Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

The Pennsylvania Bar Association Quarterly: A 10-Year History Volumes 87-96 (2016-2025), Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

This article is the second supplement to my previous two articles covering the history of The Pennsylvania Bar Association Quarterly.² For the period of this article, Robert E. Rains, Professor Emeritus, Penn State Dickinson Law, has been the editor, replacing Professor Louis Del Duca, who had served as editor for an amazing 47 years. The January 2016 issue appropriately began with two articles in homage to Prof. Del Duca.³

Law Library Collection Development In The Time Of Genai, Dana Neacsu

Law Faculty Publications

Collection development remains at the core of the library’s mission within each institutional framework. All law libraries, including those serving law schools, law firms, or governmental entities support legal research, and generative AI (GenAI) has revolutionized the interaction between librarian and the sources of legal research.

Hampton L. Carson (1852-1929): Attorney General, Bar Leader, Writer And Collector, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

Hampton L. Carson (1852-1929) was a law professor, Pennsylvania Attorney General, President of the American, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Bar Associations, noted orator and prolific writer of legal history and biography, and collector of the largest Anglo-American law books and manuscripts. This article will review his life and work.

Integrating Academic Success, Krishnee Coley, Laura A. Webb

Law Faculty Publications

Over the past few years, Richmond Law has taken several intentional steps to address one of ASP’s perennial challenges: the students who most need help may not be the ones who find their way to optional ASP sessions. By integrating academic success into orientation programs and collaborating with doctrinal professors, we’ve succeeded in reaching all our 1L students despite the lack of a mandatory 1L ASP course.

The Role Of Tradition In Classical And Contemporary Argument, Laura A. Webb

Law Faculty Publications

Integrating tradition in legal arguments remains an effective persuasive strategy, serving as a source of legitimacy and appeal, fostering the establishment of a shared identity between the speaker and the audience, and cultivating a sense of belonging to a distinct group with defined notions of its identity. This chapter examines the strategic utilization of the concept of tradition in forensic rhetoric. It investigates how communicators shape and influence discourse within forensic settings by leveraging enduring cultural norms, purported intentions and beliefs of esteemed historical figures, and narratives concerning a people's historical trajectory. By examining cases from the popular courts of …

The Persistent Treatise, Dana Neacsu, Paul Douglas Callister

Law Faculty Publications

The legal treatise remains a pillar of the American legal system and the rule of law, despite claims it might be dying and variations in quantitative citations to treatises over time. Indeed, several treatises evidence increased citation in U.S. Supreme Court opinions during the last several decades. Surprisingly, the U.S. Supreme Court, including the Robert’s Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, increasingly sees fit to rely on proto-treatises, such as Bracton, Coke, and Blackstone. This article provides empirical data and qualitative analysis to support this claim, highlighting the sometimes declining but nevertheless significant presence of treatises in …

Bibliography Of Family Law Publications Of The Pennsylvania Bar Institute (1971-2023), Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

As practicing members of the bench and bar, readers of this article know of the publications of the Pennsylvania Bar Institute (PBI) that began in 1968 to published Continuing Legal Education programs. The following is a listing of the family-law CLE publications from 1971 through 2023. The listing is partly drawn from a short-title printed list of PBI publications listed chronologically from 1968 to 1998 (1-2192) that the author obtained many years ago and now number over 11,000 publications. Not every title can be found in the law library catalogs and so some titles are listed according to the titles …

Bibliography Of The Writings Of The Justices Of The Supreme Court Of Pennsylvania, Joel Fishman, Lori Hagen, Elizabeth Post

Law Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is the oldest state appellate court in the country dating itself back to 1684 when William Penn introduced the Provincial Court as a court to hear appeals from the justices of the peace of the three counties that comprised Pennsylvania. The early court was not called a supreme court until an act 1712 that was disallowed by the Privy Council in England. It was not until 1722 that the legislation enacting a Supreme Court was overlooked by the Privy Council for several years that finally became the act establishing the court for the remaining period …

Rooted: Metaphors And Judicial Philosophy In Artis V. District Of Columbia, Richard L. Heppner Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

This article examines how the metaphors in judicial opinions reveal judicial theories of lawmaking and judicial philosophies, through a close reading of Justice Ginsburg’s majority opinion and Justice Gorsuch’s dissenting opinion in the Artis v. District of Columbia, 138 S. Ct. 594 (2018).

