NM Law Review Articles Commemorate Journal's First 40 Years
May 26, 2011
Previous contributors returned for the second issue of the New Mexico Law Review's (NMLR) 40th volume to help commemorate the journal's first 40 years of publication. In the anniversary articles, the authors revisited or updated their earlier law review articles, illustrating that the legal issues addressed in the original articles were still current.
Among these contributors were three of the University of New Mexico School of Law's own – recently retired Institute of Public Law Director Paul Biderman, Emeritus Professor Michael B. Browde and Emeritus Professor Ted Occhialino. Browde and Occhialino, along with also-returning authors New Mexico Court of Appeals Judge Linda M. Vanzi ('95) and Phillip R. Higdon (his co-author, Abiman Rajadurai, is new to NMLR).
Professor Mary Nicol Bowman of Seattle University School of Law also contributed an article to the issue. Collaborating on another article were Professor Catherine M. Grosso of Michigan State University College of Law, Professor David C. Baldus of the University of Iowa College of Law and Professor George Woodworth of the University of Iowa. All of these professors made their debut appearances in the issue.
Following is an overview from the issue:
"Director Biderman commemorates the more than 40 years that the Institute of Public Law has been based out of the UNM School of Law. Next, Professor Browde updates one of his many New Mexico Law Review articles, with Gomez Redux: Procedural and Substantive Developments Twelve Years On. The third anniversary article, by authors Higdon and Rajadurai, updates Higdon's prior article on defamation law in New Mexico.
"Next, Professor Occhialino revisits his Vo. 15 article – Separation of Powers and the Judicial Rule-Making Power in New Mexico: The Need for Prudential Constraints. Finally, Judge Vanzi updates her article, Freedom at Home, State Constitutions and Medicaid Funding for Abortions, from the NMLR's 26th volume. We greatly appreciated the willingness of these five authors to write anniversary articles.
"In the first traditional article, Professor Bowman critiques the wisdom of giving "statements against interest" weight for their veracity. Bowman advocates a nuanced approach to giving weight to such statements, advising courts to apply greater scrutiny and to consider the context in which statements are given before deeming the statements trustworthy.
"In the second traditional article, Professors Grosso, Baldus and Woodworth consider the role that the relationship between offender and victim play in military death-penalty-eligible cases. The three authors analyze a data set describing the disposition and characteristics of a set of capital murder cases and conclude that additional studies are advisable."
