Law Commons^™

The News Media’S Influence On Criminal Justice Policy: How Market Driven News Promotes Punitiveness, Sara Sun Beale

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that commercial pressures are determining the news media's contemporary treatment of crime and violence, and that the resulting coverage has played a major role in reshaping public opinion, and ultimately, criminal justice policy. The news media are not mirrors, simply reflecting events in society. Rather, media content is shaped by economic and marketing considerations that frequently override traditional journalistic criteria for newsworthiness. This Article explores local and national television's treatment of crime, where the extent and style of news stories about crime are being adjusted to meet perceived viewer demand and advertising strategies, which frequently emphasize particular …

A Field Of Green? The Past And Future Of Ecosystem Services, James Salzman

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, interest in ecosystem services has exploded. From cover stories in the New York Times and The Economist, websites connecting buyers and sellers of ecosystem services, and the comprehensive UN-sponsored Millennium Assessment - a report on the state of the world's ecosystem services - to a statement by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture calling for "a future where credits for clean water, greenhouse gases, or wetlands can be traded as easily as corn or soybeans," the ecosystem services approach has firmly arrived in the environmental policy world. But what does this approach entail and where is it going? …

A Bridge, A Tax Revolt, And The Struggle To Industrialize: The Story And Legacy Of ‘Rockingham County V. Luten Bridge Co.’, Barak D. Richman, Jordi Weinstock, Jason Mehta

Faculty Scholarship

Rockingham County v. The Luten Bridge Company is now a staple in most Contracts casebooks. The popular story goes as follows: Rockingham County entered into a contract with the Luten Bridge Company to build a bridge over the Dan River. Shortly after work commenced, the County repudiated the contract. Nonetheless, the Luten Bridge Company continued with its construction project and sued the County for the entire bill. Judge John J. Parker, the long-time chief judge of the Fourth Circuit, ruled in the famous 1929 opinion that the County was liable only for the costs up until the time of breach …

Testamentary Incorrectness: A Review Essay, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

Reviewing Samuel P. King & Randall W. Roth, Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement, & Political Manipulation at America's Largest Charitable Trust (2006)

Reconceptualizing Federalism, Erwin Chemerinsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Model Mass Tort: The Ppa Experience, Francis Mcgovern, Barbara J. Rothstein, Sara Jael Dion

Faculty Scholarship

Abstract not available

A Model State Mass Tort Settlement Statute, Francis Mcgovern

Faculty Scholarship

Abstract not available

Punitive Damage Awards In Pet-Death Cases: How Do The Ratio Rules Of State Farm V. Campbell Apply?, William A. Reppy Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Enforcing The Avena Decision In U.S. Courts, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Contesting Anticompetitive Actions Taken In The Name Of The State: State Action Immunity And Health Care Markets, Clark C. Havighurst

Faculty Scholarship

The so-called state action doctrine is a judicially created formula for resolving conflicts between federal antitrust policy and state policies that seem to authorize conduct that antitrust law would prohibit. Against the background of recent commentaries by the federal antitrust agencies, this article reviews the doctrine and discusses it's application in the health care sector, focusing on the ability of states to immunize anticompetitive actions by state licensing and regulatory boards, hospital medical staffs, and public hospitals, as well as anticompetitive mergers and agreements. Although states are free, as sovereign governments, to restrict competition, the state action doctrine requires that …

History, Human Nature, And Property Regimes: Filling In The Civilizing Argument, Jedediah Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

Comment on Carol Rose's 2005 Childress Lecture

A Tribute To Mel Shimm, Barak D. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ecosystem Services And The Public Trust Doctrine: Working Change From Within, James Salzman, J.B. Ruhl

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Conservative Case For Federalism, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Contract As Statute, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi

Faculty Scholarship

Formalists contend that courts should apply strict textual analysis in interpreting contracts between sophisticated commercial parties. Sophisticated parties have the expertise and means to record their intentions in writing, reducing the litigation and uncertainty costs surrounding incomplete contracts. Moreover, to the extent courts misinterpret contracts, sophisticated parties may simply rewrite their contracts to clarify their true intent. We argue that the formalist approach imposes large costs on even sophisticated parties in the context of boilerplate contracts. Where courts make errors in interpreting boilerplate terms, parties face large collective action problems in rewriting existing boilerplate provisions. Any single party that attempts …

Building On Custom: Land Tenure Policy And Economic Development In Ghana, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

This Note addresses the intersection of customary and statutory land law in the land tenure policy of Ghana. It argues that improving the current land tenure policy demands integration of customary land law and customary authorities into the statutory system. After describing why and how customary property practices are central to the economic viability of any property system, the Note gives a brief overview of Ghana’s customary and statutory land law. The Note concludes with specific policy suggestions about how Ghana could better draw on the strength of its customary land sector.

