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Refugee Rights Are Not Negotiable, James C. Hathaway, Anne K. Cusick Jan 2000

Refugee Rights Are Not Negotiable, James C. Hathaway, Anne K. Cusick

Articles

America's troubled relationship with international law, in particular human rights law, is well documented. In many cases, the United States simply will not agree to be bound by international human rights treaties. For example, the United States has yet to ratify even such fundamental agreements as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. When the United States does agree to become a party to an international human rights treaty, it has often sought to condition its acceptance …


Allocating The Judicial Power In A 'Unified Judiciary' (Restructuring Federal Courts), Evan H. Caminker Jan 2000

Allocating The Judicial Power In A 'Unified Judiciary' (Restructuring Federal Courts), Evan H. Caminker

Articles

Over the past half-century, federal courts scholarship concerning congressional control over the authority of Article III courts has focused predominantly on the question of jurisdiction: Which, if any, federal courts may or must be available to adjudicate which cases or controversies?' This preoccupation is unsurprising since most threatened or actualized congressional regulation over this period of time has concerned when and which federal courts would play a role in implementing the law of the land.2


Dna As Evidence: Viewing Science Through The Prism Of The Law, Peter Donnelly, Richard D. Friedman Jan 2000

Dna As Evidence: Viewing Science Through The Prism Of The Law, Peter Donnelly, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In this article, we analyze a problem related to DNA evidence that is likely to be of great and increasing significance in the near future. This is the problem of whether, and how, to present evidence that the suspect has been identified through a DNA database search. In our view, the two well-known reports on DNA evidence issued by the National Research Council (NRC) have been badly mistaken in their analysis of this problem. The mistakes are significant because the reports have carried great authority with American courts; moreover, the DNA Advisory Board of the FBI has endorsed the second …


Uncoupling The Law Of Takings, Michael A. Heller, James E. Krier Jan 2000

Uncoupling The Law Of Takings, Michael A. Heller, James E. Krier

Articles

The law of takings couples together matters that should be treated independently. The conventional view, shared by courts and commentators alike, has been that any takings case can be resolved in one of two ways: either there is a taking and compensation is due, or there is no taking and no compensation is due. These results are fine as long as one holding or the other serves the two central concerns of the Takings Clause - eficiency and justice. But a problem arises when the two purposes behind the law of takings come into cordhct, as they readily might. It …


Strategic Voting On Multimember Courts, Evan H. Caminker Jan 2000

Strategic Voting On Multimember Courts, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

In appellate adjudication, decisions are rendered by a multimember court as a collective entity, not by individual judges. Yet legal scholars have only just begun to explore the formal and informal processes by which individual votes are transformed into a collective judgment. In particular, they have paid insufficient attention to the ways in which the vote of each individual judge is influenced by the views of her colleagues on a multimember court.


An Essay On Texas V. Lesage, Christina B. Whitman Jan 2000

An Essay On Texas V. Lesage, Christina B. Whitman

Articles

When I was invited to participate in this symposium, I was asked to discuss whether the causation defense developed in Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle applied to cases challenging state action under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As I argue below, it seems clear that Mt. Healthy does apply to equal protection cases. The Supreme Court explicitly so held last November in Texas v. Lesage. But the implications of Lesage go beyond questions of causation. The opinion suggests that the Court may be rethinking (or ignoring) its promise in Carey v. Piphus …


The Earmarking Defense To Voidable Preference Liability: A Reconceptualization, William H. Widen, David Gray Carlson Jul 1999

The Earmarking Defense To Voidable Preference Liability: A Reconceptualization, William H. Widen, David Gray Carlson

Articles

No abstract provided.


Juries, Hindsight, And Punitive Damage Awards: Failures Of A Social Science Case For Change, Richard O. Lempert Jul 1999

Juries, Hindsight, And Punitive Damage Awards: Failures Of A Social Science Case For Change, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

In their recent Arizona Law Review article entitled What Juries Can't Do Well: The Jury's Performance As a Risk Manager,' Professors Reid Hastie and W. Kip Viscusi purport to show that juries are likely to do a poor job in setting punitive damages, largely because jurors cannot avoid the influence of what is called "hindsight bias," or the tendency to see the likelihood of an event higher in retrospect than it would have appeared before it happened. In particular, they argue that hindsight bias and other cognitive biases undermine the utility of jury-set punitive damage awards as risk management devices. …


A Tribute To James B. Boskey, Lela P. Love Jul 1999

A Tribute To James B. Boskey, Lela P. Love

Articles

No abstract provided.


