Michigan Legal Studies Series

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  The University of Michigan: Its Legal Profile

  William B. Cudlip

  Inspiration for the preparation of this volume came from reading two sections of Volume I of the four-volumes published in 1942 entitled, The University of Michigan-An Encyclopedic Survey. One section by E. Blythe Stason, Dean Emeritus of the University's Law School, is captioned "The Constitutional Status of the University of Michigan." The other section captioned "The Organization, Powers and Personnel of the Board of Regents" was prepared by the Dean and the late Wilfred B. Shaw, long connected with the University in important administrative capacities and intimately acquainted with its history.

  The material here presented duplicates in part that contained in these two sections. It is intended to be more specific and, in some respects, it is much more expansive. Moreover, it speaks of developments since the year 1942 when the survey was published.

  If occasionally it has value to those charged with administering the affairs of the University and educational institutions of similar constitutional posture, the efforts in publishing this volume will be well rewarded.

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  Comparative Conflict Resolution Procedures in Taxation: An Analytic Comparative Study

  L. Hart Wright, Jean Van Houtte, Pierre Kerlan, Helmut Debatin, James Arthur Johnstone, H. Schuttevaer, and Elizabeth G. Brown

  Tax administrators in well developed countries rarely have either occasion or opportunity to compare experiences or exchange opinions regarding procedures and practices utilized in administering complicated tax laws. Moreover, there is little comparative literature on the subject. Even the tax institutes which are internationally oriented usually focus on substantive tax principles, not procedures and practices. Hopefully, therefore, administrators in highly developed countries will find useful this analytic comparison of practices and procedures through which six of their number resolve disputable income tax questions -administratively and judicially.

  Concern for tax administrators in well developed countries, however, was not the prime motivation for this study. The initial conception grew out of the belief that administrators in countries just now developing would find especially useful an analytic comparison of diverse functioning models which had evolved out of long experience. Since these now developing countries differ from one another on many counts, it was imperative that there be equally wide dissimilarity among the several experienced countries selected as models. Thus, the choice of Belgium, France, West Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States. These countries differ in their size and population, the complexity and precision of their tax statutes, the degree their legislative bodies provide additional guidance through pre-enactment materials, the assessment system used (self- versus non-self-assessment systems), the standards of construction to which their courts traditionally conform, the theoretical status assigned by each to the doctrine of precedent, and the types of persons available to handle tax disputes-both within and without the government. Consequently, it was possible to determine whether such basic differences were relevant or irrelevant when choosing, from among the alternative functioning models, the structural arrangement and practices most appropriate for each level involved in the conflict resolution process.

  Also, the analytic comparison contained in the first four chapters should enable any given country to determine the extent to which diverse parts of different wholes are adaptable to its situation. The third purpose of this study is a byproduct of the first two. Practitioners engaged in international tax practice may gain a useful insight into the conflict resolution process followed in each of the six countries covered.

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  Investigation and Discovery in State Antitrust

  Bernie R. Burrus

  Monograph submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the S.J.D. degree at the University of Michigan Law School.

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  Diplomats, Scientists, and Politicians: The United States and the Nuclear Test Ban Negotiations

  Harold Karan Jacobson and Eric Stein

  This study began in 1961 as a limited attempt to assess the impact of science and modern technology on the negotiating process and concepts of international organization, using the test ban negotiations then in progress as a case study. When the Moscow Treaty was signed, however, it seemed wise to broaden the focus and to capture as many of the details as we could that might help to explain this first formal arms control agreement between East and West in the nuclear age. Our analysis is clearly not definitive, but hopefully, it will be a useful source, even after all relevant documents have been published. We hope also that the study will fulfill something of its original purpose.

  The principal written sources have been the records of the negotiations and the memoirs thus far published. In addition, a large number of the participants have been interviewed. These include President Eisenhower, all three of the Special Assistants to the President for Science and Technology who were involved, Ambassador Arthur H. Dean, Adrian S. Fisher, John J. McNaughton, various other officials of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and most of the American scientists who took part, including Robert F. Bacher, Hans A. Bethe, James B. Fisk, Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, and Edward Teller. Several United Nations and United Kingdom officials were also interviewed. For obvious reasons, there are no citations for any of the material gained through interviews.

