American Bar Foundation Research Articles

The Model Rules: A Foreword

This quarter's American Bar Foundation Research Journal book review section is devoted to review articles of the American Bar Association's proposed Model Rules of Professional Conduct. In the strict sense the current draft of the Model Rules is not a book—its typescript pages and denomination as “Discussion Draft” clearly identify it as subject to change. Yet even in their preliminary form the Model Rules merit careful analysis. First, the Discussion Draft is important in its own right. It is the most significant legislative proposal in the field of legal ethics in over a decade. Second, the problems discussed in these reviews—for example, enforcement, lying in negotiation, disclosure of client confidences, and client control of decision making—will continue to be serious problems no matter what changes are made in future drafts of the Model Rules. Third, by inviting the comments of some of the leading scholars in legal ethics before a final draft is written, we have been able to supply the Commission on Evaluation of Professional Standards with drafts of the symposium contributions in ample time for the Commission to consider making some of the changes the reviewers suggest. Last, because these scholars (most of whom are also practitioners) are familiar with the ethical literature of the last decade, they should be able to set the Model Rules in the context of that literature—no small accomplishment.

Law Professors: A Profile of the Teaching Branch of the Legal Profession

In the United States, law schools provide the principal route of entry into the legal profession. Indeed, education in a law school is the only experience that virtually all members of the modern legal profession have in common. The gatekeeping function of law schools places the nation's law teachers in a most influential position. Although law professors play a vital role in selecting and molding the members of the profession, little research has been done on them. This article presents the results of the American Bar Foundation's first major study of law teachers. The author finds them to be a most highly credentialed group of lawyers, the overwhelming majority of whom are graduates of a small group of elite law schools. She also finds that possession of a degree from one of these schools appears to be not only highly determinative of who become law teachers but also of the nature of teachers' academic careers.

Law Professors: A Profile of the Teaching Branch of the Legal Profession

In the United States, law schools provide the principal route of entry into the legal profession. Indeed, education in a law school is the only experience that virtually all members of the modern legal profession have in common. The gatekeeping function of law schools places the nation's law teachers in a most influential position. Although law professors play a vital role in selecting and molding the members of the profession, little research has been done on them. This article presents the results of the American Bar Foundation's first major study of law teachers. The author finds them to be a most highly credentialed group of lawyers, the overwhelming majority of whom are graduates of a small group of elite law schools. She also finds that possession of a degree from one of these schools appears to be not only highly determinative of who become law teachers but also of the nature of teachers' academic careers.

REVIEWS

The Discipline of the Law. By Lord Denning. [London: Butterworths. 1979. xxii and 330 pp. £4·50.]Selected Writings. By Otto Kahn‐Freund. [London: Stevens and Sons under the auspices of the Modern Law Review. 1978. xv and 381 incl. bibliography (no index). Price £10·00.]Textbook of Criminal Law. By Glanville Williams. [Stevens. 1978. Pp. xl and 973. Hardback: £16·00; Paperback: £10·00.]Denial of Justice; Criminal Process in the United States. By Lloyd L. Weinreb. [The Free Press, Macmillan, New York. 1977, pp. xi and 177 Hardback $12.95.]Legal Services Plans—Approaches to Regulation. By W. Pfennigstorf and S. L. Kimball (editors). [1977. Chicago. American Bar Foundation. xxiv and 662 (including appendices). No price stated.]Consumer Credit. Edited by R. M. Goode. [London: The United Kingdom National Committee of Comparative Law. 1978. xx + 488 pp. £30·41.]The Private International Law of Matrimonial Causes in the British Isles and the Republic of Ireland. By P. M. North. [Amsterdam, New York and Oxford: North‐Holland Publishing Co. 1977. xxiii and 465 pp. (with appendices, tables and index). Dfl. 110 00/U.S. $47.95/£27·00.]The Matrimonial Property Act 1976. By R. L. Fisher. [(Butterworths: Wellington N.Z. 1977. pp. xvii + 187 including index, N.Z. $15.00.)]Canadian Family Law: Cases and Materials. Edited by Simon Fodden. [Toronto: Butterworths. 1977. xiv + 889 pp. incl. index, $42.25.]The Law of Weights and Measures. Second Edition. By J. O'Keefe. [Butterworths. 1977. £55·00.]The Patents Act 1977. Queen Mary College Patent Conference Papers. Edited by Mary Vitoria. [Published for the Faculty of Laws, Queen Mary College, University of London by Sweet & Maxwell. 1978. xv and 95 pp. £7·25.]American Conveyancing Patterns. By D. Barlow Burkb Jr. [Lexington Books. 1978. D. C. Heath & Company, Lexington, Mass. p. xiii and 224. Hardback $18.95.]Harmonisation of Private International Law by the EEC. Edited by K. Lipstein. [Published by Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (University of London), 1978. pp. vii, 195. £8·50 paperback.]Sociological Inquiry and Legal Phenomena. By Clive Grace and Philip Wilkinson. [Collier Macmillan. 1978. pp. x + 292 (References and Recommended Reading). £8·50.]

