Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Prosecutors' Peremptory Challenges - A Response And Reply, Lynn A. Helland, Sheldon N. Light, William J. Richards

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

Three federal trial attorneys disagree with Professor Richard Friedman's proposal to eliminate the prosecution's peremptories, while Friedman defends his view.

Books Received, Michigan Journal Of International Law

Michigan Journal of International Law

List of books received by the Journal.

Imagining The Law, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

My aim in this paper is to trace out a certain line of thought about what it might mean to think of law rhetorically. In doing this I shall be resisting the impulse, quite common in our culture, to see the law from the outside, as a kind of intellectual and social bureaucracy; rather I am interested in seeing it from the inside, as it appears to one who is practicing or teaching it. Throughout I shall conceive of the law as a system of discourse that the lawyer and judge must learn and use, and of which we can …

Controlling Inadvertent Ambiguity In The Logical Structure Of Legal Drafting By Means Of The Prescribed Definitions Of The A-Hohfeld Structural Language, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon

Articles

Two principal sources of imprecision in legal drafting (vagueness and ambiguity) are identified and illustrated. Virtually all of the ambiguity imprecision encountered in legal discourse is ambiguity in the language used to express logical structure, and virtually all of· the imprecision resulting is inadvertent. On the other hand, the imprecision encountered in legal writing that results from vagueness is frequently, if not most often, included there deliberately; the drafter has considered it and decided that the vague language· best accomplishes the purpose at hand. This paper focuses on the use of some defined terminology for minimizing inadvertent ambiguity in the …

Eleonora V. Eckert, Kent D. Syverud, Gregory P. Magarian, Christina B. Whitman, Rodney D. Martin

Michigan Law Review

Tributes to Eleonora V. Eckert

Mad Midwifery: Bringing Theory, Doctrine, And Practice To Life, Barbara Bennett Woodhouse

Michigan Law Review

I share Judge Edwards' concern about the health of legal education and about lawyers as a force in society. I differ, however, in defining the sickness and prescribing the cure, at least when it comes to teaching. In my view, we need to integrate, not to dichotomize and polarize further, the practical and the impractical, the doctrinal and the theoretical. His critique, and my intuitive response to it, challenged me to examine and articulate where we disagree, based on what I have learned in my five years in the classroom and what it is I hope to accomplish in my …

Lawyers, Scholars, And The "Middle Ground", Robert W. Gordon

Michigan Law Review

The Judge seems to be arguing that both teachers and firm lawyers have been seduced from their real vocation by the fatal attraction of neighboring cultures: the practitioners by the commercial culture of their business clients, the academics by the disciplinary paradigms and prestige of theory in the rest of the university. The "deserted middle ground" is the ground of professional practice - practical, yet also public-minded. Perhaps without straining his thesis too far we could ascribe to Judge Edwards a "republican" view of the legal profession, in which legal scholars, practitioners, judges, legislators, and administrators - despite their separate …

The Growth Of Interdisciplinary Research And The Industrial Structure Of The Production Of Legal Ideas: A Reply To Judge Edwards, George L. Priest

Michigan Law Review

This brief response will attempt to repair these various deficiencies, though only in part because of the difficulty of the subject. It will try to explain more fully the rise of interdisciplinary legal research and will sketch the broader structure of the production and dissemination of new ideas about law and the legal system. The relationship between legal education and legal practice implicates an understanding of the "market" for legal ideas. To describe ideas as the subject of a "market," of course, has become conventional. In my view, however, the market metaphor most typically distorts our understanding of the issue, …

Judge Edwards' Indictment Of "Impractical" Scholars: The Need For A Bill Of Particulars, Sanford Levinson

Michigan Law Review

I can summarize my response as follows: Although Judge Edwards' article certainly seems to be leveling a heartfelt indictment, it lacks a sufficiently precise bill of particulars to know exactly whom he has accused of doing what. Nor does one know exactly what penalty Judge Edwards would exact from the miscreants. Unless he supplies such a bill, his indictment should be dismissed, though, presumably, without prejudice to its reinstatement should he wish to do the hard work of supplying evidence for the charges he set out.