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  Territorial Trademark Rights and the Antitrust Laws

  Richard F. Dole

  Trademarks are devises used by business men to distinguish their goods from those of others. The utility of trademarks to purchasers lies in the identification of different lines of merchandise by different trademarks. On the other hand, perhaps the greatest advantage of trademarks to business derives from the connotations associated with marks by skillful advertising. Legal protection of trademark rights thus has a dual aspect: preventing others from copying marks both guards the identification function of trademarks and maintains exclusive rights in the commercial value of trademarks created by advertising. A Senate committee described the hybrid nature of trademark protection as follows:

  The purpose underlying any trade-mark statute is two-fold. One is to protect the public so it may be confident that, in purchasing a product bearing a particular trade-mark which it favorably knows, it will get the product which it asks for and wants to get. Secondly, where the owner of a trade-mark has spent energy, time, and money in presenting to the public the product, he is protected in his investment from its misappropriation by pirates and cheats. This is the well-established rule of law protecting both the public and the trade-mark owner.

  The development of the law of trademark protection has been characterized by tension between the public and private reasons for protection. Proponents of liberal protection have stressed the importance of the identification function of trademarks in urging extensive protection for private interests, whereas opponents of strong protection have characterized trademarks as "monopolies, immunities from competition and minimized their social value. Controversy has raged over both the goods and the geographical area for which protection should be accorded.

  A dramatic confrontation of the opposing viewpoints was initiated in 1938 when advocates of liberal protection prevailed upon Congressman Lanham to introduce a bill to revise the federal trademark laws. The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, motivated by evidence that international cartels were utilizing trademarks to implement their schemes, and by exaggerated fears that trademarks could equal patents as major instruments of anticompetitive abuse, became the protagonist of the opposition. The passage of the Lanham Act in 1946, replete with amendments intended to assuage the Justice Department, transferred the controversy over the act's protectionist features to the courts, where the opposing viewpoints have continued to clash.

  Though the Justice Department contended that the Lanham Bill bristled with objectionable features,the principal documentation related to division of territorial markets among competitors through use of common trademarks. This evidence was drawn on to illustrate how provisions of the Lanham Bill dealing with concurrent registration, assignment, and licensing could be used to cloak conspiratorial division of trade territory by competitors. Although these are selected aspects of the Antitrust Division's position, the subject of territorial trademark rights with respect to competing goods affords a manageable microcosm in which to analyze competitive and noncompetitive aspects of trademark protection. Despite the fulminations of the Antitrust Division, it is the contention of the author that the Lanham Act provisions dealing with territorial trademark rights on balance permit a more procompetitive. demarcation of territorial trademark rights with respect to competing goods than common-law principles. This contention will be developed by survey of the territorial scope of trademark rights with respect to competing goods before and after the passage of the Lanham Act, analysis of the arguments for and against strong protection of these rights, and consideration of the relationship of these territorial trademark rights to the antitrust laws.

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  British Statutes in American Law, 1776-1836

  Elizabeth Gaspar Brown

  When a dependency severs its formal connection with the mother country - irrespective of the century in which such severance occurs - the act of independence can neither eradicate the past nor solve all problems of the future. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the United States of America discovered that independence from Great Britain in itself did not abolish the need for rules and regulations by which men could anticipate with some degree of certainty the consequences of particular actions. Wholesale adoption of such English statutes as were suited to their condition offered a solution to the need for a body of laws. At the same time it avoided the need to draft and enact a comprehensive body of legislation at the moment the newly independent jurisdictional entities were faced with a wide assortment of internal and external problems.

