Law Commons^™

Chopping Down The Rainforest: Finding A Solution To The "Amazon Problem", Eric Andrew Felleman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Current economic conditions in the United States have led to a dramatic decrease in state tax revenue. Without these funds, states will be unable to support important public services, and hundreds of thousands of jobs in the public and private sectors are at risk of being cut, as states work to close $103 billion in budget gaps. Accomplishing that will involve overcoming many hurdles, such as the unpopularity of raising taxes during times of economic trouble, but one largely untapped source could provide a significant amount of income to states. States currently lose around $23 billion annually in uncollected use …

Playing With Fire: Proceeding Cautiously With Reforms To The Michigan Fireworks Safety Act, Nicholas Pietropaulo

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

On January 1, 2012, the Michigan Fireworks Safety Act went into effect. It marked a significant change in how the state of Michigan treats the sale and use of “consumer fireworks.” Effectively, the new statute authorizes the sale and use of Roman Candles, bottle rockets, aerials, and other fireworks that had previously been banned. Almost immediately, challenges and complaints were raised. On one side, eight fireworks vendors challenged the constitutionality of one of the law’s provisions that required such vendors to purchase insurance at an arguably unreasonable rate. The court dismissed that case, holding that it could not be said …

Pathway To Minority Shareholder Protection: Derivative Actions In The People's Republic Of China, Donald C. Clarke, Nicholas C. Howson

Book Chapters

Using a dataset of Chinese judicial opinions arising in over fifty cases, this paper analyses the development and current implementation of shareholder derivative actions in the courts of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”), both before and after the derivative lawsuit was explicitly authorized in the PRC’s 2006 Company Law effective January 1, 2006. In addition, we describe the very unique ecology of enterprise organization and corporate governance in modern China, and critique the formal design of the derivative action and offer reform suggestions. We find the design of the Chinese derivative lawsuit to be, in some respects, innovative and …

Creating A Plug-In Electric Vehicle Industry Cluster In Michigan: Prospects And Policy Options, Thomas P. Lyon, Russell A. Baruffi Jr.

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Article seeks to examine how policy can be used strategically to foster the development of a plug-in electric vehicle ("PEV") industry cluster in Michigan. The tendency for certain industries to localize in particular regions has captured the interest of much economic research and policy discussion in recent years. The trend toward the clustering of new industries has stayed strong despite the acceleration of globalization. Attention to clusters has proven to be an enduring theme in economic development circles for nearly thirty years. Clusters generate synergies that make industrial activity greater than the sum of contributions by individual players. In …

The Case For Clean Energy Technology Manufacturing: Ten Steps Business And Industry Must Take To Optimize Opportunities In The Emerging Clean Energy Economy, Stanley Pruss

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Clean energy policy choices will be critical both for economic vitality within the United States and for international competitiveness in the race to improve clean energy technology and capture emerging markets. With legislative solutions losing momentum, business and industry leaders will be the key drivers in reorienting American policy, discourse, and economics in the clean energy economy. The problem, however, is that many political and business leaders are unaware of the job-creating potential and economic benefits in the clean energy sectors. These benefits could be realized if we made a serious, strategic effort to align our latent strengths in manufacturing …

Everything In Its Right Place: Social Cooperation And Artist Compensation, Leah Belsky, Byron Kahr, Max Berkelhammer, Yochai Benkler

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The music industry's crisis response to the Internet has been the primary driver of U.S. copyright policy for over a decade. The core institutional response has been to increase the scope of copyright and the use of litigation, prosecution, and technical control mechanisms for its enforcement. The assumption driving these efforts has been that without heavily-enforced copyright, artists will not be able to make a living from their art. Throughout this period artists have been experimenting with approaches that do not rely on technological or legal enforcement, but on constructing web-based business models that engage fans and rely on voluntary …

Microfranchising: A Business Approach To Fighting Poverty, Deborah Burand, David W. Koch

Articles

Imagine a franchise network that trains, guides, and supports hundreds of poor women with little or no business experience to become successful business owners. Such "microfranchise" efforts, though relatively small in number, have been gathering steam in the development community and, recently, attracting the attention of the mainstream franchising indus- Deborah Burand try. Advocates have seized on microfranchising as a natural complement or follow-on to the widely acclaimed successes of the "microfinance" sector, which provides small-scale finance services to over 150 million of the world's poor. Microfranchising today is where microfinance was a decade or more ago. It is appropriate …

