Kategoria BISAC: Law >> Civil Procedure

Big-ticket litigation is becoming a way of life in this country. But something new is afoot-something typified by the $246 billion tobacco settlement, and by other courtroom assaults against companies producing guns, cars, breast implants, asbestos, lead paint, and more. Each massive class-action suit seeks to invent new law, to ban, tax, or regulate something that elected lawmakers had chosen to leave alone. And each time the new attack process works as intended, the new litigation elite reaps billions in fees-which they invest in fresh rounds of suits, as well as political...

This book focuses on the Reagan administration's broad attempt from 1980 to 1984 to strike thousands of Social Security disability recipients from government rolls. . . . Mezey] enriches her study with a brief history of federal disability policy and provides a review of contending arguments over public policy and judicial activism. Of particular interest is the legal battle over the medical criteria used for determining desability and the SSA's deliberate policy of nonacquiescence when confronted with adverse judicial rulings. . . . A well-documented and valuable addition to case studies...

A model is developed for analyzing criminal procedure across nations and cultures, and applied to the U.S., France, the U.S.S.R. and China. The model envisions common functions of arrest and detention, screening, charging and defending, trial, sanctioning and appeal. The comparison reveals significant differences between inquisitorial and adversarial systems, including the extent of court authority to control other criminal justice agencies, the defendant's role in the proceedings, and the court's role in the proceedings. Differences between noncommunist and communist inquisitorial systems...

Scholars agree that religion-clause jurisprudence is in disarray: The Supreme Court is divided on the issue; religious lobbyists and litigators aggressively pursue their often conflicting goals; and novel pieces of church-state litigation are frequent news items. Editor Paul J. Weber argues that a 25-year-old theory called strict neutrality may provide a foundation on which a more compelling theory of the First Amendment religion clauses can be developed. Although superficially examined in a search for new approaches by many law-review authors, very little serious analysis has been done of...

What did the Founding Fathers mean when they wrote the Constitution? What did the right to keep and bear arms or an establishment of religion or the republican form of government mean to the founders? Obviously, as enlightened men of the late eighteenth century, they were familiar with a host of ideas and concepts drawn from ancient political theory as well as contemporary political pamphleteers. However, as our language has evolved the precise meaning of the words of the founders has become obscure as well as misunderstood.

To make the words and concepts used by the founders...

The reliance on state declarations of rights to expand rights protections during the last two decades has highlighted the political importance of state constitutions. Yet, throughout American history up to the present day, state constitutions have been the battleground for fundamental political conflicts. This edited volume analyzes the efforts of various groups to achieve their ends via constitutional revision and constitutional amendments, examines the responses to controversial state constitutional rulings, and assesses the consequences of constitutional politics on substantive state...

At last, here is an empirical volume that addresses head-on the thorny issue of tort reform in the US. Ongoing policy debates regarding tort reform have led both legal analysts and empirical researchers to reevaluate the civil jury's role in meting out civil justice. Some reform advocates have called for removing certain types of more complex cases from the jury's purview; yet much of the policy debate has proceeded in the absence of data on what the effects of such reforms would be. In addressing these issues, this crucial work takes an empirical approach, relying on archival and...