  As colonists, the citizens of these newly independent states had clamored for the untrammelled use of the English statutes and the common law and had made much of Great Britain's refusal to concede such use. After 1776 they were free to use, adapt, or reject the statutes and the common law which they had claimed as their birthright and heritage. This study is designed to show the extent to which British statutes without re-enactment were declared to be or were considered to be in force or not in force in the twenty-eight separate jurisdictions of the United States during the first sixty years of the nation's independence.

  To keep the scope of the study within reasonable limits, no substantial effort was made to learn the extent to which English statutes were re-enacted as state or territorial statutes. That this re-enactment did occur in some jurisdictions is apparent upon an examination of the early state or territorial statutes, especially those dealing with subjects such as wills or uses or waste. That such re-enactment, together with the enactment of state or territorial acts geared to local needs, lessened the use of and emphasis upon English statutes is likewise apparent. It is not irrelevant to note that codification of a jurisdiction's laws was more frequently than not coupled with a repeal of all English statutes heretofore in force.

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  Automobile Accident Costs and Payments: Studies in the Economics of Injury Reparation

  Alfred F. Conard, James N. Morgan, Robert W. Pratt Jr, Charles E. Voltz, and Robert L. Bombaugh

  The report is presented as a pool of data which will serve many purposes. First of all, the report furnishes a perspective on the largeness and the smallness of the reparation process, and of its many parts. Second, the report supplies much more specific information than has ever before been available on many points, such as the high or low level of reparation in relation to losses; the number of people who get paid, and those who receive nothing; the levels of legal expense, including attorneys' fees. Third, it will furnish a guide for future research directed to narrower questions, by disclosing what are the kinds and approximate dimensions of the phenomena which call for further examination. In order to suggest what sorts of information the report contains, and what conclusions may be drawn from it, a few of its findings are sketched in the following paragraphs. These findings have been selected from among many others as the ones most likely to be meaningful in the eyes of readers of many different kinds. Most of this summary relates to the survey of Michigan automobile accidents, which forms the major portion of this study.

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  The Conflict of Laws: A Comparative Study, Second Edition. Volume Three. Special Obligations: Modification and Discharge of Obligations

  Ernst Rabel

  The third volume of Ernst Rabel's comparative treatise on the conflict of laws was originally published in 1950. With the continued support ofThe University of Michigan Law School and the cooperation of the Max-Planck-Institut für auslaändisches und internationals Privatrecht in Hamburg, this second edition of Volume III has been prepared. Plans for the revision of Volumes I and II were made before the death of the author on September 7, 1955, and the work was carried to completion by Dr. Ulrich Drobnig of the staff of the Institut in Hamburg. We were fortunate in obtaining the services of another well-qualified member of the staff of that Institut, Dr. Herbert Bernstein, who spent the academic year 1962-1963 as research associate at The University of Michigan Law School. As in previous revisions of this work, this volume has very few changes in the text, as distinguished from the footnotes. Citations and illustrations have been brought up to date to the end of 1962.

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  Administrative Law and Local Government

  Bernie R. Burrus

  Part of the Legal Problems in Metropolitan Area Series by the Legislative Research Center at the University of Michigan.

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  Soviet Legal Institutions: Doctrines and Social Functions

  Kazimierz Grzybowski

  This book represents the highlight of a career of scholarship by its author and a most significant contribution to the literature, which will bring to those who seek it an understanding of the role law plays in Soviet Russia. More important, it will bring that understanding in a comparative context which sharpens the impact and compels a careful analysis of the social function legal institutions perform in both systems. Though Soviet jurists may deny the validity of comparative methodology as applied to the Soviet legal order, the analysis which is here presented proves not only that comparisons are possible but also that they can be most illuminating.

