Concert of Action by Substantial Assistance: Whatever happened to Unconscious Aiding and Abetting?

As one commentator has uncomfortably noted, in the 1980's, courts seemed inclined to develop and use theories of liability, which ensured that the risk of injury and loss was transferred from consumer victims to manufacturers and then, through the price mechanism, to the community-at-large. That was a time when courts seemed to be comfortable applying product liability without fault, and holding manufacturers as "insurers even for those products, which previously would not have been considered 'defective' in design, in manufacture, or in marketing." Since then, courts have scaled the doctrine back

CLS Stands for Critical Legal Studies, If Anyone Remembers

Critical Legal Studies (“CLS”), which started as a Left movement within legal academia, has undergone so many changes, that one may liken it to products of pop culture, such as the television cartoon show, South Park. South Park features a character named Kenny, totally unlike any other cartoon hero, tragic or otherwise. Like Kenny, who is an outsider and who speaks a language unintelligible to all except, astonishingly, his classmates, CLS no longer seems to possess a voice comprehensible to anyone outside its own small circle. Kenny, unlike all other cartoon figures, dies in every episode. Significantly, often Kenny's death has been self-inflicted--though not necessarily intentional--when, for instance, he ignores warnings of imminent danger. Like Kenny, CLS has suffered many often self-inflicted injuries. Like South Park, generally, CLS is certainly colorful, but often little more than that and, as in the cartoon, except for the certainty of Kenny's death and later resurrection, there seems more flash than substance in its existence. We are left to guess whether CLS will prove to be as resilient after apparent death, as Kenny

Immigration and Nationality

During the year 2000, there were significant developments in immigration law and policy with respect to employment-based immigration, family visas, asylum regulations and jurisprudence, refugee admissions, Temporary Protection Status (TPS) designations, and the implementation of the United Nations Torture Convention. The net effect of changes in employment-based immigration was a gain to both the business community and to immigrants under most categories. There was a virtual unanimous consent among lawmakers to increase the number of temporary H-1B specialty workers in the United States and to ameliorate some of the unintended consequences of previous legislation such as the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA).1 To accomplish these objectives, Congress enacted two significant pieces of immigration legislation late in the year: the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act2 (AC21) and the Legal Immigration and Family Equity Act of 2000 (LIFE Act),3 as well as subsequent LIFE Act Amendments. Together, the new laws provide for a three-year increase in the H-1B visa cap, new rules allowing for “portability” and extensions of H-1B visa status, temporary restoration of the special adjustment of status provisions of former Immigration and Nationality Act4 (INA) § 245(i), and temporary nonimmigrant status for certain alien spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents during the pendency of their green card processing. In addition to these legislative developments, the executive branch and courts focused on an array of issues including permanent and temporary worker labor certifications, asylum claims, and implementation of the United Nations Torture Convention