Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Discipline Of Clear Expression, Donald L. Burnett Jr.

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No abstract provided.

Francis A. Allen: 'Confront[Ing] The Most Explosive Problems' And 'Plumbing All Issues To Their Full Depth Without Fear Or Prejudice', Yale Kamisar

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Frank Allen began his distinguished teaching career more than thirty-five years ago - at a time when, at more law schools than we like to remember, "the basic criminal law course was routinely assigned to the youngest and most vulnerable member of the faculty or to that colleague suspected of mild brain damage and hence incompetent to deal with courses that really matter."' That those of us who taught criminal law years later were warmly received by our colleagues is in no small measure a tribute to the quality of mind and character and intellectual energy of people like Allen, …

Judicial Criticism, James Boyd White

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Today I shall talk about the criticism of judicial opinions, especially of constitutional opinions. This may at first seem to have rather little to do with our larger topic, "The Constitution and Human Values," but I hope that by the end I will be seen to be talking about that subject too. In fact I hope to show that in what I call our "criticism" our "values" are defined and made actual in most important ways.

How Should We Talk About Corporations? The Languages Of Economics And Of Citizenship, James Boyd White

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My immediate subject in this Comment is section 2.01 of the American Law Institute's proposed Principles of Corporate Governance (Tentative Draft No. 2), which defines in general terms the proper objectives and conduct of a business corporation. My larger subject has to do with the adequacy and inadequacy of various languages in which corporate pur­poses and limits might be expressed, and especially with the limits of the economic language used in the ALI Draft.

One Use Of Computerized Instructional Gaming In Legal Education: To Better Understand The Rich Logical Structure Of Legal Rules And Improve Legal Writing, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon

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This article describes an innovation in legal education and speculates about its importance and effectiveness as an educational tool. The speculations about its potential use, however, are ones that each legal educator will be able to test individually to determine the effectiveness of this use of microcomputers to improve legal education. The computer software that permits the innovation to be used will be available to interested persons by the time that this article is published.

Scholarly Books: What, To Whom And Why, James J. White

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A consideration of the role that the books reviewed in this edition will play in the future of American legal thought has led me to speculate about the transmission of ideas into acts and about the role of books in that transmission. In certain arenas, tracing an idea from its origins to its ultimate application is straightforward. For example, the evolution of Germany's Schlieffen plan for invading France can be traced with little difficulty from the circumstances responsible for its birth, through years of refinement, to its eventual application in World War I. The development and acceptance of a medical …

The Need For Clear Structure In 'Plain Language' Legal Drafting, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm

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Language is not simple. To pretend otherwise is to mislead. In practice the aspect that is handled most ineptly in written legal materials is the structure. The focus of this article is upon structure and how to improve it. At the outset, let one thing be absolutely clear. In seeking to achieve clarity of expression, those who have no more to recommend than short sentences, simple words, and readability formulas are offering a cracker in circumstances where a full gourmet feast is gleaming in the chef's eye for those with the wit but to ask for the menu. To practice …

On The Relevance Of Philosophy To Law: Reflections On Ackerman's Private Property And The Constitution, Philip E. Soper

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To turn to moral philosophy these days for help in trying to decide "what to do" is a bit like turning to recipe books for help in a famine. One soon discovers that most philosophers avoid ultimate questions about actual choices in actual cases, preferring to concentrate instead on a preliminary problem: how to go about thinking about what to do. One also discovers that philosophers who have written about this preliminary problem of the structure of moral inquiry are neatly divided, as logically they must be, into precisely two camps: those who do and those who do not think …

Normalized Legal Drafting And The Query Method, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm

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Normalized legal drafting is a mode of expressing ideas in statutes, regulations, contracts, and other legal documents in such a way that the syntax that relates the constituent propositions is simplified and standardized. This "normalization" results in documents that are easier to understand in the dual sense that they can be read faster and more accurately than corresponding documents that are not normalized. The query method is a technique for familiarizing learners with normalized drafting and providing practice in some of the easier aspects of doing it.

