Common Law Commons^™

Comparative Law In Action: Promissory Estoppel, The Civil Law, And The Mixed Jurisdiction, David Snyder

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Modern Mail Fraud: The Restoration Of The Public/Private Distinction, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Over their long history, the mail and wire fraud statutes have gone through repeated periods of rapid expansion and contraction. The 1970s saw the flowering of the "intangible rights doctrine," an exotic flower that quickly overgrew the legal landscape in the manner of the kudzu vine until by the mid- 1980s few ethical or fiduciary breaches seemed beyond its potential reach. That doctrine was radically pruned by the Supreme Court in 1987 in the McNally decision, which held that the federal mail and wire fraud statutes reached only those schemes that intentionally sought to deprive their victims of money or …

How Green Was Common Law?, David Schoenbrod

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

The Federal Psychotherapist-Patient Privilege After Jaffee: Truth And Other Values In A Therapeutic Age, Christopher B. Mueller

Publications

No abstract provided.

Self V. Queen: Retaining Eighteenth Century Feudalistic Jurisprudence To Determine A Landowner's Duty Of Care, Thomas S. Kleeh

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Regulatory Standards And Products Liability: Striking The Right Balance Between The Two, Teresa Moran Schwartz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Common law courts have a long tradition of borrowing legislative and regulatory standards to define standards of care under the tort system. Treating such standards as setting minimum levels of care and safety under tort law, the courts uniformly have ruled that violations of standards constitute negligence per se, while compliance is merely evidence of negligence. Although critics of the tort system have urged legislatures and courts to adopt rules giving greater weight to regulatory compliance in products liability cases, the drafters of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability have declined to do so. They have adopted instead an …

九七後香港普通法的淵源面臨衝擊 : 僱主所負轉承責任的例子, Kwok Keung Chow

Hong Kong Institute of Business Studies Working Paper Series

香港現行法律淵源之一的英國普通法，在1997年主權回歸後將再難對法院產生自動的法律約束力，而以英國普通法為基礎、體現侵權法原則的僱傭轉承責任亦預期會出現至少兩方面的改變:第一，涉及轉承責任的案件在缺乏普通法適用地區司法判例約束力的前提下，出現案例與審判原則在援引及關釋上的困難。第二，在與國內司法系統的互動關係上，作為特別行政區的香港將受到國內司法部門有關侵權法及相關案例的影響，又或反過來衝擊國內這方面的立法工作。

The Board Of Directors And Internal Control, Melvin A. Eisenberg

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Hazards Of Tinkering With The Common Law Of Future Interests: The California Experience, Laura E. Cunningham

Articles

No abstract provided.

Adjudication As Representation, Christopher J. Peters

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article sets forth an interpretive theory of adjudicative lawmaking according to which, under certain conditions, such lawmaking ensures constructive participation through interest representation and thus is not inherently nondemocratic. The author contends that the idea of ‘judicial activism,‘ courts deciding issues better left to political processes or substituting the personal ‘values‘ of judges for law, is based on the incorrect assumptions that courts are unconstrained and nonrepresentative. Instead, when adjudication operates in an archetypal way, it produces law in a manner similar to the parliamentary legislation process. Courts making law are constrained by the process of participatory decisionmaking--the production …

Gasperini In Line With Erie: New York Law Determines Excessiveness Of Verdict In Diversity Cases, Edie C. Grinblat

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of People, For Michigan Republic, Ex Rel V. State Of Michigan, 30 J. Marshall L. Rev. 937 (1997), Phillip A. Hendges

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mikhail Bakhtin And Change In The Common Law, Russell West Jr.

