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Tort Law: Cases & Critique
Thomas E. Kadri
My goal in creating this casebook is to do my part to make legal education more affordable, accessible, and adaptable. That’s why I’m making the book available to all for free. By using a CC BY-NC license, I’m also inviting others to adapt these materials for their own use, so long as they adhere to the non-commerciality and attribution terms. (Anyone interested in “remixing” this book for their own purposes should feel free to contact me, including if you’d like a more adaptable non-PDF version.)
You’re welcome to print any part of this casebook if you want a hard copy to accompany the digital version. If you do print it, I ask that you please be environmentally conscious by using double-sided pages. Because the digital version can be easily searched, it contains no index or other finding aids that are conventional for printed books. You should also be able to enhance your experience with the digital version by highlighting text, adding comments, and annotating it in other ways you find helpful.
To see the syllabus accompanying this casebook, please visit www.thomaskadri.com/torts.
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Legal Writing Manual (2nd Edition)
Jean Mangan, Brittany Blanchard, Gabrielle Gravel, Chase Lyndale, and Connely Doizé
This manual provides you with an overview of first-year legal writing topics and provides checkpoints during your writing process. On the other hand, this manual does not answer every question you have ever had on any legal writing concept and it is certainly not a spellbook that will make you instantly awesome at legal writing. Writing as a skill is a lifelong development process. Everyone can be an effective legal writer. Put in the time to study the concepts and then to practice using those concepts in your writing. Seek feedback on your writing and implement the feedback you receive. Writing takes practice, and this manual can help guide you through.
The first edition of the Legal Writing Manual was made possible with funding from the University of Georgia’s Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost’s Affordable Materials Course Grant. The second edition of this manual was made possible with funding from an Affordable Learning Georgia Round 18 Continuous Improvement Grant.
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Georgia Legal Research
Amy Taylor
This open source textbook authored by Amy Taylor was designed to provide University of Georgia School of Law students with a comprehensive guide to Georgia legal research. Using this text in combination with appropriate assignments, student objectives include the ability to select, evaluate, and use appropriate legal research tools with an emphasis on cost-effective research and proficiency in the following topics:
- Developing an efficient and cost effective research strategy
- Advanced searching skills in legal research databases
- Case law, including docket research, court rules, and verdicts & settlements
- Statutory law, including legislative materials and legislative history
- Administrative regulations, rules, and related materials
- Practice materials, including litigation and transactional tools
- Competitive Intelligence & business information
- Local & municipal law
- Legal ethics
- Free and low cost internet legal resources
Attorneys use primary and secondary sources to research the law as it applies to a client’s legal situation in order to give accurate legal advice. A careful legal researcher asks critical questions of these sources and acknowledges the potential strengths and weaknesses of a client’s legal situation before giving legal advice.
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Criminal Law Drafting Manual
Jean Mangan
This textbook was created under a Round 19 Mini-Grant. It is hosted on the Open ALG (Affordable Learning Georgia) Projects platform.
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Legal Writing Manual
Jean Mangan, Chase Lyndale, and Gabrielle Gravel
This manual provides you with an overview of first-year legal writing topics and provides checkpoints during your writing process. On the other hand, this manual does not answer every question you have ever had on any legal writing concept and it is certainly not a spellbook that will make you instantly awesome at legal writing. Writing as a skill is a lifelong development process. Everyone can be an effective legal writer. Put in the time to study the concepts and then to practice using those concepts in your writing. Seek feedback on your writing and implement the feedback you receive. Writing takes practice, and this manual can help guide you through.
This manual was produced with funding from University of Georgia’s Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost’s Affordable Materials Course Grant. This work is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
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Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America
Andrea L. Dennis and Erik Nielson
Should Johnny Cash have been charged with murder after he sang, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”? Few would seriously subscribe to this notion of justice. Yet in 2001, a rapper named Mac whose music had gained national recognition was convicted of manslaughter after the prosecutor quoted liberally from his album Shell Shocked. Mac was sentenced to thirty years in prison, where he remains. And his case is just one of many nationwide.
Over the last three decades, as rap became increasingly popular, prosecutors saw an opportunity: they could present the sometimes violent, crime-laden lyrics of amateur rappers as confessions to crimes, threats of violence, or revelations of criminal motive—and judges and juries would go along with it. They’ve reopened cold cases, alleged gang affiliation, and secured convictions by presenting the lyrics and videos of rappers as autobiography. Now, an alarming number of aspiring rappers are imprisoned. No other form of creative expression is treated this way in the courts.
Rap on Trial places this disturbing prosecutorial practice in the context of hip-hop history and exposes what’s at stake. It’s a gripping, timely exploration at the crossroads of contemporary hip-hop and mass incarceration.
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Defending the Public's Enemy: The Life and Legacy of Ramsey Clark
Lonnie T. Brown
What led a former United States Attorney General to become one of the world's most notorious defenders of the despised? Defending the Public's Enemy examines Clark's enigmatic life and career in a quest to answer this perplexing question.
