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Full-Text Articles in Law

Bursting The Auto Loan Bubble In The Wake Of Covid-19, Pamela Foohey Jul 2021

Bursting The Auto Loan Bubble In The Wake Of Covid-19, Pamela Foohey

Articles

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, auto loans outstanding in the United States had soared to record highs. The boom in lending spanned new and used cars and traditional and subprime loans. With loan delinquencies also hitting new highs almost every quarter, predictions that the auto lending market could burst soon abounded. When the economy came to a grinding halt and unemployment skyrocketed in the wake of the pandemic, auto lenders knew they were facing a crisis. Throughout 2020, auto lenders granted more payment forbearances to consumers, while slashing interest rates on new loans. Auto manufacturers similarly made promises to buyers, such …


Contract Design When Relationship-Specific Investment Produces Asymmetric Information, Albert H. Choi, George Triantis Jun 2021

Contract Design When Relationship-Specific Investment Produces Asymmetric Information, Albert H. Choi, George Triantis

Articles

Under conventional contract theory, contracts may be efficient by protecting relationship specific investment from holdup in subsequent (re)negotiation over terms of trade. This paper demonstrates a different problem when specific investment also provides significant private information to the investing party. This is fairly common: for example, a manufacturer invests to learn about its buyer's idiosyncratic needs or a collaborator invests to learn about a joint venture. We show how such private information can lead to subsequent bargaining failure and suboptimal ex ante relationship-specific investment. We also show that this inefficiency is worse if the parties enter into a binding and …


The Economics Of Class Action Waivers, Albert H. Choi, Kathryn E. Spier Mar 2021

The Economics Of Class Action Waivers, Albert H. Choi, Kathryn E. Spier

Articles

Many firms require consumers, employees, and suppliers to sign class action waivers as a condition of doing business with the firm, and the U.S. Supreme Court has endorsed companies’ ability to block class actions through mandatory individual arbitration clauses. Are class action waivers serving the interests of society or are they facilitating socially harmful business practices? This paper synthesizes and extends the existing law and economics literature by analyzing the firms’ incentive to impose class action waivers. While in many settings the firms’ incentive to block class actions may be aligned with maximizing social welfare, in many other settings it …


Noncompete Agreements In The U.S. Labor Force, Evan P. Starr, J.J. Prescott, Norman D. Bishara Feb 2021

Noncompete Agreements In The U.S. Labor Force, Evan P. Starr, J.J. Prescott, Norman D. Bishara

Articles

Using nationally representative survey data on 11,505 labor force participants, we examine the use and implementation of noncompete agreements and the employee outcomes associated with these provisions. Approximately 18 percent of labor force participants are bound by noncompetes, with 38 percent having agreed to at least one in the past. Noncompetes are more likely to be found in high-skill, high-paying jobs, but they are also common in low-skill, low-paying jobs and in states where noncompetes are unenforceable. Only 10 percent of employees negotiate over their noncompetes, and about one-third of employees are presented with noncompetes after having already accepted job …


Playing At The Crossroads Of Religion And Law: Historical Milieu, Context And Curriculum Hooks In Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb Jan 2021

Playing At The Crossroads Of Religion And Law: Historical Milieu, Context And Curriculum Hooks In Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This chapter presents the use of Lost & Found – a purpose-built tabletop to mobile game series – to teach medieval religious legal systems. The series aims to broaden the discourse around religious legal systems and to counter popular depiction of these systems which often promote prejudice and misnomers. A central element is the importance of contextualizing religion in period and locale. The Lost & Found series uses period accurate depictions of material culture to set the stage for play around relevant topics – specifically how the law promoted collaboration and sustainable governance practices in Fustat (Old Cairo) in twelfth-century …


Incentivized Torts: An Empirical Analysis, John Shahar Dillbary, Cherie Metcalf, Brock Stoddard Jan 2021

