Legal Studies Commons^™

Religious Civil Rights In Public High Schools: The Supreme Court Speaks On Equal Access, Richard F. Duncan

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court's recent decision in Board of Education v. Mergens, which upheld the constitutionality of the Equal Access Act and decided that the Act was violated on the facts before the Court, must be viewed against the background of governmental discrimination and the struggle for religious civil rights. Mergens is truly a civil rights case, and we must heed its lessons if we are serious about our claim to be a fair, open, and pluralistic society.

Shooting Yourself In The Foot With Due Care: Psychotherapists And Crystallized Standards Of Tort Liability, Robert F. Schopp, David B. Wexler

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Professional organizations sometimes promulgate guidelines intended to inform their members' practice. These standards may be designed to guide practitioners under ordinary conditions, or they may define an ideal toward which to strive. If courts adopt idealized standards as criteria of responsible practice for the purpose of establishing tort liability, professional organizations might respond by refraining from developing such guidelines or by framing them with an eye toward preventing liability rather than strictly for the purpose of enhancing patient care. In either case, the courts' actions and the organizations' responses might hinder, rather than enhance, the therapeutic project of the mental …

Title Vii And The Age Discrimination In Employment Act: Should Partners Be Protected As Employees?, Colleen E. Medill

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

In deciding whether a state law partner is an "employee" under Title VII or the ADEA, the test proposed by this Comment is as follows: (1) Did the partnership agreement create an "expulsion power" in favor of the partnership? If so, a rebuttable presumption exists that the partner is an "employee." (2) Assuming the partner cannot be expelled without cause, is this an "expendable partner?" Could the partnership afford to pay the partner the value of his partnership interest if he decides to leave? If so, a rebuttable presumption arises that the partner is an employee.

This test has several …

Protecting Shareholders From Themselves? A Policy And Constitutional Review Of A State Takeover Statute, C. Steven Bradford

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

American business in the last twenty-five years has experienced an explosion in the number of hostile corporate takeovers. Attempts to acquire billion-dollar companies are becoming commonplace. Smaller takeovers barely attract the attention of the financial press. The likelihood of a tender offer has become another everyday concern of management, as much a part of the business landscape as sales figures and profit margins.

Proponents of hostile corporate takeovers argue that such takeovers generally benefit society and corporate shareholders. They provide a way to discipline the management of companies which are operating inefficiently or not returning the full value of their …

Returning To M'Naghten To Avoid Moral Mistakes: One Step Forward, Or Two Steps Backward For The Insanity Defense, Robert F. Schopp

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

The history of the not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) defense has been characterized by an extended search for a satisfactory standard. For many years, the M'Naghten test was the standard applied by the majority of courts in the United States. The M'Naghten test has been widely criticized, however, as being too narrow, over-emphasizing the cognitive aspect of personality, and artificially restricting the scope of expert testimony. In 1955, the American Law Institute (ALI) proposed an alternative standard as part of its Model Penal Code. Since that time, there has been a marked trend in many jurisdictions from the …

Loan Payments To Secured Creditors As Preferences Under The 1984 Bankruptcy Amendments, Richard F. Duncan

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

The recent bankruptcy amendments made significant revisions in the law of preferences. At least one of these changes, the elimination of the forty-five day rule from section 547(c)(2), has the potential of rendering the trustee impotent against creditors who receive preferential loan payments while other creditors go unpaid. If this possibility materializes, the primary policy of bankruptcy preference law, equality of distribution among similarly situated creditors, will be severely undercut. The bankruptcy courts should respond by construing the ordinary course requirement strictly so as to avoid extending its protection to preferential payments of long-term loans and other atypical financings. If …

Job Satisfaction And Job Performance: A Meta-Analysis, Michelle Iaffaldano [Graef], Paul M. Muchinsky

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

The assumption that job satisfaction and job performance are related has much intuitive appeal, despite the fact that reviewers of this literature have concluded there is no strong pervasive relation between these two variables. The present meta-analytic study demonstrates that (a) the best estimate of the true population correlation between satisfaction and performance is relatively low (.17); (b) much of the variability in results obtained in previous research has been due to the use of small sample sizes, whereas unreliable measurement of the satisfaction and performance constructs has contributed relatively little to this observed variability in correlations; and (c) nine …

Tarasoff, The Doctrine Of Special Relationships, And The Psychotherapist's Duty To Warn, Robert F. Schopp, Michael R. Quattrocchi

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

The California Supreme Court, in its controversial Tarasoff decision, ruled that a psychotherapist may be found negligent when he fails to prevent his patient from harming someone.

