Category: Volume 56 No. 4

Promoting Urban Agriculture as an Alternative Land Use for Vacant Properties in the City of Detroit: Benefits, Problems and Proposals for a Regulatory Framework for Successful Land Use Integration

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Urban agriculture is significant to the history of the City of Detroit, from ribbon farms to Mayor Hazen Pingree’s famous potato patches of the nineteenth century, victory gardens to gardening angels of the twentieth century, and a burgeoning of garden network capacity to gardening programs in the twenty-first century. To scale up the benefits of existing urban agriculture operations, especially as it confronts large expanses of vacant land, Detroit should actively promote urban agriculture on a widespread scale. The enormity of Detroit’s vacant land is overwhelming even to urban experts, and there is little to no market demand for new residential, commercial or industrial developments. The few recent developments have been small, scattered and required major public subsidies. Urban agriculture, on the other hand, does not rely upon subsidies and serves a local demand for wholesome, inexpensive food, while providing residents with jobs, a method for eliminating neighborhood blight and a greater feeling of self- worth. Read More …

Recuse Me? Caperton, Campaign Spending and Disqualification of Judges in Michigan

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The 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. raised the profile of the electoral process by which most state judges, unlike federal judges, are chosen and the significant amounts of money that campaigning for judicial office entails. This Note examines the background behind that decision, and how the justices arrived at their decision, which effectively federalized state judges’ decisions regarding their recusal from cases. It then discusses the process the Michigan Supreme Court undertook to codify its federal counterpart’s holding in Caperton in the Michigan Court Rules. The Analysis section addresses why the court was justified in amending the rules, but also why it fell short of an opportunity to advance and clarify the law. Read More …

Cost-Shifting in E-Discovery: Reexamining Zubulake and 28 U.S.C. § 1920

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The burden of e-discovery is familiar to the modern litigator. Discovery costs have always dominated the cost of complex litigation, and despite advances in technology, this is unlikely to change. While litigation has moved from paper discovery to electronic discovery, the net effect of the move to electronic format has been to raise, not lower, discovery costs. Read More …

Charges and International Extradition

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An international request for the extradition of a fugitive is triggered by an interest, on the part of the foreign country making the request, to prosecute the fugitive for a criminal offense, or to secure his presence so that a sentence can be imposed for an offense for which his guilt has been determined, or so that he can begin service of a sentence. Extradition treaties express this concept in different ways. For example, some treaties call for the surrender of persons who have been “charged with or found guilty of,” or “charged with or convicted of,” extraditable offenses. Others ask for surrender “for prosecution or for imposition or execution of a sentence,” or “for prosecution or for the imposition or enforcement of a sentence,” or for “trial or punishment,” or for “prosecution, trial, or imposition or execution of punishment” of an extraditable offense. Read More …

Understanding the Overrulings: A Response to Robert Sedler – 56 Wayne L. Rev. 1761

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In The Michigan Supreme Court, Stare Decisis and Overruling the Overrulings, Wayne State University Law School Professor Robert Sedler takes the Michigan Supreme Court to task for abandoning the concept of stare decisis, or the principle that courts should follow their prior opinions. He attributes this abandonment to current Justices Robert Young and Stephen Markman, and to former Justices Maura Corrigan and Clifford Taylor, each of whom was originally appointed to the bench by a Republican governor and each of whom is a self-proclaimed judicial traditionalist. Read More …

The Paradox of Insurance Coverage for Vandalism But Not Theft

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Standard commercial property insurance policies often include coverage for vandalism, but not theft: “Covered Causes of Loss means the following: . . . Vandalism, meaning willful and malicious damage to, or destruction of, the described property. We will not pay for loss or damage caused by or resulting from theft, except for building damage caused by the breaking in or exiting of burglars.” Provisions like these, covering vandalism but not theft, have been frequently litigated; the result has been a jumble of confused and conflicting judicial decisions. The present article begins with a case the author litigated and uses it as a springboard to illustrate, and hopefully illuminate, murky issues relating to property insurance that covers vandalism but not theft. Read More …

Grating Race-Conscious Student Assignment Plans in the Cauldron of Parents Involved v. Seattle School District

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School districts today remain racially segregated partly due to vestiges of past discrimination and an expanded resegregation of our public schools. While the resegregation today remains mostly de facto, it still presents great dangers to race relations in our country if, from their impressionable years, students are not exposed to the benefits of diversity as part of an overall educational experience. As Chief Justice Warren noted in Brown v. Board of Education, “[s]eparate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Consequently, various school districts across the country have voluntarily adopted race-conscious plans in order to ensure a diverse educational experience for students. As revealed in our examination of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 and seven pre-Parents Involved cases, these voluntary plans have come under increasing attack. This has spurred great fears of legal repercussions in school administrators, leading them to abandon efforts to implement race-conscious plans or to dismantle those already in place. The media is not helping calm those fears either, and the misperception lingers that race-conscious plans are unconstitutional. If we are to diminish or reverse the growing trend of resegregation and ensure our students are educated in diverse schools, we must educate administrators and policymakers about the continued viability of race-conscious plans in schools. Our article is one step forward in that direction. Read More …

Syllogisms, Enthymemes and Fallacies: Mastering Secured Transactions Through Deductive Reasoning

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In 2007, the University of Pittsburgh Law Review published the essay Logic for Law Students: How to Think Like a Lawyer, co- authored by federal appellate judge Ruggero J. Aldisert and two of his law clerks. The essay begins with the statement: “Logic is the lifeblood of American law.” It then asks the question prompted by Professor Kingsfield’s famous line above—“What is thinking like a lawyer?”—and offers this reply: “It means employing logic to construct arguments.” The authors lament that “our law schools do not give students an orientation in the principles of logic[,]” a failure which “does violence to the essence of the law.” Read More …