Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Acknowledging Our Roots: Setting The Stage For The Legal Writing Institute, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article discusses the history and development of legal writing courses and the Legal Writing Institute.

The Language Of Supreme Court Briefs: A Large-Scale Quantitative Investigation, Brady Coleman, Quy Phung

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

How Courts Use Wikipedia, Joseph L. Gerken

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Changing Fashions In Advocacy: 100 Years Of Brief-Writing Advice, Helen A. Anderson

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Unified Business Laws For Africa: Common Law Perspectives On Ohada, Duncan E. Alford

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Nudge, Choice Architecture, And Libertarian Paternalism, Pierre Schlag

Michigan Law Review

By all external appearances, Nudge is a single book-two covers, a single spine, one title. But put these deceptive appearances aside, read the thing, and you will actually find two books-Book One and Book Two. Book One begins with the behavioral economist's view that sometimes individuals are not the best judges of their own welfare. Indeed, given the propensity of human beings for cognitive errors (e.g., the availability bias) and the complexity of decisions that need to be made (e.g., choosing prescription plans), individuals often make mistakes. Enter here the idea of the nudge-the deliberate effort to channel people into …

Rationalism In Regulation, Christopher C. Demuth, Douglas H. Ginsburg

Michigan Law Review

Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health, by Richard L. Revesz and Michael A. Livermore, aims to convince those who favor more government regulation-in particular environmental groups-that they should embrace cost-benefit analysis and turn it to their purposes. Coauthored by a prominent law school dean and a recent student with a background in environmental advocacy, the book is a jarring combination of roundhouse political polemics and careful academic argument. Sweeping pronouncements are followed by qualifications that leave the sweep of the pronouncements in doubt- rather like the give-and-take of the law school classroom …

A Planet By Any Other Name…, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

Michigan Law Review

In case you haven't heard, Pluto isn't a planet anymore (and maybe it never was). In grade school, we all memorized the planets, giving little thought to what made something a planet besides revolving around the Sun and being part of some familiar mnemonic. However, scientific discoveries about Pluto and other parts of space led scientists to question Pluto's planetary status and ultimately, to strip Pluto of its standing among the planets. This leads to the inevitable question-what is a planet?-which turns out to be a more difficult and fascinating question than one might think. The Pluto Files grapples with …

A Portrait Of The Internet As A Young Man, Ann Bartow

Michigan Law Review

In brief, the core theory of Jonathan Zittrain's 2008 book The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It is this: good laws, norms, and code are needed to regulate the Internet, to prevent bad laws, norms, and code from compromising its creative capabilities and fettering its fecund flexibility. A far snarkier if less alliterative summary would be "We have to regulate the Internet to preserve its open, unregulated nature." Zittrain posits that either a substantive series of unfortunate Internet events or one catastrophic one will motivate governments to try to regulate cyberspace in a way that promotes maximum stability, …

The Price Of Conflict: War, Taxes, And The Politics Of Fiscal Citizenship, Ajay K. Mehrotra

Michigan Law Review

This Review proceeds in four parts, paralleling the chronological organization of War and Taxes. It focuses mainly on the book's analysis of the leading modern American wars, from the Civil War through the global conflicts of the twentieth century, up to the recent war on terror. Part I contrasts the tax policies of the Union and Confederacy during the Civil War to show how the Lincoln Administration was able to overcome Yankee resistance to wartime tax hikes to wage a war against a Southern Confederacy that resolutely resisted any type of centralized taxation until, of course, it was too late. …

The Future Of Books Related To The Law?, Eugene Volokh

Michigan Law Review

People have been reading books for over 500 years, in more or less the same format. Book technology has changed in some measure during that time. Fonts have become more readable. Books have become more affordable. Still, the general form of the book has remained much the same. But the arrival of e-readers, such as the Kindle and the Sony eBook, offers the possibility of a major change. First, people may shift to reading existing books on those e-readers. Second, the shift may lead them to change the way they use books, for instance by letting people have many reference …

Misunderstanding Lawyers' Ethics, Monroe H. Freedman, Abbe Smith

Michigan Law Review

The title of Daniel Markovits's book, A Modern Legal Ethics, gives the impression that it is a comprehensive treatise on contemporary lawyers' ethics. The contents of the book, however, are both more limited and more expansive than the title suggests. Markovits's treatment of lawyers' ethics concerns itself with what he conceives to be the pervasive guilty conscience of practicing lawyers over their "professional viciousness" (p. 36), and how lawyers can achieve a guilt-free professional identity "worthy of ... commitment" (p. 2). Markovits's goal in the book is to "articulat[e] a powerful and distinctively lawyerly virtue" (p. 2), one that …

Can Criminal Law Be Controlled?, Darryl K. Brown

Michigan Law Review

It is a bizarre state of affairs that criminal law has no coherent description or explanation. We have standard tropes to define criminal law, but they obscure as much as they clarify and are honored in the breach as much as the rule. Crimes, for instance, are defined by wrongdoing and culpability; to be guilty, one must do a wrongful act in a blameworthy manner, that is, as a responsible agent without excuse or justification. And crimes define public wrongs, which are distinct from private wrongs. Further, we criminalize only harmful conduct, or risk-creating conduct, or immoral conduct, or conduct …

Why Care About Mass Incarceration?, James Forman Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Advocates for less punitive crime policies in the United States face long and dispiriting odds. The difficulty of the challenge becomes clear if we compare our criminal justice outcomes with those of other nations: We lock up more people, and for longer, than anyone else in the world. We continue to use the death penalty long after Europe abandoned it, we are the only country in the world to lock up juveniles for life, and we have prisoners serving fifty-year sentences for stealing videotapes from Kmart. Our courts offer little relief: the German Constitutional Court prohibits a sentence of life …

When Enough Isn't Enough: Qualitative And Quantitative Assessments Of Adequate Education In State Constitutions By State Supreme Courts, Amy L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article facilitates the education debate by directing the question of what having an adequate education means, and how state supreme courts are grappling with the issue. This article uses a study of case law from state supreme courts analyzing state constitutional requirements for education. Three themes emerge from this study of case law: state supreme courts are dealing with a choice between judicial restraint and interference; courts struggle with how much to consider funding as opposed to other issues; and courts are trying to define adequacy claims within the context of equity claims.