Washington Law Review

Traditional legal analysis comprehends change in the common law over time as a shifting legal response to different facts and circumstances. This approach does not examine the internal mechanisms by which the meaning of a judicial opinion changes when cited in later legal writing. Mikhail Bakhtin, a literary and cultural theorist, argued that any statement can be understood only through the context in which it is uttered and that every change in context causes a shift in the statement's meaning. This Comment analyzes the internal mechanisms of judicial opinions in light of Bakhtin's theories. First, this Comment describes one example …

Towards A Federal Counselor-Battered Woman Privilege, Fernando Laguarda

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

INTRODUCTION: In theory if not in fact, the purpose of a trial in the American legal tradition is to discern the truth related to a particular dispute. Although scholars have debated how well the adversary system actually promotes fair and accurate outcomes, this truth-seeking paradigm remains generally well-accepted. To ascertain the truth, information must be presented to the triers of fact for their consideration. The law of evidence thus provides the rules for introducing and considering such information in the adversary system.

Natural Law And Birthright Citizenship In Calvin's Case (1608), Polly J. Price

Faculty Articles

The roots of United States conceptions of birthright citizenship lie deep in England's medieval past. This Article explores Calvin's Case (1608) and the early modem common-law mind that first articulated a theoretical basis for territorial birthright citizenship. Involving all the important English judges of the day, Calvin's Case addressed the question of whether persons born in Scotland, following the descent of the English crown to the Scottish King James VI in 1603, would be considered "subjects" in England. Calvin's Case determined that all persons born within any territory held by the King of England were to enjoy the benefits of …

The Equity Jurisdiction Of The Exchequer, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

The municipal Jaw of England is divided into common Jaw and equity. This is so because in the middle ages, the judges of the courts of common law (the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of King's Bench) believed that they could not expand the existing law in order to solve new problems. They thought that they were bound by the established Jaw as found in their own earlier judicial opinions. Furthermore, they felt that it was the function of Parliament to change the law; therefore, it would be an unconstitutional usurpation of the legislative power for the courts …

Common Law Elements Of The Section 1983 Action, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the role of the common law in Supreme Court interpretation and application of § 1983, which grants a cause of action for violations of constitutional rights committed "under color of any [state] statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage."' I argue that the common law has served primarily to narrow the reach of § 1983, and that this is inappropriate in light of the broad statutory language and the absence of good evidence that the enacting Congress intended a narrower application than the statutory language indicates.

Hearsay Evidence: A Comparison Of Two Jurisdictions: United States And Nigeria, Lawrence Okechukwu Azubuike

LLM Theses and Essays

Many jurisdictions have detailed rules of evidence which regulate the facts that are admissible in court. The hearsay rule is one such rule which excludes certain evidence. The hearsay rule has roots in an old common law principle and is featured in many jurisdictions today, but has endured heavy criticisms over time. This paper examines the application of the hearsay rule in the United States and in Nigeria. Both are common law countries, however, the United States’ legal system is more advanced than that of Nigeria. This comparison aims to inform and assist current reform efforts in Nigeria.

An Analysis Of The Personal Use Principle Under Copyright Law, Hsin-Chih Cheng

LLM Theses and Essays

Personal use is when an individual uses a copyrighted work for private purposes, such as learning or entertainment. Personal use is a right given in the Copyright Clause of the U.S. Constitution, however, an issue arises when the individual wants to make a copy of the copyrighted work. New technologies like photocopying and videotaping make this issue more prominent today. Some copyright owners think that the individual’s copying for private use is harmful to their potential market and they argue for compensation. Does the individual have the right under the personal use principle to reproduce the copyrighted work for private …

Copyright, Common Law, And Sui Generis Protection Of Databases In The United States And Abroad, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

What protection remains for compilations of information, particularly digital databases, since the United States Supreme Court swept away "sweat copyright" in its 1991 Feist decision? "Thin" copyright protection is still available, but it covers only the original contributions (if any) that the compiler brings to the public domain information. Moreover, Feist makes clear that padding the compilation with original added value will not flesh out the skeletal figure beneath: the information, stripped of selection, arrangement, or other copyrightable frills, remains free for the taking.