  In some respects it is a grim story which unfolds in this perceptive work. The Western mind is not unfamiliar with governmental efforts to shape human conduct through the creation or manipulation of legal institutions. We are not unmindful that the monopoly of force reserved to government can be turned, through the imposition of penal sanctions, to deter human conduct which would otherwise emerge as a result of other social pressures. But the Western mind will find the chapter on Homo Sovieticus extremely disquieting as the author traces the means by which and the extent to which the compulsive force of law is directed toward reshaping the ideas, the attitudes, the minds of the Soviet citizens. To read, from the Judicature Act of 1933, that courts of law "shall educate the citizens of the USSR in the spirit of devotion to the country and the cause of socialism ... " cannot but evoke in the Western mind a response of shock, when one recalls the power of the court to enforce its dictates. To watch the concept of "public official" being expanded through legal manipulation to include practically an entire population, while simultaneously observing that the state is imposing a stringent liability upon public officials who deviate from current political or economic views, will not be restful. To learn that libel suits have disappeared from the dockets of socialist courts because the press now represents functionally the best way to attack problem spots in the social and economic life and must not be impeded by individual interests from pursuing social action, will not appeal to those who champion freedom of the press.

  But this book is not written to shock the reader. It is written to bring him enlightenment concerning the realities of legal order in Russia. Not many persons could write it. To do so requires a deep understanding of several legal systems, a capacity to translate the verbal doctrine into terms of social function, and an ability to perceive those points of comparison which will permit the reader to understand the human meaning of legal institutions. The distinguished author, Dr. Kazimierz Grzybowski, has all these qualifications and he has brought them to bear in full measure to produce this volume.

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  Survey of Metropolitan Courts: Final Report

  Maxine Boord Virtue

  Adhering to the view that the original question is important, unanswered, and essential to a proper development of standards of judicial administration, the Section arranged for the University of Michigan Law School to supervise and for the author of the Detroit study to prepare a final report for the metropolitan court survey, which will make use of such material as comes to hand from all available sources in an attempt to identify, characterize, and classify the special problems of metropolitan courts. The report will also include a discussion of the methods being brought to bear on those problems, their advantages and disadvantages, and their effectiveness. The report will deal with the concept of the metropolitan trial court as an attribute of the state court system, and, finally, with the question whether the special problems of metropolitan courts yield fully or in part to the same measures which improve the state court system as a whole, if those measures are multiplied to allow for the larger size of the metropolitan court.

  This report, so prepared upon such data, will not be the scientific demonstration based upon adequate comparable materials which was originally planned and hoped for. Indeed, such a study will have some of the defects that the first study sought to avoid when the question was originally posed.

  Nevertheless, it will provide for the bench and bar a presentation of the writer's conclusions about the problems of metropolitan courts as such, rounding out more than twelve years of study of that question by the Section's committee on metropolitan trial courts. It will at least challenge the assumption that the metropolitan court is the same as any other court, with a larger workload and uniformed elevator operators. This challenge should be of assistance to the profession in its task of improving the judicial process.

  That the metropolitan court is a unique entity with problems peculiar to itself was perceived by Dean Roscoe Pound in 1930. With an eloquence and insight not since brought to bear on the subject, he pointed out that if you transfer the trial of Huck Finn's father from the small Missouri community where everyone knows his neighbor to the heart of a great metropolis, and if you see to it that the same number of man-hours are brought to bear on the trial, the end result will not be the equal of the disposition described by Mark Twain. Something will be missing.

  That "something" is the subject of this study.

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  Fraud on the Widow’s Share

  W. D. Macdonald

  This study seeks the answer to a troublesome question: What should be done about gratuitous inter vivos transfers in alleged "evasion" of the widow's statutory share? My thesis is that the statutory share should be replaced by the type of decedent's family maintenance legislation found in the British Commonwealth, and that this legislation should be buttressed with anti-evasion provisions. Inter vivos "evasions" seem to be a permanent and increasingly serious concomitant of our forced share system. Part I, dealing with matters of policy, explores the chief aggravating factors. These factors include the high rate of remarriage, which induces transfers to children of a prior marriage; the increasing popularity of gratuitous inter vivos property transmission; and the inflexible nature of the typical statutory share. The remainder of Part I is devoted to the search for a criterion with which to judge the work of the courts. Inchoate dower and the ancient custom of London receive separate treatment, in Part II, because of their influence on the cases relating to evasions of the statutory share. These cases are covered in Part III, which comprises the main portion of the book. As an aid to the practicing lawyer the decisions are analyzed in terms of doctrine, of the persuasive evidentiary factors, and of the individual dispositive devices. The study is concerned mainly with postnuptial devices; but antenuptial transfers and spouses' rights in contracts to make a will are also examined in separate appendixes. The decision in each case is also tested in the light of the maintenance and contribution formula. Part IV examines various proposals for legislative change and concludes with a suggested model statute. The statute is based on the British Commonwealth decedent's family maintenance legislation, augmented by anti-evasion provisions.

