Legal Docs LibraryKnow Your Rights

The New York Times is reporting “a tectonic shift in legal theory”–the American Law Institute’s announcement that it is abandoning the framework it created in 1962 in an “effort to make the death penalty less arbitrary.” Section 210.6 of the Model Penal Code, which created the “intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system, has been withdrawn by the ALI “in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.” Click here to read a message from ALI Director Lance Liebman and here to read the Report of the Council to the Membership of the ALI on this subject. The New York Times has a pithy summary of the reason underlying ALI’s action: “What the institute was saying is that the capital justice system in the United States is irretrievably broken.”

Read the rest of this entry »

This New York Times editorial, written by New Hampshire Chief Justice John T. Broderick, Jr. and California Chief Justice Ronald M. George, makes a cogent argument for closing the “justice gap” by unbundling legal services. Observing that many litigants can no longer afford legal representation, the two justices voice their support for so-called limited scope representation which allows attorneys to “take only part of a case, a cost-saving practice … that, with proper ethical safeguards, is responsive to new realities.” Limited scope representation is the subject of ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 1.2, adopted by forty-one states, which provides that “A lawyer may limit the scope of the representation if the limitation is reasonable under the circumstances and the client gives informed consent.” The ABA Section of Litigation recently released the report of the Modest Means Task Force, which concluded that the time was ripe to move ahead with this initiative. The alternative is that many litigants will have no representation whatsoever. As Chief Justices Broderick and George conclude,

Read the rest of this entry »

Courtney Minick and David Tsai provide an overview of the new features Google Scholar provides for the legal research market.