Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Foreword, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Other Publications

Specialists in any field have a vested interest in their mastery of the subject. Expertise, after all, is their stock in trade. Assaults on the conventional wisdom can be unnerving if not discrediting. In the pages that follow, such an experience awaits all conscientious readers with a labor background who dare to expose themselves to Professor Charles Morris's provocative, iconoclastic, and ultimately persuasive arguments. He insists that a half-century of American labor law thinking has gone astray in failing to recognize the duty of an employer to bargain with a labor union representing less than a majority of the firm's …

Researching The Laws Of The Colony Of Rhode Island And Providence Plantations: From Lively Experiment To Statehood, Gail I. Winson

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legal Writing And Academic Support: Timing Is Everything, Dionne L. Koller

All Faculty Scholarship

The conventional wisdom is that legal writing and academic support go hand-in-hand. Most law schools assume that struggling students can be reliably identified for academic support through their first-year legal writing course, and that first-year legal writing instructors can fairly easily and effectively provide this support. Indeed, this is the prevailing view in current academic support and legal writing scholarship. Professor Koller's article challenges the conventional wisdom and instead points out several issues that should be considered if a law school relies on the first-year legal writing course as a component of, or in lieu of, an academic support program. …

Student Expression In The Age Of Columbine: Securing Safety And Protecting First Amendment Rights, David L. Hudson Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

"Student Expression in the Age of Columbine" is one in an ongoing series of First Reports, published by the First Amendment Center, on major First Amendment issues of our time.

Justice Brennan's Significant Departure And Warning Of An Evisceration, David L. Hudson Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

An essay on Justice Brennan's First Amendment jurisprudence regarding obscenity and the secondary effects doctrine.

Academics And The Federal Circuit: Is There A Gulf And How Do We Bridge It?, John R. Thomas

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Many of the great research universities of the United States enjoy a close relationship with innovators. Names like Carnegie, Cornell, Hopkins, Stanford, and Vanderbilt bring to mind not so much these men, but the academic institutions that they founded. The mention of other research institutions, such as the Universities of Chicago and Virginia, allows us to recall entrepreneurial founders such as Rockefeller and Jefferson. It is appropriate then, to consider how university research - and in particular, the work product of the law schools - is faring before that court whose rulings most directly impact American innovation policy.

Why Print And Electronic Resources Are Essential To The Academic Law Library, Michelle M. Wu

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Libraries have supported multiple formats for decades, from paper and microforms to audiovisual tapes and CDs. However, the newest medium, digital transmission, has presented a wider scope of challenges and caused library patrons to question the established and recognized multiformat library. Within the many questions posed, two distinct ones echo repeatedly. The first doubts the need to sustain print in an increasingly digital world, and the second warns of the dangers of relying on a still-developing technology. This article examines both of these positions and concludes that abandoning either format would translate into a failure of service to patrons, both …

The Five Stages Of Law Review Submission, Brannon P. Denning, Miriam A. Cherry

All Faculty Scholarship

"The Five Stages of Law Review Submissions," is a humorous look at the law review submissions process from the author's perspective. My colleague Miriam Cherry and I suggest that the process of submitting to law reviews tracks Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's "five stages of grief."

Paper Versus Electronic Sources For Law Review Cite Checking: Should Paper Be The Gold Standard?, April Schwartz, Mary Rumsey

Scholarly Works

Despite law students' reliance on electronic sources for legal research, a survey confirmed that many journals make their staff members check authors' citations against paper sources. Rumsey and Schwartz argue that the advent of image-based document collections should change this practice, making life easier for law students and law school librarians.

Writing Like A Contemporary (And Effective Lawyer): The Joys And Pitfalls Of Legal Writing, David Spratt

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Lesbian And Gay Parenting: The Last Thirty Years, Nancy Polikoff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Bad Writing: Some Thoughts On The Abuse Of Scholarly Rhetoric, Jethro K. Lieberman

Articles & Chapters

Like most kinds of writing, academic writing rarely shines, but far more often than ordinary writing scholarly prose is murky and impenetrable. This brief jeu d'esprit considers several forms of bad writing, rejecting the claim, increasingly made in academic quarters, that "difficult writing" is necessary to the scholarly enterprise. Bloated, foggy, and enigmatic prose masquerades as profundity that escapes conventional mental grooves. In fact it is useless, unethical, and taken far enough, evil.

The Quandary Of Serving Multiple Masters: An Institutional Exploratory Analysis Of Publishing In Business Law, Robert S. Rubin, John R. Olson, Laura Hartman, James A. Belohlav

ExpressO

Notwithstanding published articles on the nature and quality of research and scholarship in practically every other business discipline, to date there has been little systematic evaluation of relevant journals in the business law discipline. This deficiency is due, in part, to the fact that business law may still be described as a developing discipline. Thus, the focus of this article is on delineating the nature of research and scholarship within the business law discipline. Specifically, the publishing practices of business law faculty from academic institutions that were members of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International), the …

