SelectedWorks @ Widener University Commonwealth Law School
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The Prosser Notebook: Classroom as Biography and Intellectual History
No full textWhen a former student offered to let me see his grandfather\u27s Torts notebook, I was intrigued. The 70-year-old black notebook has developed a patina, but is in remarkably good condition. The sides have a lightly textured surface. The spine, not damaged by cracks, has several small gold stripes running across it. The notebook belonged to a first-year law student named Leroy S. Merrifield during the 1938-39 academic year at the University of Minnesota Law School. Merrifield used it to record notes during his Torts class. His professor was William Prosser.Because Prosser\u27s papers likely have been destroyed, Merrifield\u27s notebook offers a unique behind the scenes look at Prosser during a very significant period in his professional development. During 1938-39, Prosser was finishing a draft of the first edition of Prosser on Torts, the most influential treatise ever published on tort law. Furthermore, Prosser\u27s article legitimizing intentional infliction of emotional distress as an independent tort appeared in the spring of 1939. In addition to insights into these particular projects, the notebook allows a better understanding of Prosser\u27s place in the intellectual history of twentieth century legal theory. Prosser\u27s 1938-39 Torts class took place at the height of the realist influence in the academy. The notebook demonstrates Prosser\u27s realism in the classroom, as well as his connection to the two major consequentialist torts rationales of the twentieth century: compensation and deterrence. In short, the notebook sheds light on both the origins and the content of one of the law\u27s most influential thinkers.This Article accomplishes three things. First, with no biography available on Prosser, the Article provides an account of his life, drawn heavily from archival research. Second, the Article presents new details of several of Prosser\u27s seminal accomplishments. Third, the Article helps situate Prosser in the jurisprudential development of law in the twentieth century
Conflicting Signals: Understanding US Immigration Reform Through the Evolution of US Immigration Law
No full textThis essay, published in the Revista catalana de dret public (Catalan Journal of Public Law), highlights the conflicting signals sent throughout the history of US immigration law. One consistent feature of the development of US immigration law is that it has exhibited signs of welcome and of tight control. Understanding this conflicted narrative helps to explain modern debates about immigration reform in the United States. The conflicting signals are evident in debates about the effectiveness of the system designed to select immigrants (including its enforcement features) and in debates over the future of the immigration adjudication system. Opposing views in these debates reflect the historical signals of welcome and of tight control
Symposium, Internet Expression in the 21st Century: Where Technology & Law Collide: Introduction
No full textThe Widener Law Journal has assembled a dynamic and diverse group of preeminent legal scholars to evaluate and discuss the many engaging, perplexing, and unanswered legal and ethical questions presented by Internet expression. These scholars have focused on two primary topics: (1) issues of constitutional law and criminal procedure that arise with Internet expression, including whether the Internet has increased concerns about invasions of other persons\u27 rights and what regulations are necessary to protect privacy rights; (2) the intersection of Internet expression and property law, including issues of ownership, protectable interests,and fair use in the realm of intellectual property law for interests created with the mind
