Law and Society Commons^™

Rhetoric Of Silence: Some Reflections On Law, Literature, And Social Violence, James A. Epstein

Vanderbilt Law Review

Martha Minow suggests the importance of looking outside of court-rooms and the law to find ways of speaking about social and family violence. Her article underscores the difficulties of breaking silence, and yet the power to impose silence is integral to violence itself. We are called upon, however, not only to speak, but to listen. Respectful listening indeed may be a prerequisite to attempting to frame words and actions of intervention and resistance. We are called upon to speak, but we are hard pressed to summon public language that does justice to private pain and anguish.

Robert Cover, in his …

Law, Literature, And Social Change: Foreword, Sharon A. Mattingly

Vanderbilt Law Review

FOREWORD: Interpreting the meaning of words, whether those words compose a precedent-setting case or a newly enacted statute, is an integral part of the law. Furthermore, the impact of legal texts clearly extends beyond the legal discipline and permeates all layers of society. But from where do we derive the meaning of words and texts? Is the text itself the source of meaning, or is the text an embodiment of a meaning, the source of which is society? What determines textual interpretations-the historical roots of the text itself, the historical gloss of prior interpretations, the private experiences that each new …

Afterword: Voices And Violence--A Dialogue, Ellen W. Clayton, Jay Clayton

Vanderbilt Law Review

WE: When organizing this Symposium on the topic of "Law, Literature,and Social Change," we asked whether current trends in literature and in literary, social, and legal theory actually could play a role in bringing about social change. The authors gathered at this Symposium responded to this question in very different ways. As we read their articles and comments, however, and as we talked about their various approaches, some common themes began to emerge. Narrative seemed important. The way people split public life off from private experience came up frequently. But violence seemed to be on everyone's mind.

IT: Why violence? …

Social Violence And Political Representation, Michael Ryan

Vanderbilt Law Review

If I were to sum up the revolution that has occurred in the humanities (and increasingly in the social sciences) in the past two decades, it would be to say that what was before seen as substance is now seen as representation. One could expand on that statement in several ways:what was before seen as nature or reason is now seen as convention or artifact; what was before a logic of necessity is now a highly contingent,even random relation of terms whose connections obey no necessary order; what was before a ground or foundation from which reasonable derivatives could be …

To Quote Or Not To Quote: The Status Of Misquoted Material In Defamation Law, Sharon A. Mattingly

Vanderbilt Law Review

To quote or not to quote' is no longer a valid question in defamation law because courts have lessened the burden on writers to use the exact words of the speaker in quoted language. If individuals feel that the press has misquoted them, they have three realistic options: First,ignore the misquotation; second, contact the media and request a re-traction; and third, file a lawsuit claiming defamation and seeking monetary damages.' The first alternative is the easiest, but given the emotional overtones of defamation, it is also the most unlikely. If the media were more sensitive and less defensive, the second …

Damages For Emotional Distress In Fraud Litigation: Dignitary Torts In A Commercial Society, Andrew L. Merritt

Vanderbilt Law Review

One of the most dynamic developments in modern tort law has been the increased focus on damages for emotional distress. During the past few decades courts have fashioned several new tort theories to allow recovery of emotional distress damages as independent causes of action. At the same time, lobbyists and legislators have attacked these damages for contributing to "runaway" jury verdicts. As a result of these attacks, a growing number of states are enacting statutes that limit recovery of emotional distress damages in traditional tort are as such as medical malpractice. Thus, damages for emotional distress are at a crossroads …

Making Society's Legal System Accessible To Society: The Lawyer's Role And Its Implications, L. Harold Levinson

Vanderbilt Law Review

During the past two decades the legal profession has been remarkably, even frantically active in examining and drafting standards of professional conduct. The American Bar Association (ABA) adopted the Code of Professional Responsibility in 1970. Most states adopted the Code with relatively minor variations during the 1970s. The ABA repealed the Code in 1983 and adopted, in its place, the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. By the beginning of 1988 one-half of the states had implemented the Model Rules, with significant variations from the ABA version in some of these states, while the remaining states either had rejected the Model …

The Unique, Novel, And Unsound Adversary Ethic, Thomas L. Shaffer

Vanderbilt Law Review

The dominant ethic in the American legal profession in 1988 is the adversary ethic. The adversary ethic, in the words of the late Justice Abe Fortas, claims that "[l]awyers are agents, not principals; and they should neither criticize nor tolerate criticism based upon the character of the client whom they represent or the cause that they prosecute or defend. They cannot and should not accept responsibility for the client's practices." This ethic is the principal-and often the only-reference point in professional discussions. Although it is embedded in our professional codes, our cases, and our law offices, this Article argues that …

