Domestic Relations

Covers laws on adoption

The Divorce Act of 1949—One Decade Later

In the legislative session of 1949 a new divorce law was enacted. Proposed departures from the existing act had been reported to the State Bar Association. The objectives and contemplated effects of the new legislation were discussed in an article immediately after the act was adopted. Trouble was predicted Today, with ten years of experience under the act and in light of 172 reported opinions dealing with it, it seems appropriate to see what has occurred. The objective of this review is to identify, by placing together the related decisions of the Washington court, trends which have appeared and significant policies which have been established. It is not the purpose of the reviewer to subject these opinions to extensive criticism nor to question the wisdom of announced policies. The article is essentially a report. It is hoped that its possible value to the practicing lawyer is reason enough for its existence

Alienation of the Skid-Road Tramp

A book review essay considering You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An Ethnography of Urban Nomads, by James P. Spradley (1970)

Unification, Funding, Discipline and Administration: Cornerstones for a New Judicial Article

Need for adjustments in the structure and operation of the judiciary is occasioned by the same factors that require modification of other institutions and is more accurately described as a continuing process than as a response to a specific crisis. In recent years, however, demands upon existing judicial resources have burgeoned, and it has been said that the old ways of doing things are clearly inadequate to meet the burdens imposed on our courts by the \u27law explosion\u27 of the mid-20th century. The legitimacy of these demands already has been recognized in Washington. Partial reform of the courts of limited jurisdiction was accomplished in 1961, and a court of appeals was created in 1969. Since no one assumed those two steps alone would resolve all the problems presented, Washington became an active participant in the National Center for State Courts when it was organized. The state also has been aided twice by the citizen conference series sponsored in part by the American Judicature Society. It was during the second of these two conferences that S.J.R. 113, the proposal to place a new judicial article in the state constitution, was developed. The purpose of this article is to discuss some of the provisions of that proposal

The Antimonopoly Law of Japan and Its Enforcement

The Antimonopoly Law of Japan became effective in July 1947, less than two decades ago. The act was extravagantly endorsed by the U.S. occupation forces as a charter for the economic future of Japan. It was indeed a significant undertaking, designed to implant democratic practices where none had existed before, and it required basic, almost revolutionary, changes in the economic structure of the nation. Equally important was the circumstance that this law was neither sought nor desired by the Japanese. It was imposed upon a defeated people, a device entirely alien to the history and culture of those who were expected to make it work. The purpose of this article is to examine the act and to attempt an evaluation

Impossibility and Frustration in Sales Contracts

Legal principles governing sales under Japanese law, a civil rather than common law system, are at some significant points different from the law of the United States. The treatment accorded problems in the two countries involving impossibility of performance and frustration of purpose present good examples of the differences. Indeed the latter doctrine, frustration in the sense of the well-known Coronation cases, may not have a genuine counterpart in the law of Japan. Historically the differentiation between impossibility and frustration has been difficult enough in the common law, as casual reading of the examples used by Judge Williams in Krell v. Henry will illustrate. Japanese law, for reasons which will be illustrated below, has not experienced a similar confusion of these two situations. The American Law Institute\u27s Restatement of Contracts provides definitions in section 288 for frustration and in sections 454 through 469 for impossibility which will be useful in this paper. Our objective will be to see the extent to which these doctrines are duplicated in the sales law of the two systems and to see, where no exact counterparts exist, how similar problems are resolved

\u3ci\u3eMarital Property in Conflict of Laws\u3c/i\u3e, by Harold Marsh, Jr. (1952)

The avowed purpose of Marital Property in Conflict of Laws is to demonstrate the correct analysis for the problem above and a host of similar intriguing choice-of-law questions involving marital property. Laid out between the covers of this comparatively thin volume is as fine a study, as lucid an explanation, and as great a number of practical guideposts for the rational solution of these problems as has yet been made available. The value of the work to the practicing attorney is considerably enhanced by the author\u27s careful attention to the statutes and cases, a welcome change of fare from the too prevalent generalized and theoretical discussions to which resort must normally be made