Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Discipline-Building And Disciplinary Values: Thoughts On Legal Writing At Year Twenty-Five Of The Legal Writing Institute, J. Christopher Rideout

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Legal Writing: The View From Within, J. Christopher Rideout, Jill J. Ramsfield

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Tributes To Mary S. Lawrence, Chris Rideout

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Visionary Pragmatism And The Value Of Privacy In The Twenty-First Century, Danielle Keats Citron, Leslie Meltzer Henry

Michigan Law Review

Part I of our Review discusses the central premises of Understanding Privacy, with particular attention paid to Solove's pragmatic methodology and his taxonomy of privacy. We introduce his pluralistic approach to conceptualizing privacy, which urges decision makers to assess privacy problems in context, and we explore his view that meaningful choices about privacy depend on an appreciation of how privacy benefits society as a whole. We also describe how Solove's taxonomy aims to account for the variety of activities that threaten privacy. In Part II, we analyze the strengths of Solove's pragmatism by demonstrating its functionality and flexibility in …

The Vitality Of The American Sovereign, Todd E. Pettys

Michigan Law Review

The proposition that "the people" are the preeminent sovereign in the United States has long been a tenet of American public life. The authors of the Declaration of Independence characterized the American people's sovereignty as a "self-evident" truth when announcing the colonies' decision to sever their ties with Great Britain, the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 invoked the people's sovereignty when framing the nation's Constitution, and Americans today exercise their sovereignty each time they cast their ballots on Election Day. Yet what prerogatives, precisely, does the people's sovereignty entail? In modern America, where neither a bloody revolution nor …

If I Had A Hammer: Can Shepardizing, Synthesis, And Other Tools Of Legal Writing Help Build Hope For Law Students?, Edward R. Becker

Articles

Are lawyers mechanics? In 1920, photographer Lewis Hines took a striking photo of a powerhouse mechanic sure-handedly wielding a large wrench to tighten bolts on a steam pump. This picture may bring to mind many things, but I suspect that many legal writing professors in our (past or present) incarnations as practicing attorneys would not look at this image and think, "My job is a lot like that." Similarly, I assume that many of our students do not think of a lawyer's role in this way. Indeed, many of our students might have chosen to pursue a career in law …

Feminism As Liberalism: A Tribute To The Work Of Martha Nussbaum Symposium: Honoring The Contributions Of Professor Martha Nussbaum To The Scholarship And Practice Of Gender And Sexuality Law: Feminism And Liberalism, Tracy E. Higgins

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, I revisit and expand an argument I have made with respect to the limited usefulness of liberalism in defining an agenda for guaranteeing women's rights and improving women's conditions. After laying out this case, I discuss Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach to fundamental rights and human development and acknowledge that her approach addresses to a significant degree many of the objections I and other feminist scholars have raised. I then turn to fieldwork that I have done in South Africa on the issue of custom and women's choices with regard to marriage and divorce. Applying Professor Nussbaum's capabilities …

Review Of Understanding Labor And Employment Law In China, By Ronald C.Brown, Nicholas C. Howson

Reviews

Any attempt to analyze China’s comprehensive labor reform over the past three decades faces at least two dilemmas. First, the analyst must confront the task of describing how the Chinese state has dismantled the “work unit” (or danwei)- based “iron rice bowl” employment and entitlements system, replacing that comforting but low-production employment and social security scheme with formally-proclaimed legal rights and institutions apparently designed to protect employees in a functioning labor market. Second, the analyst must track how the state’s commitment (at all levels of government) to implementation of proclaimed legal and institutional protections has waxed and waned, based upon …

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

Articles

American appellate practice is accomplished mainly through the written word, and there seems to be a modem consensus about what constitutes a good appellate brief. Books, articles, and continuing legal education materials tell the appellate advocate to be succinct, to organize arguments clearly, and to present facts and law truthfully yet persuasively. The ideal appellate advocate is a careful strategist and accurate researcher who writes crisply and credibly. The power of emotional or narrative arguments has not been stressed although this may be changing-because appellate judges are presumed to be less emotional than juries.

As one who teaches advocacy, and …

Front Matter

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead, advisors, and Table of Contents for the Intercultural Human Rights Law Review Volume 5 (2010).

Waging War Within The Constitution, Alberto R. Gonzales

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the United States' response to the September 11, 2001 attacks by Al Qaeda from my perspective as Counsel to the President and then later as Attorney General. It reviews the actions of government lawyers and how federal courts have judged the implementation of U.S. government policy. It explains that U.S. government officials quickly understood that our nation was confronted with a non-state enemy fighting an unconventional war. This forced us to make a number of difficult decisions quickly about how best to fight this threat in a manner consistent with the United States' domestic and international legal …

Good Enough For Government Work: The Interpretation Of Positive Constitutional Rights In State Constitutions, Jeffrey Omar Usman

Law Faculty Scholarship

The United States Supreme Court ruled in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189 (1989) and reaffirmed in Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005) that absent conditions of confinement the Due Process Clause imposes no affirmative obligations upon government to protect an individual’s life, liberty, or property. These decisions reflect the Supreme Court’s broader understanding of the United States Constitution as a guarantor of negative rights but devoid of assurance of positive rights. Like the constitutions of many other countries, state constitutions have charted a different course. Unlike their federal counterpart, state …

Keeping Up With Legal Technology: Five Easy Places, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Symposium: Reasoning From Literature, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

The “literary turn” in legal studies manifests in many ways in our legal discipline and practice. Be it with the birth of the study of law and literature in the 1980s, the growing attention to narrative theory and storytelling in the law in the 1990s, or the “cultural turn” in legal studies in the 21st century (as some scholars have called the cultural analysis of law), reasoning from literature seems commonplace. And yet it is still marginalized in legal studies as interdisciplinary, not “really law,” and lacking the core persuasive power that legal argumentation and doctrinal analysis do. This Symposium …

Studying And Teaching “Law As Rhetoric”: A Place To Stand, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

This article proposes that law students may find a better fit within the legal culture of argument if they are introduced to rhetorical alternatives to counter narrowly formalist and realist perspectives on how the law works and how judges decide cases. To support this proposal, the article describes and evaluates an upper-level elective course in Law & Rhetoric, which I have offered at two law schools since 2003.

