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Abstract: This document contains information about submitting articles to law reviews and journals, including the methods for submitting an article, any special formatting requirements, how to contact them to request an expedited review, and how to contact them to withdraw an article from consideration. It covers about 188 law reviews. The document was fully updated on June 9, 2009.
law reviews, law journals, Articles, Submissions, law schools, law
Abstract: Too often, professors offer exemplar edits of student papers providing a single edit or identifying one or two instances of a problem. The expectation is that the students will respond to the general principle and use it themselves in editing the remainder of their own pieces. Independent learning theory suggests that students learn best if they learn the tools of self-assessment. Editing checklists abound. Grammar dos and don'ts are not difficult to obtain; indeed, virtually every legal writing text has some variation. Students who take the time to review these lists find them quite helpful. Independent learners only need access to the information. Not all students, however, are independent learners. Many need more than a nudge to use information that is provided to them. Requiring self-editing certification enables the student to develop editing skills by focusing on discrete tasks rather than the often overwhelming instruction to proofread carefully. Although this same information is available in a myriad of sources, the certification directs the student to manageable tasks. The following is a checklist for students to use in editing their own papers. It lists many of the most basic principles of good, clear writing and many of the most common flaws in students' papers. It requires the student to certify, by signing and noting the date and time, that the student has checked the paper for each of the points listed.
Law school paper, Notes, Comments, Editing, Self-editing, Checklist, Legal writing, Scholarly writing, Student papers, Grammar, Plagiarism, Law students, Students
Abstract: On April 16, 2007, the day of the "Massacre at Virginia Tech", in which 32 innocent college students and faculty lost their lives to a crazed gunman armed with two semi-automatic pistols and a couple hundred rounds of ammunition, the first reaction of the gun lobby was that we need more guns on the college campuses of our Nation. The gun lobby also wants to repeal the Federal Gun-Free School Zones Act and arm public school teachers. This report exposes the gun lobby's step-by-step strategy to force guns into every aspect of daily life. Introducing guns into schools and universities is only the latest attempt to knock down barriers to firearms possession in places that previously were gun-free. Section One discusses the severe risks that would be created if gun possession and carrying became widespread on college campuses and gun-free school zones were undermined. Section Two explains how that campaign would destroy fundamental rights of academic freedom and wrest control of college campuses and schools from persons entrusted to secure those institutions. Section Three explains that these risks can best be managed by continuing gunfree policies. The Conclusion stresses that because of the gun lobby's campaign, it is no longer enough for academic institutions to adopt gun-free policies. Academic communities must also become active in potentially every state legislature if they want to keep the right to maintain a gun-free environment.
Virginia Tech, gunman, pistols, gun lobby, guns, college, campuses, handguns, universities, Brady Center, gun violence, gun control, National Rifle Association, NRA, firearms, right to bear arms, Second Amendment, schools
Abstract: This article examines the issue of gun control through the lens of the 'comprehensive rationality' and 'incrementalism' models of policymaking and argues that incremental policymaking has been one of the major impediments to progress toward more effective regulation of guns. Gun laws are often an incoherent patch-work of provisions as new restrictions are piled atop old ones in response to particular tragedies or narrow concerns, instead of crafting bills to achieve an optimal approach to the entire problem. Political science and other social sciences literature has closely examined the 'incrementalism' and 'comprehensive rationality' models of policymaking over the past several decades, but legal scholars discuss the models much less frequently. This article describes how political scientists have identified a few exceptional types of policy problems that are particularly unsuited for an incrementalist approach. Incremental policymaking poses a special risk for firearm regulation because of the uniquely prominent role that 'slippery slope' fears play in the opposition to any new measures concerning guns. This article contends that a more comprehensive approach is vital both to achieve more effective policies and to quell gun owners' concerns that moderate gun control measures will eventually lead to gun bans and confiscation. The top policy priority should be expanding background check regulations to form a more complete and coherent system limiting access to guns.
