About Ian C. Pilarczyk

Ian C. Pilarczyk is an administrator and legal historian who runs the Executive LL.M. in international business law, and the Legal English Certificate Program, at Boston University School of Law. His title is Director of Executive, Online and Special Initiatives.

Ian’s Legal Fact of the Week 8/17/15: Legal Fictions

A legal fiction is a fact that is assumed or created by courts in order to apply a legal rule. Most often a feature of common law systems, perhaps the best-known (and one of the most controversial) such fictions in the … Continue reading

Lawyer Raises Prospect of ‘Trial by Combat’ in Lawsuit

In 2011 I wrote a blog about the archaic form of legal action known as trial by combat. In it, I mused about whether the right to trial by combat (also commonly called ‘wager of battle’ or ‘trial by battle’) to settle … Continue reading

Ian’s Legal Fact of the Week 2/1/16: Crime in America

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, an estimated 1,165,383 violent crimes occurred nationwide in 2014, a decrease of 0.2 percent from the 2013 estimate (2015 full results are not yet available). This was 6.9 percent less than in 2010, and 16.2 percent less … Continue reading

Ian’s Legal Fact of the Week 4/11/16: ‘Be Kind to Lawyers’ Day

Distressingly, there is no official “Lawyer’s Day” in the U.S.–despite the fact that nearly half of the members of Congress are lawyers. In fact, a member of Congress in 2015 was 66x more likely to be a lawyer than the average … Continue reading

Ian’s Legal Fact of the Week 5/4/15: Composition of the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is provided for in Article 3, Section 1 of the Constitution, but only the Chief Justice is specifically mentioned (in Article 1, Section 3). The number of other “Judges of the Supreme Court”  (Article 2, Section 2) is … Continue reading

Ian’s Legal Fact of the Week 4/20/2015: “Of the People”

While it is commonly thought that the phrase “of the people, by the people, for the people” is a description of our government that is found in the Constitution, the language actually comes from Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address. … Continue reading

Ian’s Legal Fact of the Week 4/13/15: Taxation Without Representation

Since 2000, license plates for the District of Columbia display the slogan “Taxation Without Representation”, to reflect the fact that D.C. has no voting representatives in Congress. It does, however, send a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives, and has … Continue reading

Ian’s Legal Fact of the Week 4/6/2015: The Fugitive Slave Clause

The Fugitive Slave Clause is found in Article 4, Clause 3 of the Constitution, which states that “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or … Continue reading

Ian’s Legal Fact of the Week: 3/30/2015: A Republican Form of Government

Article 4, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution states that the United States “shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government….” Sometimes referred to as the Guarantee Clause, the definition of “republican” government is not … Continue reading

Ian’s Legal Fact of the Week 3/23/15: The Number of Laws in the U.S.

Want to guess the number of federal laws in the U.S.? Good luck– even the Library of Congress doesn’t know. While this is one of the most popular questions asked of the Library’s reference librarians, they point out that simply tallying … Continue reading

Online Legal Education

I was pleased to have the opportunity to share some thoughts about distance learning in legal education in the National Jurist a few weeks ago. As the article just came out–you can read it here (Education Anywhere February 2015) — I … Continue reading

Ian’s Legal Fact of the Week 3/16/15: The Public Benefit Corporation

In addition to the for-profit and limited-liability models of traditional corporations, other variants exist. A public-benefit corporation is state-chartered and designed  to perform some public benefit (examples include the MBTA and Massachusetts Turnpike Authority). A B Corporation is a corporation certified by the non-profit … Continue reading