Courts Commons^™

The Scope Of Employer Liability For Employee Exposure To A Hazardous Substance: No Harm, No Foul? An Analysis Of Metro-North Commuter R.R. Co. V. Buckley, Barbara J. Fick

Journal Articles

This article previews the Supreme Court case Metro-North Commuter R.R. Co. v. Buckley, 521 U.S. 424 (1997). The author expected the Court to decide whether a railroad worker who is covered by the Federal Employer's Liability Act who has been exposed to asbestos because of employer negligence but who has not developed an asbestos-related disease can recover damages for emotional distress caused by the exposure.

Form Contracts Under Revised Article 2 (Symposium: Consumer Protection And The Uniform Commercial Code), James J. White

Articles

The current draft of section 2-206 in Revised Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code ("UCC") entitled "Consumer Contract: Standard Form"1 presents a unique and threatening challenge to the drafters of consumer form contracts. In earlier drafts, one part of the section applied to both to commercial contracts and consumer contracts. It required that "one manifest assent" to any form contract, commercial or consumer, in order for it to be binding.2 Bowing to commercial opposition in the most recent version, the drafters have omitted all reference to commercial contracts. As the section stands, it applies only to consumer contracts.

Suggestions For Studying The Federal Appellate System, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

The United States Congress recently authorized the appointment of a Commission on Structural Alternatives for the Federal Courts of Appeals. That entity has an historic opportunity to analyze carefully the federal appellate system and make valuable suggestions for improvement, thereby charting the destiny of the intermediate appeals courts for the twenty-first century. The creation of this new commission is important because now is a critical time for the appellate courts. All twelve regional circuits have experienced exponential docket growth but have possessed insufficient resources to treat the cases: this crisis of volume now seriously threatens the system.

This Article initially …

Unraveling The Tangled Web: Choosing The Proper Statute Of Limitation For Breach Of The Implied Covenant Of Good Faith And Fair Dealing, Tyler T. Ochoa, Andrew Wistrich

Faculty Publications

In this article, we first will review the general principles applicable to classification of claims for limitation purposes and the various statutes which could be applied to breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. We then will examine cases in which the statute of limitation for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing was at issue and analyze what limitation period, rules of accrual and tolling doctrines are appropriate in the absence of contractual modification. Finally, we will analyze the extent to which contractual modification of the limitation period, rules of accrual …

Congressional Self-Discipline: The Constitutionality Of Supermajority Rules, Susan Low Bloch

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Congress needs to be more disciplined. It has at times become sloppy and even cavalier. When, for example, Congress enacted the federal Gun-Free School Zone Act of 1990, it was asking for trouble. Neither the legislation nor the legislative history said anything about any effect on interstate commerce. It was therefore not surprising to see the Supreme Court strike the law down in United States v. Lopez.

Book Review Of The Sourcebook Of Federal Courts, U.S. District And Bankruptcy, James S. Heller

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Making Constitutional Doctrine In A Realist Age, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this article the author considers three examples of modern constitutional doctrine that show how judges have stolen bits and pieces from popularized skepticisms about the job of judging and have molded this stolen rhetoric into doctrine. In the first example, she asks whether constitutional law's recent penchant for doctrinal rules based on "clear law" could have existed without the modern age's obsession with legal uncertainty. In the second, the author considers whether our contemporary rhetoric of constitutional "interests" and "expectations" reflects modern critiques of doctrine as failing to address social needs. In the third, she asks how an offhand …

The Armstrong Principle, The Narratives Of Takings, And Compensation Statutes, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment is famous for inspiring disagreement. More than one hundred years have passed since the Supreme Court departed from the original understanding of the clause and interpreted regulations as potentially falling within its ambit. Although the passage of time has established the principle that regulations can run afoul of the Takings Clause, the Court has been unable to offer a coherent vision of when compensation is required. Academic commentators also have failed to reach agreement on the issue, offering an enormous range of solutions to the takings question. The newest field of controversy involves …

Dedication To Professor Ralph W. Johnson, David H. Getches

Publications

No abstract provided.

Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied: May A Prisoner's Challenge To Parole Revocation Be Delayed Until The Sentence Is Completed And Then Dismissed As Moot?, Jimmy Gurulé

Journal Articles

A preview of Spencer v. Kemna, a 1997 Supreme Court case where a prison inmate challenged the revocation of his parole by the state of Missouri. This case is significant because the inmate initiated his challenge while in prison and continued it after he had served his sentence and was released. Substantial confusion exists in case law regarding whether such a challenge would be considered moot after the inmate had completed serving his or her sentence. At issue is if the “collateral consequences” rule applies to challenges against parole revocations. The Court has ruled that challenges by individuals against their …

Recent Developments In American Indian Law

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

The New Requirement Of Enforcement Reliance In Commercial Promissory Estoppel: Section 90 As Catch-22, Sidney Delong

Faculty Articles

Any comprehensive examination of recent appellate court decisions will disclose that the legal doctrine of promissory estoppel has not become a significant source of commercial contractual obligation. Although commercial promissory estoppel claims are often made, plaintiff victories are very rare. These results are difficult to reconcile with frequent scholarly contentions to the effect that contemporary courts have become more receptive to claims of promissory estoppel and have liberalized its doctrinal requirements. More important, the promisor behavior that is incidentally disclosed in reported opinions also undermines academic arguments that rules providing for promissory estoppel have commercial utility. The decisions suggest that …

Judicial Review As A Tool For The Safeguard Of Human Rights: Prospects And Problems Of The U.S. Model In Malawi, Janet Laura Banda

LLM Theses and Essays

Judicial review is a judicial action that involves the review of an inferior legislative or executive act for conformity with a higher legal norm, with the possibility that the inferior norm may be invalidated or suspended if necessary. Although judicial review has been explicitly provided for in some written post-independence African constitutions, such review has not developed into a significant principle of African juridical democracy. This lack of development can be attributed to the emergence of dictatorships in the post-colonial era. However, Malawi’s weak judiciary system was remedied by the 1994 Constitution which gave the Malawian judiciary a central position, …

International Jurisdiction In Products Liability Cases (Analysis Of Asahi And Post-Asahi Cases), Tsutomu Kuribayashi

LLM Theses and Essays

With the increase of foreign trade, there has also been an increase in the number of foreign manufacturers and distributors involved in product liability litigation in the United States. In many cases, the products from these foreign manufacturers and distributors reach the forum states through the stream of commerce, and are distributed to the customers by regional distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. Therefore, in many product liability cases where defective products from these foreign manufacturers and distributors cause injuries to people in the United States, those foreign companies do not have a direct relationship with the forum states. In these cases, …

The Issue Of The Legal Validity Of Using Economic Sanctions To Enforce Human Rights, Thomas Hailu

LLM Theses and Essays

The international legal regime as it pertains to human rights is neither as established nor as definitive as it appears. It suffers from many disadvantages, the first and most important of which is the fact that the international legal regime has never been capable of effectively enforcing its rules or instituting appropriate remedies for its breaches. Some states have attempted to make up for this inability on behalf of international law by undertaking an enforcement mechanism either unilaterally or multilaterally; economic sanctions are often regarded as valuable tools of enforcement to be used against countries which are allegedly engaged in …

Some Cautions About Structural Overhaul Of The Federal Courts, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Once a Century: Time for a Structural Overhaul of the Federal Courts substantially improves understanding of the federal judicial system. Professor Martha Dragich first clearly describes the phenomena which she attributes to unprecedented increases in the number of appeals since the 1960s. The writer asserts that this "crisis of volume" has compromised "appellate justice" and made federal case law less "coherent." Because Professor Dragich finds that appeals courts' dual responsibilities to correct error in specific cases and to declare the law have also decreased justice and coherence, she proposes the creation of District Court Appellate Panels for correcting error and …

Some Realism About Federal Procedural Reform, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

A New Confederacy? Disunionism in the Federal Courts is a thought-provoking tour de force about many ills that federal court observers believe plague the modem federal district courts. In Disunionism, Professor Paul Carrington paints a perceptive portrait of the troubling conditions that he asserts impede civil litigation in a number of districts, and he trenchantly criticizes district judges for their contributions to these circumstances while admonishing the Judicial Conference to sweep "our national courts clear of all local clutter."

Legal Ordering Of Family Values: The Case Of Gay And Lesbian Families, Craig W. Christensen

Cardozo Law Review

In the ordinary course of events, an adoption proceeding in the New York County Surrogate's Court is an unlikely candidate for attention in the editorial pages of the New York Times. But In re the Adoption of a Child Whose First Name is Evan was not an everyday proceeding, as Times columnist Anna Quindlen observed.