Doing Good While Doing Deals: Early Lesson In Launching An International Transactions Clinic, Deborah Burand

Articles

That is not to say that the launch of this clinic was easy. Four of the most challenging issues the ITC faced in its first year of operation were: 1) developing a client pool, 2) defining client projects so as to be appropriate to student clinicians’ skill levels and capacity, 3) making use of efficient and inexpensive technology to foster international communication with clients and transaction management, and 4) tapping supervisory attorney talent capable of supporting student clinicians in their international transactional work. The first two issues were the biggest challenges that we faced in launching the ITC and so …

Commerce, Jack M. Balkin

Michigan Law Review

This Article applies the method of text and principle to an important problem in constitutional interpretation: the constitutional legitimacy of the modem regulatory state and its expansive definition of federal commerce power Some originalists argue that the modem state cannot be justified, while others accept existing precedents as a "pragmatic exception" to originalism. Nonoriginalists, in turn, point to these difficulties as a refutation of originalist premises. Contemporary originalist readings have tended to view the commerce power through modem eyes. Originalists defending narrow readings offederal power have identified "commerce" with the trade of commodities; originalists defending broad readings of federal power …

Implementing The Standby Letter For Credit Convention With The Law Of Wyoming, James J. White

Articles

For the first time in American practice, we propose to implement a convention by a federal adoption of law previously enacted by the states – from Wyoming to New York – to implement the Convention on Independent Guarantees and Standby Letters of Credit (“Convention”).1

Giving In To Baby Markets: Regulation Without Prohibition, Sonia M. Suter

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The commodification of reproductive material evokes different responses. Some argue that the sale of reproductive material should be prohibited. Others argue in favor of unfettered baby markets on principle or to achieve broad-scale access to reproductive technologies. In this Article, the author responds to the emergence of baby markets with great skepticism, but reluctant acceptance. Drawing on a relational conception of autonomy and self-definition, she argues that commodification of reproductive material is intrinsically harmful. Moreover, such commodification poses a number of consequential harms. Nevertheless, in spite of these concerns, the author "gives in" to baby markets, which is to say …

Microfinance Managers Consider Online Funding: Is It Finance, Marketing, Or Something Else?, Deborah Burand

Articles

Online platforms are changing the way we engage with the world. Facebook links, eBay auctions, ePal chats, even Second Life avatars—these are all online platforms that connect people, ideas, products, and markets. These platforms shape who we connect with as well as how we connect. This concept extends to philanthropy: Online philanthropy is changing the nature of how and where people give.1 An outgrowth of online philanthropy is online social investing. Kiva.org is one of the best known online lending and investment platforms. Since its launch in 2005, Kiva has grabbed the attention (and wallets) of over 350,000 online lenders, …

China's Restructured Commercial Banks: Nomenklatura, Nicholas C. Howson

Book Chapters

In the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, and accelerating after 2003 the People's Republic of China (PRC or China) has implemented an ambitious reform program directed at the commanding heights of what once pa ed for China ' financial system-the large state-owned and state-managed commercial banks. Contrary to a good deal of advice offered by policy and finance specialists, China did not liquidate or fully privatize these institutions. Instead, the PRC sought to avoid the significant social (and no doubt political) cost associated with liquidation, or real privatization, by instead changing (1) the internal dynamics of, and …

Warranties In The Box, James J. White

Articles

Thousands of times each day, a buyer opens a box that contains a new computer or other electronic device. There he finds written material including an express "Limited Warranty." Sometimes the box has come by FedEx directly from the manufacturer; other times the buyer has carried it home from a retail merchant. Despite the fact that it is standard practice for the manufacturer to include a limited written express warranty on the sale of such products,' and despite the fact that both the manufacturer and the buyer believe that warranty to be legally enforceable, the law on its enforceability is …

Can We Dicker Online Or Is Traditional Contract Formation Really Dying - Rethinking Traditional Contract Formation For The World Wide Web, Tatiana Melnik

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

When most people imagine the process of contract formation, they picture two people sitting down and negotiating, arguing about particular contract provisions and particular contract terminology, and maybe even involving attorneys to draft an "official" version of the contract. Regardless of the specific details people imagine, traditional contract formation generally involves some form of negotiation between two parties where they choose one set of terms over another. In modern society, however, such negotiation happens very rarely. People enter into many contracts on a daily basis, for example, when they purchase goods or services online. Online purchases are governed by computers, …

