Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Justice In The Time Of Terror, Sharon L. Davies

Michigan Law Review

On my drive into work recently I found myself behind a Ford pickup truck and noticed its bumper sticker: "When the going gets tough, I get a machine gun." Not a doctor. Not a counselor or mediator. Not a shelter for cover. Not the wisdom of a favored advisor or a proven friend. But a machine gun. How odd, I thought, to prefer a weapon incapable of identifying with any precision, any careful thought, where the enemy of the wielder of it might actually be hidden. A weapon as apt to injure non-targets as targets. A weapon mindless of its …

Generalizing Disability, Michael Ashley Stein

Michigan Law Review

Published in 1949, Joseph Tussman and Jacobus tenBroek's article The Equal Protection of the Laws has exerted longstanding influence on subsequent Fourteenth Amendment scholarship. Insightfully, Tussman and tenBroek identified a paradox: although the very notion of equality jurisprudence is a "pledge of the protection of equal laws," laws themselves frequently classify individuals, and "the very idea of classification is that of inequality." Notably, classification raises two sometimes concurrent varieties of inequality: over-inclusiveness and under-inclusiveness. Of these, over-inclusiveness is a more egregious equal protection violation due to its ability to "reach out to the innocent bystander, the hapless victim of circumstance …

Spectres Of Law & Economics, William H. Widen

Michigan Law Review

There are spectres haunting law and economics - the spectres of G.W.F. Hegel and Jacques Lacan. This is one of the central theses of Professor Jeanne L. Schroeder's challenging new book: The Triumph of Venus, the Erotics of the Market ("Triumph of Venus"). Schroeder uses insights inspired by the teachings of Hegel and the French psychoanalyst, Lacan, to critique some basic assumptiosn made by scholars who use economic ideas to investigate the law and legal institutions - the law and economics ("L&E") practitioners. The book devotes much space to criticism of Judge Posner's vision of law, using it …

Growing Greener Grass: Looking From Legal Ethics To Business Ethics, And Back, Rob Atkinson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Connecting Business Ethics And Legal Ethics For The Common Good: Come, Let Us Reason Together, Rob Atkinson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Alwd Citation Manual: A Grammar Guide To The Language Of Legal Citation, Jennifer L. Cordle

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Critiquing As An Opportunity, Joel Atlas

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The path of critiquing a paper is, in all but a rare case, laced with mines: poorly constructed sentences, non-thematic paragraphs, and mangled legal standards. But rather than view these as trip interruptions, perhaps teachers can view them as challenges. After all, every student error is a learning opportunity for that student.

The Law's Many Bodies, And The Manuscript Tradition In English Legal History, David J. Seipp

Faculty Scholarship

Sir John Baker's recent book The Law's Two Bodies supplies a happy occasion to celebrate and reflect on Professor Baker's unique place within the field of English legal history today

Students beginning their study of this subject can well imagine the long history of the English common law as an hourglass. The wide upper chamber of the hourglass is the rich, complex, intricate medieval law of the Year Books. The wide bottom chamber is the equally rich, complex, intricate but very different caselaw of the modem age. The narrow neck of the hourglass can be imagined as the mind of …

Alternative Substantive Approaches To Advanced Legal Writing Courses, Michael R. Smith

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Partnerships With Monarchs: Univeiling And Re-Examining The Pattern Of "Third World" Economic Development In The Petroleum And Energy Sector, Diane M. Bales

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Purposivism In The Delegation Of Rulemaking Authority To The Courts, Michael Rosensaft

ExpressO

The courts are often used by Congress as a “political lightning rod,” when Congress cannot decide how to resolve an issue. Congress relies on administrative agencies for their expertise, and it also makes sense for Congress to delegate some rulemaking authority to the courts, relying on a court’s expertise in developing caselaw in an incremental basis. However, this authority should not be lightly implied. A court can tell that Congress has delegated rulemaking authority to it when the purpose of the statute is clear and the text is broadly worded. It thus makes sense in these cases that purposivism should …

Law Student Plagiarism: Why It Happens, Where It's Found, And How To Find It, Kristin Gerdy

Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal

The author explores why law students plagiarize and how to detect it using both personal and technological methods.

Verb-Based Writing, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

A colleague, who has devoted most of his career to legal writing, has developed an excellent solution. In a recent talk at the University of Denver College of Law, C. Edward Good, author and "writer in residence" at a law firm, delivered a one-hour talk teaching our students that the most efficient way to improve writing is by developing "verb-based style."

The Character Of Legal Reasoning, Brett G. Scharffs

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recenlty received by Michigan Law Review.

Embracing The Writing-Centered Legal Process, Suzanne Ehrenberg

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A list of books recently received by Michigan Law Review for review.