Artis was about what the phrase “shall be tolled” means in the federal supplemental jurisdiction statute, 28 U.S.C. §1367. Does a state-law claim’s statute of limitations pause or continue to run while the claim is in federal court? In holding that Congress used “stop the clock” tolling, an “off-the-shelf” legal device that pauses statute of limitations, …

Reimagining Langdell's Legacy: Puncturing The Equilibrium In Law School Pedagogy, Laura A. Webb

Law Faculty Publications

For more than 150 years, legal education has largely followed the course charted by Christopher Columbus Langdell when he became dean of Harvard Law School in 1870. Langdell’s innovations included the case method, high-stakes summative assessments, and preferences for faculty members with experience in “learning law” rather than practicing it. His proposals were innovative and responsive to challenges in legal education at the time, but this Article argues that taking Langdell’s approach to reform—including a willingness toimplement radical changes in the face of institutional shortcomings—requires reimagining his methods for the benefit of today’s students. We identify key deficiencies of the …

Addressing Employers' Citation Systems Confusion, Maria Comas, Jan M. Levine

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ecological And Holistic Analysis Of The Epistemic Value Of Law Libraries, Paul D. Callister, Dana Neacsu

Law Faculty Publications

We examine the libraries' roles within the "epistemic foundation of society.” Our analysis is in response to the omission of Yale Law Dean Gerken of the role of libraries in her recent article about legal education's new focus and to remarks by AALS President Vicki Jackson that suggest an uncertain role for libraries. We have adapted holistic ecological media theory, as developed by Ronald Deibert, to reject a technologically deterministic view of libraries as having no future. We have considered the role of law libraries in the social epistemology or cognitive authority of the legal community, the role of law …

Death Penalty Exceptionalism And Administrative Law, Corinna Lain

Law Faculty Publications

"In the world of capital punishment, the oft-repeated refrain “death is different” stands for the notion that when the state exercises its most awesome power—the power to take human life—every procedural protection should be provided. Every safeguard should be met. Granted, doing so makes the death penalty cumbersome. And granted, it slows what Justice Blackmun famously called “the machinery of death.” But when the stakes are literally life and death, the idea is that we ought to make sure that whatever the state does, it does right.

Scholars have lamented the way that this idea of death penalty exceptionalism has …

Creating A Biographical Dictionary Of The Justices Of The Supreme Court Of Pennsylvania: A Bibliographical Essay, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

As a student of Pennsylvania legal history, one of my goals is to create a website on the history of the Pennsylvania judiciary. In submitting a proposal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the Court and the Court Administrator approved the creation of a biographical dictionary of the Court's judiciary. The Supreme Court dates itself back to 1684 when William Penn created a Provincial Court to hear appeals from the county justices of the peace (act 158 of 1684). There are approximately 165 justices dating from 1684 to the present. Following the information provided on the court's current website (www.pacourts.us), my …

Speaking The Truth: Supporting Authentic Advocacy With Professional Identity Formation, Laura A. Webb

Law Faculty Publications

When law students are asked to articulate legal rules in a persuasive communication such as a brief, they may experience internal tension. Their version of the rule, as framed to benefit a particular client’s position, may be different from the way they would articulate the rule if they were not taking on an advocate’s role. The conflict between those two versions of a legal rule leads some students to wonder if advocacy itself is deceptive, if an advocate’s role requires one to sacrifice ethics for success, and if ancient Greek philosophers were correct when they derided persuasive communication as “trickery …

Bibliography Of The Writings (1976-2017) Of Robert Raphael, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

The following bibliography is based on the card catalogs of the Allegheny County and Jenkins Law Libraries as well as the collection located in the first library. Robert Raphael (1922-2019) was born in New York City, but spent his whole life in Pittsburgh, PA. He is known by his colleagues as the “father of divorce law” along with Albert Momjian in creating the Divorce Code of 1980.

Bibliography Of The Writings (1979-2019) Of Lynne Z. Gold-Bikin, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

Lynne Z. Gold-Bikin (1938-2019) was a major family law practitioner in Pennsylvania for the last 40 years. Members of the section paid tribute to her in the October 2018 issue of the Pennsylvania Family Lawyer as did Judge Daniel Clifford who gave a Memorial Minute published in the Spring 2019 issue of the Pennsylvania Family Lawyer from which the following is summarized.

Goodrich-Amram: Who Were They?, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

Generations of Pennsylvania judges and lawyers have used Goodrich-Amram Procedural Rules with Forms as a major treatise on the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure. The authors wrote the first edition beginning in 1940 as Pennsylvania Procedural Rules Service, with Forms: Civil Practice Under the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure, published by Matthew Bender and Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Company. There were four volumes with updates published as pamphlets refilling the volumes as needed. Two additional publications were A 1963 Supplement to the Rules Binder (binder) and a September 1977 pamphlet to the Rules Binder.2 In 1976, a …

Supreme Court Review (1960-2009): A Bibliometrical Study, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

Supreme Court Review is a faculty-edited legal periodical published by the University of Chicago Law School. This periodical is a highly read and cited law review in law, history and political science. This article applies bibliometrics to a study of the 438 articles that are published in the periodical over a 50-year period. It is analysis of the number of articles by volume, pages, footnotes, authorship by sex, by individual, by institution, and most-cited articles.