Fred E. Inbau: 'The Importance Of Being Guilty', Yale Kamisar

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As fate would have it, Fred Inbau graduated from law school in 1932, the very year that, "for practical purposes the modern law of constitutional criminal procedure [began], with the decision in the great case of Powell v. Alabama."1 In "the 'stone age' of American criminal procedure,"2 Inbau began his long fight to shape or to retain rules that "make sense in the light of a policeman's task,"3 more aware than most that so long as the rules do so, "we will be in a stronger position to insist that [the officer] obey them."4

The Literature Labyrinth Of Nuclear Power: A Bibliography, Penny Hazelton

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The first part is a survey of the basic sources available to a person researching a problem on nuclear power. Three forms are discussed—bibliographies, U.S. government documents, and current awareness materials. The second portion is a selection of significant books on nuclear power and the law published since 1960. The third and final portion is a subject arrangement of law review articles published between 1957 and 1975. Used in conjunction with Atomic Energy and the Law: A Bibliography and Blueprint for Atomic Energy Literature: Legislative and Legal, this survey and bibliography will give the researcher a lead to the …

Formalizing Hohfeldian Analysis To Clarify The Multiple Senses Of 'Legal Right': A Powerful Lens For The Electronic Age, Layman E. Allen

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Careful communication is frequently of central importance in law. The language used to communicate even with oneself in private thought profoundly influences the quality of that effort; but when one attempts to transmit an idea to another, language assumes even greater significance because of the possibilities for enormously distorting the idea. Word skill is to be prized.

Scholarship On Soviet Family Law In Perspective, Whitmore Gray

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The radical changes in the norms of Soviet family law over the past fifty years have reflected the convulsions of Soviet society as well as the revisions of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. This paper is a commentary on the writing in this field by Americans in particular, and by other non-Soviets in general. In view of the volume of writing in this field, it has been necessary to limit discussion in the text to a few representative articles illustrating a few of the subject matters treated and various typical approaches employed. The topic is a particularly timely one, for new, comprehensive Principles of …

Better Organization Of Legal Knowledge, Layman E. Allen, Tomoyuki Ohta

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The increasing need of legislatures to draft complicated statutes, e.g., the Internal Revenue Code, requires the development of new techniques for defining and communicating complicated policies both accurately and understandably. At present, these complicated statutes are expressed in long, convoluted sentences with frequent uses of exceptions and limitations. Current drafting technique, with its inadequacies, often hinders a comprehensive understanding of the policy being communicated and often fails to communicate the policy accurately. Moreover, with the voluminous increase of legal literature in recent times, legal researchers experience increasing difficulty in attempting to retrieve relevant judicial and administrative interpretations. The authors propose …

A Language-Normalization Approach To Information Retrieval In Law, Layman E. Allen

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An information retrieval system (as distinguished from a document retrieval system) is described for handling statute-oriented legal literature. The Normalized Sentence-Index Matrix (N-SIM) system suggested differs from more traditional retrieval systems for legal literature in three respects: (1) the categories used for classification are normalized versions of sentences from statutes, regulations, treaties, constitutions, case opinions, legal treatises, law review articles, and other documents in legal literature, (2) the classification system is hierarchial and open-ended to evolve with the literature through time, and (3) the organization of the file facilitates some analysis of the literature by computer. A sentence is expressed …

Symbolic Logic: A Razor-Edged Tool For Drafting And Interpreting Legal Documents, Layman E. Allen

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A large amount of the litigation based on written instruments-whether statute, contract, will, conveyance or regulation-can be traced to the draftsman's failure to convey his meaning clearly. Frequently, of course, certain items may purposely be left ambiguous, but often the question in issue is due to an inadvertent ambiguity that could have been avoided had the draftsman clearly expressed what he intended to say. In this Article it is suggested that a new approach to drafting, using certain elementary notions of symbolic logic, can go a long way towards eliminating such inadvertent ambiguity. This new approach makes available to draftsmen …

Law Books And Law Publishers, Arthur S. Beardsley

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There are indications that the depression, which has burdened us for the past five years, is slowly receding. In its wake will doubtless follow renewed prosperity with all the blessings of peace and contentment. A freedom from financial worry will replace the present fear, and money will be more plentifully earned and freely expended.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the problems encountered during this economic cycle will be soon forgotten. Will the members of the legal profession and the law libraries return to their former policies of, what has appeared to be, uncontrolled and ill-advised purchasing of the …

The Law School Library—A Library Of Research For Lawyer, Layman, And Legislator, Arthur S. Beardsley

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We will probably agree that the college or university as a seat of learning must develop and maintain library facilities commensurate with the standing before the world which the institution's progress has earned. The library, and of course we include the law school library, is one of the indices of an educational institution's efficiency, and as such, we expect it to grow and expand by adding to the richness of its collections, material of ever increasing importance and usefulness. We expect the college library to take the lead in gathering for future reference the materials valuable for research which, on …

Revival Of Moot Courts At Michigan, Herbert F. Goodrich

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"Clubs formed for the purposes of argument of moot cases exist in varying numbers at several of the best law schools in the country. From the students of the Law School at Michigan has come a movement for the establishment of such clubs here...."

