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Full-Text Articles in Law

Discovery As Regulation, Diego A. Zambrano Oct 2020

Discovery As Regulation, Diego A. Zambrano

Michigan Law Review

This article develops an approach to discovery that is grounded in regulatory theory and administrative subpoena power. The conventional judicial and scholarly view about discovery is that it promotes fair and accurate outcomes and nudges the parties toward settlement. While commonly held, however, this belief is increasingly outdated and suffers from limitations. Among them, it has generated endless controversy about the problem of discovery costs. Indeed, a growing chorus of scholars and courts has offered an avalanche of reforms, from cost shifting and bespoke discovery contracts to outright elimination. Recently, Judge Thomas Hardiman quipped that if he had absolute power, …


Life Cycle Costing And Food Systems: Concepts, Trends, And Challenges Of Impact Valuation, Katherine Fiedler, Steven Lord, Jason J. Czarnezki Oct 2018

Life Cycle Costing And Food Systems: Concepts, Trends, And Challenges Of Impact Valuation, Katherine Fiedler, Steven Lord, Jason J. Czarnezki

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Our global food systems create pervasive environmental, social, and health impacts. Impact valuation is an emerging concept that aims to quantify all environmental, social, and health costs of food systems in an attempt to make the true cost of food more transparent. It also is designed to facilitate the transformation of global food systems. The concept of impact valuation is emerging at the same time as, and partly as a response to, calls for the development of legal mechanisms to address environmental, social, and health concerns. Information has long been understood both as a necessary precursor for regulation and as …


Improving Generic Drug Approval At The Fda, Kathleen Craddock May 2018

Improving Generic Drug Approval At The Fda, Kathleen Craddock

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Generic drugs are the store-brand cereal of the drug world. While they lack the vibrant colors of and exciting commercials behind name brands, generics are still effective. Most importantly, for some people, they make the difference between accessing essential treatment and going without. Getting generics to market as quickly as possible means fewer people will cut pills in half or skip doses to save money, which also saves billions of dollars across the U.S. health system. Because a new generic does not offer lifesaving changes for people with rare or complicated diseases, generics lack the “cultural capture of rhetoric about …


In Praise Of Law Books And Law Reviews (And Jargon-Filled Academic Writing), Cass R. Sunstein Apr 2016

In Praise Of Law Books And Law Reviews (And Jargon-Filled Academic Writing), Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

Many people, including many lawyers and judges, disparage law reviews and the books that sometimes result from them on the ground that they often deal with abstruse topics, of little interest to the bar, and are sometimes full of jargon, including excessively academic and impenetrable writing. Some of the objections are warranted, but at their best, law books and law reviews show a high level of rigor, discipline, and care; they have a kind of internal morality. What might seem to be jargon is often a product of specialization, similar to what is observed in other fields (such as economics, …


The Affordable Care Act, Experience Rating, And The Problem Of Non-Vaccination, Eric Esshaki Feb 2016

The Affordable Care Act, Experience Rating, And The Problem Of Non-Vaccination, Eric Esshaki

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Polio, the whooping cough, and the mumps, among many other communicable diseases, were once prevalent in communities within the developed world and killed millions of people.1 The advent of vaccinations contained or eradicated several of these diseases.2 However, these diseases still exist in the environment3 and are making a comeback in the United States.4 Their persistence is directly attributable to the rising trend among parents refusing to vaccinate their children.5 One proposed solution to this problem is to hold parents liable in tort when others are harmed by their failure to vaccinate. Another proposed solution argues that parents should pay …


Spending Medicare’S Dollars Wisely: Taking Aim At Hospitals’ Cultures Of Overtreatment, Jessica Mantel Dec 2015

Spending Medicare’S Dollars Wisely: Taking Aim At Hospitals’ Cultures Of Overtreatment, Jessica Mantel

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

With Medicare’s rising costs threatening the country’s fiscal health, policymakers have focused their attention on a primary cause of Medicare’s high price tag—the overtreatment of patients. Guided by professional norms that demand they do “everything possible” for their patients, physicians frequently order additional diagnostic tests, perform more procedures, utilize costly technologies, and provide more inpatient care. Much of this care, however, does not improve Medicare patients’ health, but only increases Medicare spending. Reducing the overtreatment of patients requires aligning physicians’ interests with the government’s goal of spending Medicare’s dollars wisely. Toward that end, recent Medicare payment reforms establish a range …