Gun control, Guns, Weapons, Gun laws, Firearms, Shootings, Incrementalism, Comprehensive rationality, Policymaking, Second Amendment, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Gun free zone, Background check, National Rifle Association, NRA, Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, Hurricane Katrina
Abstract: Twenty-five years have passed since courts first adopted market share liability, a theory under which a plaintiff unable to identify the manufacturer of the product that caused his injury can recover on a proportional basis from each manufacturer that might have made the product. Courts have severely restricted the reach of this potentially powerful theory by insisting that it can apply only to products that are perfectly fungible. Most products vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, posing different levels of risk, and therefore do not satisfy the fungibility requirement. As a result, courts have applied market share liability to a very small number of products. This Article argues that courts should eliminate the fungibility requirement by recognizing that market share liability is just one variant of a broader concept that the author calls proportional share liability. Rather than deny recovery in cases involving products that pose varying degrees of danger, courts should consider whether proportional share liability can be imposed by using information other than market share data to make a reasonable and fair allocation of liability among the defendants. This Article examines the potential application of proportional share liability in a wide variety of contexts, including vaccines or lead paint causing brain damage, violence fueled by negligent distribution and sales of firearms, disease resulting from exposure to asbestos or tobacco, and damage to spacecraft from collisions with orbital debris.
Market share liability, Product liability, Proportional basis, Fungible, Nonfungible, Proportional share liability, Manufacturer, Liability, Harm, Injury, Market share, Manufacturing defects, DES, Guns, Tobacco, Asbestos, Lead paint, Orbital debris, Vaccines
Abstract: Amidst all the economic trouble, one industry has reason to celebrate. Sales of firearms increased significantly before the 2008 election, driven by fears that as President Barrack Obama would bring tighter restrictions on guns. The FBI reported that almost fifty percent more background checks were conducted in the first week of November 2008 compared to the same week in 2007. While generating a surge for the gun industry, the 2008 elections may have a more significant effect on policy issues surrounding guns. After several years of momentum in favor of the National Rifle Association (NRA), the 2008 election favored gun control advocates. Should the Obama administration, with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, make a push for legislation tightening restrictions on firearms, or move to adopt a more gun-friendly stance, or do nothing and hope the issue receives as little attention as possible? This article lays out a strategy for the Obama administration to translate the campaign rhetoric of overcome old dividing lines and partisan bickering into action. Despite the decades long political and cultural conflict surrounding gun control, there is room for consensus and compromise. President Obama should announce that he wants progress on regulating firearms, but will not support any proposal unless it also enhances gun rights. This article describes examples of how both sides could work together on measures that promote beneficial use of guns while reducing harmful misuse. This approach emphasizes compromise in that the Obama administration would take a middle path between pursuing ideal policies and paying attention only to pragmatic political considerations. The approach must blend principle with practicality. Supporting measures that bolster both gun control and gun rights would enable Obama to make steps toward improving law and policy concerning guns, while minimizing the political risk and reducing the bitterness of the gun debate. This article begins with an overview of the gun issue and a review of major developments in recent years. Although the NRA devoted enormous resources to convincing voters that Barack Obama posed a serious threat, Obama downplayed the issue, neither emphasizing nor repudiating reasonable gun control measures. Learning from the pitfalls and building on achievements of the past, the Obama administration can make progress on the gun issue with a strategy that emphasizes the compatibility of gun rights and sensible gun control.
Firearms, Gun industry, Gun control, Gun policy, President Obama, 2008 election, National Rifle Association, NRA, Compromise, Gun rights, Second Amendment
Abstract: Storytelling is a fundamental part of legal practice, teaching, and thought. Telling stories as a method of practicing law reaches back to the days of the classical Greek orators. Before legal education became an academic matter, the apprenticeship system for training lawyers consisted of mentoring and telling war stories. As the law and literature movement evolved, it sorted itself into three strands: law in literature, law as literature, and storytelling. The storytelling branch blossomed. Over the last few decades, storytelling became a subject of enormous interest and controversy within the world of legal scholarship. Law review articles appeared in the form of stories. Law professors pointed out that legal decisions were really stories that told a dominant narrative. Critical theorists began to tell counterstories to challenge or critique the traditional canon. Some used fictional stories as a method of analytical critique; others told accounts of actual events in ways that gave voice to the experiences of outsiders. Storytelling began to make its way into legal education in new ways. For instance, a major textbook publisher developed a new series of books that recount the stories behind landmark cases in specific subject areas to help students appreciate not only the players in major cases, but also the social context in which cases arise. Meanwhile, Scott Turow, John Grisham, and a legion of other lawyers invaded the realm of popular fiction and conquered the bestseller lists. Legal theorists began to recognize what historians and practicing lawyers had long known and what cognitive psychologists were just discovering the extraordinary power of stories. Stories are the way people, including judges and jurors, understand situations. People recall events in story form. Stories are educative; they illuminate different perspectives and evoke empathy. Stories create bonds; their evocative details engage people in ways that sterile legal arguments do not. The UMKC Law Review plans to devote a section of one issue each year to stories. The Law Review is interested in publishing stories about personal experiences or lessons learned in legal practice, unique clients or enlightening client interactions, or enlightening episodes in legal education. In this introductory issue of the UMKC Law Review's stories section, we have been fortunate to collect stories from some of the founding parents of the storytelling movement and some of its best contemporary practitioners.
