Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

The Rhetoric Of Abortion In Amicus Briefs, Jamie Abrams

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

St. Thomas Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead and Table of Contents for St. Thomas Law Review Volume 36, Issue 2, Spring 2024.

In Pursuit Of Collective Liberation In Feminist Constitutionalism, Yvette Butler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A review of After Misogyny: How The Law Fails Women and What to Do About It. By Julie C. Suk.

Shareholder Primacy Versus Shareholder Accountability, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

When corporations inflict injuries in the course of business, shareholders wielding environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) principles can, and now sometimes do, intervene to correct the matter. In the emerging fact pattern, corporate social accountability expands out of its historic collectivized frame to become an internal subject matter—a corporate governance topic. As a result, shareholder accountability surfaces as a policy question for the first time. The Big Three index fund managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, responded to the accountability question with ESG activism. In so doing, they defected against corporate legal theory’s central tenet, shareholder primacy. Shareholder primacy builds …

Verses Turned To Verdicts: Ysl Rico Case Sets A High-Watermark For The Legal Pseudo-Censorship Of Rap Music, Nabil Yousfi

Seattle University Law Review

Whichever way you spin the record, rap music and courtrooms don’t mix. On one side, rap records are well known for their unapologetic lyrical composition, often expressing a blatant disregard for legal institutions and authorities. On the other, court records reflect a Van Gogh’s ear for rap music, frequently allowing rap lyrics—but not similar lyrics from other genres—to be used as criminal evidence against the defendants who authored them. Over the last thirty years, this immiscibility has engendered a legal landscape where prosecutors wield rap lyrics as potent instruments for criminal prosecution. In such cases, color-blind courts neglect that rap …

Pyrrhic Victories: The Mirage Of Winning At The Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Clare G. Willis

Faculty Articles

We conduct in-depth archival research of landmark constitutional criminal procedure cases and find two ways in which the declarations of the vindication of rights they contain are misleading. First, most defendants who successfully establish police violations of their constitutional rights before the highest court in the land nonetheless remain in prison for years or decades subsequently. The multitude of ways in which the state can convict the individual defendant even in the face of one or more constitutional violations means that the Supreme Court precedents that bear their names seldom translate to genuine wins for the defendants. Second, there are …

Forward-Looking Academic Impact Rankings For U.S. Law Schools, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

Although the very concept of law school rankings is currently under fire, rankings abolitionism is misplaced. Given the number, diversity, and geographic dispersion of the more than 190 law schools fully ac­credited by the American Bar Association, rankings are essential to en­able various stakeholders to make comparisons between schools. How­ever, the current rankings landscape is dire. The U.S News law school rankings rely on poorly designed, highly subjective surveys to gauge "reputational strength," rather than looking to easily available, objec­tive citation data that is more valid and reliable. Would-be usurpers of U.S. News use better data but make other arbitrary …

Masthead

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Front Matter includes table of contents, masthead and faculty for Lewis & Clark Law Review Volume 28, Issue 3.

An Updated Practical Guide To Taking And Defending Depositions, Gary Gildin

Faculty Scholarly Works

The deposition offers a singular opportunity to handcuff the deponent to an irreversible script. Consequently, both the attorney taking the deposition and defending counsel must prepare for and conduct the deposition with equal if not greater care than the trial.

Traditionally, lawyers have used the deposition to discover facts relating to the legal elements and the credibility, perception, and recollection of the witness. However, recent breakthroughs in neuroscience as to how the brain makes decisions have revealed a different genre of evidence that will drive how the trier of fact will decide the case. Today an attorney taking a deposition …

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 …

Book Review—Shaping The Bar: The Future Of Attorney Licensing, Kevin P. Lee

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

A Second Chance At Success: Using “Second Look” Laws To Modify Sentences Of Juvenile Offenders, Sophia M. Adams

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

“Second look” sentencing laws allow incarcerated individuals to petition to have their sentences reexamined and potentially reduced after they have served a significant period of incarceration. This rehabilitative relief is conditioned upon an offender showing that they have made meaningful positive changes while incarcerated and would not pose a threat to their community if released. Implementing second look laws is particularly appropriate in the context of offenders who have committed crimes as juveniles. The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that juvenile offenders are less culpable than their adult counterparts and psychological science supports this conclusion. This Comment examines and compares …

A Critical Assessment Of The First Step Act’S Recidivism-Reduction Measures, Raquel Wilson

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The First Step Act of 2018 (“FSA”) is the most impactful federal sentencing reform of the past 40 years. While the Act represents a partial resurgence of the rehabilitative model of imprisonment, which had fallen out of favor decades before, it also represents a missed opportunity to fully integrate evidence-based rehabilitation programs for those offenders who pose the greatest risks to public safety.