The Earmarking Defense To Voidable Preference Liability: A Reconceptualization, David G. Carlson, William H. Widen Jul 1999

The Earmarking Defense To Voidable Preference Liability: A Reconceptualization, David G. Carlson, William H. Widen

Articles

The article argues that the earmarking doctrine, a judge-created exception to 547b liability, should be reinterpreted under 547c1 of the Bankruptcy Code. It posits that the doctrine's current reliance on vague concepts like "control" is legally unsound and inconsistent with statutory intent. By aligning earmarking with the contemporaneous exchange defense under 547c1, the analysis would focus on the parties' intent and the timing of the exchange, eliminating the need for the controversial control criterion. This approach would bring clarity and consistency to bankruptcy law, preventing arbitrary outcomes and ensuring compliance with the Bankruptcy Code.


State Immunity Waivers For Suits By The United States, Evan H. Caminker Jan 1999

State Immunity Waivers For Suits By The United States, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

The Supreme Court closed this millennium with a virtual celebration of state sovereignty, protecting state authority from the reach of congressional power in several significant ways. In a pair of cases, Seminole Tribe v. Florida1 and Alden v. Maine,2 the Court held that states enjoy a constitutional immunity from being sued without their consent. In Seminole Tribe, the Court opined that "the background principle of state sovereign immunity embodied in the Eleventh Amendment"3 protects states from unconsented suits in federal court. In Alden, the Court held that this principle is not merely embodied in the Eleventh Amendment but rather is …


Sincere And Strategic Voting Norms On Multimember Courts, Evan H. Caminker Jan 1999

Sincere And Strategic Voting Norms On Multimember Courts, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

In appellate adjudication, decisions are rendered by a multimember court as a collective entity, not by individual judges. Yet legal scholars have only just begun to explore the formal and informal processes by which individual votes are transformed into a collective judgment.' In particular, they have paid insufficient attention to the ways in which the vote of each individual judge is influenced by the views of her colleagues on a multimember court.


Lost Lives: Miscarriages Of Justice In Capital Cases, Samuel R. Gross Jan 1999

Lost Lives: Miscarriages Of Justice In Capital Cases, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

In case after case, erroneous conviction for capital murder has been proven. I contend that these are not disconnected accidents, but systematic consequences of the nature of homicice prosecution in the general and capital prosecution in particular - that in this respect, as in others, death distorts and undermines the course of the law.


Dna Database Searches And The Legal Consumption Of Scientific Evidence, Peter Donnelly, Richard D. Friedman Jan 1999

Dna Database Searches And The Legal Consumption Of Scientific Evidence, Peter Donnelly, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

DNA evidence has transformed the proof of identity in criminal litigation, but it has also introduced daunting problems of statistical analysis into the process. In this Article, we analyze a problem related to DNA evidence that is likely to be of great and increasing significance in the near future. This is the problem of whether, and how, to present evidence that the suspect has been identified through a DNA database search. In our view, the two well-known reports on DNA evidence issued by the National Research Council ("NRC"), each of which has carried great authority with the American courts on …


Constitutions And Spontaneous Orders: A Response To Professor Mcginnis, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki Jan 1999

Constitutions And Spontaneous Orders: A Response To Professor Mcginnis, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki

Articles

Professor John McGinnis has written a perceptive and provocative comment on our economic analysis of the role of tradition in constitutional interpretation.1 A brief summary of our areas of agreement and disagreement may help set the stage for this response. It appears that Professor McGinnis substantially agrees with the two central propositions of our article. First, he appears to agree with our definition of efficient traditions as those evolving over long periods of time from decentralized processes.2 Second, he explicitly agrees that Justices Scalia and Souter have adopted sub-optimal models of tradition because they rely on sources that lack the …


Finding The Constitution: An Economic Analysis Of Tradition's Role In Constitutional Interpretation, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki Jan 1999

Finding The Constitution: An Economic Analysis Of Tradition's Role In Constitutional Interpretation, Adam C. Pritchard, Todd J. Zywicki