Stories, Storytelling, Legal Education, Legal Scholarship, Narrative, Analysis, Criticism, Critical theorists, Cognitive psychology, Cognition, Literature, Understanding, Empathy
Abstract: In 2002, for the first time in more than 20 years, the Supreme Court of the United States decided a case involving the First Amendment rights of Jehovah's Witnesses. The Court ruled that Witnesses cannot be required to give their names to local government authorities in order to obtain permits before going door-to-door to distribute their publications and preach their religious message. While the amount of new law being generated by the religion's followers has slowed, scholars have finally begun in recent years to give significant attention to the legal history of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and, in particular, to their phenomenal wave of constitutional litigation. Shawn Francis Peters' Judging Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution is the most recent, and broadest, historical account of the Witnesses' legal activities. Peters focuses on the period of the late 1930s through the mid-1940s, a time when persecution of the Witnesses was at its peak and the Supreme Court decided a flurry of major First Amendment cases involving the Witnesses. Peters' book shares a fundamental flaw with previous accounts of the legal history of the Jehovah's Witnesses. He has chosen to passionately and unequivocally support the Witnesses' side of each and every one of the legal battles he describes. In Peters' hands, every episode in the Witnesses' legal struggles becomes a story about how an extraordinarily brave and dedicated Witness challenged an indefensible rule of law, and how every case ultimately resulted in either a watershed victory for liberty, or a disheartening judicial failure to protect our freedom. This Review considers the problems that arise in trying to force the history of the Jehovah's Witnesses into a uniform narrative of courageous opposition to unjust legal restrictions and prejudice. This form of legal history idealizes and oversimplifies the events underlying the cases and the issues they raise. Part I of this Review describes Peters' approach, and how he consistently frames the legal history of the Witnesses as a confrontation between righteous dedication and legal harassment. Part II suggests that Peters and other historians have been so determined to applaud the Witnesses' effect on the law that they have overlooked the equally significant question of how participating in these legal activities affected the Witnesses. Part III closely examines one particular case in which the Supreme Court considered the First Amendment rights of Jehovah's Witnesses, in order to suggest how Peters' approach to the legal history of the Witnesses can distort representation of the facts underlying cases as well as analysis of the meaning and significance of the cases as legal precedent. Finally, Part IV suggests that Peters, like others, has also neglected the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the Witnesses' legal history through comparison of the Witnesses to other religious groups.
First Amendment, Jehovah's Witnesses, Supreme Court, Legal history, Religious groups, Religious persecution, Watchtower, Persecution, God's chosen
Abstract: Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies, by Paul Bergman and Michael Asimov, and Legal Reelism: Movies as Legal Texts, edited by John Denvir, represent valuable initial steps in the consideration of how movies and other elements of popular culture reflect the cultural positions of lawyers and law, and how their study can aid discussion of issues of legal theory. Reel Justice analyzes movies about lawyers and law, particularly those with significant trial scenes. It determines whether movies accurately portray legal reality. Legal Reelism discusses how movies can be considered legal texts that reflect themes and problems of legal theory. The approaches of each of these books are considered in analyzing three films about criminal trials directed by Alfred Hitchcock: The Paradine Case, I Confess, and The Wrong Man. The treatment of Hitchcock's movies by film critics and scholars over the years reveals the fundamental similarity of the questions raised by interpretation of movies and the interpretation of more conventional legal materials such as statutes. The history of Hitchcock's movies also shows that interpretive issues cannot be overlooked if movies are truly to be treated as legal texts, as suggested by Legal Reelism. Movies and television have served as the primary source of information about law and lawyers for millions of people over the years, and they will continue to do so. Popular entertainment has also continually influenced lawyers' understandings and attitudes toward law and the legal profession. Posted with permission.