The Michigan Law Review: A Survey, John B. Waite

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"The Michigan Law Review was instituted as a means of special education for those seniors in the Law Department who proved themselves particularly capable of profitting[sic] therefrom. It stands also as an extremely valuable service of the Law School to its alumni and to practicing lawyers in general."

Legal Education And Admission To The Bar, Henry M. Bates

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From Conclusions: "We cannot close this report with some general remarks concerning standards of admission to the bar. An examination of the Proceedings of the American and the various state bar associations during the last few years will show a constant expression of dissatisfaction with the comparatively low standards for admission which prevail ..."

Roman Law In Modern Life And Education, Joseph H. Drake

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"This discussion might be entitled, an experiment in classical education and how it failed... It is in a way an Apologia pro Mea Vita Paedagogica. The excess of ego dixi et meus filius respondit in it may, therefore, perhaps be pardoned by a confession at the outset that it is an account of failure on the part of the speaker to solve a troublesome pedagogical question and a very satisfactory solution of the same problem by one of his colleagues in the Latin Department."

Legal Education, Henry M. Bates

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Bates describes the growth of law schools and the changing nature of legal education: "The outstanding fact in legal education in this country during the past twenty-five years is the shift from the law office to the law school as the avenue of approach to the bar.... This increase in the number of institutions teaching law and in the number of students preparing for the bar in this way makes on the whole for improvement, but the ointment is not without its flies..."

Some Observations On Case Law Reporting, John R. Rood

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There is an old tradition, still believed by many lawyers, that these year-books were official reports made by a reporter appointed and paid by the king. If there ever was such a reporter, he is yet to be discovered. No year-books have been found in the treasury of the courts; there is no record of the appointment or payment of any official reporter, through all the two hundred and fifty years covered by the year-books; all the year-books now in the British Museum were found in private hands.2 Is it conceivable that an official reporter would criticize the court and …

The "Law Reports", Nathan Abbott

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The period between the years 1860 and 1870 marks an interesting stage in the history of law reporting. Within this period a system of reporting that had existed for upward of three centuries came to an end, and an experiment was begun whereby it was hoped to produce reports not merely in a new way, but reports that were to be materially different in form and substance from those of the previous system. The conception of the enterprise and its successful accomplishment is due to the energy and discretion of one man, whose history of the affair, after twenty years …

Davey V. Aetna Life Ins. Co., Henry W. Rogers

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Professor Rogers considers a case where a life insurance policy appears to be voided by the use of alcoholic beverages by the insured, to the degree of cause of death. Rogers notes: "In the particular case the court was asked to give the following instruction: Th expression in the policy, 'became so far intemperate as to impair his health,' does not mean habitual intemperance; but an act of intemperance producing the impairment of health is within the condition of the policy, and renders the policy null and void except as therein provided...."

In the Application for Rule to Show Cause …

Sarony V. Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co., Henry W. Rogers

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Commenting in the Federal Reporter on this Opinion, Professor Rogers considers at length this case bearing on definitions of copyright and artistic properties. "This was an action at law for the violation of the plaintiff's copyright of a photograph of Oscar Wilde, which the defendant had copied by the process known as chromo-lithography.... A jury was waived, and the case was argued upon questions of law only, which appear in the opinion."

"The contention of the defendant, briefly stated, is this: That there was no constitutional warrant for this act; that a photographer is not an author, and a photograph …

Detroit Savings Bank V. Zeigler, Henry W. Rogers

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"Such interchanges of assistance between officers of a bank, as temporary need may require, is fairly within the contemplation of the appointment of such an officer, and the sureties on his bond are liable for a default made while he was temporarily filling the place of another officer.

"The receiving teller of the savings department of a bank, while filling the place of the general teller, during the latter's temporary absences, embezzled moneys of the bank: Held, that the sureties on a bond, given by him for so taken."

Coyle V. The Commonwealth, Henry W. Rogers

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"Homicidal mania must be proved, not assumed, nor confounded with reckless frenzy; To instruct, however, that it must be proved by 'clearly preponderating evidence' is error. All the authorities require is that the evidence proving it should 'fairly' preponderate.

"An attempt at suicide is not of itself evidence of insanity, and raises no legal presumption thereof....

"It was clearly proved that Coyle killed Emily Myers. That fact is admitted. The only defence set up is that he was insane at the time."