Gender Disparity In Law Review Citation Rates, Christopher A. Cotropia

Law Faculty Publications

Gender disparity in scholarly influence – measured in terms of differential citation to academic work – has been widely documented. The weight of the evidence is that, in many fields of academic inquiry, papers authored by women receive fewer citations than papers authored by men. To investigate whether a similar gender disparity in scholarly influence exists in legal studies we analyze the impact of gender on citation to articles published in top 100 law reviews between 1990 and 2010. We find evidence of gender disparity in citation rates, but in surprising contrast to observations made in other disciplines, we observe …

Avoiding Ethics Complaints: Finding The Rules And Leos, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

One nightmare shared by all lawyers is the prospect of a letter from the Standing Committee on Lawyer Discipline informing them of a complaint. Prudent lawyers avoid this by becoming familiar with the ethical rules and standards of their jurisdiction. Because, as many a lawyer has learned, ignorance of the rules is no excuse.

A Guide To Legal Research In Virginia, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

The primary goal of this new edition of A Guide to Legal Research in Virginia is to expand coverage in several chapters and to add a new chapter covering legal ethics materials. This edition also notes changes in the URLs for many Virginia government websites. Most of these changes are likely based on changes in administrations and technological upgrades. The researcher should be aware that there is a lack of consistency among Virginia government web addresses. Changes in the operation and coverage of the major legal databases are noted where appropriate. Today, Virginia practitioners have a wide variety of resources, …

Fastcase, Roger V. Skalbeck

Law Faculty Publications

In February 2006, the VSB gave its notice of intent to award a contract to Fastcase, a legal research vendor now based in Washington, D.C. Fastcase provides online legal research services to more than two dozen bar associations and has been the provider of legal research services in Virginia since this original contract award. On January 26, 2016, the VSB published a notice of intent to award Fastcase a new three-year contract with optional one-year renewals. All lawyers admitted to practice in Virginia have access to the Fastcase platform as part of their annual bar dues.

Fastcase is a web-based …

Judge Lawrence W. Kaplan And His Court Cases In Family Division, Court Of Common Pleas Of Allegheny County (1980-1990), Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

In the last issue of the Pennsylvania Family Lawyer, I compiled a list of family law cases decided by Judge R. Stanton Wettick, Jr. for the decade of the 1980s when the Divorce Code was first introduced into the Commonwealth. The local court was a leader in deciding cases that set forth many of the principles that the appellate courts adopted as new law developed. In this article, I present the cases of Judge Lawrence Kaplan who served his entire judicial career in the Allegheny Court of Common Pleas from June 30, 1978 until his retirement on Augst 12, 1998 …

Statutory Law, Kathleen Klepfer, Alexis Fetzer

Law Faculty Publications

This chapter describes the sources of law created by the legislative branch of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The materials include the laws enacted by the Virginia General Assembly, the publications in which those laws are found, and the resources available to assist in interpreting the legislative enactments.

The cardinal rule in Virginia statutory construction is that the statute expresses the intention of the lawmakers. Therefore, it falls upon the courts to ascertain the General Assembly’s intent where that intent becomes important in the application of statutory materials. When researching Virginia statutes, certain principles of interpretation and application must be kept …

Finding And Using Images, While Respecting Copyright, Roger V. Skalbeck

Law Faculty Publications

Text plays a central role in nearly every lawyer’s life. From cases to codes to contracts, words matter tremendously. At times, words alone are insufficient. A well-selected image can evoke emotion and attract attention. While there are literally millions of images online available for use without cost, a well sourced and properly referenced image should recognize and respect the creator’s intellectual property rights. Here are tips for finding and using images, while respecting copyright.

Gpo’S New Govinfo Site, Paul Birch

Law Faculty Publications

It’s about time. Seven years after its official launch, the Government Printing Office’s rather dated looking FDsys website is soon to have a fresh replacement, https://govinfo.gov. Still in beta testing, the site already bears the rakishly lowercased call-name “govinfo.” Those, like myself, who have been unsure about how to pronounce “FDsys” should be thankful enough for this alone. But GPO has delivered more than just a name change. The forthcoming site is in many ways a vast improvement over its predecessor.

Third Circuit Court Reports (1789-1879), Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

The history of court reporting of the federal lower judiciary dates from the early days of the Republic. Mr. Fishman helps to document that history by reviewing the publication of the reports for the Third Circuit ( circuit and district courts) covering the nominative reports from the late-eighteenth to the late-nineteenth century, before their republication in Federal Cases by West Publishing Company. A bibliography is appended.

Omg - The Internet Is Amazing, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

Maybe even more useful than the source lists are the original articles by Rick such as “Federal Administrative Law: A Brief Overview” and “Federal Legislative History Research: A Practitioner’s Guide to Compiling the Documents and Sifting for Legislative Intent.” These publications are invaluable to both the novice and the more experienced researcher who may not conduct legislative research on a regular basis. They keep researchers up to date on what can be found where -- either on free or commercial databases. Using the Source Book is still a way to save valuable research time.

Honoring Rick Mckinney And Llsdc’S Legislative Source Book, Roger V. Skalbeck, Joyce Manna Janto, Kathleen Klepfer

Law Faculty Publications

In this essay, through three vignettes inspired by the Legislative Source Book, we honor Rick McKinney for his role as the collection’s guiding light and leading author. We also provide a list of permanent links suitable for scholarly citation, where major parts of the collection are now archived online.