Defining Dicta, Michael Abramowicz, Maxwell Stearns

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

In recent decades, legal scholars have devoted substantially greater attention to studying the origin and nature of stare decisis than to defining the distinction between holding and dicta. This appears counter-intuitive when one considers, first, that stare decisis applies only to holdings of announced precedents, and second, that beyond problematic and rudimentary intuitions, the legal system has failed to develop meaningful definitions of these terms. While lawyers, legal scholars, and jurists likely assume that they can identify dicta when they see it, a careful analysis that categorizes the range of judicial assertions in need of proper characterization reveals that defining …

Help Is On The Way, Gail A. Partin, Mary Ann Neary, Jennifer Murray

Faculty Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Why Do Empirical Legal Scholarship?, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

People conduct legal scholarship for many different reasons. This Article focuses on the demand for and reaction to scholarship that helps inform litigants, policymakers, and society as a whole about how the legal system works. Law schools do little to train generations of lawyers in how to systematically assess the state of the legal system and the legal system's performance. Schools leave such assessments largely to self-interested advocates and to other disciplines. Self-interested advocates have less interest in objective assessment of the system than in pushing preferred policy agendas. Academic disciplines other than law have a distinct advantage in that …

Why We Write: Reflections On Legal Scholarship, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

When Flyspecks Matter—Part Ii, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Most of my columns advise legal writers; this one also aims to change the perspective of a legal reader. The September 2004 column addressed some of the issues raised by a British best- seller on punctuation called Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The author, Lynne Truss, attempts to make a case for "sticklers" who "refuse to patronize any shop with checkouts for 'eight items or less'" or who have urges to "shin up ladders at dead of night with an apostrophe-shaped stencil and a tin of paint" to correct advertisements. To her, punctuation errors are "signs of ignorance and indifference."

Legal Writing And Academic Support: Timing Is Everything, Dionne L. Koller

Faculty Scholarship

The conventional wisdom is that legal writing and academic support go hand-in-hand. Most law schools assume that struggling students can be reliably identified for academic support through their first-year legal writing course, and that first-year legal writing instructors can fairly easily and effectively provide this support. Indeed, this is the prevailing view in current academic support and legal writing scholarship. Professor Koller's article challenges the conventional wisdom and instead points out several issues that should be considered if a law school relies on the first-year legal writing course as a component of, or in lieu of, an academic support program. …

Federal And State Court Rules Governing Publication And Citation Of Opinions: An Update, Melissa M. Serfass, Jessie Wallace Cranford

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Common Knowledge About Appellate Briefs: True Or False?, David Lewis

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

When Flyspecks Matter—Part I, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Thus, instead of reinforcing the author's premise, the panda story may illustrate the weakness of assertions that most punctuation significantly controls meaning.

The Generality Of Law, Frederick Schauer

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Reference Brief, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Judges read briefs looking for guidance from the parties about the correct law and the proper resolution of a case. Although it would be nice to assume that all of the briefs provide this guidance, many do not. Some briefs are unclear and contain obvious format and substantive errors. Consequently, in sifting through the submissions for a case, the judges and their clerks often learn more heavily on one party's brief over another as a starting point for their analysis.

The Embarrassing Rule Against Perpetuities, Peter A. Appel

Scholarly Works

The Rule Against Perpetuities offers an opportunity for those who teach property or trusts and estates to review some of the major schools of jurisprudence and how accurately or inaccurately those schools characterize law and legal development. At first blush, the idea that the rule can be used to advance a student's mastery or consideration of theory seems absurd. But this essay will outline an innovative approach to the rule that allows those who teach it to mix theory in with the difficult problems that the rule creates.

The modern pedagogical approach to the rule treats it as an embarrassment …

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

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

Reputation, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Whenever you send our a piece of paper or, nowadays, an email, your reputation flutters or flickers on the words you write. Perhaps you have an engaging presence or you are a crack litigator in the courtroom. Perhaps your tech department can help you use multimedia to make innovative presentations. Still, ninety percent of what lawyers do is writing. Be vigilant about what your writing is saying to others about you.

Easing The Path For Newer Colleagues: Conference For New Law Librarians Helps Beginners Learn Aall's Ropes, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

The author provides advice for prospective attendees of the Conference of Newer Law Librarians (CONELL).

Are Single-Sex Schools Inherently Unequal?, Michael Heise

Michigan Law Review

In chess, a "fork" occurs when a player, in a single move, attacks two or more of an opponent's pieces simultaneously, forcing a necessary choice between unappealing outcomes. Similar to the potentially devastating chess move, single-sex public schooling forks many constitutionalists and feminists. Constitutionalists are forced to reexamine the "separate but equal" doctrine's efficacy, this time through the prism of gender. Although the doctrine - forged in the crucible of race and overcome in the monumental triumph we know as Brown v. Board of Education - rested dormant for generations, persistent (and increasing) single-sex education options are forcing scholars to …

Pleas' Progress, Stephanos Bibas

Michigan Law Review

George Fisher's new book, Plea Bargaining's Triumph, is really three books in one. The first part is a careful, detailed explanation of how and why plea bargaining exploded in Middlesex County, Massachusetts in the nineteenth century. This part is the fruit of an impressive amount of original research in Massachusetts court records and newspaper archives. The second part of the book looks more broadly at other academic histories of plea bargaining in England, California, and New York. It explains how the forces that produced plea bargaining in Middlesex County likewise contributed to plea bargaining's rise elsewhere. The final part …