Review: The Legal Needs of the Public: The Final Report of a National Survey by Barbara A. Curran

Book Review| January 01 1979 Review: The Legal Needs of the Public: The Final Report of a National Survey by Barbara A. Curran BARBARA A. CURRAN. THE LEGAL NEEDS OF THE PUBLIC: THE FINAL REPORT OF A NATIONAL SURVEY. Chicago: American Bar Foundation, 1977, 382 pp., $25.00. Laurence A. French Laurence A. French University of Nebraska, Lincoln Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Explorations in Ethnic Studies (1979) 2 (1): 45–47. https://doi.org/10.1525/ees.1979.2.1.45 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Laurence A. French; Review: The Legal Needs of the Public: The Final Report of a National Survey by Barbara A. Curran. Explorations in Ethnic Studies 1 January 1979; 2 (1): 45–47. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ees.1979.2.1.45 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentEthnic Studies Review Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright, ©EES, The National Association for Ethnic Studies, 19791979 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Environment, Damages, and Compensation

This article, the first part of a larger study devoted to the compensation of damages caused by pollution, reviews the existing sources of compensation in the United States: the common law of torts, federal and state statutes, and various forms of commercial insurance coverages. It shows how the rules of nuisance law have remained flexible in response to changing customs and public policies, how for a long time prevailing attitudes favored industrial development and economic growth over physical comfort, and how increasing concerns about the long-term health effects of environmental pollution have created a trend in the opposite direction. The author also points out that the existing system of liability and compensation, which relies on individual actions and case-by-case adjudication, is not ideally suited for dealing with the effects of large-scale pollution or for the —primarily political—task of evaluating and balancing all of the interests and values, present and future, economic and noneconomic, that need to be considered before decisions can be made that are bound to affect the health and economic well-being of a large part of the population beyond the immediate parties to a lawsuit. This indicates a need for a comprehensive approach that would not only coordinate the rules concerning liability and those concerning insurance and other sources of compensation but would also make the compensation of pollution damages an integral part of a thoroughly rational and consistent environmental policy. The various possibilities of constructing such a comprehensive compensation system will be discussed in the second part of the study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the American Bar Foundation Research Journal.

Nuisance Law: Corrective Justice and Its Utilitarian Constraints

Nuisance Law: Corrective Justice and Its Utilitarian Constraints

Automating the legal Reasoning Process: A Computer that uses Regulations and Statutes to Draft Legal Documents

Several years ago, the American Bar Foundation initiated a modest investigation into the feasibility of designing a computer that could automate the assembly of form legal documents such as wills, trusts, complaints, and the like. The investigation has since matured into a major research effort to design an entirely new kind of computational processor. A prototype processor has now been constructed, and it is undergoing field tests to determine whether it truly fulfills the specialized needs of the legal drafter.This article briefly traces the history of the project, explaining the motivation behind it and describing the role of the participants. The article then introduces a new language—the principal result of the research effort—that may be used to draft both form documents and statutes, regulations, and other “instructions” defining how form documents are to be assembled. The new language, a subset of English, is fully comprehensible both to attorneys and to a properly designed computational processor. An attorney or paraprofessional may redraft form legal documents, statutes, and regulations in the new language and then feed them directly into the computer; no conventional programming is required. The computer asks questions couched in language taken from the forms and statutes, performs any necessary computations, and draws any necessary legal conclusions. The computer then returns client-customized legal documents ready for court filing. The article tells how the new processor may be set up to perform even the most complex drafting tasks—even complex tax-return preparation. Particular emphasis is placed on having the computer force the attorney or paraprofessional to proceed in a highly organized fashion with the development of a complex delivery system so that the computer, and not the attorney or paraprofessional, keeps track of the complex linkages between the elements of the system as it evolves.In its concluding section, the article explores the possible impact of this new technology upon the legal profession and the public, and the author expresses his view that centralized systems set up by legal specialists to support the work of numerous nonspecialists may expand the areas in which the generalist may do competent work and may enable the general practitioner to buck the current trend toward specialization.