The Law: From A Profession To A Business, Norman Bowie

Vanderbilt Law Review

The public believes that the practice of law has become a business.They also believe that lawyers are in the profession for the money and that everything a law firm does is motivated by greed-well not every-hing, in L.A. Law lawyers are motivated by greed and lust. Allegedly,lawyers overcharge, create work, and delay in order to make more money. In return lawyers produce nothing useful; they do not make cars, steel, or heavy machinery. They are perceived by many as social parasites who make a handsome living off the productive labor of others. Economists note that the United States' workforce has …

Privatization And Prisons, E. S. Savas

Vanderbilt Law Review

"Privatization" means increased governmental reliance on the private sector, rather than on government agencies, to satisfy the needs of society. Since the word was first used in 1969,' privatization has gained broad recognition and widespread acceptance, and,in recent years, a major trend toward privatization has developed in the United States and abroad. The reasons for this trend are both pragmatic and ideological. Pragmatists advocate privatization because it offers a more efficient way to provide goods and services. Ideological opponents of big government support privatization be-cause it reduces the role of government. Privatization is therefore an important movement in East and …

The Political Economy Of Co-Financing America's Urban Renaissance, Robin P. Malloy

Vanderbilt Law Review

America's urban centers are experiencing a renaissance of sorts that reflects the vitality of a renewed interest in the city.Dynamic growth and revitalization of the central city have emerged since the 1970s as key focal points for investment and development, replacing years of investing primarily in suburbanization. The emerging activity in America's urban down towns has been more than an isolated or segmented investment in office buildings. With strong political support and the emergence of an affluent group of new urbanites, some central cities are said to be transforming into entirely new urban environments where people not only work, but …

Defending Miranda: A Reply To Professor Caplan, Welsh S. White

Vanderbilt Law Review

Professor Caplan yearns for the good old days "when the police enjoyed greater public confidence" and, in accordance with the tactics recommended in the police manuals, it was acceptable "for an investigator to talk sharply to the suspect or glare at him or sit too closely or withhold cigarettes, or, from the opposite vantage, to pretend to be a sympathetic friend or a concerned coreligionist."'Thus, Professor Caplan attacks the Miranda decision on the ground that "by introducing novel conceptions of the proper relationship between the suspect and authority," Miranda operates to subvert the principal function of the criminal process, the …

How Serious Is Serious Crime?, Albert J. Reiss, Jr.

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article examines the information systems that are available to the American public. Part H of the Article discusses crime information sources and limitations arising from their excessive dependence upon the same sources of information. Parts III and IV of the Article focus on the information and methods that American society depends upon to determine the amount and seriousness of"serious" crime. These parts of the Article criticize society's present modes of crime assessment by evaluating public perceptions of crime under several standards for determining the amount of harm that results from different criminal acts. In part V, the Article examines …

Deterrence, Death, And The Victims Of Crime: A Common Sense Approach, Frank G. Carrington

Vanderbilt Law Review

The concept of deterrence is one of the most important in the formulations of the victim advocate, primarily because of two essential premises that underlie the entire field of victim advocacy.The first, but not necessarily the most important, of these premises concerns the policy that favors assuaging the plight of persons after they have been victimized. This relief can be provided in a number of different ways: compensation to innocent victims from the states; restitution to victims as a condition of granting probation to the criminal; victim counselling; and victim/witness assistance programs.' The second premise of victim advocacy, namely,preventing victimization …

The Decline Of The Rehabilitative Ideal: Penal Policy And Social Idea, Louis A. Jacobs

Vanderbilt Law Review

In his most recent contribution Professor Francis Allen suggests that the rehabilitative ideal can flourish only in a particular kind of society. He observes that today's American society lacks the nourishing characteristics that once fed that ideal; consequently, the ideal has withered. This argument is concisely and precisely constructed in The Decline of the Rehabilitative Ideal, a book derived from the 1979 Starrs Lectures on Jurisprudence at Yale Law School. Rather than describe the extent of the decline, Professor Allen focuses on the nexus raised in the book's subtitle--penal policy and social purpose. As social purpose evolved (perhaps "devolved"is more …

