Recent Entries

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personal thoughts

A short musing on Internet Opinions

I realise that I want to be disagreed with. But I do not want someone to angrily attack without strategy. It must not be a reactionary opponent—reactionaries do not think before they act. That person will waste their blows at random, just as likely to approach the strongest part of my idea as they are to land a lucky hit.

I want someone to closely inspect my idea, to calculate the thickest and hardest places to tear, and then put their finger on the weakest most fragile part and say, "there, that could kill you. Would you reconsider?"

That's what I want.

Entry tags:

contract,
law

Parole Evidence Rule | Contracts

predictability - parties should be able to depend in the writings and the agreements they make

slight distrust of juries - a jury might be biased for a sympathetic person who invents a conversation or exaggerates a story about what happened before or after the contract writing

Roadmap:
1. effect and policy under
2. types of evidence that raise parol
3. integrated, partial, non integrated
4. distinguish between contradictory and consistent terms
5. identifying evidence otherwise admissible

( Read more... )

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Pleading the Claim for Relief | Legal and Factual Sufficiency

Rule 8(a)(2)

The plaintiff must present "a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief."

In Code States, in contrast, a plaintiff must make "a statement of the facts constituting a cause if action." Code States don't follow Rule 8(a)(2).( Read more... )

Entry tags:

law,
property

Transfers under Modern Law

Jaber v. Miller

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

law,
property

Tenant’s Obligations and Transfers under the Common Law

Tenant’s Common Law Obligations

A common restriction on lease agreements:

1. Permissible Uses

The law implies no restriction on a lease, but a carefully worded lease might restrict. Courts can enjoin these restrictions if the Landlord establishes that…

(1) the tenant misrepresented what he intended to use the property for.
(2) the Landlord reasonably relied on tenant’s misrepresentation
(3) the use to which the premises were actually put caused the Landlord damages.

1. Duty of Continued Operation

In commercial settings—especially if rent is based on % of tenant’s sales—a lease agreement might require tenant to keep the premises continually open. Courts decide to enforce this by looking at…

(1) the language of the lease
(2) the circumstances surrounding the lease
(3) this particular court has a history of intervening in landlord-tenant relationships

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

law,
property

Landlord's Implied Covenants

Covenants are either express or implied. Express covenants are clearly agreed between the parties. Implied covenants are implied by law by default.

An express covenant can often overwrite an implied covenant because contracting parties have the freedom to contract whatever the wish, but there are some covenants implied by statute that cannot be overwritten.
( Read more... )

Entry tags:

law,
property

Equal Opportunity Housing

3604(c) violation

make or publish statement or ad

respecting a dwelling

indicating a preference of familial status or race

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

law,
property

Tenancy for Years Becoming a Tenancy at Will

Womak v. Hyche

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

law,
property

Non-Freehold Estates

One who has a non-freehold estate has:

- No ownership rights

- Exclusive right of possession

Exclusive right of possession allows the leasee to bar the actual owner from entry.

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

personal thoughts

A short musing on Writers

My favourite thing about getting deeper into literature is that the coherency of media starts to both expand and vanish the more words you get your hands on. Writers of all types, such as historians, reporters, or poets, are typically tasked with making a story out of some chaotic sequence of events. Getting deep enough into literature turns you into a writer yourself, and then you find all the things you read are similar to the jumbled mess a writer had to order themselves before. That way every writer gets around to adding to the order of the pieces.

Entry tags:

essays,
lewis

Essay from C.S. Lewis's God in the Dock

The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment

In England we have lately had a controversy about Capital Punishment. I do not know whether a murderer is more likely to repent and make good on the gallows a few weeks after his trial or in the prison infirmary thirty years later. I do not know whether the fear of death is an indispensable deterrent. I need not, for the purpose of this article, decide whether it is a morally permissible deterrent. Those are questions which I propose to leave untouched. My subject is not Capital Punishment in particular, but that theory of punishment in general which the controversy showed to be called the Humanitarian theory. Those who hold it think that it is mild and merciful. In this I believe that they are seriously mistaken. I believe that the “Humanity” which it claims is a dangerous illusion and disguises the possibility of cruelty and injustice without end. I urge a return to the traditional or Retributive theory not solely, not even primarily, in the interests of society, but in the interests of the criminal.( Read more... )

Entry tags:

essays,
tocqueville

Chapter from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America

Vol. II Ch. I: Why Democratic Peoples Show A More Ardent And Enduring Love For Equality Than For Liberty:

The first and most lively of the passions to which equality of conditions gives birth, I need hardly say, is the love of this same equality. One will therefore not be astonished that I speak of that before all the others.

