Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Comment On Frederick Schauer's Prediction And Particularity, Gerald F. Leonard

Faculty Scholarship

Ignorance of the law is generally no excuse. I say generally because the century since the publication of The Path of the Law has brought a small but increasing number of exceptions to the rule. In Oliver Wendell Holmes's day, however, exceptions to the rule were nearly nonexistent, much to Holmes's satisfaction. In The Common Law, Holmes said that the law requires persons "at their peril to know the teachings of common experience, just as it requires them to know the law."  He did not, of course, actually think that common experience was perfectly knowable or judicial interpretation perfectly predictable, …

Plain English Part Iii: Choosing The Right Words, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

In an effort to provide investors with full and fair disclosures in language they can understand, the SEC has proposed rules to require that disclosures be written in Plain English.' These rules outline six "clear writing techniques": (1) active voice; (2) short sentences; (3) definite, concrete, everyday language; (4) tabular presentations; (5) no jargon; and (6) no multiple negatives. The January and March 1998 Scrivener article addressed the first two techniques; this article addresses the third.

Legal Writing: Its Nature, Limits, And Dangers, Douglas Litowitz

Mercer Law Review

Lawyers have a unique and highly technical manner of writing, one that differs significantly from standard English. Legal education involves an indoctrination into this new discourse, a process that ends when one awakens to find oneself writing in a manner that once seemed impossibly obscure. Of course, the mastery of legal language reflects a paradigm shift in thought, sometimes called "learning to think like a lawyer" or "seeing things from a legal perspective." The conceptual scheme and language of the law are so different from the ordinary way of thinking that Lord Coke was perhaps correct when he characterized the …

The Process And The Product: A Bibliography Of Scholarship About Legal Scholarship, Mary Beth Beazley, Linda H. Edwards

Mercer Law Review

This bibliography of scholarship about legal scholarship was originally prepared for the 1997 Conference of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. The Conference explored the rapidly developing area of scholarship by legal writing professors and the ways in which this important scholarship can be encouraged. Characteristically, when writing teachers turn their attention to a particular kind of writing the genre employs-that is, the process and the product. This bibliography is one result of that study. We hope that it will prove helpful to anyone interested in legal scholarship, especially to law faculty in the early stages of their scholarly careers. …

The Book Review Issue: An Owner's Guide, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

Law reviews have short memories. Other institutions count on long-term managers and well-kept files to preserve the experience of the past. But there is no remembrance of things past in an institution whose officers serve - fileless and frantic - for a single year. I want to use the opportunity this volume's editors have kindly given me to contribute to the Michigan Law Review's institutional memory. Editors past, present, and future may be curious about when and why the book review issue was conceived and born. I will briefly tell that story. More significantly, however, I want to relate the …

Notre Dame Lawyer - Spring 1998, Notre Dame Law School

Notre Dame Lawyer

Dwight King-On the Cutting Edge

The Kresge Law Library: A Tradition of Challenges and Progress

Advanced Legal Research: Advances on 21st Century Practice

Ode to Law 512 (Legal Research)

Collection Development: The Questions We Face

Kresge Law Library Faculty

Technology at NDLS

Bridging the Gap: Electronic Document Delivery and Networked Information Services

Digital Legal Information: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Plain English Part Ii: Shorter Sentences And Lighter Luggage, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

January's column addressed the first of six specific "clear writing techniques to communicate information" set out in the SEC's proposed rules for plain English-the active voice. This column addresses the SEC's second technique-shorter sentences.

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

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

Recent Books, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

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

Legal Writing Unplugged: Evaluating The Role Of Computer Technology In Legal Writing Pedagogy, Legal Writing, Suzanne Ehrenberg

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Linguistics And The Composition Of Legal Documents: Border Crossing, Elizabeth Fajans, Mary R. Falk

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Plain English Part I: Secrets For The Sec, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Studies have shown that traditional legal writing has four main characteristics: it is "wordy," "unclear," "pompous," and "dull." Furthermore, law books have been dubbed "the largest body of poorly written literature ever created by the human race." Although some lawyers intend to perpetuate this tradition, most have recognized the benefit of converting to "plain English."

Book Reviews: Bodies Of Law By Alan Hyde, Cynthia Godsoe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Issues Affecting Notarial Law And Policy, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 647 (1998), Robert Gilbert Johnson

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Notary Law And Practice: An Annotated Bibliography, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1007 (1998), Jason R. Levine

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Shepardizing English Law, Stephen E. Young

Scholarly Articles

Young explores the use of noter-up resources for English legal materials, with an emphasis on case law and statutory citators. He also describes the online tools that can be used as citator services.

Teaching Upperclass Writing: Everything You Always Wanted To Know But Were Afraid To Ask, Lissa Griffin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

A survey conducted as part of this project reveals that law schools generally require their students to have an upperclass writing experience taught or supervised by non-writing tenured or tenure-track faculty. These teachers currently bear the responsibility for assigning, supervising, reviewing, and evaluating most of the writing by upperclass students, either through substantive seminars or independent study projects. In almost all schools there is no major curricular planning, systematic instruction, faculty training, or institutional support for upperclass writing.