The article makes a two-part argument: first, introducing law students to rhetorical alternatives allows them to envision their role as lawyers as constructive, effective, and imaginative while grounded in law, language, and …

Symposium, The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years Of Teaching And Scholarship, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

This is the transcript of Mercer Law Review’s Symposium, The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years of Teaching & Scholarship. In this Symposium Linda Edwards, among other panelists, discussed the work that goes into producing scholarship.

The Weiner-Rogers Law Library: An Invaluable Legal Resource, Jeanne Price

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Symposium, The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years Of Teaching And Scholarship, Terrill Pollman

Scholarly Works

This is the transcript of Mercer Law Review’s Symposium, The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years of Teaching & Scholarship. In this Symposium Linda Edwards, among other panelists, discussed the work that goes into producing scholarship.

The Legal Writing Institute: Celebrating 25 Years Of Teaching & Scholarship, Mary Beth Beazley

Scholarly Works

Professor Beazley joins a panel of the elite of legal writing professors at Mercer University, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Legal Writing Institute in this transcript of the proceedings.

A Writing Life, Linda H. Edwards

Scholarly Works

This essay was written on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Legal Writing Institute (LWI), celebrated at Mercer University School of Law, LWI’s current home. In a sense the essay is retrospective, for it is written to honor the scholars whose work has moved us toward a vision of legal writing scholarship and all it can offer. Many of those experienced and inspiring scholars have kindly offered their advice for inclusion in this essay. That advice is probably the most important content included here, and it is placed, appropriately, at the end of the text as the essay’s …

Free Speech Federalism, Adam Winkler

Michigan Law Review

For decades, constitutional doctrine has held that the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech applies equally to laws adopted by the federal, state, and local governments. Nevertheless, the identity of the government actor behind a law may be a significant, if unrecognized, factor in free speech cases. This Article reports the results of a comprehensive study of core free speech cases decided by the federal courts over a 14-year period. The study finds that speech-restrictive laws adopted by the federal government are far more likely to be upheld than similar laws adopted by state and local governments. Courts applying strict …

The Dog That Didn't Bark: Stealth Procedures And The Erosion Of Stare Decisis In The Federal Courts Of Appeals, Amy E. Sloan

All Faculty Scholarship

Informal en banc review is a procedural expedient that nine of the thirteen federal circuits use to circumvent the requirements of formal en banc review. Panels invoke informal en banc review to take actions normally reserved for the full court sitting en banc. The circuits that use informal en banc review say the procedure is to be used rarely. In practice, however, the frequency of informal en banc review is significant when compared with formal en banc review. Informal en banc review is more efficient than formal en banc review, but the efficiency benefits come at a price. Informal en …

The Elements Of Legal Style, Mark P. Painter

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Where Have All The (Legal) Stories Gone?, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This essay examines whether law schools are doing a good job of teaching the art of storytelling to law students.

Law And Practice, William Rhee

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Researching Colorado Local Government Law, Robert Linz

Other Faculty Publications

As citizens, our daily lives are directly affected by local law. For example, many of us consider the speed limit (and whether we'll get caught exceeding it) as we drive to work each day, as well as the amount of property tax we pay each year. Given the immediate impact of local laws on residents, it seems counterintuitive that the body of local law is obscure and difficult to research. This article presents an overview of Colorado local government organization and the resources available to help researchers find law by and about local government.

Persuasive Arguments For Establishing An Institutional Repository, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

Presentations

Presents the business case for creating an institutional repository (IR), including a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages with Social Science Research Network (SSRN); offers advice on obtaining faculty buy-in to the project in order to obtain content; reviews copyright right issues involved in depositing published materials into the repository; and suggests ways in which creating a repository can build relationships beyond the institution.

Using The Internet To Save On Legal Research Costs, Lisa Radtke Bliss

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

The Sounds Of Silence: Are U.S. Arbitrators Creating Internationally Enforceable Awards When Ordering Class Arbitration In Cases Of Contractual Silence Or Ambiguity?, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

This article addresses a gap in the scholarly literature by comparing interpretive methodologies used by U.S. arbitrators to those used by international arbitrators to determine whether and to what extent U.S.-based class awards are enforceable outside the United States. Since many courts and arbitrators have claimed an analogy between consolidated and class arbitration, the article also considers whether such an analogy is appropriate as a matter of law and policy to identify whether the traditional disinclination to order consolidation can or should be extended to class proceedings. This second portion of the article is applicable to both domestic class arbitrations …

From Imperial Scholar To Imperial Student: Minimizing Bias In Article Evaluation By Law Reviews, Rachel J. Anderson

Scholarly Works

This Article is intended to serve as a roadmap for law professors and law review editors alike in their efforts to find a better way for students to evaluate articles. Further, this Article aims to offer low-cost ways to improve the institution of student-run law reviews by strengthening editors' evaluation skills and processes. This Article is divided into three main parts. Part II of this Article, Manifestations of Systemic Bias, develops a theory of the safe-dissent continuum and employs this theory to determine whether there is empirical support for claims of bias in article evaluation and the legal discourse. Part …