Youth Crime And Urban Policy: A View From The Inner City, Diana R. Gordon

Vanderbilt Law Review

One does not expect to be mesmerized by a book entitled Youth Crime and Urban Policy: A View from the Inner City. Yet this volume, compiled from the proceedings of a May 1980 conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) proves to be a powerful testament to the plight of the dweller in America's crime-plagued inner-city neighborhoods. Because Robert Woodson has edited the comments of the conference's participants with a light hand, the book gives the reader the power of voices from the street-voices of people who are trying daily to stem the tide of …

Witness For The Defense: A Right To Immunity, Robin D. Mass

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note has outlined various constitutional arguments that the criminal defendant can invoke in support of an application for witness immunity.First, the Note relies on the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Nixon for its argument that courts should use a flexible separation of powers approach in the context of witness immunity grants. While the Nixon Court accepted the notion that separation of powers protects the decision making authority of the individual branches of government from infringement by the other branches, it observed that the doctrine does not enforce an absolute executive privilege. Thus, the separation of powers doctrine …

Point, Counterpoint: The Evolution Of American Political Philosophy, William H. Rehnquist

Vanderbilt Law Review

I would suggest to you that during the more than two centuries that have elapsed since the American Revolution, American political philosophy has been notable principally for the contrapuntal themes that rise and fall as the nation matures. Numerous commentators have pointed out that certain ideals have long been widely shared by Americans: individual autonomy, liberty, equality, and a belief in limited, decentralized government.1 But no one would be so bold as to describe the present government of the United States as embodying those ideals. We have a strong national government that, with occasional lapses, impinges more and more on …

Categories And The First Amendment: A Play In Three Acts, Frederick Schauer

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the foregoing pages I have attempted to flesh out three different aspects of what has been broadly called "categorization."Implicit in this project is the premise that it is often quite revealing to search for important differences in the face of superficial similarity. Very often, however, when we search for differences we may discover additional points of similarity that are not at first apparent. This seems to be the case here, in that one recurrent feature is what one might inelegantly call "learnability." The concept of learnability is comprehensible only in the con-text of a separation of roles.' Thus, if …

The Interface Of Myth And Practice In Law, Frederick Schauer

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article has analyzed and critiqued the myth of law as rules and contrasted it with a view of law as a process of responsible decision making. The operational code of this process requires that the lawyer recognize his role as decision maker and the necessary ramifications of personal choice and responsibility inherent in that role. Yet the individual who resists embracing the code, and who seeks instead the holy grail, may only be clamoring for fulfillment of the myth system. If his commitment to the significance of the myth does not impede his education as decision maker or his …

Recent Publications, Paul Heng-Chao Chen, Paul Hoffman, Gilbert Sharpe, Glenn Sawyer, Leon Friedman, Catharine A. Mackinnon, Edward Dumbauld

Vanderbilt Law Review

Chinese Legal Tradition Under the Mongols: The Code of 1291 as Reconstructed. By Paul Heng-chao Ch'en

The author's analysis of the "New Code" leads him to two conclusions: that the Yuan penal system was more lenient than its predecessors in imposing lesser punishments for minor offenses, and that the Mongol-Chinese partnership of the Yuan dynasty developed one of the most impressive and mature judicial systems that imperial China ever had for the administration of justice. He therefore argues that Chinese law in the time of Marco Polo was much less barbaric than has traditionally been thought.

Courthouse. By Paul Hoffman. …

Regulation Of Programming Content To Protect Children After Pacifica, Dabney E. Bragg

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note examines the "protect the children" rationale as justification for the regulation of program content to determine if it is likely to withstand future challenges. Initially, the Note reviews the Pacifica decisions to illustrate how the rationale recently has been employed. The Note then considers this rationale in light of traditional first amendment analysis and the interface of that analysis with the rights of children, concluding that the rationale does not justify abridgment of the first amendment. The Note then considers the effect of broadcasting's "unique characteristics" upon this analysis, concluding that this added element does not tip the …

Justice On The Tennessee Frontier: The Williamson County Circuit Court 1810-1820, Cornelia A. Clark

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Note examines the history of one early nineteenth-century circuit court and the caliber of its bench and bar. To analyze the workings of that court, this Note applies the analytical framework adopted by Friedman, Blume, and other historians to the raw data provided by a study of the Williamson County Circuit Court records. In each of several substantive areas for which the court's records provide information, the Note first considers Friedman's generalizations about nineteenth-century law and then interprets the Williamson County data in the light of those generalizations and the results of other case studies. This Note proceeds on …