The Debt Dilemma, Katherine Porter

Michigan Law Review

Part I describes the nature of credit card spending and explores the usefulness of Mann's comparative approach to studying credit cards. Part II evaluates Mann's findings on the overall relationships between individual credit card transactions and aggregate levels of spending, borrowing, and bankruptcy. It also briefly analyzes the relationship between his findings and policy recommendations. Part III explores data on families who refrain from credit card use and struggle with serious financial distress. Part IV revisits Mann's policy recommendations in light of this new data. I conclude that implementing credit card reform would offer families only partial, albeit valuable, protection …

The Cash Nexus, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Courts and legislatures have labored for decades to protect patients' choice of medical treatments, even though patients seize that gift less eagerly than lawmakers expect. Yet while courts have rushed to build the whited sepulchre of informed consent, they have fled from a related problem that patients actually yearn to solve and that actually can be ameliorated the plight of patients who perforce agree to a treatment before they know its costs and who receive a bill both unrelated to the treatment's value and several times what an insured patient would pay. Increasingly, patients must be consumers in the medical …

Boilerplate And Economic Power In Auto-Manufacturing Contracts, Omri Ben-Shahar, James J. White

Book Chapters

This chapter examines the boilerplate contracts used by auto makers to procure parts from suppliers. It identifies drafting and negotiation techniques that are used to secure advantageous terms. It also explores some prominent specific arrangements as evidence that firms with bargaining power are exploiting their position to dictate self-serving but inefficient terms. Finally, it shows how standard contractual clauses solve the problem of ex-post hold-up by suppliers.

The Executive Role In Culturing Export Control Compliance, Matthew G. Morris

Michigan Law Review

Part I argues that the nature of export control enforcement requires extensive self-governing behavior on the part of exporters and that enforcement should be directed toward that end. Part II examines several possible justifications for penalizing a business entity and concludes that deterrence and rehabilitation through education are the most viable, particularly in a self-regulating industry. Part III argues that examining the export compliance program is actually a necessary prerequisite to determining the general culpability required under the general factors, and on that basis alone cannot be relegated to a mitigating factor. Part IV argues that an emphasis on corporate …

The High Stakes Of Wto Reform, James Thuo Gathii

Michigan Law Review

Behind the Scenes at the WTO definitively exposes how the trade negotiation process makes it possible for a few rich countries to dominate the trade agenda at the expense of all other countries. It is one of the first studies that authoritatively shows how trade negotiations have developed into "a game for high stakes, between unequally matched teams, where much of the game is played with few rules and no referee" (p. 50). The book attributes the deadlocked nature of the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations and the recent disruptions of the World Trade Organization's ("WTO") ministerial meetings to …

The Hidden Roles Of Boilerplate And Standard-Form Contracts: Strategic Imposition Of Transaction Costs, Segmentation Of Consumers, And Anticompetitive Effects, David Gilo, Ariel Porat

Michigan Law Review

Standard-form contracts offered to consumers contain numerous terms and clauses, most of which are ancillary to the main terms of the transaction. We call these ancillary terms "boilerplate provisions." Since most consumers do not read boilerplate provisions or, if they do, find them hard to understand, courts are suspicious of boilerplate provisions and sometimes find them unenforceable under the doctrine of unconscionability. At times, courts conclude that harsh terms have not been accepted by consumers in the first place and therefore are not included in the contract, and on other occasions courts interpret boilerplate provisions in favor of consumers, applying …

Boilerplate And Economic Power In Auto Manufacturing Contracts, Omri Ben-Shahar, James J. White

Articles

This Article is structured as follows. Part I compares the terms and conditions in the purchase orders of the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and highlights important differences in the substance of these boilerplate provisions. It argues that these differences cannot be easily reconciled with the prediction that sophisticated parties draft the most efficient boilerplate terms. Part II examines how these forms are drafted, how their terms are negotiated, and how the OEMs guard their terms from erosion. It provides some insight on how tailoring occurs and how the internal organization of a party to a deal affects the terms that …

Applying 42 U.S.C. § 1981 To Claims Of Consumer Discrimination, Abby Morrow Richardson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note explores several interesting legal questions regarding the proper interpretation of 42 U.S.C. § 1981, which prohibits racial discrimination in contracting, when discrimination arises in the context of a consumer retail contract. The Note further explores how the Fifth Circuit's and other federal courts' narrow interpretation of § 1981's application in a retail setting (which allows plaintiffs to invoke the statute only when they have been prevented from completing their purchases) is contrary to the statute's express language, congressional intent, and to evolving concepts of contract theory, all of which reflect a commitment to the strict enforcement of civil …