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  The Evolution of British Planning Legislation

  Beverley J. Pooley

  A part of the Legal Problems of Metropolitan Area Studies series by the Legislative Research Center of the University of Michigan Law School. Excerpt from the foreword by William J. Pierce, Director, Feb 2 1960:

  This study, by Beverley J. Pooley, is the first in a series of monographs which will be published by the Center. It deals with the problems which have confronted British legislators and with the resultant Parlimentary enactments-- particularly in the post World War II era. This topic is necessarily broad, and therefore this monograph contains little detailed legal analysis of the various acts. Rather, the writer has presented a descriptive review for American readers, in which attention is focused upon the general nature of the problems and the theory of the legislation.

  It might well be asked why this paper has been included in a research project whose main concern is the peculiar nature of the American metropolitan problem. We believe that, if our problems are to be solved within the framework of our democratic system, the efforts of another similar democracy to grapple with essentially similar difficulties merit our consideration. Naturally, the differences between British and American governmental organization, constitutional requirements, judicial power, and experience of governmental control of land use should be constantly borne in mind. These differences do not, however, make an understanding of the British experience valueless. On the contrarwe are afforded an opportunity to test the values of our own institutions by observing the recent history of a society which shares our fundamental democratic ideals but differs in some respects as to their optimum effectuation. If a thoughtful perusal of this paper either strengthens or weakens some of our beliefs, either change of attitude may help us to an acceptable solution of our own problems. Britain has produced a startlingly novel and ruthless solution to some of the problems of metropolitan living; we may resolve to follow the example, to utilize some of its features, or to reject it entirely; but it would be shortsighted indeed to ignore it.

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  The Conflict of Laws: A Comparative Study, Second Edition. Volume Two. Foreign Corporations: Torts: Contracts in General

  Ernst Rabel

  The second volume of Ernst Rabel's comparative treatise on the conflict of laws was originally published in 1947. This new edition completes the plan to revise the first two volumes, as arranged with the approval of the author before his death on September 7, 1955. Pursuant to this plan, the present edition has been made possible through the continued support of the work by the University of Michigan Law School and the generous cooperation of the Max Planck-Institut für aüslindisches und internationales Privatrecht in Hamburg, in making available the competent services of a member of the staff of the Institut, Dr. Ulrich Drobnig, who utilized the special facilities at the Legal Research Building in Ann Arbor from July, 1955, to June, 1956. In accordance with the advice of the author, whom Dr. Drobnig fortunately was able to consult before undertaking the revision of the two volumes, the collection and inclusion of new material in the author's text has been strictly limited to the addition of new citations and illustrations. Consequently, alterations of the text proper, as distinguished from the footnotes, have been avoided as far as possible. The additional material covers publications up to July 1, 1956, but with the continued co-operation of the Institut after Dr. Drobnig's return to Germany, account has been taken of later developments up to January 1, 1959.

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  American Enterprise in the European Common Market: A Legal Profile. Volume 1.