Brokering Education: A Study Of Charter Receipt, Renewal, And Revocation In Louisiana's Charter Schools, Amy L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarship

The most fundamental part of a charter school is its charter, its governing document. This article traces the history of Louisiana's charter system from its inception and walks through the legal process of obtaining and retaining a charter and what happens to cause a charter to be revoked. Louisiana provides for five types of charters via statute that have different avenues of funding and different legal requirements from the state. Louisiana provides an excellent case study for the process of chartering because of the recent boom of charter schools in the area; there are lessons to be learned both in …

Forecast For The Future: Emerging Legal Technologies, Carol A. Watson

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

Begins by discussing technologies that are currently available on the web that can reduce office overhead. Also highlights current general technology trends and still-developing technologies. Concludes with a list of frivolous gadgets to provide food for thought about the coming prospects of technology.

Great Resources For The Great Recession : Useful Business Sources On The Internet, Wendy E. Moore

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

Explore 48 business websites, drawn from governmental, non-profit, and commercial information resources, that provide good examples of the types of information sources available to meet Internet business research needs.

"Gotcha!" Investigative Tools On The Web, Suzanne R. Graham

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

Free or low cost online resources exist to assist lawyers doing investigative research, but assessing the quality of the information remains challenging.

Wrangling The Web: Advanced Tools For Effective Internet Searching, Anne E. Burnett, Wendy E. Moore

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

Describes how to conduct effective Internet searches for legal information with a focus on advanced Google tools, but also includes Bing, Wolfram|Alpha, Legal Research Engine at Cornell, DocStoc and Scribd.

Where Have All The States Gone: Growing Research Resources, Sharon Bradley

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

Provides assistance with finding current and authoritative information about legal matters in each of the fifty states at the state and local level. Includes guidance on finding case law, administrative codes and regulations, state and local codes, legal forms, and court dockets.

Briefing Cases: Session On Copyright Law, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

This handout contains the decision from Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates, 581 F.2d 751 (1978), suggested elements for how to brief a case in general, and an example brief for the Air Pirates case.

Scorn Not The Sonnet: In Search Of Shakespeare's Law, Jeffrey G. Sherman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Expected: Creating And Sustaining Relationships For Your Institutions, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In this day of upheaval in the library and information world, many law librarians have found ways to reaffirm their value to their parent organizations. They have created and now sustain relationships for their institutions—law schools, law firms, government entities, and other organizations—because they have the common good of the institution in mind and are there to stay. The purpose of this article is to inform, inspire, celebrate, and provide concrete examples for other libraries to follow. Library initiatives can lead to benefits for the institution that are larger than the library itself. They also reinforce the value of the …

Pining For Sustainability, Timothy M. Mulvaney

University of Richmond Law Review

In the legal academic community, there are significant positive signs demonstrating attention to sustainable practices, from course offerings to many day-to-day operations. Scholarly research also reflects this positive trend. Much of this recent scholarship assesses sustainability-focused regulatory and normative efforts to address the impacts associated with a warming planet in marked detail, and there is an additional plethora of writing on the many topics beyond the changing climate that raise sustainability questions.

Beyond The Expected: Creating And Sustaining Relationships For Your Institutions, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Do Liquidated Damages Encourage Breach? A Psychological Experiment, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan

Michigan Law Review

This Article offers experimental evidence that parties are more willing to exploit efficient-breach opportunities when the contract in question includes a liquidated-damages clause. Economists claim that the theory of efficient breach allows us to predict when parties will choose to breach a contract if the legal remedy for breach is expectation damages. However, the economic assumption of rational wealth-maximizing actors fails to capture important, shared, nonmonetary values and incentives that shape behavior in predictable ways. When interpersonal obligations are informal or underspecified, people act in accordance with shared community norms, like the moral norm of keeping promises. However, when sanctions …

Legal Citation Without Fear, Maureen Cahill

Presentations

Presentation by Maureen Cahill, Student Services Librarian, as part of the library's Lunch-n-Learn series.

http://www.law.uga.edu/lunch-n-learn-series

Preserving A Racial Hierarchy: A Legal Analysis Of The Disparate Racial Impact Of Legacy Preferences In University Admissions, Kathryn Ladewski

Michigan Law Review

Many public and private universities around the country employ legacy admissions preferences in order to give children of alumni special consideration in the admissions process. Such preferences disproportionately benefit white applicants at the cost of their nonwhite counterparts, because past generations of college students were less diverse than today's applicant pool. However, universities argue that their legacy preferences are justified because they assist in alumni fundraising efforts. This Note presents a statistical analysis to argue that legacy preferences are prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because they have a discriminatory effect on minority college applicants and have not …

Local Rules In The Wake Of Federal Rule Of Appellate Procedure 32.1, David R. Cleveland

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.