Comment On Burbank And Silberman, William W. Schwarzer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sacrificing Legislative Integrity An The Altar Of Appropriations Riders: A Constitutional Crisis, Sandra B. Zellmer

Faculty Law Review Articles

No abstract provided.

Police Discretion And The Quality Of Life In Public Places: Courts, Communities, And The New Policing, Debra A. Livingston

Faculty Scholarship

The advent of community and problem-oriented policing – the so-called "quality-of-life" policing philosophies – raises complex questions concerning police discretion in addressing minor street misconduct and judicial response to that discretion. In this Article, Debra Livingston addresses these questions by reassessing the ways in which courts have employed the facial vagueness doctrine to limit police discretion in the performance of "order maintenance" tasks. Livingston contends that aggressive employment of the facial vagueness doctrine is an inadequate mechanism for limiting police discretion and at the same time could impair positive change in the direction of community and problem-oriented policing. As an …

The Evolution Of Adolescence: A Developmental Perspective On Juvenile Justice Reform, Elizabeth S. Scott, Thomas Grisso

Faculty Scholarship

The legal response to juvenile crime is undergoing revolutionary change, and its ultimate shape is uncertain. The traditional juvenile court, grounded in optimism about the potential for rehabilitation of young offenders, has long been the target of criticism, and even its defenders have been forced to acknowledge that it has failed to meet its objectives. Beginning in the late 1960s, when the Supreme Court introduced procedural regularity to delinquency proceedings in In re Gault, courts and legislatures began to slowly chip away at the foundations of the juvenile justice system. Recent developments have accelerated and intensified that process, as …

The Bylaw Battlefield: Can Institutions Change The Outcome Of Corporate Control Contests?, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

What, if anything, can institutional investors do to influence the course and outcome of corporate control contests? The traditional answer was relatively little. To be sure, institutions could tender their shares in a tender offer or vote in a proxy contest to oust the incumbent board, but such a role was essentially reactive and contingent. It required that an offer actually be made before institutions could respond on an after-the-fact basis. Similarly, institutions have occasionally conducted precatory proxy campaigns calling upon the board to redeem its poison pill, but management was free to ignore these requests (and has done so).

The Charter Dialogue Between Courts And Legislatures (Or Perhaps The Charter Of Rights Isn't Such A Bad Thing After All), Peter W. Hogg, Allison A. Bushell

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article responds to the argument that judicial review of legislation under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is illegitimate because it is undemocratic. The authors show that Charter cases nearly always can be, and often are, followed by new legislation that still accomplishes the same objectives as the legislation that was struck down. The effect of the Charter is rarely to block a legislative objective, but rather to influence the design of implementing legislation. Charter cases cause a public debate in which Charter-protected rights have a more prominent role than they would have if there had been no …

Un Commission To Rule On Extent Of Corporate Claims Against Iraq, Roger P. Alford, Anthony Gardner, Richard Weiner

Journal Articles

The U N Compensation Commission set up to investigate Gulf War claims must make sure that pre-invasion Iraqi debts are given the same importance as war damage, argue Anthony Gardner, Roger Alford and Richard Weiner, of Hogan & Hartson LLP, Brussels and Washington.

Transcript For The Future Of The Federal Courts, William H. Rehnquist, Sarah Evans Barker, Edward R. Becker, Claudio Grossman, Stephen Reinhardt, Ira P. Robbins

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Outlaw Judiciary: On Lies, Secrets, And Silence: The Florida Supreme Court Deals With Death Row Claims Of Actual Innocence, Michael Mello

City University of New York Law Review

No abstract provided.

Impermeable Federalism, Pragmatic Silence, And The Long Range Plan For The Federal Courts, Lauren K. Robel

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: The Indiana Law Journal Forum on the Long Range Plan for the Federal Courts

Proposed Long Range Plan For The Federal Courts: Ambition Or Abdication?, Myra C. Selby

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: The Indiana Law Journal Forum on the Long Range Plan for the Federal Courts

Federal Court Long Range Planning: Fine Lines And Tightropes, Sarah Evans Barker

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: The Indiana Law Journal Forum on the Long Range Plan for the Federal Courts