Home Insecurity 2012: Foreclosures and Housing in Ohio

Analyzes trends in the number of new foreclosure filings, developments in prevention efforts, and data on mortgage defaults and negative equity. Makes policy recommendations for strengthening stability among individuals, families, and communities

Small Investment, Big Difference: How an Ohio Earned Income Tax Credit Would Help Working Families

Gov. John Kasich has proposed major changes in Ohio's tax system, including broadening the sales tax to cover most services, cutting the sales-tax rate, slashing income taxes and giving business owners a big tax break. Together, the impact of these changes will be to cut needed revenues, while transferring income from poor and middle-income Ohioans to the affluent.Broadening the sales tax base while cutting the state rate to 5 percent would produce significant needed revenue and make the sales tax more viable long-term, since more and more of the Ohio economy is based on services.The problem: Low- and moderate-income Ohioans would be most affected, as they would pay the most as a share of their income. And low-income Ohioans already pay more of their income in state and local taxes than rich Ohioans do. If Ohio is going to broaden the tax base, the state should adopt a state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), as 25 states (including the District of Columbia) have done. It is good policy at any time, especially when legislators are considering raising taxes on those least able to pay. An EITC not only helps create a more fair tax structure, it provides a boost to local economies, as EITC dollars are often spent and saved locally. This multiplier effect creates local and state tax revenue based on goods and services that are sold. Below we review the successes of the federal EITC and how it can be implemented in Ohio

Intellectual Coherence in an Evidence Code

The Federal Rules of Evidence (Federal Rules or Rules) were created in large part to promote uniformity and predictability in federal trials by providing a relatively instructive guide for judges and lawyers concerning the admissibility of evidence. As with any codification, success in this respect requires, among other things, that there be a considerable degree of intellectual coherence among the code\u27s various provisions. The Federal Rules fall short of intellectual coherence in a number of areas. They contain contradictory and inconsistent mandates that do not make theoretical sense and therefore accord the trial judge almost unlimited discretion in these areas. He or she may arbitrarily make a ruling based on either side of the contradiction. Rulings are thus unlikely to be uniform or predictable on these matters. Although the Federal Rules lack intellectual coherence in a number of respects, this Essay focuses on only two examples: (1) Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b ), which governs the admissibility of prior crimes, wrongs, and acts to help establish a current alleged one; and (2) Federal Rule of Evidence 901, which involves authentication and identification of documents and other items in order to establish the genuineness of their connection to the litigated matter

Anything You Say May Be Used Against You : A Proposed Seminar on the Lawyer’s Duty to Warn of Confidentiality’s Limits in Today\u27s Post-Enron World

In light of recent developments, the confidence that one\u27s communications with a lawyer will remain sacrosanct today may be badly misplaced. This raises important questions concerning the duty of lawyers: When, to what extent, and in what detail, does an attorney communicating with someone who may expect confidentiality, have a duty to explain in advance the circumstances under which the information gained may subsequently be revealed pursuant to these or other confidentiality loopholes? Will the interviewee “clam up” in the face of such Miranda-like warnings? If so, what does this do to the premise of Upjohn and the Model Rule comment that confidentiality enables attorneys to obtain the facts necessary to advise properly against illegality? These are significant questions and are the central focus of this essay. But rather than directly answering, I propose a law school student seminar to explore them. In the course thereof, I venture directions toward some tentative conclusions

Response Essay: Some Observations on Professor Schwartz\u27s Foundation Theory of Evidence

Professor David Schwartz\u27s A Foundation Theory of Evidence posits an intriguing new way to look at Evidence. It asserts that offered evidence must meet a tripartite requirement before it can be relevant. The tripartite requirement is that the evidence must be case-specific, assertive, and probably true. His shorthand for the tripartite requirement is that evidence must be well founded. Hence, he calls his theory the foundation theory of evidence and claims this foundation notion is so central to evidence law that it eclipses in importance even relevance itself. The tripartite requirement inheres in the very concept of evidence and relevancy, he says, and although there are only a few evidentiary areas where the Federal Rules of Evidence and their state progeny specifically require something analogous to this requirement, he finds the requirement almost universally applied in trials across the country by judges\u27 rulings (going by a variety of other names) and in decisions by parties about what evidence to offer as a practical matter. This response essay addresses two of Schwartz\u27s most intriguing and central contentions: (1) that almost all evidence must be case-specific, assertive, and probably true ; and (2) that scholars who say there is no such thing as conditional relevance—that it is an incoherent concept—are wrong: conditional relevance exists and is widespread. The two are linked in Professor Schwartz\u27s view because it is the tripartite requirement in (1) that often make evidence conditionally relevant as asserted in (2)—that is, irrelevant unless something is shown to establish that it complies with the elements of the tripartite requirement

Mason Ladd--In Memoriam

I shall always have fond thoughts of my dear friends, Dean and Mrs. Ladd. I got to know them only recently--in the last six or seven years before his death. I was sorry I did not know them sooner. Of course, I always knew of the Dean\u27s enormous contributions to the law of evidence. But I did not know, until I met him, that this was accompanied by an equally remarkable warmth and genuineness, a deep caring, and a charismatic presence (particularly on the podium). Nor did I know of the loving support and charm of Mrs. Ladd, an equal partner with the Dean in every way, a woman of keen intellect and massive good sense in her own right. Both had twinkles in their eyes even in the most adverse of times. It was the Federal Rules of Evidence and the effort to carry knowledge of them to the bench and bar that brought us together. Dean Ladd and I found ourselves bumping into one another on the lecture circuit just prior to and following the Rules\u27 passage into law. We invited each other to programs, and it was in unlikely Las Vegas, at a University of Iowa sponsored program, that we first got to know each other well on the personal level. Mason would have been proud and deeply touched to hear that he was being honored with a symposium issue of the law review he loved, at the school he loved, by friends and contributors of such stature as those who join me here. It would have pleased him to be the cause of a major assemblage of important papers, furthering evidence scholarship as he did throughout his life

The Collision Between New Discovery Amendments and Expert Testimony Rules

The young litigator\u27s nightmare was always the same. He was in medieval Europe, ready to engage in a sword fight with the expert swordsman representing his arch rival. After countless hours of preparation, he felt confident that he would be able to hold his own against the swordsman. But when the swordsman drew his lengthy rapier from its sheath, the young attorney pulled only a short dagger from his scabbard. Realizing that he was doomed to defeat, he tossed his dagger into the air and ran from the scene with the laughter of the onlookers ringing in his ears. The young litigator needed no dream analyst to tell him the nightmare\u27s symbolism. He knew that the sword fight represented cross-examination and that his swordsman opponent was simply an expert witness. As hard as he practiced and studied and researched, he never felt comfortable crossexamining his opponent\u27s expert about the expert\u27s field of expertise. He might as well admit his failure now and become a tax attorney, he thought. Fear of expert witnesses can indeed be disabling. With the increase in litigation about complex business transactions, products liability, and professional malpractice, expert testimony continues to become more important. The modern litigator must learn to deal effectively with opposing experts or be faced with the embarrassment of his worst nightmares. Handling the opponent\u27s expert has become more difficult because the rules of evidence have been liberalized over the years, while the rules of discovery recently have been restricted