Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Law
Marks, Morals, And Markets, Jeremy N. Sheff
Marks, Morals, And Markets, Jeremy N. Sheff
Faculty Publications
The prevailing justification for trademark law depends on economic arguments that cannot account for much of the law's recent development, nor for mounting empirical evidence that consumer decisionmaking is inconsistent with assumptions of rational choice. But the only extant theoretical alternative to economic analysis is a Lockean "natural rights" theory that scholars have found even more unsatisfying. This Article proposes a third option. I analyze the law of trademarks and unfair competition as a system of moral obligations between producers and consumers. Drawing on the contractualist tradition in moral philosophy, I develop and apply a new theoretical framework to evaluate …
Accentuate The Normative: A Response To Professor Mckenna, Jeremy N. Sheff
Accentuate The Normative: A Response To Professor Mckenna, Jeremy N. Sheff
Faculty Publications
In his article, “A Consumer Decision-Making Theory of Trade-mark Law,” 98 Va. L. Rev. 67 (2012), Professor Mark McKenna makes two significant claims. The first is that the dominant Law and Economics theory of trademark law—the search-costs theory of the Chicago School—is in some way connected to recent undesirable expansions of trademark rights. The second is that a preferable theory of trademark law—one that would result in more tightly circumscribed and socially beneficial notions of trademark rights—would take consumer decision making, rather than search costs, as its guiding principle. I find myself sympathetic to these arguments, and yet I believe …
Tortious Interference And The Law Of Contract: The Case For Specific Performance Revisited, Deepa Varadarajan
Tortious Interference And The Law Of Contract: The Case For Specific Performance Revisited, Deepa Varadarajan
Faculty Publications
What is the role of contract law in remedying breach? The question of the appropriate legal remedy, specific performance versus money damages, has provided adequate fodder for three decades of debate in the law and economics discourse. In the legal discipline at large, the topic has spurred centuries of debate, as illustrated by Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous line: “The only universal consequence of a legally binding promise is, that the law makes the promisor pay damages if the promised event does not come to pass.” Holmes's approach to contractual remedy would evolve during the latter half of the twentieth century …