Medicine As A Public Calling, Nicholas Bagley Oct 2015

Medicine As A Public Calling, Nicholas Bagley

Michigan Law Review

The debate over how to tame private medical spending tends to pit advocates of government-provided insurance—a single-payer scheme—against those who would prefer to harness market forces to hold down costs. When it is mentioned at all, the possibility of regulating the medical industry as a public utility is brusquely dismissed as anathema to the American regulatory tradition. This dismissiveness, however, rests on a failure to appreciate just how deeply the public utility model shaped health law in the twentieth century— and how it continues to shape health law today. Closer economic regulation of the medical industry may or may not …


In All Fairness: Using Political Broadcast Access Doctrine To Tailor Public Campaign Fund Matching, Andrew V. Moshirnia, Aaron T. Dozeman Apr 2015

In All Fairness: Using Political Broadcast Access Doctrine To Tailor Public Campaign Fund Matching, Andrew V. Moshirnia, Aaron T. Dozeman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Recent United States Supreme Court decisions have undermined the viability of campaign public financing systems, a vital tool for fighting political corruption. First, Citizens United v. FEC allowed privately financed candidates and independent groups to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigning. Publicly financed candidates now risk being vastly outspent. Second, Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom PAC v. Bennett invalidated a proportional fund matching system whereby privately financed candidates’ or independent groups’ spending triggered funds to publicly funded candidates. These decisions effectuate a libertarian speech doctrine: all speakers, individual or corporate, must be absolutely unburdened. To comply with this approach, …


Comparative Effectiveness Research As Choice Architecture: The Behavioral Law And Economics Solution To The Health Care Cost Crisis, Russell Korobkin Feb 2014

Comparative Effectiveness Research As Choice Architecture: The Behavioral Law And Economics Solution To The Health Care Cost Crisis, Russell Korobkin

Michigan Law Review

With the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) set to dramatically increase access to medical care, the problem of rising costs will move center stage in health law and policy discussions. “Consumer directed health care” proposals, which provide patients with financial incentives to equate marginal costs and benefits of care at the point of treatment, demand more decisionmaking ability from consumers than is plausible due to bounded rationality. Proposals that seek to change the incentives of health care providers threaten to create conflicts of interest between doctors and patients. New approaches are desperately needed. This Article proposes a government-facilitated …


Holding Up And Holding Out, Colleen V. Chien Jan 2014

Holding Up And Holding Out, Colleen V. Chien

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Patent “hold-up” and patent “hold-out” present important, alternative theories for what ails the patent system. Patent “hold-up” occurs when a patent owner sues a company when it is most vulnerable—after it has implemented a technology—and is able wrest a settlement because it is too late for the company to change course. Patent “hold-out” is the practice of companies routinely ignoring patents and resisting patent owner demands because the odds of getting caught are small. Hold-up has arguably predicted the current patent crises, and the ex ante assertion of technology patents whether in the smartphone war, standards, or patent “troll” context. …


Dilution At The Patent And Trademark Office, Jeremy N. Sheff Jan 2014

Dilution At The Patent And Trademark Office, Jeremy N. Sheff

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Article undertakes the first systematic investigation of trademark dilution in registration practice before the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). The Article consists of three distinct descriptive empirical analyses. In the first, I present a new hand-coded dataset of all 453 Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) dispositions of dilution claims through June 30, 2014, and report that dilution has been necessary to the PTO’s refusal of exactly three registrations in over a decade. In the second part, I apply algorithmic coding of the recently released PTO Casefiles Dataset to demonstrate that concurrent registration of identical marks to different …


The Meaning Of Green Growth, Michael A. Livermore Sep 2013

The Meaning Of Green Growth, Michael A. Livermore

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Although the term is still rarely used in the United States, in recent years “green growth” has become part of the lexicon of global environmental policy. Unfortunately, although it is frequently cited as a public policy goal, green growth has remained vague and ill-defined, leading to conflicting interpretations and confusion over the distinction between green growth and related concepts like sustainable development. This paper seeks to clarify the meaning of green growth as a distinct concept, defining a “green growth frontier” of policies that dominate along both environmental and economic dimensions. The green growth agenda can be understood as moving …


