WHEN ETHICAL WORLDS COLLIDE: TEACHING NOVICE LEGAL WRITERS TO BALANCE THE DUTIES OF ZEALOUS ADVOCACY AND CANDOR TO THE TRIBUNAL
by: Frances C. DeLaurentis | download this article [PDF]
This article examines one of the most important ethical tensions that arise in legal writing—zealous advocacy versus candor to the tribunal— and explores how to educate, sensitize, and train young lawyers so that they may effectively navigate the boundaries of this conflict. Although this tension is manifested in a myriad of choices legal writers make, ethical issues arising in the context of written documents are generally not discussed in law school. Consequently, a law student may graduate with no appreciation for the complexities of ethical issues that arise in legal writing and without the tools to address those issues. To understand the dilemma confronting novice lawyers, this article analyzes the tension between the duties of zealous advocacy and candor; explores the judiciary’s inconsistent response to attorneys’ fulfillment of these duties and its impatience with a perceived lack of candor; examines the education presently provided to law students; and suggests various pedagogical and practice-based techniques that will heighten the novice legal writer’s awareness of and ability to embrace these dual ethical duties. This article concludes that legal education, specifically legal research and writing courses, must alert students to the ethical issues manifested in legal advocacy documents and provide students with the tools to draft ethical and effective legal arguments.
WRONG WAY: WHY LABELING YOUNG DRIVERS PRESENTS A MISGUIDED APPROACH IN THE
IMPROVEMENT OF GRADUATED DRIVER’S LICENSE PROGRAMS
by: Kyle E. Gray | download this article [PDF]
Graduated Driver’s License programs—licensing processes whereby new drivers are granted driving privileges in progressively less restrictive stages—have proven very effective in curtailing motor vehicle accidents involving young drivers. However, identifying teen drivers subject to the restrictions of Graduated License Laws has been a constant hurdle in law enforcement’s efforts. Without being able to identify such drivers with relative ease, the ultimate life-saving potential of these laws becomes hindered and law enforcement officers are forced to identify vehicles in other ways that may border on profiling. To address this situation, New Jersey has become the first state in the country to require young drivers subject to the laws to display a highly visible driver identification decal on their vehicles. Yet, such decals have raised concerns beyond what these laws initially anticipated and have caused waves of protest and noncompliance over fears of teen targeting, predatory attacks, and increased profiling. This Note analyzes the law’s implementation and suggests ways it may be improved to address these issues while emphasizing the importance of including the public’s mode of risk assessment in the regulatory process. This Note also seeks to inform other states of ways to improve their Graduated Driver’s License programs to avoid the same dilemmas and legislative pitfalls that have plagued the enactment of this law in New Jersey.
HOW ’BOUT THEM APPLES?: THE POWER OF STORIES OF AGREEMENT IN CONSUMER CONTRACTS
by: Tal Kastner | download this article [PDF]
Contract scholars continue to grapple, perhaps today more than ever, with the challenge posed by proliferating standard terms in consumer contracts. None, however, has sufficiently explored the role of narratives of agreement in furthering inequity or exacerbating existing disparities in power. This Article reveals the ways that stories of agreement themselves can be a form of power to be leveraged by firms at the expense of consumers—especially in connection with procedural contract terms. In addition, this Article shows how the stories told by courts reveal shared norms of fairness that purport to enable the possibility of agreement. The Article thereby identifies an aspirational approach to contract that, by its own terms, seeks to further an ideal of agreement involving knowledge and deliberation. This approach is particularly manifest in courts’ insistence upon notice of terms as a baseline for enforcement. In addition, the doctrine of the duty to read, as a response to the possibility of misunderstanding the meaning of signs, makes salient the inherent function of contract law in establishing conventions of agreement and thus allocating power. This Article argues that we cannot assess proposed interventions in the area of consumer contracting unless we consider the aspirational narrative of agreement underlying contract doctrine, as well as the substantive way and the context of power in which this narrative operates. Thus, we must also examine the ways in which stories of agreement can be leveraged by powerful parties in conversation with courts to subvert this aspiration in practice. The Article thereby lends further support for the presumptive unenforceability of predispute-arbitration, forum selection, and unilateral-modification provisions in certain consumer contexts. More broadly, it highlights contract as the site at which the definitions of freedom and agency continue to be negotiated in America today.