Race, Property Rights, And The Economic Consequences Of Reconstruction: A Case Study, Robert J. Haws, Michael V. Namorato

Vanderbilt Law Review

In assessing the problems of race and debtor relief in Mississippi during Reconstruction, it is clear that, on the local level, the Lafayette County court system, as represented by the Lafayette county court, effectively carried out an institutional framework established by the Mississippi legislature and the Mississippi Supreme Court in which the freedman was denied any meaningful role and/or opportunity in the economic environment of the community.In doing so, the county court system, by allegedly protecting the rights of private property, helped stifle the economic recovery of Lafayette County and, inferentially, the State as a whole. Moreover, by quickly acting …

Comment: Law And Disorder In Nineteenth-Century Kentucky, Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau

Vanderbilt Law Review

Robert M. Ireland's Article, "Law and Disorder in Nineteenth-Century Kentucky," centers on the state constitutional conventions of 1849 and 1890-1891, spiced with newspaper accounts, statutes,court cases, and legislative records. He has said that his Article presents a preliminary overview of some of the principal problems of the criminal justice system of nineteenth-century Kentucky. I hope this means he intends to continue his study so that soon we can expect a full examination of the criminal justice system in that state. I also hope that other scholars then will be inspired by his example to examine other contemporary state criminal justice …

Essays On Problems And Prospects In Southern Legal History, Kermit L. Hall

Vanderbilt Law Review

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., once urged historians to study the law because it offered a magic mirror whose reflections divulged fundamental social values.' Holmes' plea on behalf of the utility of legal history has relevance for southerners intrigued by the possibility of their historical distinctiveness. Without a basis of comparison, however, the search for southern exceptionality becomes a quest after the arcane. As C. Vann Woodward observed,southern history ought to tell all Americans, not southerners alone,something about their common pasts. Woodward argued that attaining this goal was entirely feasible, since certain aspects of the southern past, such as slavery …

Comment: Southern Violence-Regional Problem Or National Nemesis?: Legal Attitudes Toward Southern Homicide In Historical Perspective, Dennis R. Nolan

Vanderbilt Law Review

The preceding pages should indicate that Southern Violence is a disappointment to those of us whose expectations had been raised by Professor Brown's earlier works and to those who are interested in his stated topic. It is a thoroughly unfocused, loose collection of facts and incidents that will interest only those with a curiosity about Alabama's Chief Justice Stone or the Texas law of self-defense. The paper does contain several seeds of thought that might,if given adequate attention, grow into testable hypotheses. Those hypotheses will be hard to evaluate, but they are of immense importance because they concern the fundamental …

Comment: Race, Property Rights, And The Economic Consequences Of Reconstruction, Robert B. Jones

Vanderbilt Law Review

Professors Haws and Namorato are to be praised for their pioneer work in studying the operation of a county court system in the Reconstruction era. They break new historical ground in this effort that has the potential for greatly contributing to the study of the legal history of the South. More scholars must engage in this endeavor if the field of legal history is to reach its full maturity. While their efforts are to be complimented it must be pointed out, however, that they generally fail to make their case in this Article. They do not show a significant link …

Recent Publications, Journal Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Bar Admission Rules and Student Practice Rules

Edited by Fannie J. Klein with contributions by Ms. Klein, Steven H. Leleiko, and Jane H. Mavity

In this single volume, the Council on Legal Education for Professional Responsibility provides the first comprehensive collection of state and federal bar admission and law student practice rules. - - - - - - - - -

Desegregation from Brown to Alexander: An Exploration of Supreme Court Strategies

By Stephen Wasby, Anthony D'Amato,and Rosemary Metrailer.

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (Brown I) held that "separate" education for blacks …

Corporal Punishment In Public Schools: Constitutional Challenge After Ingraham V. Wright, Charles L. Schlumberger

Vanderbilt Law Review

Corporal punishment has been employed to maintain discipline and order in American schools since the colonial period.' During that era, the practice was not restricted to the classroom: corporal punishment was the generally accepted mode of correction for practically every civil and criminal offense. Attitudes toward correction did not begin to change until after the American Revolution. Since then, corporal punishment has been steadily discarded as a method of correction in both prisons and the military. Despite discontinuance in these areas, corporal punishment remains a well-established facet of the American educational process. Only a few states and municipalities have legislative …