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Michigan Law Review

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Articles 181 - 210 of 674

Full-Text Articles in Legal Writing and Research

Moral Icons: A Comment On Steven Lubet's Reconstructing Atticus Finch, William H. Simon May 1999

Moral Icons: A Comment On Steven Lubet's Reconstructing Atticus Finch, William H. Simon

Michigan Law Review

Atticus Finch's conduct would have been justified by the bar's conventional norms even if he had known Tom Robinson to be guilty. That fact, however, is not the source of the admiration for him that To Kill a Mockingbird has induced in so many readers. That admiration depends on the clear premise of the novel that Finch plausibly believes that Tom Robinson is innocent. Thus, the bar's invocation of Finch as a sympathetic illustration of its norms is misleading. The ethics of the novel are quite different from those of the bar. Steven Lubet does a good job of showing …


Rights And Wrongs, John C.P. Goldberg May 1999

Rights And Wrongs, John C.P. Goldberg

Michigan Law Review

If one were to ask an American lawyer or legal scholar for a definition of liberalism, her explanation would likely include mention of constitutional provisions such as the First and Fourth Amendments. This is because liberalism is today understood primarily as a theory of what government officials may not do to citizens. Its most immediate expression in law is thus taken to be those parts of the Bill of Rights that set limits on state action. This tendency to conceive of liberalism exclusively as a theory of rights against government is a twentieth century phenomenon. To be sure, liberalism has …


Reconstructing Atticus Finch? A Response To Professor Lubet, Ann Althouse May 1999

Reconstructing Atticus Finch? A Response To Professor Lubet, Ann Althouse

Michigan Law Review

In one of her childishly obtuse moments, Scout, the narrator of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, denies that her father Atticus Finch is any sort of proper example of how a lawyer ought to act when cross-examining a witness. The prosecutor's crossexamination of the accused Tom Robinson has moved her friend Dill to tears: "I couldn't stand . . . [t]hat old Mr. Gilmer doin' him thataway, talking so hateful to him _" Scout, who has taken her friend out of the courtroom, explains: "Dill, that's his job . . . . He's supposed to act that way." Atticus, …


Foreword, Jeffrey Rosen May 1999

Foreword, Jeffrey Rosen

Michigan Law Review

America now is a society addicted to legalism that has lost its faith in legal argument. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was only the most visible manifestation of this paradox. Both Democrats and Republicans professed a rhetorical commitment to the rule of law while revealing a deep pessimism about the ability of courts, legislatures, or even citizens to transcend their biases and to converge, through deliberation, on impartial and democratically acceptable outcomes. The simplistic Supreme Court decisions that precipitated the impeachment - in particular, Morrison v. Olson,1 upholding the Independent Counsel law, and Jones v. Clinton,2 denying the President temporary …


Reconstructing Atticus Finch, Steven Lubet May 1999

Reconstructing Atticus Finch, Steven Lubet

Michigan Law Review

Atticus Finch. No real-life lawyer has done more for the self-image or public perception of the legal profession than the hero of Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. For nearly four decades, the name of Atticus Finch has been invoked to defend and inspire lawyers, to rebut lawyer jokes, and to justify (and fine-tune) the adversary system. Lawyers are greedy. What about Atticus Finch? Lawyers only serve the rich. Not Atticus Finch. Professionalism is a lost ideal. Remember Atticus Finch. In the unreconstructed Maycomb, Alabama of the 1930s, Atticus was willing to risk his social standing, professional reputation, and …


Comment On Steven Lubet, Reconstructing Atticus Finch, Rob Atkinson May 1999

Comment On Steven Lubet, Reconstructing Atticus Finch, Rob Atkinson

Michigan Law Review

Professor Lubet has joined a growing list of revisionists who question Atticus's standing as the paragon of lawyerly virtue.1 But Professor Lubet takes revisionism in a distinctly postmodern direction, if not to a radically new level. Atticus's previous critics have wondered how he could have overlooked, perhaps even condoned, the pervasive racism, sexism, and classism of the Depression-era South. They have even occasionally censured his paternalism toward his pro bono client, the working-class black rape defendant Tom Robinson. But they have never questioned either Tom's claim of innocence or the propriety of Atticus's advocacy of that claim. Professor Lubet questions …


Reply To Comments On Reconstructing Atticus Finch, Steven Lubet May 1999

Reply To Comments On Reconstructing Atticus Finch, Steven Lubet

Michigan Law Review

Reconstructing Atticus Finch was intended to be provocative, so I am not surprised at the strength of the responses. Neither should I be surprised by the continuing reverence engendered by the fictional Atticus Finch; as I pointed out in my original essay, he is our moral archetype. Indeed, it was the accepted nobility of the character that made my question worth asking in the first place. What if Mayella had been attacked by Tom Robinson? Would Atticus still be a hero? To ask that question about a lesser figure would inevitably invite stock responses. Champions of the adversary system would …


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Mar 1999

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Feb 1999

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.


