Law Commons^™

Race Matters In Bankruptcy, A. Mechele Dickerson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Secrets And Liens: Verification And Measurement In Commercial Finance Law, Jonathan C. Lipson

ExpressO

This article argues that commercial finance law increasingly uses contract rules to displace property rules, especially as these rules pertain to verifying and measuring property interests. In this context, verification simply means confirming the existence of a property interest, such as a lien or security interest. Measurement means determining the relationships of various property interests to one another (i.e., the priority of interests).

Historically, commercial finance law – in particular the Uniform Commercial Code, which governs loans secured by personal property – provided that something would be treated as “property” only if its property character was fairly easy to discover. …

Credible Coercion, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

The ideal of individual liberty and autonomy requires that society provide relief against coercion. In the law, this requirement is often translated into rules that operate “post-coercion” to undo the legal consequences of acts and promises extracted under duress. This Article argues that these ex-post anti-duress measures, rather than helping the coerced party, might in fact hurt her. When coercion is credible—when a credible threat to inflict an even worse outcome underlies the surrender of the coerced party—ex post relief will only induce the strong party to execute the threatened outcome, to the detriment of the coerced party. Anti-duress relief …