Culture, Society, Legal theory, Legal texts, Movies, Myths, Interpretation, Intent, Authority, Justice, Critical Legal Studies, Law and economics, Hitchcock
Abstract: In recent years, gun manufacturers and dealers have faced a wave of tort litigation in courts across the country. Shooting victims and their families have sued, claiming that they suffered injuries attributable to gun companies designing and distributing firearms in unreasonably dangerous ways. Dozens of major cities and counties have sued as well, seeking to recover costs for law enforcement, medical, and other public services allegedly incurred as a result of gun industry practices that foster criminal possession and misuse of guns. Patterned after the lawsuits by state attorneys general that shattered the tobacco industry's aura of legal invulnerability several years earlier, these government suits received widespread attention and generated predictions of a similar breakthrough against the gun companies. As these cases made their way through the courts, they caught the attention of writers and producers of various forms of popular entertainment. Stories about litigation against gun manufacturers and dealers became the basis for episodes of two of the most popular television courtroom dramas, a Hollywood star-studded legal thriller, a novel by a best-selling author, and an investigative journalist's account of the legal and political controversy surrounding guns. This Article examines these dramatic portrayals of litigation against gun companies, looks at the messages and information they conveyed to audiences, and considers what they reveal about the real legal battles that inspired them. The creators of these dramatic works used real litigation as source material. They drew facts, events, and arguments from actual cases and wove them into stories. Some strived to portray the gun litigation realistically and others relied more heavily on artistic license and imagination. While varying widely in the extent to which they aimed for realism, they shared several core goals. First and foremost, each sought to tell a compelling story that people would want to watch or read. In addition, for a mix of ideological and dramatic reasons, each strived to present a strong and convincing case against the defendant gun companies. To accomplish those goals, the creators of these works relied on techniques of melodrama. They simplified and personalized the issues, ratcheting up the pathos of plaintiffs and villainy of defendants to create a stark conflict between moral extremes. That process of developing narratives and using dramatic techniques to enhance their impact is similar in many ways to what lawyers inevitably do in litigation. They select and arrange facts to tell stories that judges and juries will find more coherent, credible, and convincing than the competing stories created by the adversaries. Narrative and melodrama play vital roles in real litigation just as in the depictions of litigation that appear on screen and in print. A review of popular entertainment's portrayal of lawsuits against gun manufacturers thus provides an illuminating way of approaching the real litigation and thinking about what types of claims and strategies did, or did not, work. In particular, it suggests explanations for one of the central puzzles of the gun litigation: the relatively weak results achieved by the most potentially potent litigation. Lawsuits brought by cities and counties initially appeared to pose the greatest threat to the gun industry. They were aggregative in nature, asserting claims based on a broad swath of incidents and an immense accumulation of injuries, rather than just a single event as in a conventional lawsuit brought by one, or a few, individuals. At least to date, these government lawsuits have not achieved the breakthrough results for which their proponents hoped, confounding expectations that the aggregative approach would prove more powerful than conventional, individualized claims. Examining television, film, and literary portrayals of gun litigation provides insight into what occurred in the real litigation, shedding light on significant but overlooked shortcomings of the aggregative litigation approach. The cities' and counties' lawsuits addressed the issue of gun violence in an unusually comprehensive, but abstract, way. While that initially seemed like an advantage, it ultimately undermined the cases. In analyzing and comparing the construction of narratives in real cases and their dramatic counterparts, this Article crosses through the intersection of several subjects that have been the focus of intense academic interest and extensive writing in recent years. Scholars have lavished attention on the significance of narrative in law. In addition, scholars have begun to pay substantial attention to the relationship between law and popular culture, looking carefully at law's reflection in movies, television, and books. Popular culture not only has a profound influence on how millions of Americans view the legal system and legal issues, but constitutes a valuable cultural record of ideas and attitudes about lawyers and law. Part I of this Article provides a brief overview of the real lawsuits against the gun industry and, in doing so, notes a key distinction between traditional individual cases which focus on one incident, and broader, aggregative cases brought by local governments and other entities. Part II describes how gun litigation has been depicted on the television programs Law & Order and The Practice, in the film Runaway Jury, in Richard North Patterson's novel Balance of Power, and in a non-fiction account entitled Outgunned: Up Against the NRA -- The First Complete Insider Account of the Battle over Gun Control. Part III compares the creation of narratives and the use of melodrama in the dramatic portrayals of gun litigation with the same phenomena in the real litigation. The analysis suggests that the absence of crucial melodramatic narrative features has been a fundamental deficiency in the government lawsuits and similarly expansive forms of litigation against the gun industry. In the interests of full disclosure, I emphasize that I am by no means an impartial observer of lawsuits concerning firearms, whether the litigation is real or fictional. As a staff attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, I helped represent plaintiffs or amici curiae in many of the cases discussed here. In addition, I provided information and ideas to two writers, Brian Koppelman and David Levien, at an early stage of their work on adapting John Grisham's book Runaway Jury into a screenplay. Whatever one thinks about their ultimate merits, lawsuits against gun makers provide a revealing opportunity to look at the relationships between one of the most controversial types of litigation in recent years and its fictional reflections in the realm of popular culture.