Why Do Jury Research?, Richard O. Lempert

Book Chapters

Inside the Juror presents the most interesting and sophisticated work to date on juror decision making from several traditions - social psychology, behavioural decision theory, cognitive psychology, and behavioural modeling. The authors grapple with crucial questions, such as: why do jurors who hear the same evidence and arguments in the courtroom enter the jury room with disagreements about the proper verdict? how do biases and prejudices affect jurors' decisions? and just how 'rational' is the typical juror? As an introduction to the scientific study of juror decision making in criminal trials, Inside the Juror provides a comprehensive and understandable summary …

Books Received, Michigan Journal Of International Law

Michigan Journal of International Law

List of books received by the Journal.

Some Steps Between Attitudes And Verdicts, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Book Chapters

Most research that has attempted to predict verdict preferences on the basis of stable juror characteristics, such as attitudes and personality traits, has found that individual differences among jurors are not very useful predictors, accounting for only a small proportion of the variance in verdict choices. Some commentators have therefore concluded that verdicts are overwhelmingly accounted for by "the weight of the evidence," and that differences among jurors have negligible effects. But there is a paradox here: In most cases the weight of the evidence is insufficient to produce firstballot unanimity in the jury (Hans & Vidmar, 1986; Hastie, Penrod, …

Law Teachers' Writing, James Boyd White

Michigan Law Review

Judge Edwards divides scholarship into the theoretical and the practical, and, while conceding the place and value of both, argues that there is today too much of the former, too little of the latter. The result, he says, is an increasing and unfortunate divide between the life of law practice and the writing of law teachers. One can understand his complaint readily enough, especially coming as it does from an overworked judge. I myself have had perceptions and feelings somewhat like those that seem to animate Judge Edwards, though I would express them differently: for me the relevant line is …

The Case Of The Disappearing Briefs: A Study In Preservation Strategy, Margaret A. Leary

Articles

Federal appellate court records and briefs are significant to researchers in many disciplines, but academic law libraries are discarding them. Ms. Leary chronicles the demise of paper holdings in law libraries, the rise of microforms, and the contents and usage of the National Archives and Records Administration's files. She then derives principles for preservation strategies that may apply to other categories of legal material.

Wayne R. Lafave: Search And Seizure Commentator At Work And Play, Yale Kamisar, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

Starting in 1969,1 we have had the honor and pleasure of co-authoring a goodly number of casebooks, texts, treatises, pocket parts, and annual supplements (more than twenty) with Wayne LaFave.2 On each occasion we have been impressed by the quality of his mind and the judiciousness of his temperament, and impressed as well (and sometimes amazed) by his speed and efficiency.

Oh No! A New Bluebook!, James D. Gordon Iii

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation

Accommodation And Satisfaction: Women And Men Lawyers And The Balance Of Work And Family, David L. Chambers

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

This article by Professor Chambers began with data from the periodic surveys of Law School alumni he has conducted. It is adapted from an article Professor Chambers published in the journal Law and Social Inquiry.

Women first entered the legal profession in large numbers in the 1970s. The same movement that brought them into the profession also sought to deliver messages to men that they ought to participate more in the raising of children. How, over the years that have followed, have men and women lawyers responded to the multiple roles of home and work? How satisfied are they with …

Books Received, Michigan Journal Of International Law

Michigan Journal of International Law

List of books received by the Journal.

Books Received, Michigan Journal Of International Law

Michigan Journal of International Law

List of books received by the Journal.