Everyone has remarked that in our time, and especially in France, this passion for equality is every day gaining ground in the human heart. It has been said a hundred times that our contemporaries have a far more ardently and tenacious love for equality than for freedom; but as I do not find that the causes of the fact have been sufficiently analyzed. I am going to try.( Read more... )

Entry tags:

law,
legal research

Legal Analysis and Writing 1-5

Cases and rules

Cases

A short story of an incident where a court acted or may act to settle a dispute

“Every request to a court is a request that the state use force if necessary to settle the dispute in favour of the complaining party. A court “acts” whether such a request is granted or denied.”

“The availability of formal dispute settlement procedures may lessen the level of violence and other disruptions in society by affording the disputants an alternative to fighting.”

Rules

Statement of law that permits or requires of classes of people in classes of circumstances.( Read more... )

Entry tags:

contract,
law

Contract Basic

The “why” of contract law

Policy provides the why of law. Why courts create a policy. Deadly force cannot be used to protect private property, such as a car, because society values life (even a wrongdoers) over the property. The four policies most used in contract cases:

Predictability

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

law,
property

Legal Concept of Property

What is property?

Property isn’t a thing but a concept—it is the legal relationship among people and a res or an intangible subject.

It is a basic human urge to own things, though many societies regard the concept of ownership differently.

Earliest theories of private property:

the Roman occupation theory that stated he who first seized a thing, owns the thing. This only works in early society.

Philosophers of antiquity next came up with the natural rights theory, “property is a natural right, part of the law of nature.” They upheld that slaves were a natural right, too. Much of what we consider today natural was unnatural by past standards, and many rights we consider today will be considered unnatural in the future. Our concept of rights in this sense is essentially mutable. ( Read more... )

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Civil Procedure Basics

Civil Litigation and the Adversary System

Litigation

Civil procedure is about litigation, which is the basic model by which disputes are resolved in the US. People invoke the process of litigation and engage the judicial system to resolve a civil dispute; it is publicly funded.( Read more... )

Entry tags:

law,
property

Property Rights: Lost and mislaid property

Immovable property is “real property” commonly called chattels. Realty.

movable property is “personal property.” Personality.

Full ownership is conceived as a “bundle of rights.” Holders of partial title only have part of the bundle, but they still have property rights that the law should protect. This spectrum of title rights is known as relativity of title.( Read more... )

Entry tags:

law,
legal research

Process for Statutes

Statutes are classified as either civil or criminal.

Criminal - impose various types of punishments for violations. Only the government can bring this charge, which may subject a person to imprisonment, and does not require harm for a violation

Civil - the government or a private party may bring a claim under a civil statute, and a violation does not provide for imprisonment. It usually requires harm done to one party.

Statutes may prohibit or require conduct.

Prohibiting conduct - ex: drunk driving.

Requiring conduct - ex: sex offenders register with a government entity

Allowing conduct - ex: "a landlord may require a security deposit for each rental unit.

Even if a court disagrees with a statute's purpose of policy they must follow and apply it as written.( Read more... )

Entry tags:

law,
legal research

Locating Legal Cases and Legal Case Weight

Finding Cases

Written opinions are often published in print and online forms. A print decision would be found published in chronological order in books called reporters. Online there are both free and fee-based websites and databases which also carry written decisions such as:

Google Scholar

The deciding court's website

Westlaw or Lexis

Many cases are never published electronically, and even less are published in print.

Nearly all supreme court cases are published, but only a small percent of lower court opinions are published. Some states "hide" their trial court opinions, and very few trial court opinions are even online. Rare exceptions, like Florida, however, publish trial court decisions.( Read more... )

Entry tags:

aristotle,
writing

Quotations from Aristotle's Poetics

Plot

"The unity of plot does not consist, as some suppose, in its having one man as its subject. An infinity of things befall that one man, some of which it is impossible to reduce to unity: and in like manner there are many actions of one man which cannot be made to form one action."

"The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts, one imitation is always one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdraw of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole."

"Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver importance than history, since its statements are of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars."( Read more... )