The public has a strong interest in reducing recidivism, particularly among violent offenders, most of whom will be released from federal prison eventually. The FSA incentivizes participation in evidence-based, recidivism-reducing programs offered by the Bureau of Prisons …

The Sword And The Scale: Model Rule 8.4(G) As A Tool Of Racial Justice In The Legal Profession, Tiffany Williams Brewer

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Lady Justice. Have you seen her? Standing regal and tall with blindfolded eyes. A sword in one hand and a scale in the other. Her image represents a symbol of hope and idealism in protecting and delivering her virtues. Lawyers enter this noble profession to do right by her and carry on her legacy. We serve our clients with the aim that she will ultimately be both our arbiter of facts and our judge. While the symbolism of her blindfold is often the subject of commentary on justice, consider the symbolism of the powerful tools she has chosen in her …

Reshaping Government’S Fiduciary Role Under The 1992 Constitution Of Ghana, Rose Rameau, Abdul Baasit Aziz Bamba

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In Ghana and across many African States, the people—through the instrumentality of law or their respective Constitutions— have constituted their presidents trustees of the natural resources to be held in trust for the benefit of the people. With a few exceptions, mineral resource governance in Africa has been horrendous: Many African States have failed to leverage their natural resource endowments as a catalyst for much-needed socioeconomic development.

This Article analyzes the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana which provides that all public lands and natural resources in Ghana shall be vested in the President on behalf of, and in …

The Case For Climate Reparations, Scott W. Stern

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Climate reparations are, to employ an old cliché, an idea whose time has come. Of course, calls for reparations have been emanating from the Global South since long before scholars in the Global North started paying attention. The United States has been in the midst of a public debate over reparations for many years. And reparations have become among the more contentious issues pushed by campaigners and even delegates at international climate summits. Yet, although legal scholars have begun to contend with climate reparations, there is hardly a robust body of literature on the matter. The subject deserves—demands— deep scrutiny. …

Style, Substance, And Process: An Elegant Trio, Justin Iverson

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

From Briefs To Bytes: How Generative Ai Is Transforming Legal Writing And Practice, Joseph Regalia

Scholarly Works

ChatGPT is having a moment in the legal field. And for good reason: Generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) was already disrupting the practice of law before OpenAI’s new chatbot came on the scene. But ChatGPT marks a new era. The brain behind OpenAI’s latest AI contains up to a trillion artificial neurons and was trained on hundreds of billions of pieces of text gathered on the web. All that data makes for the smartest AI ever.

But what’s more important is that all that computational muscle is aimed at things lawyers do every day: (1) Understanding complex concepts, (2) analyzing convoluted …

Mandatory Anti-Bias Cle: A Serious Problem Deserves More Meaningful Response, Rima Sirota

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay addresses the problematic convergence of two recent trends: (1) the expansion of jurisdictions requiring anti-bias training (ABT) as part of mandatory continuing legal education (CLE), and (2) the growing recognition among social scientists that such training, at least as currently practiced, is of limited effectiveness.

Forty-six American states require continuing legal education (CLE), and eleven of these states now require lawyer ABT as one facet of CLE requirements. I have previously criticized the mandatory CLE system because so little evidence supports the conclusion that it results in more competent lawyers. The central question tackled by this essay is …

The Origins Of The Legal Imagination, James Boyd White

Articles

I want to say at the outset that I feel honored beyond imagining at this celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of my book, and all the more because it is you who have set this up—so many beloved friends over the years and others who will surely become friends. I thank you deeply.

As I wondered about what I might say this morning, I thought perhaps you would be interested in where this truly odd book, with its 986 pages of readings and questions, came from.

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

“‘Go In Fear Of Abstractions’: The Precision, Persuasiveness, And Power Of Gender In Legal Writing”, Dr. Justin Kishbaugh

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Purple Zones And Traffic Cones: Navigating Bluebook & Redbook Overlaps, Derek H. Kiernan-Johnson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Correcting Contradiction: Limiting License Suspension As A Child Support Enforcement Mechanism In Pennsylvania, Robin Platte

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In many communities across Pennsylvania, maintaining employment without a driver’s license is extremely difficult. Section 4355 of the Pennsylvania Domestic Relations Code authorizes license suspension as a means to encourage child support payments. Unfortunately, license suspensions rarely result in obligors making payments. Instead, suspensions often lead to loss of employment and financial insecurity. Under Section 4355, if an obligor falls three months behind in child support payments, their professional, recreational, and driver’s licenses may be suspended indefinitely. Coincidentally, the obligor’s actual ability to pay may not be considered in a pre-suspension hearing. Even those who fall far below the national …

Weed Like Our Money Back: Amending Pennsylvania’S Medical Cannabis Law For Insolvent Cannabusinesses, Nikolajs V. Gaikis

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In 2016, Pennsylvania joined what is now 37 states and the District of Columbia in legalizing medical cannabis. The Commonwealth’s cannabusinesses share in a struggle that is common in other legal jurisdictions: operating within the confines of the Controlled Substances Act and the Bankruptcy Code. Insolvent individuals and businesses that profit from cannabis or hold cannabis assets cannot declare bankruptcy because cannabis is a Schedule I drug. Under state law, other insolvency alternatives like an assignment for the benefit of creditors, receiverships, and compositions with creditors exist as potential alternatives.

Pennsylvania’s insolvent cannabusinesses are in a uniquely poor position because …

Masthead

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Masthead

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.