The culmination of ten years of research and interviews, Lonnie T. Brown, Jr. explores how Clark evolved from our government's chief lawyer to a strident advocate for some of America's most vilified enemies. Clark's early career was enmeshed with seminally important people and events of the 1960s: Martin Luther King, Jr., Watts Riots, Selma-to-Montgomery March, Black Panthers, Vietnam. As a government insider, he worked to secure the civil rights of black Americans, resisting persistent, racist calls for more law and order. However, upon entering the private sector, Clark seemingly changed, morphing into the government's adversary by aligning with a mystifying array of demonized clients—among them, alleged terrorists, reputed Nazi war criminals, and brutal dictators, including Saddam Hussein.
Is Clark a man of character and integrity, committed to ensuring his government's adherence to the ideals of justice and fairness, or is he a professional antagonist, anti-American and reflexively contrarian to the core? The provocative life chronicled in Defending the Public's Enemy is emblematic of the contradictions at the heart of American political history, and society's ambivalent relationship with dissenters and outliers, as well as those who defend them.
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Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Mass-tort lawsuits over products like pelvic and hernia mesh, Roundup, opioids, talcum powder, and hip implants consume a substantial part of the federal civil caseload. But multidistrict litigation, which federal courts use to package these individual tort suits into one proceeding, has not been extensively analyzed. In Mass Tort Deals, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch marshals a wide array of empirical data to suggest that a systematic lack of checks and balances in our courts may benefit everyone but the plaintiffs - the very people who are often unable to stand up for themselves. Rather than faithfully representing them, plaintiffs' lawyers may sell them out in backroom settlements that compensate lawyers handsomely, pay plaintiffs little, and deny them the justice they seek. From diagnosis to reforms, Burch's goal isn't to eliminate these suits; it's to save them. This book is a must read for concerned citizens, policymakers, lawyers, and judges alike.
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Healthism: Health-status Discrimination and the Law
Elizabeth Weeks and Jessica L. Roberts
Can an employer refuse to hire someone who tests positive for nicotine or alcohol? Can an airline or movie theatre require overweight customers to purchase two seats? Can a health insurance company refuse to sell policies to those most in need of medical care? Can the government condition public assistance on wellness program participation or work activity? In this illuminating book, Jessica L. Roberts and Elizabeth Weeks consider these and similar questions, offering readers a nuanced analysis of when and why discrimination based on health status - or 'healthism' - should be allowed, and when it should not. They provide a methodology to distinguish desirable health-based classifications from the undesirable, and propose law and policy solutions to encourage the former and limit the latter. This work should be read by anyone concerned with how government does - and does not - regulate based on health.
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Stay Ahead of the Pack: Your Comprehensive Guide to the Upper Level Curriculum
Gregg Polsky, Robert L. Glicksman, David C. Gary, Andrew Lund, Eric Miller, and W. Bradley Wendel
Built on the very successful model of Get a Running Start: Your Comprehensive Guide to the First Year Curriculum, this book offers a global overview of the core upper-level bar courses in a single volume. In accessible, short lessons, Stay Ahead of the Pack covers all the major concepts taught in each of the courses most commonly taken by second- and third-year law students: administrative law, business associations, criminal procedure, evidence, personal income tax, and professional responsibility. Each of the chapters is written by a specialist in the field who is a decorated teacher with years of experience in the classroom. In this volume, they have distilled that experience and expertise to produce the tool they wish they had when they were in law school: a clear, concise introduction to all the upper-level bar courses that form the core of the second- and third-year curriculum. Get a Running Start has proved to be a valuable tool for first-year law students, heralded as a “must read” that “covers everything,” “should be required reading for every incoming law student,” and is “of great help when reviewing and studying for exams.” Stay Ahead of the Pack provides the same competitive advantage for second- and third-year law students. By reading through the chapter for a course, students will get a complete overview early in the semester. As the semester goes forward, students can accelerate their learning and comprehension by reviewing individual lessons when preparing for class. As the semester comes to a close, the lessons in this book provide a framework for outlining and exam preparation. And after graduation, the materials in this book will be valuable for aspiring new lawyers as they study for the bar exam. Outside the classroom, Stay Ahead of the Pack offers a stimulating introduction to fundamental legal concepts that will engage citizens who want to know more about the law as a central feature of public life and legal issues commonly featured in the news and policy debates. Among the many features readers will find useful are: •Up-to-date content that includes the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and major Supreme Court cases from the 2017-2018 term including Carpenter v. United States.•An introductory chapter offering advice on how to structure a successful class preparation and study process.•Short lessons that provide readers with an introduction to the major concepts for a day or week of law school classes in 10-15 minutes.•Complete course coverage that will allow readers to get a global overview of a core curriculum bar course in the span of an afternoon.•Frequent use of examples and hypotheticals to illustrate major points in an accessible way.•Short “Takeaway” summaries at the end of each lesson that highlight the main points and provide a quick reference or refresher.
School of Law faculty at the University of Georgia author some of our country's leading legal scholarship. The following is a collection of books published by our past and current faculty members. Several faculty members have also created open educational resources made available through open textbook platforms. View a list of our faculty's open educational resource materials.
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