Book reviews

Law, Justice, and The Individual in Society: Psychological and Legal Issues. Edited by June Louin Tapp, University of California, San Diego and Felice J. Levine, American Bar Foundation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977. 446 pp. Group Care of Children: Crossroads and Transitions. By Morris Fritz Mayer, Leon H. Richman and Edwin A. Balcerzak. New York: Child Welfare League of America, 1977. 327 pp. A Group Home for Adolescent Girls: Practice and Research. By Joseph L. Taylor, Jerome L. Singer, Harriet Goldstein, Margaret O. Tsaltas and Elaine Kasowski. New York: Child Welfare League of America, 1976. 125 pp. The ABC's of Child Care Work in Residential Care: The Linden Hill Manual. By Paul Lambert. New York: Child Welfare League of America, 1977. 76 pp.

The Effect of Peremptory Challenges on Jury and Verdict: An Experiment in a Federal District Court

* This experiment was conducted in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and was supported by Grant GS-33825 from the National Science Foundation. Additional funds were provided by the Nancy G. and Raymond G. Feldman Fund for studies in criminal justice. t Dr. Jur., 1927, Dr. Pol. Sc., 1928, University of Vienna. Professor Emeritus of Law and Sociology, Research Associate, Center for Studies in Criminal Justice, University of Chicago; Senior Consultant, American Bar Foundation. + B.A., 1968, University of Michigan; Ph.D., 1972, Northwestern University. Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago. 1 Voir dire is sometimes translated from the French as see [them] talk, but in fact means true talk, the word voir being a corruption of the Latin verus, or true. See WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INT'L DICTIONARY 2562 (1961). The earliest known procedure for challenging jurors was found in Roman law. The Lex Sevilia (104 B.C.) provided that the accuser and the accused in capital cases could each propose a list of 100 judices and that each could reject 50 from the other's list, leaving 100 to try the case. W. FORSYTH, HISTORY OF TRIAL BY JURY 175 (Cambridge 1852). In the year 7 B.C., the Roman emperor Augustus Caesar issued an edict governing the selection of jurors in capital cases in the city of Cyrene on the Lybian coast (the modern Shahhat). II ROMAN CIVILIZATION 37 (N. Lewis & M. Reinhold eds. 1963). The edict provided for the drawing of 50 prospective jurors, one-half of whom had to be Greek, the other half Roman. The edict added: Of these the prosecutor may, if he wishes, dismiss one from each group, and the accused three out of the total, provided he does not dismiss either all Romans or all Greeks. Id. The modern system of challenges for cause and peremptory challenges originated in the common law of England, which allowed peremptory challenges only in criminal trials for capital offenses; the defendant in such an action could exclude 35 jurors. W. FORSYTH, supra at 231. King Henry VIII later reduced this number to 20, where it remained until the mid19th century. Id. The challenge for cause, allowed by the common law in all cases, was more complex than the present-day system. In Lord Coke's time, the challenge for cause included both the challenge to the array, which led to the exclusion of the entire jury, and the challenge to the polls, which led to the exclusion of individual jurors. Id. at 177. Two classes of cause were recognized: The principal challenge was allowed as a matter of course upon a showing that

Regulation of Legal Service Plans

Legal service plans, widely regarded as the key to better availability of legal services for Americans of moderate incomes, have not yet found their proper place in the legal and regulatory framework. Uncertainty about regulatory requirements threatens to hold up progress. This article presents the results of a three-year study of alternative approaches to the regulation of legal service plans. It analyzes the inherent dangers of various types of plans and suggests ways of providing adequate protection for consumers while preserving maximum freedom and flexibility for experimentation with new delivery systems. Specifically, the authors recommend the existing and time-tested system of insurance regulation as the most suitable model for plans having a significant risk-carrying element, subject, however, to appropriate amendments to accommodate the unique features of some kinds of plans, such as bar-sponsored nonprofit organizations, and with special procedures to ensure close cooperation with disciplinary authorities as far as the conduct of lawyers is concerned.A volume containing all the principal and background papers prepared in this study, including a modified version of the present article, will be published by the American Bar Foundation as Legal Service Plans: Approaches to Regulation.

REVIEWS

Legal Services in Birmingham. By Lee Bridges, Brenda Sufrin, Jim Whetton and Richard White.Legal Expense Insurance. By Werner Pfennigstorf. [Chicago: American Bar Foundation. 1975. ix and 117 pp. $3.00.]The Land and the Development, or The Turmoil and the Torment. By Sir Desmond Heap; being the 27th series of the Hamlyn lectures.Compensation for Compulsory Purchase: A Comparative Study. Edited by J. F. Garner.Compensation for Compulsory PurchaseLandlord and Tenant. By M. PartingtonKemp and Kemp: The Quantum of Damages in Personal Injury and Fatal Accident Claims. By David A. McI. Kemp, q.c., assisted by Derrick Turriff, John M. C. Moxom and Richard W. Seymour.Compensation and Rehabilitation. By Harold Luntz.Bullen anD Leake and Jacob's Precedents of Pleadings. Twelfth edition. By I. H. Jacob.Odgers' Principles of Pleading and Practice. Twenty‐first edition. By D. B. Casson and I. H. Dennis.The European Convention on Human Rights. By Francis G. Jacobs.The European Convention on Human Rights. By Fredr. Casteberg.European Community Law in the United Kingdom. By Lawrence Collins.Compendium of Case Law Relating to the European Communities 1973. By H. J. Eversen, H. Sperl, and J. A. Usher.Megarry's Manual of the Law of Real Property. Fifth ed. By P. V. Baker.A Practical Guide to Capital Transfer Tax. By Hilda Wilson.

