Law Commons^™

Distributive Justice And Donative Intent, Alexander Boni-Saenz

All Faculty Scholarship

The inheritance system is beset by formalism. Probate courts reject wills on technicalities and refuse to correct obvious drafting mistakes by testators. These doctrines lead to donative errors, or outcomes that are not in line with the decedent’s donative intent. While scholars and reformers have critiqued the intent-defeating effects of formalism in the past, none have examined the resulting distribution of donative errors and connected it to broader social and economic inequalities. Drawing on egalitarian theories of distributive justice, this Article develops a novel critique of formalism in the inheritance law context. The central normative claim is that formalistic wills …

Brexit And Ip: The Great Unraveling?, Graeme Dinwoodie, Rochelle Dreyfuss

All Faculty Scholarship

In theory, exit from Brexit will free the United Kingdom from the constraints and burdens of EU membership. It will transfer sovereignty back to the people from the technocratic rule of Brussels; replace the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice with the adjudicative power of national courts; and allow the UK to tailor its market regulation in the particular exigencies of the UK economy. Whether, as a general matter, the restoration of a classic Westphalian state enhances value either nationally or globally is an issue we leave to others to debate.We ask a different question: we explore how well the …

Partial Takings, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

Partial takings allow the government to expropriate the parts of an asset it needs, leaving the owner the remainder. Both vital and common, partial takings present unique challenges to the standard rules of eminent domain. Partial takings may result in the creation of suboptimal, and even unusable, parcels. Additionally, partial takings create assessment problems that do not arise when parcels are taken as a whole. Finally, partial takings engender opportunities for inefficient strategic behavior on the part of the government after the partial taking has been carried out. Current jurisprudence fails to resolve these problems and can even exacerbate them. …

Immovable-Associated Equipment Under The Draft Mac Protocol: A Sui Generis Challenge For The Cape Town Convention, Benjamin Von Bodungen, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

UNIDROIT is in the process of adopting a fourth Protocol under the umbrella of the Cape Town Convention, the MAC Protocol, which will cover mining, agricultural and construction equipment. This article addresses a challenge faced by the MAC Protocol that was not encountered in the development of the previous Protocols - the potential for MAC equipment to be associated with immovable property in ways that result in the holder of an interest in the immovable property acquiring an interest in the associated MAC equipment under the law of the State in which the immovable property is located. The article first …

Seizing Family Homes From The Innocent: Can The Eighth Amendment Protect Minorities And The Poor From Excessive Punishment In Civil Forfeiture?, Louis S. Rulli

All Faculty Scholarship

Civil forfeiture laws permit the government to seize and forfeit private property that has allegedly facilitated a crime without ever charging the owner with any criminal offense. The government extracts payment in kind—property—and gives nothing to the owner in return, based upon a legal fiction that the property has done wrong. As such, the government’s taking of property through civil forfeiture is punitive in nature and constrained by the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause, which is intended to curb abusive punishments.

The Supreme Court’s failure to announce a definitive test for determining the constitutional excessiveness of civil forfeiture takings under …