Creating Effective Legal Research Exercises, Amy E. Sloan

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Damaška: Evidence Law Adrift. A Book Review, Richard O. Lempert

Reviews

Let me state my biases at the start. I am a great fan of Professor Damaska and have been ever since I read his first book, The Faces of Justice and State Authority. Professor Damaska's most recent book, Evidence Law Adrift, adds to my admiration. In Evidence Law Adrift Professor Dama~ka examines Continental and Anglo-American trial procedures and argues that changes in the way Anglo-American courts resolve cases, especially the marginalization of the jury trial, strip common law evidence doctrine of its theoretical base and place it in danger of becoming an intellectual curiosity confined, in Professor Damaska's words, "to …

The Right To Participate, Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan, Richard H. Pildes

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following essay is excerpted and adapted from The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process, © The Foundation Press, Inc., Westbury, NY (1998). Publication is by permission.

Constitutions are often viewed today as constraints on majoritarian power in the service of minority interests. But constitutional ground rules also create the possibility of ongoing democratic self-government; constitutions establish relatively stable and non-negotiable precommitments that enable generally accepted structures of political competition to emerge and endure.

Despite the centrality of this role for the American Constitution , however, there is paradoxically little that the text or its history offers …

A Critique Of The Proposed Tobacco Resolution And A Suggested Alternative, Jon D. Hanson, Kyle D. Logue

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following essay is adapted from testimony presented to the Senate Democratic Task Force on Tobacco in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 9 1997, which in turn is based on the authors' forthcoming article, "The Costs of Cigarettes: The Economic Case for Ex Post Incentive-based Regulation," 107 Yale Law Journal (March 1998)

If the goal of cigarette regulation is either to reduce substantially the public health problem created by cigarette smoking or to allocate the costs of smoking more equitably, there are significantly better alternatives to the regulatory regime than would be created by the state attorneys general's Proposed Tobacco Resolution. …

Upstream Patents = Downstream Bottlenecks, Michael A. Heller, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

The following text is excerpted from "Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons in Biomedical Research" and is reprinted with permission from 280 Science 698-701 (May 1998). © 1998 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Thirty years ago in Science, Garrett Hardin introduced the metaphor "tragedy of the commons" to help explain overpopulation, air pollution, and species extinction. People often overuse resources they own in common because they have no incentive to conserve. Today, Hardin's metaphor is central to debates in economics, law, and science and powerful justification for privatizing commons property. While the metaphor highlights the cost of overuse …

Shall - Take No. 2, Debra R. Cohen

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Scholarship About Teaching, Jonathan L. Entin

Faculty Publications

This essay draws on that experience, focusing on approximately half a dozen particularly good articles that have appeared in the Journal during my editorial tenure. Most of these describe new ideas, offering detailed information for the curious reader who might want to emulate the author's approach or simply to learn what others in the legal academy are doing. Typically, however, these papers contain little or no meaningful assessment or evaluation. "Descriptive" is too often a pejorative term of dismissal. But good description is often an essential first step toward understanding. Because I believe that more rigorous evaluation could add to …

Ethics On The Web: An Annotated Bibliography Of Legal Ethics Material On The Internet, 28 Stetson L. Rev. 369 (1998), Darby Dickerson

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Breaking Into The Academy: The 1998-2000 Michigan Journal Of Race & Law Guide For Aspiring Law Professors, Gabriel J. Chin, Denise C. Morgan

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

I was not very far into my law school experience when I realized that my professors had the best job in town-it took me quite a bit longer to discover that I, too, could get in on the deal. Do not misunderstand me-being a law professor is not easy. In fact, when done correctly, the job requires a tremendous amount of intellectual energy, emotional commitment, long hours, and hard work. However, if you enjoy writing, research, public speaking, and developing mentoring relationships, being a law professor could be the career for you. This Article, and the listings of helpful organizations …

Playing Beyond The Rules: A Realist And Rhetoric-Based Approach To Researching The Law And Solving Legal Problems, Thomas Michael Mcdonnell

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The proposed realist and rhetorical approach to legal research applies to every conceivable legal problem and provides the student a conceptual foundation not only for solving any legal dispute, but for successfully completing any transactions with which he or she will be confronted. Part I of this article will demonstrate why law students should learn to research the relevant audiences in the legal drama and to research the unpublished and often unwritten rules and practices that these audiences follow. Part II will show how. Part III will present a comprehensive legal problem solving model that integrates these new dimensions of …

The Digests Of Pennsylvania, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

Published case law in Pennsylvania dates from the colonial period and constitutes one of the largest collections of court decisions in American law. Digests have long stood as an important tool for those conducting research in this material, with the first appearing not long after the cases themselves. Mr. Fishman helps to document the history of Pennsylvania digests by reviewing their publication, beginning with the early nineteenth century to the present. A bibliography is appended.

Front Matter

St. Thomas Law Review

Front Matter includes Table of Contents for St. Thomas Law Review Volume 10, Issue 3, Spring 1998.