Tax Policy And Panda Bears, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

In this article, Professors Kahn and Lehman argue that the concept of tax expenditures is flawed as a tool for measuring the propriety of tax provisions. It assumes the existence of one true and correct standard of dederal income taxation that applies to all circumstances. To make that assumption, the proponents of the concept implicitly make a particular moral claim about the relative importance of a wide range of values, including efficiency, consumption/savings neutrality, privacy, distributional equity, administrability, charity, and pragmatism. They then measure a tax provision's "normalcy"exclusively by how it conforms to their Platonic concept of income.

Professors Kahn …

Secondary Legal Sources: A Selected Subject Bibliography Of Treatises, Looseleaf Services And Form Books Sixth Edition, Rose Coad, Beth Mcwilliams

Law Library Publications

The sixth edition of this bibliography is a subject arrangement of selected English language treatises, looseleaf services and form books. Most of the works listed were published in this country, and all are in the collection of this law library.

The object in revising this bibliography has been to present to law students of the University of Michigan a reasonably thorough listing of useful and current secondary sources covering domestic and international law. The inclusion of a work in this bibliography does not mean the Law Library is endorsing either the author's sty le or the substance of the work. …

The Constitution As Literature, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

Although presumably no one would say that the Constitution offers its readers an experience that cannot be distinguished from reading a poem or a novel, there is nonetheless a sense in which it is a kind of highly imaginative literature in its own right (indeed its nature as law requires that this be so), the reading of which may be informed by our experience of other literary forms. But to say this may be controversial, and the first step toward understanding how such a claim can be made may be to ask what it is we think characterizes imaginative literature …

Translation As A Mode Of Thought, James Boyd White

Articles

I think that Clark Cunningham's article, The Lawyer as Translator, is a wonderful piece of work, full of life and interest and originality. I especially admire: his ability to make vivid to the reader the ways in which languages do truly differ, and differ beyond our efforts to bridge them-as he shows when he imagines an attempt to translate our most common professional terms into Chinese; his recoguition of the kind of force that our languages have over our minds, both as we see the world and as we tell stories about it; his sense that what we think of …

Evidentiary Rules And Rulings: The Role Of Treatises, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

I have devoted large gobs of time to work on a multi-author treatise on the law of evidence.' And before even one volume is published, I will devote further multiple gobs of time to the project-which, perhaps audaciously and perhaps merely foolishly, but with heredity and precedent on our side,2 we are calling The New Wigmore. Accordingly, I found the question posed by this symposium-Does Evidence Law Matter?-rather disquieting. If it is doubtful even whether the law of evidence matters, then how much can a treatise on the law of evidence matter, and how worthwhile can such a work be? …

On Coming Of Age: Twenty-Five Years Of The University Of Michigan Journal Of Law Reform, Francis A. Allen

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A reflection on the first twenty-five years of the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform.

Books Received, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A List of Books Received by the Michigan Law Review

Books Received, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A List of Books Received by the Michigan Law Review

Generalization In Interpretive Theory, Joseph Vining

Book Chapters

There are arguments at large about the nature of legal interpretation, proceeding from an implicit proposition that interpretation is the same phenomenon or experience whatever its setting. An assumption that there is one phenomenon can be found in discussions among lawyers of interpretation and in discussions among nonlawyers of legal interpretation -- and as often in the work of those who would deny there is any significance to theorizing about interpretation, as of those who think persuasion to a particular theory will have the utmost consequence for law and society.

Proceeding from such a proposition, rather than toward it, raises …

Automatic Generation Of A Legal Expert System, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon

Book Chapters

The use of the AUTOPROLOG system to generate automatically a legal expert system is described in this chapter. The interpretation of a statutory or other legal rule by one expert (or by the consensus of a group of experts) expressed in a normalized form is the only input needed by the AUTOPROLOG system (which includes Turbo Prolog, the AUTOPRO program, and some data files) to produce automatically a computer program that is an expert system for that legal rule. The process for producing a legal expert system for Section 213.1 of the Modal Penal Code, which deals with rape and …

Books Received, Michigan Journal Of International Law

Michigan Journal of International Law

List of books received by the Journal.