UHLC Nota Bene

In my last post , I reviewed Professor David Dow ’s Confessions of an Innocent Man , which I summarized as “a story about love and hatred, innocence and guilt, friendship and animosity, forgiveness and condemnation, hope and hopelessness, coping and failing to cope [and]… a story about the many, mixed, and devastating emotions associated with the loss of a partner, the loss of freedom, and the loss of normalcy all at once [and]… a story about relationships—those accepted and denounced, broken and repaired, real and perceived, unlikely and purposeful, traditional and extraordinary… [and, finally]… a story about the numerous inefficacies of our criminal justice system and the devastating tolls paid by those wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death.” Dow’s novel is a fascinating read, yet it leaves us with many questions about the failures of our current system and the implications of wrongful convictions. When Justice Fails: Causes and Consequences of Wrongful Convictions , written ...

Black’s Law Dictionary defines a fiduciary relationship as a “relationship in which one person is under a duty to act for the benefit of another on matters within the scope of the relationship.” If that sounds like it covers a lot of ground, that’s because it does. Fiduciary relationships arise in a number of legal contexts, including family law, corporate law, banking, trusts, employment law, international law, and more. It is only recently, however, that legal scholars have begun to address fiduciary law as a field unto itself.   The Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law provides a survey of this burgeoning field. The book’s purpose, as the editors write in their introduction, “is to furnish a single source to which readers can turn for guidance on fiduciary principles across a host of substantive fields, jurisdictions, and epochs.” The book is divided into four parts. The first part examines the various doctrinal areas in which fiduciary principles arise. (The University of Hou...