If copyright is unavailing, contract is appearing more promising, as mass-market, "shrinkwrap" and "click-on" licenses gain …

In The Tribunal Of Conscience: Mills V. Wyman Reconsidered, Geoffrey R. Watson

Scholarly Articles

In this Article, Professor Watson explores the historical record surrounding Mills v. Wyman, 20 Mass (3 Pick) 207 (1825), one of the leading American cases on moral obligation in contract law. In Mills, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court refused to enforce a father's promise to compensate a Good Samaritan who had cared for the father's dying son. Professor Watson combs the historical evidence--court records, census reports, genealogical data, probate records, military rolls, and so on-and argues that the Mills court got both the facts and the law wrong. According to Professor Watson, the father did not make the promise in …

Divining The Deep And Inscrutable: Toward A Gener-Neutral, Child-Centered Approach To Child Name Change Proceedings, Lisa Kelly

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Vital Common Law: Its Role In A Statutory Age, M. Stuart Madden

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Road Less Taken: Annulment At The Turn Of The Century, Chris Guthrie, Joanna Grossman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

It is hardly surprising that certain legal institutions--adoption, wills, and guardianship--have lasted through the centuries. Each meets a different, seemingly timeless need: providing parenting for orphans or abandoned children, distributing property at death, and dealing with legal incapacity, respectively. Similarly, divorce, though it appeared somewhat later, took hold and persisted for an obvious reason-the increasing demand for a legally sanctioned way to terminate broken marriages. The endurance of annulment, however, particularly in the face of increasingly liberalized divorce laws, defies easy explanation. The existence of annulment prior to the mid-nineteenth century is easily explained. Until 1857, England was a "divorceless …

Rule 803(7): Absence Of Entry In Records Kept In Accordance With The Provisions Of Paragraph (6)

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Husband And Wife Are One - Him: Bennis V. Michigan As The Resurrection Of Coverture, Amy D. Ronner

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Although the legal fictions of coverture and guilty property have been repudiated by statutes and the Court respectively, the Supreme Court implicitly resurrected and fused the coverture and guilty property myths in Bennis v. Michigan. In that decision, the Court approved the forfeiture of Ms. Bennis' interest in a car in which her husband engaged in sexual activity with a prostitute. This Article explores that resurrected conglomerate in three parts. Part I is a concise review of the feudal doctrine of coverture and the disabilities it imposed on married women. Part II focuses almost entirely on the decision in …

“Attitudinal” Decision Making In The Federal Courts: A Study Of Constitutional Self Representation Claims, John R. Quinn

Scholarly Works

This Article reports on the performance of a study based on and inspired by Segal and Spaeth's work. It examines the possible attitudinal bases of the entire corpus (over 100 cases) of federal district court decisions involving constitutional self-representation claims. As explained in greater detail below, this area of jurisprudence was selected for study because decisions often are dependent upon the exercise of judicial discretion-Segal and Spaeth's attitudinal factors. This study both elucidates the attitudinal methods of Segal and Spaeth and "proves" an exception to the attitudinal model hypothesized by Segal and Spaeth. That exception is the salience of doctrine …

The Distinction Between Crime And Tort In The Early Common Law, David J. Seipp

Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers and judges in English royal courts between 1200 and 1500 drew a distinction between crime and tort. Each type of lawsuit-each writ or action-had its own form and nature. Medieval English lawyers grouped these individual actions into categories such as real actions and personal actions, writs of possession and writs of right.' The lawyers recognized categories that later acquired the labels crime and tort, although those were not the names for them in the early common law. Crimes were prosecuted by actions known as indictments and appeals of felony. Torts were remedied by writs of trespass alleging use of …

How Do Judges Decide Divorce Cases?: An Empirical Analysis Of Discretionary Decision Making, Marsha Garrison

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Duration Of Copyright And The Limits Of Cultural Policy, J. H. Reichman

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.