  Eric Stein and Thomas L. Nicholson

  The rapid expansion of international trade during the past fifteen years has confronted the American business counselor with a great variety of new problems. Solutions to these problems were not expounded to him in his pre-war legal education, nor are they to be found in the rich proliferation of advance sheets, digests, and loose-leaf services with which the modern American lawyer is blessed. When he turns to foreign counsel, he finds that a lack of common legal background makes meaningful professional communication difficult. This book has been prepared with the primary purpose of helping those American lawyers who, because of their clients' expanding activities, confront for the first time the problems of trading with and trading in the European Common Market. It is designed to give them an over-all picture of the new legal framework of the Market itself and of the laws of business organization, labor relations, industrial property, competition, and taxation which prevail there. With this background American lawyers should be better able to select and use the services of the European experts on whom they must, of course, depend for definitive counsel.

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  American Enterprise in the European Common Market: A Legal Profile. Volume 2.

  Eric Stein and Thomas L. Nicholson

  The rapid expansion of international trade during the past fifteen years has confronted the American business counselor with a great variety of new problems. Solutions to these problems were not expounded to him in his pre-war legal education, nor are they to be found in the rich proliferation of advance sheets, digests, and loose-leaf services with which the modern American lawyer is blessed. When he turns to foreign counsel, he finds that a lack of common legal background makes meaningful professional communication difficult. This book has been prepared with the primary purpose of helping those American lawyers who, because of their clients' expanding activities, confront for the first time the problems of trading with and trading in the European Common Market. It is designed to give them an over-all picture of the new legal framework of the Market itself and of the laws of business organization, labor relations, industrial property, competition, and taxation which prevail there. With this background American lawyers should be better able to select and use the services of the European experts on whom they must, of course, depend for definitive counsel.

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  Constitutional Uniformity and Equality in State Taxation

  Wade J. Newhouse

  The method of approach and arrangement of materials are developed during the course of the monograph. Therefore, it is not necessary to repeat them here. The purpose of the study is twofold. First, it should provide background material for constitutional revision. Second, it should aid counsel and court in deciding cases arising under existing constitutional limitations and state legislatures in drafting tax measures in such a way that pitfalls in existing limitations are avoided. The greater part of this monograph was prepared during a two year period from June 1951 to 1953, while I was a Research Assistant with the Legislative Research Center, University of Michigan Law School. It was completed during succeeding summers, and I have attempted to reflect all cases decided through the summer of 1956.

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  Atoms and the Law

  E. Blythe Stason, Samuel D. Estep, and William J. Pierce

  Early in 1951 a group of interested members of the faculty of The University of Michigan Law School conceived the idea of a research project, the purpose of which would be to investigate the principal unique legal problems being created and likely to be created in the future by peaceful uses of atomic energy. The group planned the preparation and publication of a series of manuscripts which might ultimately emerge as one or more printed volumes dealing with the legal problems affecting this new form of energy. Many phases of the subject were scrutinized, including the rule-making and licensing powers of the Atomic Energy Commission, the censoring of scientific information, liability for radiation injuries to persons and property, patent rights, state regulatory activities, imd other areas of possible interest.

  In July 1951 the Michigan Memorial-Phoenix Project, the University's major program of research in all phases of peaceful uses of the atom, made a substantial grant in support of the proposed study of legal problems. The law faculty group, consisting at the outset of Professors Samuel D. Estep, William ]. Pierce, and the undersigned, organized and embarked upon the program. Later Professors Eric Stein and William W. Bishop were added. A small research staff was recruited and the studies were commenced, beginning with an intensive examination of the legislative history of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.

  In the summer of 1952, an Institute on Industrial and Legal Problems of Atomic Energy was organized and held in the Law Quadrangle in Ann Arbor. This proved to be one of the earliest of the many conferences held in this country resulting from the development of atomic enterprise, and it served to give very great stimulus to the research work being carried on within the staff of the Law School. The proceedings were published by the School and were widely distributed.

  In 1956 a second summer conference was held, this time a "workshop," with a prepared agenda and working papers distributed in advance to the invited participants, who included not only lawyers but also engineers, A. E. C. staff members, scientists, health officials, and economists-a truly "inter-disciplinary" undertaking. The objective was to elicit concentrated thinking and interchange of ideas between knowledgeable people concerning atomic legal problems, and to precipitate these ideas in concrete form for the guidance of those responsible for current legal developments in the field. Again, proceedings were published and were widely distributed.