TESTAMENTARY CONDITIONS IN RESTRAINT OF THE MARRIAGE OF HOMOSEXUAL DONEES
by: Emalee G. Popoff | download this article [PDF]
Courts generally enforce conditions on inheritance; however, conditions restricting the conjugal choices of donees are sometimes held unenforceable on public policy grounds. These policies have not yet been applied to testamentary conditions in restraint of the marriage of homosexual donees.
Today, attitudes toward homosexuality are changing. At the same time, the use of incentive trusts and other conditional testamentary gifts is on the rise. Given the political trend in many jurisdictions toward treating homosexual relationships like heterosexual relationships, the resulting backlash against homosexuality, and the recent increase in the use of incentive trusts and other conditional testamentary gifts, testamentary gifts conditioned on the conjugal choices of homosexual donees are likely to become more common.
There is reason to believe that, in certain circumstances, courts would not consider a donee’s sexual orientation relevant to such conditions’ enforceability, even with respect to conditions restricting the donee’s marriage to a person of a particular sex. This Note argues that courts should consider a donee’s sexual orientation in determining whether a condition in restraint of the donee’s marriage is enforceable or void as against public policy.
THE “NOT SO SUPREME” COURT: STATE LAW DICTATES SUPREME COURT DECISION IN CHAIDEZ
by: Robert Uzdavines | download this article [PDF]
In the landmark case of Padilla v. Kentucky, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a criminal defense counsel must inform a noncitizen criminal defendant of the deportation consequences of a guilty plea. The decision was based on long-standing principles governing effective assistance of counsel and the fact that immigration law has been intimately tied to the criminal process for nearly one hundred years. Then in Chaidez v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Padilla decision would not be applied retroactively to cases that were finalized before Padilla. The Court reasoned that Padilla was a new law that changed the law in many lower courts.
This article argues that the Supreme Court erred in its ruling in Chaidez. First, Padilla was not new law but old law applied to a new factual context. Secondly, the U.S. Supreme Court incorrectly allowed state law to dictate their decision. The Padilla decision should apply retroactively and provide relief for thousands of defendants who were denied due process. However, because of the error in Chaidez, defendants like Roselva Chaidez—whose case was finalized one week before the Padilla decision— were denied the benefit of the Padilla decision and ultimately faced deportation.
WHEN THE CONSEQUENCES ARE LIFE AND DEATH: PRETRIAL DETENTION FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE OFFENDERS
by: Suraji R. Wagage | download this article [PDF]
Domestic violence continues to be a critical societal issue that requires immediate attention, affecting one in three women in her lifetime. The main domestic abuse interventions in place—mandatory arrest policies, no-drop prosecution policies, and mandatory medical reporting—are salutary in their overall effects, but leave a gap in protection after the defendant is arrested and before he or she is prosecuted. During this time, the defendant may be free to pursue his or her victim. This Note proposes an underconsidered intervention: pretrial detention or denial of bail for serious domestic violence offenders. Research indicates that the risk of violence is greatest when the abused individual is attempting to leave an abusive partner, which is likely to occur during the gap left by mandatory arrest and mandatory prosecution policies. Offenders have also been shown likely to violate protective orders. Bail reform could address this lethal break in protection. Several states have policies that contemplate pretrial detention for domestic violence offenders. This Note will propose legislation that provides a model for pretrial detention statutes for domestic violence offenders nationwide. Pretrial detention hearings should also be made mandatory in domestic violence cases that meet a certain number of risk factors for severe violence.