Articles

In this Article, Professor Pritchard and Professor Zywicki examine the role of tradition in constitutional interpretation, a topic that has received significant attention in recent years. After outlining the current debate over the use of tradition, the authors discuss the efficiency purposes of constitutionalism--precommitment and the reduction of agency costs--and demonstrate how the use of tradition in constitutional interpretation can serve these purposes. Rejecting both Justice Scalia's majoritarian model, which focuses on legislative sources of tradition, and Justice Souter's common-law model, which focuses on Supreme Court precedent as a source of tradition, the authors propose an alternative model--the "finding model"-- …


Narrative Relevance, Imagined Juries, And A Supreme Court Inspired Agenda For Jury Research, Richard O. Lempert Jan 1999

Narrative Relevance, Imagined Juries, And A Supreme Court Inspired Agenda For Jury Research, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

This paper has its roots in Old Chief v. United States, a case the Supreme Court of the United States decided in 1997. I will begin by describing this case; then comment on its implications for the Supreme Court's conception of the jury, and conclude by examining the agenda one may draw from it for empirical jury research. Old Chief arose when Johnny Lynn Old Chief was charged not only with assault with a dangerous weapon and using a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence, but also with violating a law that precludes convicted felons from possessing …


Jury Reform At The End Of The Century: Real Agreement, Real Changes, Phoebe C. Ellsworth Jan 1999

Jury Reform At The End Of The Century: Real Agreement, Real Changes, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

Complaints about the jury system and calls for its reform are nothing new-they have probably existed as long as the jury system itself. Warren Burger called for the reform of the civil jury in 1971'; in 1905 William Howard Taft decried the contemporary tendency "to exalt the jury's power beyond anything which is wise or prudent .... ,2 Judges complain to judges, lawyers complain to lawyers, legal academics write articles about the jury for other legal academics, social scientists report their research on juries to other social scientists, and the jurors themselves go home and express their exasperation to their …


Sticks And Stones, Phoebe C. Ellsworth Jan 1999

Sticks And Stones, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

I believe that research should be refuted by research. More and more of our scarce journal space is being taken up by attacks, rebuttals, and rebuttals to the rebuttals, often ending with a whimper of recognition that the adversaries were not so very far apart to begin with, and that the only way (if possible) to resolve the disagreement is through empirical research. Communication of scientific disagreement does not require a published article. Grant proposals and manuscripts submitted to refereed journals like this one are sent out to reviewers, who provide written evaluations that are communicated to the author. Papers …


Lilly V. Virginia: A Chance To Reconceptualize The Confrontation Right, Richard D. Friedman Jan 1999

Lilly V. Virginia: A Chance To Reconceptualize The Confrontation Right, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In Lilly v. Virginia, the Supreme Court once again has the opportunity to grapple with the meaning of the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendmel).t. The basic facts of Lilly are simple, for they present the ageold problem of accomplice confessions. Three men, Gary Barker and Ben and Mark Lilly, went on a crime spree, during which one of them shot to death a young man they had robbed and kidnaped. Ben Lilly was charged with being the triggerman, and Barker testified to that effect at Ben's trial. Mark did not testify. But Mark had made a statement to the …


The Constitutional Authority Of The Federal Government In State Criminal Proceedings That Involve U.S. Treaty Obligations Or Affect U.S. Foreign Relations, Malvina Halberstam Jan 1999

The Constitutional Authority Of The Federal Government In State Criminal Proceedings That Involve U.S. Treaty Obligations Or Affect U.S. Foreign Relations, Malvina Halberstam

Articles

No abstract provided.


Justice Without Justices, John O. Mcginnis Jan 1999

Justice Without Justices, John O. Mcginnis

Articles

No abstract provided.


Are Tax "Benefits" Constitutionally Equivalent To Direct Expenditures?, Edward A. Zelinsky Dec 1998

Are Tax "Benefits" Constitutionally Equivalent To Direct Expenditures?, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

In this Article, Professor Zelinsky discusses whether tax "benefits" are constitutionally equivalent to direct expenditures. He argues that, in constitutional contexts, the generic categories "tax" and "direct expenditure" are unhelpful and often misleading, in light of the diverse and overlapping nature of different tax laws and direct spending programs, the disparate perspectives from which equivalence can be assessed, and the variety of constitutional contexts in which the equivalence issue must be addressed. Professor Zelinsky thus calls for case-by-case determinations of equivalence considering particular constitutional contexts, the appropriate perspective in each of those contexts, and the specific tax and direct spending …


The Top Ten Intellectual Property Law Questions That Should Be Asked About Any Merger Or Acquisition, Marci A. Hamilton Jul 1998

The Top Ten Intellectual Property Law Questions That Should Be Asked About Any Merger Or Acquisition, Marci A. Hamilton

Articles

No abstract provided.