Apparently Substantial, Oddly Hollow: The Enigmatic Practice Of Justice, Heidi Li Feldman Jan 1999

Apparently Substantial, Oddly Hollow: The Enigmatic Practice Of Justice, Heidi Li Feldman

Michigan Law Review

The Practice of Justice: A Theory of Lawyers' Ethics, by William H. Simon, is one of the most thoughtful and important books in legal theory - not just legal ethics - published in the past ten years. Like David Luban's seminal contribution to legal ethics, Lawyers and Justice: An Ethical Study, published a decade ago, Simon's book is a deliberate rival to accounts of lawyers' professional responsibility that begin with a command to zealous advocacy, end with a prohibition on outright illegal conduct, and offer nothing in between. Authors and commentators have grown increasingly dissatisfied with this as the basic …


Direct Democracy In America, Sherman J. Clark Jan 1999

Direct Democracy In America, Sherman J. Clark

Michigan Law Review

The phrase "laboratories of democracy," as applied to the states, seems most often to mean something more like "democratic laboratories" - democratic testing grounds for various approaches to social problems. What sort of welfare reform will be most effective? Let Wisconsin try out Plan A, while Michigan experiments with Plan B. What combination of tort liability rules will achieve desired levels of compensation and deterrence? Let the states experiment with strict liability, comparative negligence, or various nofault schemes. It is also true, however, that the states are literally laboratories of democracy - arenas in which democratic institutions are themselves experimented …


The Richness Of Contract Theory, Randy E. Barnett Jan 1999

The Richness Of Contract Theory, Randy E. Barnett

Michigan Law Review

When I teach the doctrine of good faith performance, I assign an exchange between two distinguished contracts scholars, Robert Summers and Steven Burton, that has come to be known as the "Summers-Burton" debate. This debate is interesting not only for the contrasting views of its protagonists concerning the doctrine of good faith, but also because of the generational shift in modes of scholarship it represents. In the 1950s and 1960s, contracts scholars, like so many others, rejected so-called "conceptualist" or "formalist" approaches that attempted to dictate the outcome of cases with general concepts and rules. Contracts scholarship was dominated by …


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Nov 1998

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.


Books Received, Michigan Law Review Oct 1998

Books Received, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Aug 1998

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Jun 1998

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.


The Book Review Issue: An Owner's Guide, Carl E. Schneider May 1998

The Book Review Issue: An Owner's Guide, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

Law reviews have short memories. Other institutions count on long-term managers and well-kept files to preserve the experience of the past. But there is no remembrance of things past in an institution whose officers serve - fileless and frantic - for a single year. I want to use the opportunity this volume's editors have kindly given me to contribute to the Michigan Law Review's institutional memory. Editors past, present, and future may be curious about when and why the book review issue was conceived and born. I will briefly tell that story. More significantly, however, I want to relate the …


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Mar 1998

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Feb 1998

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.


Pomobabble: Postmodern Newspeak And Constitutional "Meaning" For The Uninitiated, Dennis W. Arrow Dec 1997

Pomobabble: Postmodern Newspeak And Constitutional "Meaning" For The Uninitiated, Dennis W. Arrow

Michigan Law Review

A parody of postmodern writing.


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Nov 1997

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Oct 1997

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Aug 1997

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Jun 1997

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.


Books Received, Michigan Law Review Mar 1997

Books Received, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.


Vampires Anonymous And Critical Race Practice, Robert A. Williams Jr. Feb 1997

Vampires Anonymous And Critical Race Practice, Robert A. Williams Jr.

Michigan Law Review

I can only explain what Vampires Anonymous has done for me by telling my story. I know, stories, particularly autobiographical stories, are currently being dissed by some law professors. Raised in an overly obsessive, objectively neutralized cultural style, they are plain and simple Storyhaters. Their middle to upper class parents had money, a home in the burbs, and nice kids who were going to go on from their fancy grade schools and college preparatory gigs to Harvard/Stanford/Yale - all those types of pricey places where law professors usually come from. These kids were raised to be objective, neutral, neutered, fair, …


Books Received, Michigan Law Review Feb 1997

Books Received, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Jan 1997

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by the Michigan Law Review.


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Dec 1996

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.


Recent Books, Michigan Law Review Nov 1996

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.