Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Stranger Than Fiction: How Lawyers Can Accurately And Realistically Tell A True Story By Using Fiction Writers’ Techniques That Make Fiction Seem More Realistic Than Reality, Cathren Page

Articles

This Article differs from other articles on related topics in that it focuses broadly on including specific details to establish an overall sense of reality. In contrast, in his article, This is Not the Whole Truth, Professor Steve Johansen discusses those details that can ethically be omitted; this Article, however, is about which select details to include rather than to omit. Although some articles have focused on details regarding specific objects, such as an obtuse object or an endowed object, this Article covers a wider category of details that applies throughout the narrative as opposed to details that surface only …

Telling Tales The Transactional Lawyer As Storyteller, Karen J. Sneddon

Articles

Transactional lawyers are storytellers, although they may not think of themselves as such. They work with provisions and clauses to build trans-actional documents that encapsulate the wishes, hopes, and fears of the transacting parties to promote, guide, and control the relationship of those parties. Narratology, the theory of narrative, can provide a resource to transactional lawyers that facilitates the construction of a wide range of transactional documents, which can themselves be considered narratives.

The form documents that transactional lawyers use as starting points in the drafting process are already rife with narrative characteristics; they are embedded with characters and plots, …

Applying Daubert To Flaubert: Standards For Admissibility Of Testimony Of Writing Experts, Heidi K. Brown

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Review (1960-2009): A Bibliometrical Study, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

Supreme Court Review is a faculty-edited legal periodical published by the University of Chicago Law School. This periodical is a highly read and cited law review in law, history and political science. This article applies bibliometrics to a study of the 438 articles that are published in the periodical over a 50-year period. It is analysis of the number of articles by volume, pages, footnotes, authorship by sex, by individual, by institution, and most-cited articles.

So Ordered The Techniques Of Great Judicial Stylists, Jill Barton

Articles

Judges are writers first. And many write exceptionally well, lacing their prose with artful passages, vivid descriptions, stinging rebukes, and clever turns of phrase. What's even more remarkable is that they do all this while crafting the law.

The goal of great legal writing has always been plain language. James Madison called for concise, straightforward language when defending the U.S. Constitution, writing that it "will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot …

Front Matter

St. Thomas Law Review

Front Matter includes the Table of Contents for St. Thomas Law Review Volume 30, Issue 2, Spring 2018.

Corporate Personhood And The History Of The Rights Of Corporations: A Reflection On Adam Winkler’S Book We The Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

Adam Winkler’s book We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights is an impressive work on several different levels. Because so much of the development of American constitutional law over the centuries has involved businesses, the book is a nearly comprehensive legal history of federal constitutional law. It certainly would be worthwhile reading for anyone interested in the constitutionality of economic regulation in the United States, spanning the controversies over the first and second Banks of the United States, through the Lochner era and present-day clashes over corporate campaign spending, and religiously-based exemptions to generally applicable laws such …

Narrative Topoi In The Digital Age, Zahr K. Said, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Decades of thoughtful law and humanities scholarship have made the case for using humanistic texts and methods in the legal classroom. We build on that scholarship by identifying and describing three “narrative topoi” of the twenty-first century – podcasts, twitter and fake news. We use the term “topos” (from the Greek meaning “place”) and its plural, “topoi,” to mean “a literary commonplace” and “general setting for discussion” in the context of literary forms. Like an identifiable genre, narrative topoi are familiar story paths for audiences to travel. These narrative topoi live in contemporary popular culture and are products of digital …

Owning The Right To Open Up Access To Scientific Publications, Lucie Guibault

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Whether the researchers themselves, rather than the institution they work for, are at all in a position to implement OA principles actually depends on the initial allocation of rights on their works. Whereas most European Union Member States have legislation that provides that the copyright owner is the natural person who created the work, the copyright laws of a number European countries, including those of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, establish a presumption, according to which the copyright of works made in the course of employment belongs initially to the employer, which in this case would be the university. …

Social Science Evidence In Charter Litigation: Lessons From Carter V Canada (Attorney General), Jocelyn Downie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this paper, I offer the reflections of an academic who wandered well out of her wheelhouse. While I have graduate training in both philosophy and law, I am not an expert on the use of social science and humanities evidence in litigation. But, through the course of working on Carter v Canada (Attorney General), I had the opportunity to participate directly in the process of marshalling, preparing, analyzing, and critiquing the evidence. My hope is that, through this paper, I can bring a perspective that may be useful both for practitioners who might (or, I would say, should) be …

Judicial Audiences: A Case Study Of Justice David Watt's Literary Judgments, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Applicants to the federal judiciary identify three main audiences for their decisions: the involved and affected parties, the public, and the legal profession. This case study examines a set of decisions authored by Justice David Watt of the Ontario Court of Appeal, involving the rape, torture, murder or attempted murder of women, in which he attempts humour or uses puns, parody, stark imagery and highly stylized and colloquial language to introduce the violence, or factual circumstances surrounding the violence, in these cases. It assess these introductions in relation to the audiences judges have identified as important for their decisions. The …

Avoiding Ethics Complaints: Finding The Rules And Leos, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

One nightmare shared by all lawyers is the prospect of a letter from the Standing Committee on Lawyer Discipline informing them of a complaint. Prudent lawyers avoid this by becoming familiar with the ethical rules and standards of their jurisdiction. Because, as many a lawyer has learned, ignorance of the rules is no excuse.

