Jul

9

Measuring the McCarran-Ferguson Act’s Antitrust Immunity

Posted by: | July 9, 2011 | Leave a Comment

That insurance regulation rests primarily with the fifty states has become axiomatic and even cliché.  Around the country are operational state insurance commissions, and for much of the twentieth century, the federal government has let these agencies be.  The Employee Retirement Income Security Act’s (ERISA) sweeping preemptive force is cabined by a savings statute that allows [...]

Jul

7

Arbitrator’s Social Life Overturns Award

Posted by: | July 7, 2011 | 4 Comments

In Dallas last week, a court overturned a $22 million (!) arbitration decision because the arbitrator had failed to disclose that he had socialized with one of the lawyers.  As the Wall Street Journal law blog reported: Arbitration awards, as most litigators know, are very difficult to overturn on appeal. That’s why a Dallas appellate court’s [...]

Jul

7

Eckstein Hall Opened One Year Ago

Posted by: | July 7, 2011 | 2 Comments

Yesterday (July 6) marked the one-year anniversary of the opening of Eckstein Hall. The very first class in the new building was American Legal History which first met in Room 257 at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 6, 2010. To reach the classroom in the not-quite-finished building, the 17 students and their instructor had to [...]

Jul

6

R.I.P. Caylee Anthony

Posted by: | July 6, 2011 | 5 Comments

An Orlando jury decided on July 5 that Casey Anthony was not guilty of murdering her daughter Caylee, who was only two at the time of her death.   Hundreds of protestors gathered outside the courthouse after the verdict was announced, and local police worried if they would be able to protect the building from being [...]

Jul

6

The Shocking Testing Scandal in Atlanta

Posted by: | July 6, 2011 | 2 Comments

I don’t think “Bad Teacher,” the movie currently playing in theaters, is going to do damage to the reputation of teachers or education in general across the United States. It may be gross, dumb, tasteless, and a lot of other things, but it’s a movie.  People can grasp that it’s not a documentary. But the [...]

Jul

4

Hylton System for Identifying Freehold Estates and Future Interests

Posted by: | July 4, 2011 | 1 Comment

Should anyone be contemplating spending part of their summer break honing their skills at identifying estates in land and future interests, I offer the question-based system below which can be used to simplify the process of identifying estates in land and future interests.  The questions can also be easily diagrammed as a flow chart for [...]

Jul

3

How Scam Blogging Threatens the Law’s Professional Image

Posted by: | July 3, 2011 | 13 Comments

I first want to express my sincerest gratitude for the opportunity to appear on the Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog.   I have been a long time reader of the Faculty Blog, and what was true when I first started reading this blog continues to be true now: I have thoroughly enjoyed the quality of [...]

Jul

2

Diminishing the Harmful Effects of “Cultural Cognition” in Labor and Employment Litigation

Posted by: | July 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Our recent past Boden Lecturer Dan Kahan and his colleagues have developed a provocative body of empirical and theoretical scholarship on “cultural cognition” (see, e.g., his article here in the Marquette Law Review). Kahan’s basic thesis is that judges and other legal decisionmakers tend to perceive facts in ways that are congenial to their social [...]

Jul

1

Sentencing Commission Makes Crack Amendment Retroactive

Posted by: | July 1, 2011 | 1 Comment

The U.S. Sentencing Commission announced yesterday that the most important of the recent changes to the crack sentencing guidelines will be made retroactive, assuming Congress does nothing to block retroactivity before November 1.   Filling in the details, the Commission has now posted the unofficial “reader-friendly” version of its new retroactivity amendment.  The news is very good [...]

Jul

1

Welcome, July Blogger

Posted by: | July 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Thanks to our June bloggers, Greg Weyandt ’76 and rising 3L Garrett Soberalski. Our July guest will be Andrew Spillane ’11.

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