United States v. Hatahley: A Legal Archaeology Case Study in Law and Racial Conflict

This article is a case study of United States v. Hatahley using the methodology of legal archaeology to reconstruct the historical, social, and economic context of the litigation. In 1953, a group of individual Navajos brought suit under the Federal Tort Claims Act for the destruction of over one hundred horses and burros. The first section of the article presents two contrasting narratives for the case. The first relates what we know about the case from the reported opinions, while the second locates the litigated case within the larger social context by examining the parties, the history of incidents culminating in the destruction of the Navajo horses, and the litigation that preceded Hatahley. The remainder of the article examines the role of racial conflict in various aspects of the case. Part II looks at the problem of cross-cultural damages and how the courts grappled with assigning money damages where the plaintiffs live in a non-market-based society. Part III examines the intersection of race and power, particularly the paradoxical role of law in both maintaining and challenging racial hierarchies. Part IV examines the question of judicial bias from a unique perspective. The case ultimately was assigned to another judge due to the trial judge\u27s alleged partiality in favor of the Navajos. The section explores whether the lack of prejudice, when contrasted with a background societal prejudice, could be read as partiality. The epilogue points out how this question has a modem application

Labor Disputes in Contract Law: The Past and Present of Alaska Packers’ Ass’n v. Domenico

In Part II, I will give a brief recapitulation of the facts and background of Alaska Packers\u27 as revealed by my digging into the case. In Part III, I will briefly discuss the doctrinal evolution of duress and the pre-existing duty rule before and after Alaska Packers\u27 and conclude that this evolution complicates, but does not negate, Professor Snyder\u27s insight into the pernicious effect of labor disputes on the development of contract doctrine. Finally, in Part IV, I will point out the continuing relevance of the case to the intersection of labor and contracts, and suggest that a hundred years of experience dealing with labor disputes has not clarified the lesson of Alaska Packers\u27

Legal Archaeology and Feminist Legal Theory: A Case Study of a Violation of a Protective Order

This article explores the intersection between the field of legal archaeology and feminist legal theory through the medium of a case study of the prosecution of the violation of a protective order. Both legal archaeology and feminist theory employ “bottom up,” or grounded, theorizing; that is, they begin with specific context and move from there to generalization or abstraction, rather than the other way around. And both operate from a critical perspective that consciously challenges what we think we know about how law operates. For example, both are interested in exploring how systemic vulnerabilities, such as conscious or unconscious gender biases, interfere with our judicial system’s ability to do justice. The paper illustrate these points of convergence through the case study of a routine misdemeanor prosecution for violation of the “no contact” provision of a protective order. The case itself implicates two gender issues: domestic violence, which forms the backdrop against which the case is played out, and gender bias in jury selection, when the defense attorney accuses the prosecutor of bias during voir dire because the prosecutor eliminates all men and only men with her peremptory challenges. Looking at the case more closely, we see that the petitioner on the protective order, a woman, uses the protective order in a somewhat subversive manner, to police her relationship rather than end it. This leads the defense to argue that she is “abusing” the protective order process. When this case is read in conjunction with other cases where women seem to have used protective orders in the same way, it suggests that accusations that the petitioner is abusing the protective order may be symptomatic of resistance to the progressive legal change that now recognizes domestic violence as aberrant behavior

Labor Disputes in Contract Law: The Past and Present of Alaska Packers’ Ass’n v. Domenico

In Part II, I will give a brief recapitulation of the facts and background of Alaska Packers\u27 as revealed by my digging into the case. In Part III, I will briefly discuss the doctrinal evolution of duress and the pre-existing duty rule before and after Alaska Packers\u27 and conclude that this evolution complicates, but does not negate, Professor Snyder\u27s insight into the pernicious effect of labor disputes on the development of contract doctrine. Finally, in Part IV, I will point out the continuing relevance of the case to the intersection of labor and contracts, and suggest that a hundred years of experience dealing with labor disputes has not clarified the lesson of Alaska Packers\u27

Contract Law: An Integrated Approach

Contract Law: An Integrated Approach (Doctrine and Practice Series) conveys traditional contract doctrine in a user-friendly format designed to reach 21st century students. Its integrated online and hard-copy elements provide a sophisticated interactive educational experience that professors can administer even in large classes. Each new topic starts with a short 5-minute video that gives students a “mind map” or “scaffold” for the upcoming material. Short quizzes in the videos and at the end of each chapter provide online formative assessments of ascending difficulty. The hard-copy text poses questions before and after each case to direct attention to core issues and stimulate deeper thinking, and also features text boxes to define crucial legal terms or provide cross-references. Both hard-copy and online materials are presented in a visually compelling format to keep students engaged. The balance of time-tested classic cases and recent opinions provides relevant fact situations and also illustrates the continuing relevance of venerable doctrines in new contexts such as online adhesion contracts.https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/books/1126/thumbnail.jp