Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Portrait Of A Transplant Artist, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the process of norm migration through the study of one tax expert, Victor Thuronyi. It situates the literature on the role of experts in tax norm migration and identifies core themes and gaps in the tax transplant literature; explores five themes, connected to the literature on the role of tax experts and tax transplants, that arise from a study of Victor Thuronyi’s contributions to tax transplantation; and concludes with some reflections on the benefits and challenges of having highly specialized, non-insider tax experts engaged in the exercise of drafting tax laws.

An Intellectual History Of Comparative Tax Law, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this article, the author argues that comparative tax law has an intellectual history. More specifically, the author claims that history reveals there is a distinguishable comparative tax law scholarship where tax scholars engage in common debates. The author then offers a description of method, highlighting the difficulty of identifying the work that might be considered “comparative tax law.” Next, the author conceptualizes and clusters contributions from scholars who have framed the comparative tax law field. The author argues that our national boundedness, combined with the lack of an explicit network of scholars, has masked the rich intellectual history in …

Implementing User Rights For Research In The Field Of Artificial Intelligence: A Call For International Action, Sean Flynn, Christophe Geiger, Joao Pedro Quintais, Thomas Margoni, Matthew Sag, Lucie Guibault, Michael W. Carroll

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Last year, before the onset of a global pandemic highlighted the critical and urgent need for technology-enabled scientific research, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched an inquiry into issues at the intersection of intellectual property (IP) and artificial intelligence (AI). We contributed comments to that inquiry, with a focus on the application of copyright to the use of text and data mining (TDM) technology. This article describes some of the most salient points of our submission and concludes by stressing the need for international leadership on this important topic. WIPO could help fill the current gap on international leadership, …

Fixing America's Founding, Maeve Glass

Faculty Scholarship

The forty-fifth presidency of the United States has sent lawyers reaching once more for the Founders’ dictionaries and legal treatises. In courtrooms, law schools, and media outlets across the country, the original meanings of the words etched into the U.S. Constitution in 1787 have become the staging ground for debates ranging from the power of a president to trademark his name in China to the rights of a legal permanent resident facing deportation. And yet, in this age when big data promises to solve potential challenges of interpretation and judges have for the most part agreed that original meaning should …

In Defense Of Empiricism In Family Law, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

It is fitting to include an essay defending the application of empirical research to family law and policy in a symposium honoring the scholarly career of Peg Brinig, who is probably the leading empiricist working in family law. While such a defense might seem unnecessary, given the expanding role of behavioral, social, and biological research in shaping the regulation of children and families, prominent scholars recently have raised concerns about the trend toward reliance on empirical science in this field. A part of the criticism is directed at the quality of the science itself and at the lack of sophistication …

Exemplary Legal Writing 2019: Books: Five Recommendations, Femi Cadmus, Casandra Laskowski

Faculty Scholarship

A brief review of five recommended exemplary legal books published in 2019.

Reign Of Error: District Courts Misreading The Supreme Court Over Rooker–Feldman Analysis, Thomas D. Rowe Jr., Edward L. Baskauskas

Faculty Scholarship

Seventeen decisions in nine U.S. district courts from 2006 through 2019 have taken a demonstrably misgrounded starting point for Rooker–Feldman analysis. The cases have read language from a 2006 Supreme Court opinion, in which the Court quoted criteria stated by the lower court, as their guideline. But the Court summarily vacated the lower court’s judgment, and it had previously articulated, and has repeated, different criteria for federal courts to follow. The district-court decisions all appear to have reached correct results, but the mistake about criteria should be recognized and avoided as soon as possible before it creates potential mischief. And …

The Gaps Model And Faculty Services: Quality Analysis Through A “New” Lens, Alex Zhang, Sherry Xin Chen

Faculty Scholarship

Faculty service is an important function of U.S. academic law libraries. This article evaluates three types of faculty services programs using the Gaps Model to identify, analyze, and propose ways to fill four main gaps: knowledge, policy, delivery, and service quality.

Law, Artificial Intelligence, And Natural Language Processing: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Search Results, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

Renowned legal educator Roscoe Pound stated, “Law must be stable and yet it cannot stand still.” Yet, as Susan Nevelow Mart has demonstrated in a seminal article that the different online research services (Westlaw, Lexis Advance, Fastcase, Google Scholar, Ravel and Casetext) produce significantly different results when researching case law. Furthermore, a recent study of 325 federal courts of appeals decisions, revealed that only 16% of the cases cited in appellate briefs make it into the courts’ opinions. This does not exactly inspire confidence in legal research or its tools to maintain stability of the law. As Robert Berring foresaw, …

Contributions To The Intellectual Life Of The Institution And The Profession, Janet Sinder

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Roberto Rosas

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Speaking The Truth: Supporting Authentic Advocacy With Professional Identity Formation, Laura A. Webb

Law Faculty Publications

When law students are asked to articulate legal rules in a persuasive communication such as a brief, they may experience internal tension. Their version of the rule, as framed to benefit a particular client’s position, may be different from the way they would articulate the rule if they were not taking on an advocate’s role. The conflict between those two versions of a legal rule leads some students to wonder if advocacy itself is deceptive, if an advocate’s role requires one to sacrifice ethics for success, and if ancient Greek philosophers were correct when they derided persuasive communication as “trickery …

Law Library Blog (January 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Facilitating Collaborative Metadata Creation For Faculty-Initiated Digital Projects, R. Cecilia Knight, Elizabeth Rodrigues, Rebecca Ciota

Publications

The usability and long-term preservation of digital humanities projects, such as a digital archive or other project built around digitized materials, depend on thoughtful and thorough metadata creation. The variety of expertise required to create high-quality metadata for digital humanities projects practically requires a collaborative approach. Putting the call for collaboration into practice requires tools that are accessible and functional for all collaborators. Research on tools for metadata creation has tended to focus either on tools for librarians to manage digital project metadata or on tools for independent author metadata creation (Greenberg, 2003; Crystal & Greenberg, 2005). The …

Masthead

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

The Power Of A Positive Tweet, Patricia G. Montana

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

I am not naively suggesting that all we need are more positive tweets to solve the inequity problems that still plague many law schools’ treatment and advancement of legal writing faculty. But I do wonder whether more positive tweets from administrators, tenured colleagues, and others can help (and more instantaneously) spread positive feelings, heal past harms, build relationships, forge new connections, and ultimately help create more opportunities for success.

Getting It Right By Writing It Wrong: Embracing Faulty Reasoning As A Teaching Tool, Patricia G. Montana, Elyse Pepper

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In the early days of legal writing, we use exercises that have clear "right" answers. The rules are very simple and their meaning, even without looking at the cases, is usually clear. So, the "right" answer is often obvious. Indeed, it is intuitive. Though these exercises give students a sense of accomplishment and allow them to track achievement and understand success and failure, in some ways, they reinforce a common problem in first-year law students: their inability to see beyond the surface of a legal rule.

To ensure the "right" answer, students must distill not only a general rule, …

Research Strategies And Organization, Courtney Selby

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The model for the research process outlined in Chapter 1 assumes a project that is undertaken from scratch, with no prior knowledge of the area of law or essential relevant authorities. Chapter 1 calls this a “fresh search.” However, each research project is by nature unique, and thus requires a distinctive strategy. This chapter explores the ways a judicious researcher can take the essential elements of a fresh search, consider the practical confines of the research environment, develop a strategy for approaching the research process that fits the unique problem, and implement that strategy in a cost-effective and efficient …

Front Matter

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Front Matter includes Masthead, advisors, and Table of Contents for the Intercultural Human Rights Law Review Volume 15 (2020).