The Future Of Physician-Assisted Suicide, Yale Kamisar Jan 1998

The Future Of Physician-Assisted Suicide, Yale Kamisar

Articles

I believe that when the Supreme Court handed down its decisions in 1997 in Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacca v. Quill, proponents of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) suffered a much greater setback than many of them are able or willing to admit.


Why Do Juries Get A Bum Rap: Reflections On The Work Of Valerie Hans, Richard O. Lempert Jan 1998

Why Do Juries Get A Bum Rap: Reflections On The Work Of Valerie Hans, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

The paper by Professor Valerie Hans that I have been asked to comment on examines the widespread expectation that jurors are prepared to hold businesses responsible in tort actions when they would not hold individual actors similarly responsible.1 Two reasons are commonly offered for this expectation. The first is that jurors naturally sympathize with individuals (like themselves) when people sue businesses, either because they identify with the plaintiffs as individuals or because they hold antibusiness attitudes. The second is that because businesses are often wealthy, a "deep pockets" effect exists such that jurors in negligence cases will find for undeserving …


Mandatory Arbitration Of Employee Discrimination Claims: Unmitigated Evil Or Blessing In Disguise?, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 1998

Mandatory Arbitration Of Employee Discrimination Claims: Unmitigated Evil Or Blessing In Disguise?, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

One of the hottest current issues in employment law is the use of mandatory arbitration to resolve workplace disputes. Typically, an employer will make it a condition of employment that employees must agree to arbitrate any claims arising out of the job, including claims based on statutory rights against discrimination, instead of going to court. On the face of it, this is a brazen affront to public policy. Citizens are being deprived of the forum provided them by law. And indeed numerous scholars and public and private bodies have condemned the use of mandatory arbitration. Yet the insight of that …


Truth And Its Rivals In The Law Of Hearsay And Confrontation (Symposium: Truth And Its Rivals: Evidence Reform And The Goals Of Evidence Law)." , Richard D. Friedman Jan 1998

Truth And Its Rivals In The Law Of Hearsay And Confrontation (Symposium: Truth And Its Rivals: Evidence Reform And The Goals Of Evidence Law)." , Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In this paper, I will look at the problem of hearsay and confrontation through the lens offered by this symposium's theme of "truth and its rivals." I will ask: To what extent does the law of hearsay and confrontation aspire to achieve the goal of truth in litigation? To what extent does it, or should it, seek to achieve other goals, or to satisfy other constraints on the litigation system? And, given the ends that it seeks to achieve, what should the shape of the law in this area be? My principal conclusions are as follows: In most settings, the …


Confrontation: The Search For Basic Principles, Richard D. Friedman Jan 1998

Confrontation: The Search For Basic Principles, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the accused in a criminal prosecution the right "to be confronted with the Witnesses against him."' The Confrontation Clause clearly applies to those witnesses who testify against the accused at trial. Moreover, it is clear enough that confrontation ordinarily includes the accused's right to have those witnesses brought "face-toface," in the time-honored phrase, when they testify.2 But confrontation is much more than this "face-to-face" right. It also comprehends the right to have witnesses give their testimony under oath and to subject them to crossexamination. 3 Indeed, the Supreme Court has treated the accused's …


The New York Court Of Appeals: 150 Years Of Leading Decisions, Stewart E. Sterk Jan 1998

The New York Court Of Appeals: 150 Years Of Leading Decisions, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

During its first 150 years, the New York Court of Appeals has had more impact on more areas of law than any other court in the United States. Other state courts-the California Supreme Court in the Traynor era, the New Jersey Supreme Court under Chief Justice Weintraub, to take two obvious examples-have had enormous impact, but no other state court has generated leading case after leading case in every decade for 150 years. Federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court, have had an enormous impact on American law, but that impact has been concentrated in public law; no federal …