is wide agreement in American law and scholarship about the role the common law tradition plays in statutory interpretation. Jurists and scholars of various stripes concur that the common law points away from formalist interpretive approaches like textualism and toward a more creative, independent role for courts. They simply differ over whether the common law tradition is worth preserving. Dynamic and strongly purposive interpreters claim the Anglo-American common law heritage in support of their approach to statutory interpretation, while arguing that formalism is an unjustified break from that tradition. Formalists reply that the common law mindset and methods are …

Constitutional Implications Of School Punishment For Cyber Bullying, Raul R. Calvoz, Bradley W. Davis, Mark A. Gooden

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

In this article, we address the scope of student free speech rights as it relates to cyber bullying. We provide a review of legal theories under which school administrators can address cyber bullying while still respecting student free speech rights and the First Amendment. Additionally, we address the jurisdiction of administrators to deal with off-campus bullying conduct.

The Best Interest Of The Child And The Law , Christian Reichel Van Deusen

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Use Of Legislative History In Treaty Interpretation: The Dual Treaty Approach, Malvina Halberstam

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Province Of Legislation Determined: Legal Theory In Eighteenth-Century Britain, Thomas A. Green

Reviews

David Lieberman's lucid and sure-footed reinterpretationof late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century jurisprudence is original, thoughtful, analytically acute, and a pleasure to read. Lieberman argues that Bentham's law reform ideas must be viewed in relation to earlier (and contemporary) reform traditions. Bentham's views were more complex than the long-held myth would have it, partly because they were more derivative, at least in his early enterprises, combining as they did a reception of earlier notions with the novelty for which he is usually credited. Blackstone and Mansfield, on this account, were not the match stick figures they are sometimes made out to be; the …

Allocation Of Scarce Goods Under Section 2-615 Of The Uniform Commercial Code: A Comparison Of Some Rival Models, James J. White

Articles

Section 2-615 of the Uniform Commercial Code authorizes a contract seller to allocate goods in short supply when full performance has become commercially impracticable. Most of the cases under and commentary on that section have focused on the issue of commercial impracticability. The allocation aspects of the section have attracted much more modest attention in the cases and in the scholarly journals. The purpose of this article is to examine critically the allocation rule set out in section 2-615(b). That subsection authorizes a seller, upon a finding of commercial impracticability, to allocate "in any manner which is fair and reasonable." …

The Federal Medical Care Recovery Act: A Case Study In The Creation Of Federal Common Law, Joseph C. Long

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

The Common Law As A Bar To Judicial Legislation, James H. Mccauley

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Conflict Of Spousal Immunity Laws: The Legislature Takes A Hand, Dale A. Whitman

Faculty Publications

During the 1967 session of the North Carolina General Assembly, the legislators made a novel excursion into the realm of conflict of laws, modifying the state's traditional rule of lex loci delicti as it applies to spousal immunity. The purpose of this comment is to explore the legal background and examine the possible effects of the new statute, and to consider its implications for existing choice-of- law doctrine. At common law, neither spouse could bring an action against the other for negligently inflicted injury. Such a rule leads to a good deal of manifest injustice, and it has been abandoned …

"Appropriate And Just": Section 24 Of The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms And The Question Of Judicial Legitimacy, W A. Bogart

Dalhousie Law Journal

At the heart of procedural law lie questions concerning the role of courts in a liberal democratic state. What is the essence of their function? What is the proper relationship between the judiciary and other governmental institutions? What is the well-spring for values with which courts can make law? The questions are perennials and will be asked so long as there is interest in the workings and malfunctions of all aspects of government. Courts, like all institutions of government, are continually being assessed on their own terms and in relation to other branches. In Canada this examination has received a …

Our Legal System And How It Operates, Burke W. Shartel

Michigan Legal Studies Series

Five lectures delivered at the University of Michigan February 23, 24, 25, 26, and 27, 1948 on the Thomas M. Cooley Lectureship, enlarged and revised.

First, it is descriptive of the American legal system as it now exists, not of past law and not of legal systems in general. Second, it portrays the legal system as an operating institution. Third, I have given a large place to the discussion of language in relation to law. Fourth, I have given a considerable amount of space to a discussion of the ways in which statutes are made and interpreted. Fifth, technical ideas …

Interpretation Of Statutes In Derogation Of The Common Law, Jefferson B. Fordham, J. Russell Leach

Vanderbilt Law Review

The tendency of the lex scripta to supplant the lex von scripta has carried far since Roscoe Pound published his provocative paper on "Common Law and Legislation" in 1908. One can note at the same time indications that statute law is being received with much less hostility. The surprising thing, however, is that legislation in general is not at this day getting a far more sympathetic reception by lawyers and judges. Clearly they make up the professional group which has the largest share in the drafting and enactment of statutes. In actual practice, moreover, lawyers are given to committing private …

The Balance Sheet Of Law And Religion, Frank E. Horack Jr.

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Common Law Of Legislation, Frank Edward Horack Jr.

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.