SelectedWorks @ Widener University Commonwealth Law School
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Accounting for Mortgages and Mortgage Backed Securities
No full textHelps financial accounting policymakers and practitioners in companies, public accounting firms, and other professional environments keep abreast of ongoing and emerging issues and assists them in analyzing pronouncements and other actions by major accounting and auditing standard setters
Peace: A Public Purpose for Punitive Damages?, Symposium: Punitive Damages, Due Process, and Deterrence: The Debate After Philip Morris v. Williams
No full textThere is widespread agreement that tort (and criminal) law developed historically as an alternative to violence. Given that pedigree, it is not surprising that preserving the peace would be pursued as a goal of punitive damages, as is claimed in several cases and law review articles. The precise relationship between peace and punitive damages is left relatively vague. However, a recent article by Professor Anthony Sebok can be used to fill in the details.Professor Sebok constructs a private-law theory of punitive damages that emphasizes two features. First, punitive damages are awarded for violations of only a certain kind of right: the right to dignity. Second, punitive-damages awards are personal punishment. This Essay argues that those features can also be used to explain punitive damages\u27 role in preserving the peace. Violations of the right to dignity are the most likely to be met with violence. Furthermore, the punishment\u27s personal nature maximizes the appeal of the legal system as an alternative to violence. However, three significant changes-the increased reliance on criminal law as a means of social control, the advent of corporations, and the establishment of a general social norm against violent solutions to serious conflicts-have substantially decreased the necessity of a pacificatory function for punitive damages
Lawyers Hold the Key: Attacks on Judicial Independence Are Based on Ignorance and are Best Parried by Lawyers Themselves
No full textTrial Tips: Structure in Direct Examination Wins Cases
No full textTwo issues are likely to create problems for the attorney in organizing the internal structure of the direct examination. First, new attorneys often follow a script when conducting direct examination. A second issue arises from the attorney\u27s familiarity with the witnesses\u27 testimony. Both of these problems can be alleviated by a simple strategy: The attorney must listen to the witness and use the witness\u27 answer in formulating the questions
A Recipe for Balanced Tort Reform: Early Offers with Swift Settlements
No full textThis book begins with detailed and evocative accounts of the workings of several actual personal injury cases with all their turbulence and tribulations. It then closely analyzes the (one-sided) tort reforms, both proposed and enacted, that leave too much of the present dysfunctional system intact, while even further undermining it. The authors provide a detailed account of a proposed reform: a device for encouraging defendants’ “Early Offers” of claimants’ economic losses designed to benefit both sides as well as society generally. This system, while greatly lessening the daunting uncertainty and delay plaguing personal injury claims today, would also make far better use of the resources that are expended. The book ends with an economic analysis documenting the dramatic savings in time and money from the early offers reform, exemplified in medical malpractice and product liability cases
Introduction: Immigration Law in Pennsylvania: Policy and Practice
No full textThe first panel fulfilled goal one: to host a thoughtful, Pennsylvania-focused analysis of state and local efforts to legislate in the area of immigration law. The second panel fulfilled goal two: to provide a forum for Pennsylvania immigration attorneys to share their experiences amongst themselves and with the public. The panels together fulfilled goals three and four: to help bridge the gap between policy and practice and to increase the involvement of the Institute in this important debate
Introduction, Crimtorts Symposium
No full textCrimtorts is a word coined by Professors Thomas Koenig and Michael Rustad to describe the middle ground between criminal and tort law. Crimtorts is not a new body of law or even a new cause of action. Rather, crimtorts is an explicit recognition that criminal law principles of punishment and deterrence have been assimilated into tort law. The extent of the assimilation and its effects on the tort system are issues that merit robust consideration.The Crimtorts symposium, held at the Widener University School of Law on February 25, 2008, took up this challenge. The participants were Professors Martha Chamallas, Mark Geistfeld, Keith Hylton, Thomas Koenig, Jeffrey O\u27Connell, Michael Rustad, Sheila Scheuerman, Anthony Sebok, Catherine Sharkey, Kenneth Simons, Byron Stier, and Frank Vandall. This Introduction summarizes the papers that were written in conjunction with the symposium