New and Forthcoming Titles from LexisNexis

Legal Writing: Ethical and Professional Considerations, 2006
Melissa Weresh, Assistant Director & Associate Professor of Legal Writing, Drake University Law School

Price: $30.00 | Publisher: Matthew Bender | ISBN: 0820562491 ©2006

Description: This book is designed to supplement a legal writing course, ethics course, or clinical course. Legal Writing: Ethical and Professional Considerations tracks the types of documents typically produced in a first-year legal writing curriculum. It identifies ethical rules and professional concerns that pertain to the particular type of document, while introducing cases to illustrate how the rules should influence lawyers’ behavior when preparing and submitting those documents. It also contains notes designed to reinforce students’ understanding of how the rules should affect them as they communicate professionally in writing.

Reproductive Technologies and the Law, 2006
Judith Daar, Professor of Law, Whittier Law School; Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California Irvine College of Medicine
   
Price: $76.00 | Publisher: Matthew Bender | ISBN: 0820559865 ©2005

Description: The world of assisted reproductive technologies is a relative newcomer to the law school curriculum, making its perceptible entrance only within the past two decades. Yet the discipline mixing law and assisted conception seems to have established firm roots, sustained by a nearly daily dose of activity somewhere around the globe. The study of reproductive technologies has branched out from its founding in the late 1970s with the introduction of in vitro fertilization, to a field that includes such emerging topics as posthumous reproduction, embryonic stem cell research and human cloning. These topics often take center stage in our political and social world, making them ideal for dissection in the law school classroom.

Reproductive Technologies and the Law is designed to introduce our students to the essentials in science, medicine, law and ethics that underpin and shape each of the topics that combine to form the law of reproductive technologies. As each new technology is introduced, an effort is made to fully inform the reader about the clinical application of the technique ? that is, how the procedure is used to treat patients facing infertility or produce advances in medical research. Once comfortable with the science, students can then contemplate the legal parameters that do or should accompany the technology. Since so much of the law in this area is either nascent or wholly unformed, students are free, and indeed encouraged, to design legal systems that meet the needs of patients, parents, children and society at large -- participants all in the world of assisted reproduction.

The Palsgraf Case: Courts, Law and Society in 1920s New York, 2005 (Softbound)
William H. Manz, Senior Research Librarian, St. John's University School of Law
   
Price: $26.00 | Publisher: Matthew Bender | ISBN: 0820563722 ©2005

Description: This book tells, for the first time, the full story of Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad, the most famous negligence case in American legal history. The book is not another doctrinal discussion, but instead views the case as a historical event -- one in which the lives of ordinary people intersected with the legal theorizing of a scholar judge. Drawing on archival materials, contemporary newspaper articles, electronic databases, and personal interviews, the author covers the famous case from the fateful accident at the Long Island Railroad's East New York station to the rejection of Mrs. Palsgraf's motion for reargument.

Included are in-depth profiles of the Palsgrafs, the Long Island Railroad, the attorneys, and all thirteen judges who heard the case. Also covered are all the major controversies surrounding Palsgraf, such as scope of the factual inaccuracies in Cardozo's majority opinion, his alleged insensitivity to women and the poor, the actual level of the railroad's negligence, the validity of Mrs. Palsgraf's alleged injuries, the legal strategies pursued by opposing counsel, and whether the case can be viewed merely as a contest between a rich corporation and a poor working-class plaintiff. The book also tells the story of the American legal profession at a critical time of its development. It discusses the impact of the growing diversity of the bar, controversies over changes in legal education, debates over the value of the jury system, the influence of politics on judicial selection, abuses by negligence attorneys, and ongoing court congestion.

The book's value lies in providing a myriad of detail and in placing the case within its historic context -- both of which are essential for a full understanding of Palsgraf. It is recommended as supplemental reading for basic or advanced torts classes, and in courses on American legal history.

And Head to the LexisNexis Bookstore to check out these new titles in the Understanding series:

• Understanding Copyright Law, Fourth Edition (Marshall A. Leaffer)
• Understanding Trademark Law (Mary LaFrance)
• Understanding Evidence, Second Edition (Paul C. Giannelli)
• Understanding Criminal Procedure—Volume One: Investigation, Fourth Edition (Joshua Dressler & Alan C. Michaels)
• Understanding Nonprofit and Tax Exempt Organizations (Nicholas P. Cafardi & Jaclyn Fabean Cherry)
• Understanding Securities Law, Fourth Edition (Marc I. Steinberg) (Scheduled for March)
• Understanding Remedies, Second Edition (James M. Fischer) (Scheduled for April) 
• Understanding Products Liability (Terrence F. Kiely & Bruce Ottley) (Scheduled for April) 
• Understanding Criminal Procedure—Volume Two: Adjudication, Fourth Edition (Joshua Dressler & Alan C. Michaels) (Scheduled for April)   
• Understanding Criminal Law, Fourth Edition (Joshua Dressler) (Scheduled for April)