Legal Reference Books

1. Brakel, Samuel J. Judicare. Public Funds, Private Lawyers and Poor People. Chicago, American Bar Foundation, 1974. 145pp. S7.50. For the past several years, the most important objective of the American Bar Association has been to render legal services more accessible to the needy. Two systems designed to accomplish that objective are legal aid societies and Judicare, a federally‐funded plan for utilizing private attorneys, already in practice, to deliver legal services to the poor. Samuel J. Brakel's earlier publication, Wisconsin Judicare: A Preliminary Appraisal, published by the American Bar Foundation in 1972, introduced the earliest model of Judicare. In his 1974 study, he prsented a fuller and more critical view of the Wisconsin model and a comparison with the Montana and Upper Michigan's Judicare programs. Valuable features of this booklet are its demographic studies, budget tables, eligibility criteria and fee schedules Since publication of this work, the Congress has created the Legal Services Corporation to provide legal assistance to the poor in non‐criminal proceedings. The Corporation has evidently replaced the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as a funding source for legal aid programs of all sorts.

The Scope of the Fourth Amendment: Privacy and the Police Use of Spies, Secret Agents, and Informers

This article has been produced under the Samuel Pool Weaver Constitutional Law Essay program, which is supported by trust funds given to the American Bar Foundation by the late Samuel Pool Weaver to encourage research and writing about the Constitution and its application to current problems. Under the terms of the program as presently structured, a constitutional law scholar is invited from time to time to write an essay on a subject agreed upon between the scholar and the American Bar Foundation. This is the first essay produced under the program's new format.

The Scope of the Fourth Amendment: Privacy and the Police Use of Spies, Secret Agents, and Informers

This article has been produced under the Samuel Pool Weaver Constitutional Law Essay program, which is supported by trust funds given to the American Bar Foundation by the late Samuel Pool Weaver to encourage research and writing about the Constitution and its application to current problems. Under the terms of the program as presently structured, a constitutional law scholar is invited from time to time to write an essay on a subject agreed upon between the scholar and the American Bar Foundation. This is the first essay produced under the program's new format.

Legal Education: The Consumers' Perspective

This paper is the first in a series on data collected for the Law Student Activity Patterns Project. The project is one of several discrete studies in the research program in legal education of the American Bar Foundation, conducted at the request of the American Bar Association House of Delegates, with the advice and consultation of the Special Committee for the Study of Legal Education. A major purpose of this research is to develop an understanding of the professionalization of law students in behavioral terms, that is, in terms of patterned activities and time use. However, we will first present a series of initial reports analyzing data relevant to other general concerns about contemporary legal education.

Diversity, Representation, and Leadership in an Urban Bar: A First Report on a Survey of the Chicago Bar

This research originated from a request that the American Bar Foundation provide information to the Chicago Bar Association's Committee on the Development of the Law in its study of the Association's “role and purpose.” The resulting research by the Foundation is much broader than that originally contemplated in our early conversations with the Committee, and it now constitutes a major study of the Chicago legal profession and its relation to the organizations that represent it A significant part of the study, however, has been addressed to the CBA's concerns, and this article was originally prepared as a report to the Committee. It is being published because we believe that its findings and analyses will be of wider interest. The form of the article remains that of the report to the Committee, though it has been revised for publication.

A Select Bibliography of American Bar Foundation Research

A Select Bibliography of American Bar Foundation Research

Legal Education: The Consumers' Perspective

This paper is the first in a series on data collected for the Law Student Activity Patterns Project. The project is one of several discrete studies in the research program in legal education of the American Bar Foundation, conducted at the request of the American Bar Association House of Delegates, with the advice and consultation of the Special Committee for the Study of Legal Education. A major purpose of this research is to develop an understanding of the professionalization of law students in behavioral terms, that is, in terms of patterned activities and time use. However, we will first present a series of initial reports analyzing data relevant to other general concerns about contemporary legal education.

A Select Bibliography of American Bar Foundation Research

This bibliography of the American Bar Foundation's published research was compiled within definite limitations. The principal consideration was the provision of a historical record of the research product of the American Bar Foundation from its beginning.