When a therapist determines, or pursuant to the standards of his profession should determine, that his patient presents a serious danger of violence to another, he incurs an obligation to use reasonable care to protect the intended victim against such danger. The discharge of this duty may require the therapist to take one or more of various steps, depending on the nature of the case. Thus it may call for him to warn …

Section 547(C)(1) And Delayed Perfection Of Security Interests In The Ninth Circuit: In Re Vance, 721 F.2d 259 (9th Cir. 1983), Richard F. Duncan

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

The Bankruptcy Reform Act's treatment of belatedly perfected security interests in personal property is enigmatic, because it attempts to employ preference law to avoid a class of transfers, so-called "secret liens," that are not true preferences. When a security interest is granted in exchange for contemporaneous value, preference policy in bankruptcy is not offended, because the transaction does not cause a depletion of the debtor's estate for the benefit of a particular creditor. However, the effect of the timing rules of section 547(e) of the Bankruptcy Reform Act is to treat most security interests perfected during the preference period and …

Field Technique For The Identification Of Deer Blood, David W. Oates, Carol A. Jochum, Kenneth A. Pearson, Cathy A. Hoilien

Nebraska Game and Parks Commission: Staff Research Publications

A latex suspension sensitized with deer antiserum has been prepared, placed on plastic cards, dried, and packaged for field use. The product was tested against bloodstains from 22 species (including Homo sapiens). Strong agglutination reactions occurred only with bloodstains from deer and elk.

Delayed Perfection Of Security Interests In Personal Property And The Substantially Contemporaneous Exchange Exception To Preference Attack, Richard F. Duncan

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

The Bankruptcy Reform Act's treatment of belatedly perfected security interests in personal property is enigmatic, because it attempts to employ preference law to avoid a class of transfers, socalled "secret liens," that are not true preferences. When a security interest is granted in exchange for contemporaneous value, preference policy in bankruptcy is not offended, because the transaction does not cause a depletion of the debtor's estate for the benefit of a particular creditor. However, the effect the timing rules of section 547(e) of the New Act is to treat most security interests perfected during the preference period and more than …

Preferential Transfers, The Floating Lien, And Section 547(C)(5) Of The Bankruptcy Reform Act Of 1978, Richard F. Duncan

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Case law under the Former Act provided nearly absolute protection to perfected security interests attaching to collateral during the preference period pursuant to after-acquired property clauses in valid pre-existing security agreements. The Bankruptcy Reform Act replaced this case law with a legislative compromise that first treats most, if not all, security interests attaching to after-acquired collateral within ninety days of bankruptcy as preferences, and then exempts from preference attack security interests in inventory and receivables collateral to the extent that the floating lien financer has not improved its secured position at the end of the ninety-day period.

Although section 547(c)(5) …

Through The Trap Door Darkly: Nebraska Exemption Policy And The Bankruptcy Reform Act Of 1978, Richard F. Duncan

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

The Bankruptcy Reform Act establishes a somewhat disingenuous exemption policy that first creates, and then allows the individual states to nullify, uniform federal bankruptcy exemptions. The State of Nebraska has chosen to opt out of the federal exemption scheme thereupon assuming a continuing moral obligation to ensure that its exemption policy does not deny Nebraska debtors the fresh start following bankruptcy to which they are entitled. The Unicameral should undertake an immediate reconsideration of Nebraska exemption law with a view to possible elimination of the homestead exemption in favor of an expanded exemption in lieu of homestead to be available …

Federal Regulations Pertaining To Collection, Import, Export, And Transport Of Scientific Specimens Of Mammals, Hugh H. Genoways, Jerry R. Choate

University of Nebraska State Museum: Mammalogy Papers

The routine tasks of mammalogists whose research or curatorial activities include collecting, importing, processing, exporting, or interstate transporting of living or dead scientific specimens of mammals have become increasingly complicated by newly enacted (or more rigorously enforced) Federal regulations. These regulations were necessary largely because of the activities of non-scientists, but their provisions have had a tremendous impact on the activities of scientists (especially museum-based systematists and ecologists). Most mammalogists have expressed a willingness to comply with the regulations (although nearly all agree that administration of the permit system should be consolidated into a single office) if they can obtain …

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Political And Legal Speeches Of Robert B. Crosby, Gilbert Frank Nykodym Ii

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

I first saw Robert Crosby as a lawyer defending Duane Pope in November 1965. I was intensely interested in the Pope trial for a number of reasons. I was interested because, first, as a law student I found the legal points of interest, second, one of my law professors, Wallace Rudolph, was serving as an assistant defense counsel in the trial and, third, having a bachelors degree in speech I wanted to see what part speaking played in this trial.

As I began graduate work in speech I took a course entitled Rhetorical Criticism under Dr. Donald O. Olson. I …

The Spirit Of The Common Law, Roscoe Pound

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

These lectures speak in large part from the second decade of the present [20th] century; and they show the faith in the efficacy of effort and belief that the administration of justice may be improved by conscious intelligent action which characterized that time. The recrudescence of juristic pessimism in the past three years has not led me to abandon that point of view. At the end of the nineteenth century lawyers thought attempt at conscious improvement was futile. Now many of them think it is dangerous. In the same way the complacent nothing-needs-to-be-done attitude of Blackstone, who in the spirit …