For Of All Sad Words Of Tongue Or Pen, The Saddest Are “It Might Have Been”—Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology And The Law To Lock Down Culture And Control Creativity, Katherine Kelly

William Mitchell Law Review

Review of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. By Lawrence Lessig. Penguin Press, 2004. 348 pages, $24.95

A Guide To U.S. Intellectual Property Searching Online, Jennifer L. Selby

Law Librarian Scholarship

The disadvantage to searching intellectual property online, patents in particular, is that the available online databases do not encompass the array and extent of tools needed to conduct a comprehensive search.7 Essentially, you can search patents on the web, but you cannot do a true patent search. A complete patentability search must include not only U.S. patents, but foreign patents and all relevant non-patent literature also (all resources together are referred to as ‘‘prior art’’ for an invention).8 These additional resources can be researched at the Patent Office Library in Washington D.C., and, on a more limited basis, at a …

Vulcan Mind Melds And Picture Windows, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Because our words can both facilitate and block communication, they are much like glass in a windowpane. Just as a window helps us see outside, the words can help our readers see our analysis. But first, we must eliminate three main obstructions to the view : 1) mechanical erros, 2) complex wording, and 3) literary devices.

Front Matter

St. Thomas Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead and Table of Contents for St. Thomas Law Review Volume 16, Issue 3, Spring 2004.

Front Matter

St. Thomas Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead and Table of Contents for St. Thomas Law Review Volume 17, Issue 1, Fall 2004.

A Law Librarian's Guide To Unpublished Judicial Opinions, Joseph L. Gerken

Law Librarian Journal Articles

Mr. Gerken provides readers with an overview of the rules and practice related to the nonpublication of judicial decisions. Using a question-and-answer format, he offers a convenient reference source for librarians to consult when responding to patron inquiries about unpublished opinions. A selective annotated bibliography of articles on the subject is included.

Judicial And Law Review Citation Frequencies For Articles Published In Different 'Tiers' Of Law Journals: An Empirical Analysis, Gregory S. Crespi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

An empirical study of the judicial and law journal citation frequencies for a large and comprehensive sample of 550 articles that were published from 1996 through 1998 in fifteen selected law journals resulted in several findings. First, these articles averaged only 0.4 judicial citations and 14.5 law journal citations through May 30, 2003. Second, both courts and scholars cite articles that are published in the three most prestigious law journals at much higher rates than they cite articles that appear in either mid-level or lower-tier law journals. Third, courts virtually ignore altogether legal scholarshipthat appears in lower-tier law journals. Finally, …

Front Matter

St. Thomas Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead, and Table of Contents for St. Thomas Law Review Volume 17, Issue 2, Winter 2004.

Evidence? Or Emotional Fuel?, Robert E. Precht

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following excerpt is from Defending Mohammad: Justice on Trial (Cornell University Press, 2003), by Robert E. Precht, and appears here with permission of Cornell University Press. The excerpt is from Chapter 8, "Relevance and Prejudice." The book is based on the author's experience as public defender for Mohammad Salameh, the lead suspect in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Institutions Of Learning Or Havens For Illegal Activities: How The Supreme Court Views Libraries, 25 N. Ill. U. L. Rev. 1 (2004), Raizel Liebler

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

The role of libraries in American society is varied: libraries act as curators and repositories of American culture's recorded knowledge, as places to communicate with others, and as sources where one can gain information from books, magazines and other printed materials, as well as audio-video materials and the Internet. Courts in the United States have called libraries "the quintessential locus of the receipt of information, "'places that are "dedicated to quiet, to knowledge, and to beauty," and "a mighty resource in the free marketplace of ideas." These positive views of libraries are often in sharp contrast with views by some …

Damages As Narrative, Melody Richardson Daily

Faculty Publications

The traditional approach to legal instruction in America-the casebook method-requires students to read hundreds of appellate decisions, most of which include equally terse accounts of human suffering. How might this pedagogical approach affect future lawyers? Can reading a book like Damages help law students develop the ability to empathize with their clients?

Foreword, Helen Meyer

William Mitchell Law Review

The William Mitchell Law Review has decided once again to dedicate one issue of this annual volume to Recent Decisions of the Minnesota Supreme Court. This issue reviews some of the court’s more important decisions from the 2003-04 term. If tradition is honored, the articles and notes you find in these pages will be thorough, well-written, and thoughtful in their analysis of each decision. This annual review is a tradition that gives our legal community a wonderful opportunity to publicly comment on the work of the court. This public testing of the court’s work is a healthy part of the …

Meaning What You Say, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

In this essay I talk about a wide range of themes in the hope of establishing a connection among them: writing (including the teaching of writing) and what is at stake, for the writer and the rest of the world, in doing it well or badly; certain forces in our culture-hard to define and understandthat tend to reduce or trivialize human experience, indeed the very value of the human being; the conception of the human being, not trivial at all, that underlies our practices of self-government in general and constitutional democracy in particular; and the idea of justice at work, …