guns, gun manufacturers, gun industry, gun companies, firearms, tort litigation, gun litigation, popular culture, entertainment, televisions, movies, film, Hollywood, courtroom drama, NRA, National Rifle Association, gun control, Law & Order, The Practice, Runaway Jury, narrative, melodrama
Abstract: During the 1970s, the FCC closely examined the commercial content of children's television programming. However, in the 1980s, it declined to adopt any specific advertising or programming standards to replace those of the abandoned National Association of Broadcasters' code. The result, according to critics, was "program-length commercials," advertising for toys and other children's products contained in children's programs. The Children's Television Act of 1990 directed the FCC to address this problem, but the agency failed to respond to the concern of Congress that children's television had become the "video equivalent of a Toys-R-Us catalog." It rejected proposals submitted during the rule-making proceeding because, it said, they raised First Amendment issues or threatened the existence of excellent children's shows like Sesame Street. The FCC's approach pleased toy makers and broadcasters, but displeased groups such as Action for Children's Television and the National Association for Better Broadcasting. Other groups, such as the Children's Television Workshop and the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center, unsuccessfully proposed limited rules that addressed only the placement of spot advertisements, but not the commercial nature of the program itself. A better approach to regulating program-length commercials would be to give broadcasters full discretion in the first instance to air what they feel will entertain and serve their audiences. At the second stage - renewal - the FCC could evaluate the licensee's overall handling of commerciality in its children's programs, taking into account factors such as the program producer's intent, the placement and quantity of spot advertisements, the use of barter or profit-sharing arrangements between advertisers and producers, and the nature of the programs aired. In evaluating programs, the FCC could rely on the opinions of experts who understand the needs of children and the television industry. The FCC's oversight of commercialization in children's television through license renewal review would meet the Supreme Court's tests for restricting commercial and broadcast speech under the First Amendment. It would constitute a reasonable and narrowly tailored means of advancing the government's interest and would help solve the problem of program-length commercials in children's television programs.
Program-length commercials, FCC, Children's Television Act, National Association for Better Broadcasting, Children's Television Workshop, Donald McGannon Communication Research Center, Communications Act, Censorship, Commercial speech, First Amendment
Abstract: While tort lawsuits against gun manufacturers and sellers have captured much attention in recent years, there is an intriguing constitutional issue arising in the cases that has largely escaped notice. The gun companies build a defense from statements in a line of recent Supreme Court opinions indicating that the dormant Commerce Clause forbids application of a state statute to commerce occurring wholly outside the state's borders. The gun companies contend that it would be unconstitutional for them to be held liable under state tort law for the manufacture or sale of a gun that occurred outside the state. Several courts have accepted that argument, which would dramatically reduce the reach of state authority, while other courts have expressed bewilderment about the lack of clear precedent affirming or rejecting the argument. This article contends that the Supreme Court should disavow its recent statements about strict territorial limits on the reach of state law. Those statements hark back to a conception of state authority that prevailed throughout the law a century ago but appeared to be dead until the Supreme Court's recent comments revived it. The statements have no support in modern precedent, they arose in part from a Supreme Court opinion's error in citation of authority, and they cannot be correct without rendering unconstitutional a vast number of the products liability and other tort claims that courts hear every day. Lower court decisions trying to follow the Supreme Court's lead on this point have produced only confusion and inconsistency. Strict territorial limits on the reach of state law died long ago for good reasons. The Supreme Court should let them rest in peace. While it ultimately fails, the gun companies' argument highlights the need for courts to clear up the substantial confusion surrounding this important but overlooked constitutional issue.
