Law, Society, and Reception: The Vision of Alan Watson

A Review of The Evolution of Law by Alan Watso

German Jewish Refugee Lawyers Abroad: The Bonn Conference of 1991

During World War I, Jews were allowed to serve in the German armed forces. Gradually Jews were permitted to practice the professions, including law. By the time of the establishment of the Weimar Republic after the war, Jewish lawyers had assumed a major role in the profession and were amongst the most well-known practitioners and law professors. With the accession to power of Hitler and the National Socialist party in the 1930s, however, things changed radically. They were deprived of their rights and dismissed from their jobs. During the period from 1933 to 1941, when escape became impossible, a few Jewish lawyers were able to flee and resettle abroad. These individuals emigrated to Britain, Palestine, Egypt and to the United States. A few, however, those who were lucky or persistent, did succeed in emigrating and many-of these refugee lawyers went on to exceptionally successful careers in their adopted homelands. a conference to be held at Bonn in 1991 which would bring together an international group of legal scholars and surviving refugee lawyers. The subject of the conference was to be the life histories of those men and women who succeeded in escaping from Nazi Germany and who went on to successful legal careers in the United States and Britain

The Anatomy of a Leading Case: \u3cem\u3eLawrence v. Fox\u3c/em\u3e in the Courts, the Casebooks, and the Commentaries

In spite of the wide diversity of training, practice, and location of lawyers throughout the United States, virtually all share one experience: the standard core curriculum of the first year of law school taught by the case method. The extent to which that experience in parsing cases in contracts, torts, and property shapes the American legal mentality is open to debate, but it undeniably has an impact. The first-year experience socializes law students in the culture of the law. During this period, students learn the language of the law and the ways that lawyers think. During this period, too, students absorb certain basic notions about legal analysis and the shape of the legal system, and begin to view the world as common lawyers. Included among these basic notions, the conventional wisdom of basic law training, is the concept of the leading case. This Article explores the notion of the leading case, and places the concept in an historical and jurisprudential framework

The Mystery of the Leavenworth Oaths

Lawyers have sworn an oath to be admitted to the Bar since the beginnings of the Anglo-American legal profession. The oath serves several extremely important purposes. First, it is the formal act that admits an individual into the Bar and confers upon the oath taker the right to perform the duties of an attorney in the jurisdiction in which the oath is given. Second, the oath admits the new attorney to the broader world of the legal profession and signifies that the new attorney has been judged by the oath giver as worthy of the right to practice law. Third, the oath creates broad legal obligations on the part of the new attorney to uphold the promises made as the oath taker. The customary scope of these broad obligations, such as when the duty to keep promises implies a broader promise to be truthful in statements to others, could be a bit surprising in practice. So, we should not be surprised that the precise language of the oath of admission for lawyers is of great significance and is taken seriously by those who administer and those who swear to the oath

The Mystery of the Leavenworth Oaths

Lawyers have sworn an oath to be admitted to the Bar since the beginnings of the Anglo-American legal profession. The oath serves several extremely important purposes. First, it is the formal act that admits an individual into the Bar and confers upon the oath taker the right to perform the duties of an attorney in the jurisdiction in which the oath is given. Second, the oath admits the new attorney to the broader world of the legal profession and signifies that the new attorney has been judged by the oath giver as worthy of the right to practice law. Third, the oath creates broad legal obligations on the part of the new attorney to uphold the promises made as the oath taker. The customary scope of these broad obligations, such as when the duty to keep promises implies a broader promise to be truthful in statements to others, could be a bit surprising in practice. So, we should not be surprised that the precise language of the oath of admission for lawyers is of great significance and is taken seriously by those who administer and those who swear to the oath

The Earliest Near-infrared Time-series Spectroscopy of a Type Ia Supernova

We present ten medium-resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio near-infrared (NIR) spectra of SN 2011fe from SpeX on the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) and Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph (GNIRS) on Gemini North, obtained as part of the Carnegie Supernova Project. This data set constitutes the earliest time-series NIR spectroscopy of a Type Ia supernova (SN Ia), with the first spectrum obtained at 2.58 days past the explosion and covering -14.6 to +17.3 days relative to B-band maximum. C I {\lambda}1.0693 {\mu}m is detected in SN 2011fe with increasing strength up to maximum light. The delay in the onset of the NIR C I line demonstrates its potential to be an effective tracer of unprocessed material. For the first time in a SN Ia, the early rapid decline of the Mg II {\lambda}1.0927 {\mu}m velocity was observed, and the subsequent velocity is remarkably constant. The Mg II velocity during this constant phase locates the inner edge of carbon burning and probes the conditions under which the transition from deflagration to detonation occurs. We show that the Mg II velocity does not correlate with the optical light-curve decline rate {\Delta}m15. The prominent break at ~1.5 {\mu}m is the main source of concern for NIR k-correction calculations. We demonstrate here that the feature has a uniform time evolution among SNe Ia, with the flux ratio across the break strongly correlated with {\Delta}m15. The predictability of the strength and the onset of this feature suggests that the associated k-correction uncertainties can be minimized with improved spectral templates.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Interacting supernovae and supernova impostors. SN 2007sv: the major eruption of a massive star in UGC 5979

We report the results of the photometric and spectroscopic monitoring campaign of the transient SN 2007sv. The observables are similar to those of type IIn supernovae, a well-known class of objects whose ejecta interact with pre-existing circum-stellar material. The spectra show a blue continuum at early phases and prominent Balmer lines in emission, however, the absolute magnitude at the discovery of SN 2007sv (M_R = - 14.25 +/- 0.38) indicate it to be most likely a supernova impostor. This classification is also supported by the lack of evidence in the spectra of very high velocity material as expected in supernova ejecta. In addition we find no unequivocal evidence of broad lines of alpha - and/or Fe-peak elements. The comparison with the absolute light curves of other interacting objects (including type IIn supernovae) highlights the overall similarity with the prototypical impostor SN 1997bs. This supports our claim that SN 2007sv was not a genuine supernova, and was instead a supernova impostor, most likely similar to the major eruption of a luminous blue variable.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 15 pages, 11 figures, 5 table