Combatant Status Review Tribunals: Flawed Answers To The Wrong Question, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

This Comment argues that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals were not competent to deny Prisoner of War status because they were charged only with identifying enemy combatants, a broad category that by its own terms includes many POWs. Given the substantial overlap between the definitions of "enemy combatant" and "POW," a CSRT's affirmative enemy combatant determination actually supports a detainee's POW status. Thus, even after their enemy combatant status has been adjudicated by the CSRTs, Guantánamo detainees should still be treated as presumptive POWs.

Fair Pay For Chief Executive Officers: Maximizing Firm Value By Minimizing Income Disparity, James D. Cox

Faculty Scholarship

This article links the growing income disparity in America to a possible metric that can be used to better assess the appropriate level of executive compensation. The article reviews the intellectual, commercial, cultural, and judicial forces that have each contributed toward the significant rise in executive compensation. Of particular note is the unqualified failure of courts and outside directors to provide meaningful supervision of executive compensation. This failure in part reflects the failure of society to develop guidance regarding what is the appropriate level of compensation for executives of public companies. The article concludes by reviewing evidence that income disparity …

Immigration Status And The Best Interests Of The Child Standard, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Criminal Justice Collapse: The Constitution After Hurricane Katrina, Brandon L. Garrett, Tania Tetlow

Faculty Scholarship

The New Orleans criminal justice system collapsed after Hurricane Katrina, resulting in a constitutional crisis. Eight thousand people, mostly indigent and charged with misdemeanors such as public drunkenness or failure to pay traffic tickets, languished indefinitely in state prisons. The court system shut its doors, the police department fell into disarray, few prosecutors remained, and a handful of public defenders could not meet with, much less represent, the thousands detained. This dire situation persisted for many months, long after the system should have been able to recover. We present a narrative of the collapse of the New Orleans area criminal …

Revisiting "The Need For Negro Lawyers": Are Today's Black Corporate Lawyers Houstonian Social Engineers?, H. Timothy Lovelace Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Texture Of Loyalty, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines whether and how reforms in corporate governance structures and practices in the United States may reshape conventional notions of the fiduciary duties owed by independent directors of public companies. The paper identifies two focal points for the evolution of directors' fiduciary duties. First, various reforms in corporate governance assign more specific responsibilities to directors, arguably reorienting directors' loyalty to due discharge of a specified function along with ongoing or residual duties of loyalty owed in more general terms to the corporation and its shareholders. The relationships among these specific duties and more general ones may be complex, …

The Functional Method Of Comparative Law, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

The functional method has become both the mantra and the bete noire of contemporary comparative law. The debate over the functional method is the focal point of almost all discussions about the field of comparative law as a whole, about centers and peripheries of scholarly projects and interests, about mainstream and avant-garde, about ethnocentrism and orientalism, about convergence and pluralism, about technocratic instrumentalism and cultural awareness, etc. Not surprisingly, this functional method is a chimera, both as theory and as practice of comparative law. In fact, "the functional method" is a trifold misnomer: There is not one ("the") functional method …

Financial Information Failure And Lawyer Responsibility, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

When public firms collapse amid allegations of financial information failure-such as misleading financial statements-society looks beyond the role of accountants to see who else should be held responsible. Lawyers advising the firm increasingly are charged with responsibility, perhaps because modern financial and business complexities, as well as rules that make accounting determinations turn in part on legal conclusions, have blurred the boundary between legal and accounting duties. Lawyers should want to satisfy this responsibility not only to avoid liability but also to safeguard their reputation and integrity. The difficult question, which this article attempts to answer, is what that responsibility …

Legal Issues In Coalition Warfare: A U.S. Perspective, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Welfare Polls: A Synthesis, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

"Welfare polls" are survey instruments that seek to quantify the determinants of human well-being. Currently, three welfare polling formats are dominant: contingent valuation (CV) surveys, quality-adjusted life year (QALY) surveys, and happiness surveys. Each format has generated a large, specialized, scholarly literature, but no comprehensive discussion of welfare polling as a general enterprise exists.This Article seeks to fill that gap.

Part I describes the trio of existing formats. Part II discusses the current and potential uses of welfare polls in governmental decisionmaking. Part III analyzes in detail the obstacles that welfare polls must overcome to provide useful well-being information, and …

Checks And Balances: Congress And The Federal Court, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

This essay was published as a chapter in Reforming the Supreme Court: Term Limits for Justices (Paul D. Carrington & Roger Cramton eds, Carolina Academic Press 2006). Its point is that Congress has long neglected its duty implicit in the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers to constrain the tendency of the Court, the academy and the legal profession to inflate the Court's status and power. The term "life tenure" is a significant source of a sense of royal status having not only the adverse cultural effects noted by Nagel, but also doleful effects on the administration and enforcement of …