Torts, Gun manufacturers, Gun companies, Gun control, Commerce Clause, Manufacture, Strict territorial limits, Product liability, Strict territorialism, Gun industry, Extraterritorial
Abstract: Near the end of the First World War, the German army introduced powerful new anti-tank rifles, and the U.S. military realized that it needed a similar weapon. Legendary American firearm designer John Browning answered the call by developing a heavy-duty machine gun and a new type of .50 caliber ammunition for it. Although rapid improvement in armor plating soon made it obsolete as an anti-tank weapon, Browning's machine gun proved to be enormously successful when deployed against personnel and less heavily armored vehicles. Military forces throughout the world continue to use it today. The ammunition for this gun became known as .50 Browning Machine Gun or .50 BMG. In the early 1980s, a handful of gun enthusiasts, tinkering in their garages and workshops, began making rifles chambered to fire the mighty .50 BMG ammunition cartridges. Rather than delivering a rapid barrage of fire like a machine gun, these rifles were designed for methodical shooting with exceptional accuracy and power at long distances. The U.S. military soon realized the value of these new rifles and purchased some of them for Marines to use in the first Iraq war. Since then, .50 BMG rifles have proliferated rapidly, moving into military and law enforcement arsenals throughout the world as well as into the hands of thousands of American civilian shooters. The rifles' success has been followed by controversy. In recent years, they have become one of the hottest points of contention in America's perpetual debate over guns and the laws controlling them. On September 13, 2004, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation that made California the first state in the nation to ban these rifles. Similar bills have been introduced in several other state legislatures and in Congress. This Article analyzes the issues surrounding these rifles and how they should be regulated. Striving to focus on facts and steer clear of hyperbole, it concludes that the truth lies somewhere between the lines drawn by the warring factions aligned on either side of the debate. While many of the arguments against tighter legal controls on these rifles are not compelling, many of the proposals made to establish such controls are flawed as well. Drawing on a British proposal, the Article explains how regulations could be crafted that would squarely address the real issue - the power of the firearm - rather than focusing exclusively on caliber. The debate over these weapons provides an illuminating means of looking at the larger conflict over guns and violence in this country and how progress could be made toward real solutions.
Guns, Rifles, Firearms, Gun Control, Terrorism, Extremist, .50 Caliber, Fifty Caliber, .50 BMG, Caliber, Muzzle velocity, National Firearms Act, Assault weapons, Sniper weapons
Abstract: As the twentieth century came to a close, the gun industry was under siege. The murders of twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School in April 1999 brought a chorus of calls for legislation limiting access to guns. A year later, demonstrators gathered in front of the U.S. Capitol building for the Million Mom March, the largest rally ever held in support of gun control measures. The industry's greatest concern, however, arose in another arena. Gun manufacturers found themselves in courts on an array of tort lawsuits across the country. Many of those asserting claims were individuals injured in shootings or the families of people killed in shootings. More than thirty government entities, cities and counties, filed lawsuits seeking to recoup law enforcement expenses and other costs incurred because of gun industry practices fueling gun violence and crime. Even the NAACP joined in, filing a lawsuit accusing gun makers of creating a public nuisance with disproportionate adverse effects on African-Americans. The industry faced an intense legal onslaught. Six years later, the storm of litigation over guns appears to have ended. On October 26, 2005, President Bush signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, giving the gun industry a unique exemption from most legal liability that otherwise might be imposed under state tort law. The new immunity created by this federal statute will not just block the filing of new claims against gun makers, but will wipe out cases already pending as well. If the law survives constitutional challenges, it will end one of the most interesting and controversial chapters in modern American tort law. As the era of tort litigation over firearms comes to a close, scholars already have begun to look back on it to explain what happened and to assess its significance. The most comprehensive effort to date is "Suing the Gun Industry: A Battle at the Crossroads of Gun Control and Mass Torts," a collection of essays edited by Timothy Lytton of Albany Law School. The book provides a comprehensive and well-balanced overview of gun litigation, bringing together work by scholars and other experts who view gun litigation from diverse perspectives. The contributors range from a lawyer who represents gun rights groups to a policy analyst for a gun control organization, with most of the authors falling somewhere closer to the middle ground. The essays include careful analyses of specific legal matters such as the constitutional and liability insurance issues raised by the lawsuits, as well as examinations of broader questions surrounding the litigation, such as public health and criminological assessments of gun violence. This Review examines how the essays in Suing the Gun Industry portray the achievements and failures of the gun lawsuits. While the essays share a conviction that the gun litigation was an unequivocal failure, this Review shows how and why that consensus view of the gun litigation overlooks important ways in which the suits were more effective than most observers have acknowledged.