  Throughout the years manuscripts on various phases of the subject have been prepared by the research staff or by the members of the faculty engaged in the project. Little by little the materials, which now emerge as this volume entitled Atoms and the Law, took shape in manuscript ·form. Principal interest finally centered on tort liability for radiation injuries, workmen's compensation for such injuries, federal statutory and administrative provisions regulating atomic activities, state regulation of atomic energy, and finally, in the later years, the international aspects of the subject. These became principal headings in the volume which is now being published.

  As the project unfolded, those of us who were participating in it became increasingly impressed with the feeling that here was something unique in legal research, for we were engaging in a task that involved not only frontiers of the law but also one which was ever so closely interwoven with the science and technology of tomorrow. In carrying out the project, it became necessary for us to proceed as far as possible to master a new scientific field, one with a new vocabulary and a radically different set of concepts. This certainly enhanced interest in the task, not to mention increasing the difficulty of carrying it forward. In addition, it afforded us an even more fascinating prospect, namely, the possibility of creation of a center for legal studies related to the new technological world, with its great variety of new facets-automation, water resources problems, aviation, etc., thus to make our contribution in providing the legal framework to facilitate the adjustment of scientific advances to the social order of which we are a part.

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  The Conflict of Laws: A Comparative Study, Second Edition. Volume One. Introduction: Family Law

  Ernst Rabel

  This volume, the first in Ernst Rabel's monumental comparative treatise on the conflict of laws, was initially published in 1945. Since then three additional volumes have been added, completing the survey of the systems of conflicts law as originally contemplated. Meanwhile, the first edition of the first two volumes has been exhausted for some time, and the literature of conflicts law has substantially increased, reflecting the new developments that have taken place since 1945. Accordingly, plans for a new edition of the first two volumes were discussed with the author before his death on September 7, I955, and were approved by him; these plans contemplated that the manuscript should be prepared by an assistant of the Institute of Foreign and International Private Law, formerly directed by the author, who should be entrusted with the formidable task of integrating with the original text the relevant conflicts materials which have appeared during the international turmoil of the past decade.

  This new edition has thus been made possible through the continued support of this research by the University of Michigan Law School and the generous cooperation of the Institute, now the Max-Planck-Institut in Hamburg, in making available the competent services of a member of the staff of the Institute, Dr. Ulrich Drobnig, who utilized the special facilities at the Legal Research Building in Ann Arbor from July 1955, to June I956. In accordance with the advice of the author, whom Dr. Drobnig fortunately was able to consult before undertaking the revision of the two volumes, the collection and inclusion of new material in the author's text has been strictly limited to the addition of new citations and illustrations. Consequently, alterations of the text proper, as distinguished from the footnotes, have been avoided as far as possible. The additional material covers publications up to July 1956, but it has been possible to take account of a few later developments. The revised edition of the second volume is to follow in the near future.

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  The Conflict of Laws: A Comparative Study. Volume Four Property: Bills and Notes: Inheritance: Trusts: Application of Foreign Law: lntertemporal Relations

  Ernst Rabel

  With this fourth and final volume, the monumental survey of existing systems of conflicts law, initiated by the late Ernst Rabel in 1939 under the auspices of the American Law Institute but conducted after 1942 through the generous sponsorship of the University of Michigan Law School, is completed. It is most fortunate that, despite the fact that the present volume was prepared in various institutions during the years immediately preceding the author's death on September 7, 1955, he not only finished but also revised the proofs of the text; the various tables were later compiled at Ann Arbor.

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  Current Trends in State Legislation 1955-1956

  University of Michigan Law School

  This third volume in our Current Trends series contains an even dozen studies of recent state statutes. In our judgment each problem studied is unique enough to merit serious consideration by state legislatures and others interested in state legislative enactments. The purpose of these monographs is to call attention to these statutes and to provide a scholarly and objective appraisal and analysis of the problem involved and the solution adopted. We continue to think, as we did when we started this series, that there is a very real need for such studies of new state statutes and that our studies make a substantial contribution towards filling this. relative void in our legal literature.