Towards An Anishinabe Research Paradigm: Theory And Practice., Deborah Mcgregor

Articles & Book Chapters

As this volume attests to, in recent years there has been a remarkable emergence of Indigenous research scholarship both internationally and within Canada. Indigenous theory, paradigms, and methods inform research practices which take on many forms, reflecting the diversity of Indigenous nations. Many scholars, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, have sought to decolonize past and current research approaches and advance Indigenous approaches and methods of research (Louis, 2007). Some more recent efforts have focused specifically on the revitalization of Indigenous research traditions (Archibald, 2008; Kovach, 2003; Wilson, 2008). Anishinaabe research is a form of reclaiming our stories and knowledge through personal …

It’S All Your Fault!: Examining The Defendant’S Use Of Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel As A Means Of Getting A “Second Bite At The Apple.”, Prentice L. White

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The United States Constitution provides individuals convicted of a crime with “a second bite at the apple.” The Sixth Amendment provides an avenue to appeal one’s conviction based on the claim of “ineffective assistance of counsel.” What were the Framers’ true intentions in using the phrase “effective assistance of counsel”? How does the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996 affect habeas corpus appeals? This article answers these questions through the eyes of Thomas—a fictional character who is appealing his murder conviction.

This article first looks at the history surrounding effective assistance of counsel and discusses the difficulties …

Innovation Diffusion In The Legal Industry, William D. Henderson

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

This article is adapted from a series of blog posts originally found in my recently-started blog entitled Legal Evolution. The foundational material set forth in this article (and in those blog posts) applies to the legal services market insights gained from disciplines other than law. This article begins by setting forth the well-established theory of an “innovation diffusion curve” and the research that has identified the factors that affect the rate of adoption of innovations. This article identifies why innovation in the legal services market is desirable and applies to the legal services field insights drawn from this research …

The End Of Special Treatment For Cubans In The U.S. Immigration System: Consequences And Solutions For Cubans With Final Orders Of Removal, Lindsay Daniels

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In January 2016, former President Obama announced the end of the “Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot” Policy, which granted special immigration benefits to Cuban migrants. As part of the agreement to end this policy, the Cuban government agreed to take back its citizens with final orders of removal for criminal convictions, an action that it had refused to take for decades. This Comment will begin by exploring past and present immigration policies between the United States and Cuba, including recent developments like the normalization of relations and the impact of President Trump’s immigration policies.

This Comment will then explore possible avenues of relief …

Stopping The Clock: Resolving The Circuit Split Over The Notice To Appear And The Stop-Time Rule Under The Immigration And Nationality Act, Maria Kennison

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA or “the Act”) is the primary governing body of law on immigration in the United States. The INA establishes the procedures for removing noncitizens from the country.

To initiate removal proceedings, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) serves a Notice to Appear (NTA) on a noncitizen deemed to be removable. The INA specifies information to be contained in the NTA, including the hearing date and location. A form of relief from removal that noncitizens may apply for is cancellation of removal, which is contingent on factors such as continuous residence in the United States …

Keeping Up With Your Sister Court: Unpublished Memorandums, No-Citation Rules, And The Superior Court Of Pennsylvania, Logan Hetherington

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

As Pennsylvania’s intermediate appellate court of general jurisdiction, the Pennsylvania Superior Court decides thousands of cases each year. The vast majority of those cases are disposed of via unpublished memorandums. These unpublished memorandums are designated as non-precedential and may not be cited by parties before the Superior Court. As a result, litigants and their counsel may not even persuasively cite an unpublished memorandum in briefs or other papers submitted to the Court. Thus, if counsel finds an unpublished memorandum deciding the identical issue of the case at hand and counsel is before the Superior Court judge who authored that opinion, …

But It’S Just A Little White Lie! An Analysis Of The Materiality Requirement Of 18 U.S.C. § 1425, Hanna E. Borsilli

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Once an individual becomes a naturalized citizen, the U.S. government can revoke citizenship only upon a discovery that the individual was not eligible to procure naturalization at the time of application. The process to revoke naturalization, referred to as denaturalization, may begin with a conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 1425, a criminal statute broadly prohibiting any attempt to procure naturalization “contrary to law.”

This “contrary to law” language created confusion regarding the required statutory elements of § 1425. Most courts to address this issue, including the Supreme Court in Maslenjak v. United States, held that § 1425 requires proof …

Bluebooking Environmental Resources, Deborah Heller

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Five-page tip sheet presented as a table covers how to properly cite environmental material according to the Bluebook. It includes federal and state bills, legislation, and regulations, federal and state administrative adjudications and other administrative material.