Swancc'S Clear Statement: A Delimitation Of Congress's Commerce Clause Authority To Regulate Water Pollution, Matthew B. Baumgartner

Michigan Law Review

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of federal water pollution law is wetland regulation. Wetlands are typically marshy or swampy areas with hydrologic soils and vegetation. Their ecological value is widely recognized, but wetlands often stand in the way of lucrative commercial development projects. Thus, the battle over the validity of federal wetland regulation is a classic fight between environmentalists and industry. The wetlands controversy is also paradigmatic of the perpetual struggle to define the constitutional limits to federal regulation. The country's main water pollution control law, the Clean Water Act (CWA), purports to regulate all "navigable waters," which it defines …

The Deregulation Of International Trucking In The European Union: Form And Effect, Francine Lafontaine, Laura M. Valeri

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

This paper examines how the deregulation of the international road transport industry in Western Europe has affected 1- the total quantity of cross-border road transport in the region; 2- the degree to which shippers outsource rather than integrate vertically their cross-border transport needs; and 3- the extent to which different countries participate in international road freight transport in Western Europe. Not surprisingly, we find that deregulation has had a large positive effect on the amount of international road transport net of the effect of the trade ties that grew over time among European Union countries. Moreover, consistent with the fact …

Scylla Or Charybdis: Navigating The Jurisprudence Of Visual Clutter, M. Ryan Calo

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that passing close to Discovery Network is the safest route - municipalities can still drastically reduce visual clutter by regulating commercial speech alone without violating the First Amendment. Part I looks at the onsite/offsite distinction, a singularly popular method of sign regulation, and concludes that this distinction runs squarely afoul of Metromedia. Part II looks at the once-accepted alternative route - the commercial/noncommercial distinction - and argues that this distinction does not run afoul of Discovery Network. Rather, a close reading of Discovery Network permits the regulation of exclusively commercial billboards where, as typically, they …

Public Nuisance Claims Against Gun Sellers: New Insights And Challenges, Jean Macchiaroli Eggen, John G. Culhane

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Gun violence continues unabated. Regulation of these deadly instruments is woefully inadequate, and legislatures are compounding the problem by barring or restricting access to the courts for the death and injuries that guns cause. In short, Congress and state legislators have repeatedly acquiesced to the demands of the gun lobby.

During the past several years, cities have struck back by filing public nuisance claims against those gun sellers whose practices pose a risk to the public's health and safety. After a slow start, public nuisance claims have recently gained traction in state appellate courts, which are increasingly coming to realize …

Chuck And Steve's Peccadillo (Symposium: Threats To Secured Lending And Asset Securitization), James J. White

Articles

Are investors in securitized receivables to be treated as the owners of an asset whose sale has taken it beyond the reach of the trustee in bankruptcy of their sellers? O are they to be treated as holders of a security interest in the transferred asset who have left behind an interest in the sellers' hands that would cause the asset to be subject to claims and interference by the sellers' grasping trustee? By adopting contrasting-arguably conflicting-statements in two subsections of a single section, the drafters of 1999 Article 9 have thrust this issue in the faces of courts and …

Contracting Under Amended 2-207 (Freedom From Contract Symposium), James J. White

Articles

Amended Section 2-207 of the Uniform Commercial Code1 (the Code) states new contract rules. I call these "contract rules" to avoid the labels of contract formation and contract interpretation. These new rules cure many of the problems presented by current Section 2-2072 and remind courts that the purpose of Section 2-207 is to interpret a contract that has been made, not to see if a contract exists. One is tempted to label current Section 2-207 as a contract formation provision-and to some extent that would be right-but most of this Section's work has been in contract interpretation, not in contract …

Government Preferences For Promoting Open-Source Software: A Solution In Search Of A Problem, David S. Evans, Bernard J. Reddy

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Governments around the world are making or considering efforts to promote open-source software (typically produced by cooperatives of individuals) at the expense of proprietary software (generally sold by for-profit software developers). This article examines the economic basis for these kinds of government interventions in the market. It first provides some background on the software industry. The article discusses the industrial organization and performance of the proprietary software business and describes how the open-source movement produces and distributes software. It then surveys current government proposals and initiatives to support open-source software and examines whether there is a significant market failure that …