Firearms, Guns, Gun Industry, Firearms Industry, Tort, Litigation, Gun control, Liability, Immunity, Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms, Suing the Gun Industry
Abstract: Jimmy Carter's presidency began like Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939), as the tale of an idealistic and innocent outsider making his way from a huble small town to the nation's capital. Following that promising beginning, disappointment and frustration followed. The story of Carter's undoing found reflection in several films of that era, particularly "...And Justice for All" (1979), "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" (1979), and "Brubaker" (1980). Each concerns an idealistic hero whose uncompromised good intentions cannot prosper. These films capture a unique period when events tested America's enduring belief in the efficacy of virtue.
President, Jimmy Carter, Watergate, Frank Capra, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1970s, And Justice for All, The Seduction of Joe Tynan, Brubaker, Politics, Government, Idealism, Corruption, Robert Redford, Al Pacino, Alan Alda
Abstract: Marketing films about European fascism and war to American audiences posed a dilemma for studios during the period 1937 to 1941. Fearful of offending foreign markets or being accused of propagandizing for American intervention, the studios delivered mixed signals and contradictory messages through their films and the marketing campaigns developed to promote them. Films discussed in the article include "Fire Over England" (1937), "Three Comrades" (1938), "Blockade" (1938), "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" (1939), "Beasts of Berlin" (1939), "The Mortal Storm" (1940), "Four Sons" (1940), "The Man I Married" (1940), "Escape" (1940), "Pastor Hall" (1940), "Arise, My Love" (1940), "Foreign Correspondent" (1940), "The Great Dictator" (1940), "Flight Command" (1941), "One Night in Lisbon" (1941), "Convoy" (1941), "Man at Large" (1941), "Haunted Honeymoon" (1941), "A Yank in the R.A.F." (1941), and "World Premiere" (1941).
World War II, isolationism, Nazis, Hitler, Hollywood, films, movies, studios, interventionism, fascism, The Three Comrades, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Beasts of Berlin, Blockade, The Mortal Storm, Four Sons, The Man I Married, Escape, Pastor Hall, The Great Dictator, A Yank in the R.A.F.
Abstract: Everyone remembers when Charlton Heston, as Moses, held his staff toward the heavens and the Red Sea parted in Cecil B. deMille's epic motion picture The Ten Commandments. Few know the curious tale of tax law that lies behind it. In the early 1930s, the Bureau of Internal Revenue claimed that Cecil and his brother, William C. deMille, also a successful motion picture director, had used personal service corporations to avoid huge amounts of income tax. The deMilles fought the charges. One brother emerged victorious, his career flourished, and he later gave credit to the wisdom of a tax court judge for making it possible for him to make legendary films like The Ten Commandments. The other brother lost, never made another motion picture, and blamed the nation's repressive tax regime for his troubles. This is the story of how the accumulated earnings tax and two decisions by the Board of Tax Appeals changed Hollywood history.
Abstract: In response to recent litigation brought against the gun industry on behalf of individuals and municipalities victimized as a result of the negligent marketing, design, and distribution of guns, the gun industry has argued that they cannot be held responsible for the victims' injuries because they have no "special relationship" with the victims. Without a "special relationship," gun manufacturers claim to have no duty whatsoever to design, market, or distribute guns in a reasonable fashion. This article examines the fallacies inherent in the gun industry's "special relationship" argument and discusses the factual, legal and policy grounds that support holding the gun industry responsible for its role in facilitating the misuse of guns.
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