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  Nonprofit Corporation Statutes: A Critique and Proposal

  Ralph E. Boyer

  The nonprofit corporation has become an important factor in the social and economic life of the American people. The American predisposition to organization and affiliation has led to an enormous number of such organizations, which in itself is a significant factor. Further, many nonprofit corporations have become national and international entities yielding tremendous economic and political influence. In spite of these factors, however, these organizations have largely escaped the serious study and academic analysis so generously bestowed upon the regular business corporation. This study is directed at an analysis of the legal framework within which such organizations operate. Its aim is to ascertain the sufficiency of the corporation statutes in view of nonprofit organizational operations, and to suggest appropriate changes. Controversial policy considerations concerning the wisdom of particular purposes, functions, or policies are not considered. The goal herein is simply a stimulation toward the achievement of an adequate, coherent, and logical code of nonprofit corporation statutes. The regulation of anti-social or undesirable activity is an additional problem beyond the scope of this study.

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  Foreign Personal Representatives

  Banks McDowell Jr.

  In dealing with the legal rules affecting foreign personal representatives, the author of the present monograph is to be commended for the lucid analysis in the following pages of the principal questions that an executor or administrator appointed in one state will encounter in the administration of a single estate on a multi-jurisdictional basis: his right to sue and liability to suit in other states, the effects of his extra-legal action outside the state of his appointment, and the possibilities of reforming existing laws so as to make feasible a system of single administration of decedents' estates. This analysis is preceded in the first chapter by a useful historical and comparative survey, summarizing the basic differences between the Civil Law system of universal succession and the Anglo-American system of divided administration and suggesting that the latter, as derived from the practice in the ecclesiastical courts, is in a sense an historical accident. Doubtless, the principle of the latter system that the management of a single mass of property should be divided, for official purposes, among as many jurisdictions as there may be in which property is found, owes its durability to the dispersion of authority in the field of private law within the United States and in the international sphere. But the principle is a source of practical difficulty that has inspired the important exceptions that have had to be introduced to secure a reasonable measure of adjustment in settling estates in a world governed by many territorial sovereigns. It is to the author's credit that he has not limited himself to careful consideration of these improvisations but has also constructively contemplated the needs of modern life that argue for the development of a unified system to administer estates that pass on death. This is a subject that obviously concerns every lawyer and everyone else.

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  Perpetuities and other Restraints: A Study of the Michigan Statutes and Decisions Relating to Perpetuities and Other Devices Which Fetter the Alienability of Property, Against the Background of the Laws of England and Other American Jurisdictions

  William F. Frachter

  The central theme of this study comprises the judicial and legislative rules developed to restrict attempts by men of property to endow their families in perpetuity, usually with land, in such manner that each successive living generation can neither part with the property nor prevent unborn generations from succeeding to it. Part One deals with attempts to accomplish this object by bestowing the whole title on each living generation but denying each such generation the power to dispose of the property or to prevent its· descent to the next generation. In this part the principal restrictive rules are judicial, the common-law rules against restraints on alienation. Part Two deals with attempts to accomplish the same object by splitting the title into present and future estates; bestowing only an estate for life on the currently living generation and conveying future estates directly to unborn generations, so that the currently living generation cannot cut them off. In this part the principal restrictive rules are likewise judicial, the common law Rule Against Perpetuities and the common-law Rule Against Accumulations. Part Two also deals with a partial statutory substitute for the common law Rule Against Accumulations which was in force in Michigan from 1847 to 1952. Part Three deals with a group of Michigan statutes, applicable to dispositions of land made between 184 7 and 1949, which partially superseded the common-law Rule Against Perpetuities and supplemented, but did not supersede, the common-law rules against restraints on alienation.