Legal Profession Commons^™

Fixed Intentions: Wills, Living Wills, And End-Of-Life Decision-Making, Jane B. Baron

Tennessee Law Review

Contemporary trusts and estates law is built on the premise that individuals can and should have fixed intentions with respect to the disposition of their property at death. These intentions can and should be fixed in a written document, and that document can and should be fixed against other outside evidence of intention. Experience with end-of-life health care decision-making gives reason to question these premises. In the health care context, intentions have proven to be fluid, and the documents purporting to record individuals' wishes have often proved unreliable.

This Article examines the implications for wills of the literature on end-of-life …

Ethics And Evidence Too Hot To Handle, Douglas R. Richmond

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

"Assault Weapon" Lethality, E. Gregory Wallace

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Simple Audits For Simple Tax Partnerships, Andrew L. Lawson

Tennessee Law Review

New rules targeting sophisticated tax partnerships unnecessarily burden small, unsophisticated taxpayers. This is a familiar narrative in partnership tax. This time, the story takes place in the rules that prescribe the process by which the IRS audits and collects tax from partnerships and partners. Designed to limit abuse, the rules are highly complex and needlessly saddle small, simple businesses with increased compliance costs and potentially excessive tax liability. Ironically, at the same time, the rules leave loopholes for sophisticated organizations able to exploit them. This Article explains these disparate consequences and suggests solutions to both limit the loopholes for large …

Contents

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Little Child Shall Lead Them: Juvenile Justice, Aging Out, And The First Step Act, Jalila Jefferson-Bullock

Tennessee Law Review

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Adjusting Pre- And Post-Judgment Interest Rates For Consumer Debt Collection Actions, Christine Abely

Tennessee Law Review

This Article discusses how states can set fair, just, and equitable statutory pre- and post-judgment interest rates in the context of consumer debt collection litigation. Where states set pre- and post-judgment interest rates applicable to state civil actions, they generally choose one of the two following methods: (1) a fixed rate of interest, in some cases set decades ago and far exceeding the current market rate; or (2) a floating rate with a fixed percentage of interest added. Federal courts in civil actions with federal question jurisdiction apply a purely floating rate of interest tracking a market benchmark to calculate …

Illegal Exactions, Renee Burbank

Tennessee Law Review

Illegal exactions, or unlawful exactions, are an amorphous category of government activities with two unifying characteristics: (1) the government acts in its sovereign capacity but beyond its authority, and (2) its action enriches the government at a person's or organization's expense. The law of illegal exactions has developed through infrequent clusters of cases over 150 years, without substantial academic evaluation or discourse. The case law, thus, often lacks theoretical coherence. Lacking a single defining framework to use, courts have borrowed from torts, Fifth Amendment takings, and due process claims to define the scope of illegal exactions. Although it is an …

Information Age Technology, Industrial Age Laws, Elizabeth Winston

Tennessee Law Review

The United States patent system was born during the Industrial Age at a time where the focus was on promoting innovation in machines and tangible means of changing the world. With the dawn of the Information Age, innovation is increasingly intangible. The Industrial Age laws, as currently interpreted, are not well-suited for the changing and evolving technological world. Information Age innovators face challenges at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, through the judicial system and at the United States International Trade Commission. It is time for a change in the system to reflect the realities of modern technology. Adequate …

Righteous Indignation: Prosecutorial Misconduct, Brady, And The Cognitive Limits Of Self-Policing, Jonathan Harwell, Marshall Jensen, Sarah Heath Olesiuk, Sally B. Seraphin

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Origination Clause's Missing Piece, Chris Land

Tennessee Law Review

The Origination Clause is nearly constitutional surplusage today. The scope of the Clause has been limited by the U.S. Supreme Court to a very narrow class of revenue legislation that emerges from the U.S. House of Representatives.