Incentivized Torts: An Empirical Analysis, John Shahar Dillbary, Cherie Metcalf, Brock Stoddard

Articles

Courts and scholars assume that group causation theories deter wrongdoers. This Article empirically tests, and rejects, this assumption, using a series of incentivized laboratory experiments. Contrary to common belief and theory, data from over 200 subjects show that group liability can encourage tortious behavior and incentivize individuals to act with as many tortfeasors as possible. We find that subjects can be just as likely to commit a tort under a liability regime as they would be when facing no tort liability. Group liability can also incentivize a tort by making subjects perceive it as fairer to victims and society. These …


The Hague Judgments Convention In The United States: A “Game Changer” Or A New Path To The Old Game?, Ronald A. Brand Jan 2021

The Hague Judgments Convention In The United States: A “Game Changer” Or A New Path To The Old Game?, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The Hague Judgments Convention, completed on July 2, 2019, is built on a list of “jurisdictional filters” in Article 5(1), and grounds for non-recognition in Article 7. If one of the thirteen jurisdictional tests in Article 5(1) is satisfied, the judgment may circulate under the Convention, subject to the grounds for non-recognition found in Article 7. This approach to Convention structure is especially significant for countries considering ratification and implementation. A different structure was suggested in the initial Working Group stage of the Convention’s preparation which would have avoided the complexity of multiple rules of indirect jurisdiction, each of which …


Temporality In A Time Of Tam, Or Towards A Racial Chronopolitics Of Intellectual Property Law, Anjali Vats Jan 2021

Temporality In A Time Of Tam, Or Towards A Racial Chronopolitics Of Intellectual Property Law, Anjali Vats

Articles

This Article examines the intersections of race, intellectual property, and temporality from the vantage point of Critical Race Intellectual Property ("CRTIP"). More specifically, it offers one example of how trademark law operates to normalize white supremacy by and through judicial frameworks that default to Euro-American understandings of time. I advance its central argument-that achieving racial justice in the context of intellectual property law requires decolonizing Euro-American conceptions of time by considering how the equitable defense of laches and the judicial power to raise issues sua sponte operate in trademark law. I make this argument through a close reading of the …


The Vulnerable Sovereign, Ronald A. Brand Jan 2021

The Vulnerable Sovereign, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The connection between sovereignty and law is fundamental for both domestic (internal sovereignty) and the international (external sovereignty) purposes. As the dominant forms of government have evolved over time, so has the way in which we think about sovereignty. Consideration of the historical evolution of the concept of sovereignty offers insight into how we think of sovereignty today. A term that was born to represent the relationship between the governor and the governed has become a term that is used to represent the relationships between and among states in the global legal order. This article traces the history of the …


A Hague Convention On Parallel Proceedings, Paul Herrup, Ronald A. Brand Jan 2021

A Hague Convention On Parallel Proceedings, Paul Herrup, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The Hague Conference on Private International Law has engaged in a series of projects that, if successful, could provide the framework for critical aspects of trans-national litigation in the Twenty-first Century. Thus far, the work has resulted in the 2005 Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements and the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters. Work now has begun to examine the need, desirability and feasibility of additional instruments in the area, with discussions of an instrument that would either require or prohibit the exercise of jurisdiction by national courts, and …


Majestic Law And The Subjective Stop, Kyron J. Huigens Jan 2021

Majestic Law And The Subjective Stop, Kyron J. Huigens

Articles

Justice John Paul Stevens subscribed to "a majestic conception" of the Constitution. This Article articulates and defends that vision. Majestic law and legal reasoning characteristically involve frank moral reasoning, such as one finds in the Eighth Amendment's "evolving standards of decency" test for proportionate punishment, or in Due Process formulations such as an appeal to "immutable principles of justice, which inhere in the very idea of free government." Majestic law employs moral values, norms, and judgments in legal reasoning, taking them on their own terms. Majestic legal reasoning does not weigh revealed preferences for decency, for example. It asks whether …