This Article, for the first time, analyzes historical evidence that the U.S. Supreme Court has defined the constitutional scope of 'Bills for raising Revenue" and the concomitant reach of the Clause in a manner that fails to account for Revolutionary-era British revenue legislation. Four of the five bills passed by the British Parliament which contributed to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, i.e., …

Table Of Cases

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Looking Back: A Case Study Of Career Interest And Experiential Learning In Law School, David I.C. Thomson, Stephen Daniels

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This article is divided into four parts. First, some general observations on what led us to think about our research differently-the importance of career relevance with attention to students interested in a business-related career. Second, an overview of our ongoing study of students and experiential learning at Denver Law-a study designed to follow an incoming class as it goes from first year to last and into the practice of law. Third, through the lens of career interest, an analysis of 1L Denver Law students' preferred style of learning and their views on experiential learning. Fourth, a corresponding analysis of Denver …

The Legal Ethics Of Secret Client Recordings, John Bliss

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Is it professional misconduct for a lawyer to record lawyer-client conversa- tions without providing notice? When this question hit the national headlines with the summer 2018 release of Michael Cohen’s recordings of Donald Trump, an unresolved area of legal ethics doctrine was brought to public attention. The ABA’s current position is that the Standing Committee is “divided” and unable to offer a disciplinary standard on secret client recordings. This ambivalence is reflected in the lack of consensus across U.S. jurisdictions. Amid recent trans- formative developments in recording technology, and heated public debate about the risks and benefits of secret recording, …

Recalibrating Suspicion In An Era Of Hazy Legality, Deborah Ahrens

Seattle University Law Review

After a century of employing varying levels of prohibition enforced by criminal law, the United States has entered an era where individual states are rethinking marijuana policy, and the majority of states have in some way decided to make cannabis legally available. This symposium Article will offer a description of what has happened in the past few years, as well as ideas for how jurisdictions can use the changing legal status of cannabis to reshape criminal procedure more broadly. This Article will recommend that law enforcement no longer be permitted use the smell of marijuana as a reason to search …

Jost Delbrück: A Reflection, Alfred C. Aman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A profile and tribute to the international legal scholar Jost Delbrück (1935-2020), written by his good friend and colleague Alfred Aman. Delbrück was not only a graduate of the Indiana University School of Law, but was also a Maurer faculty member.

To Outgrow A Mockingbird: Confronting Our History—As Well As Our Fictions—About Indigent Defense In The Deep South, Sarah Gerwig-Moore

Georgia Law Review

To Kill a Mockingbird occupies a beloved space in law school classrooms and curricula, especially in its portrayal of Atticus Finch. Frequently held up as the model or “hero-lawyer,” Atticus’s character is powerful in fiction, but problematic in practice. His work is lauded, rather than scrutinized, despite his questionable ability to represent his client in life-or-death circumstances—specifically, a racially charged sexual assault case in the Deep South. Through considering examples of historical lawyers and texts which explore similar themes without the lens of fiction, those engaged in legal education and legal practice can and should look to others to study …

As Seen Through The Eye Of The Camera: A Portrayal Of How Cultural Changes Societal Shifts And The Fight For Gender Equality Transformed The Law Of Divorce, Taylor Simpson-Wood

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The New York Prosecutorial Conduct Commission And The Dawn Of A New Era Of Reform For Prosecutors, Clyde Rastetter

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

This Note discusses the history of the national dialogue regarding prosecutorial misconduct, analyzes recent state reforms, and proposes that New York's standing Brady orders and prosecutorial conduct commission provide the blueprint for ushering in a new era of prosecutorial accountability.

Judicial Elections, Public Opinion, And Their Impact On State Criminal Justice Policy, Travis N. Taylor

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

This dissertation explores whether and how the re-election prospects faced by trial court judges in many American states influence criminal justice policy, specifically, state levels of incarceration, as well as the disparity in rates of incarceration for Whites and Blacks. Do states where trial court judges must worry about facing reelection tend to encourage judicial behavior that results in higher incarceration rates? And are levels of incarceration and racial disparities in the states influenced by the proportion of the state publics who want more punitive policies? These are clearly important questions because they speak directly to several normative and empirical …