Information Escrows, Ian Ayres, Cait Unkovic Nov 2012

Information Escrows, Ian Ayres, Cait Unkovic

Michigan Law Review

A variety of information escrows - including allegation escrows, suspicion escrows, and shared-interest escrows - hold the promise of reducing the first-mover disadvantage that can deter people with socially valuable private information from disclosing that information to others. Information escrows allow people to transmit sensitive information to a trusted intermediary, an escrow agent, who only forwards the information under prespecified conditions. For example, an allegation escrow for sexual harassment might allow a victim to place a private complaint into escrow with instructions that the complaint be lodged with the proper authorities only if the escrow agent receives at least one …


The Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz Sep 2012

The Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The legal education crisis has already struck for many recent law school graduates, signaling potential disaster for law schools already struggling with their own economic challenges. Law schools have high fixed costs caused by competition between schools, the unchecked expansion of federal loan programs, a widely exploited information asymmetry about graduate employment outcomes, and a lack of financial discipline masquerading as innovation. As a result, tuition is up, jobs are down, and skepticism of the value of a J.D. has never been higher. If these trends do not reverse course, droves of students will continue to graduate with debt that …


The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos Sep 2012

The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The economist Herbert Stein once remarked that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Over the past four decades, the cost of legal education in America has seemed to belie this aphorism: it has gone up relentlessly. Private law school tuition increased by a factor of four in real, inflation-adjusted terms between 1971 and 2011, while resident tuition at public law schools has nearly quadrupled in real terms over just the past two decades. Meanwhile, for more than thirty years, the percentage of the American economy devoted to legal services has been shrinking. In 1978 the legal sector …


Burying, Robert Brendan Taylor Jan 2012

Burying, Robert Brendan Taylor

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

When applying for a patent, applicants must provide the examiner with all known material prior art. Those who fail to do so can be charged with inequitable conduct. But applicants can still effectively hide material prior art references by submitting them along with large quantities of immaterial prior art to the examiner. This deceptive practice, known as "burying," is generally not considered inequitable conduct. This Essay summarizes the current legal landscape concerning burying, discusses the costs associated with the practice, and suggests ways to deter and punish those who do it.


The $1.75 Trillion Lie, Lisa Heinzerling, Frank Ackerman Jan 2012

The $1.75 Trillion Lie, Lisa Heinzerling, Frank Ackerman

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

A 2010 study commissioned by the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration claims that federal regulations impose annual economic costs of $1.75 trillion. This estimate has been widely circulated, in everything from op-ed pages to Congressional testimony. But the estimate is not credible. For costs of economic regulations, the estimate reflects a calculation that rests on a misunderstanding of the definition of the relevant data, flunks an elementary question on the normal distribution, pads the analysis with several years of near-identical data, and fails to recognize the difference between correlation and causation. For costs of environmental regulation, …


Efficient Breach Of International Law: Optimal Remedies, 'Legalized Noncompliance,' And Related Issues, Eric A. Posner, Alan O. Sykes Nov 2011

Efficient Breach Of International Law: Optimal Remedies, 'Legalized Noncompliance,' And Related Issues, Eric A. Posner, Alan O. Sykes

Michigan Law Review

In much of the scholarly literature on international law, there is a tendency to condemn violations of the law and to leave it at that. If all violations of international law were indeed undesirable, this tendency would be unobjectionable. We argue in this Article, however that a variety of circumstances arise under which violations of international law are desirable from an economic standpoint. The reasons why are much the same as the reasons why nonperformance of private contracts is sometimes desirable- the concept of "efficient breach," familiar to modern students of contract law, has direct applicability to international law. As …


A Comparative Fault Defense In Contract Law, Ariel Porat Jun 2009

A Comparative Fault Defense In Contract Law, Ariel Porat

Michigan Law Review

This Article calls for the recognition of a comparative fault defense in contract law. Part I sets the framework for this defense and suggests the situations in which it should apply. These situations are sorted under two headings: cases of noncooperation and cases of overreliance. Part II unfolds the main argument for recognizing the defense and recommends applying the defense only in cases where cooperation or avoidance of overreliance is low cost.


Does Misery Love Company - Evidence From Pharmaceutical Markets Before And After The Orphan Drug Act, Frank R. Lichtenberg, Joel Waldfogel Jan 2009

Does Misery Love Company - Evidence From Pharmaceutical Markets Before And After The Orphan Drug Act, Frank R. Lichtenberg, Joel Waldfogel

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The possibility that small populations would see few medications developed for their conditions has [...] led the U.S. Congress to pass the 1983 Orphan Drug Act ("ODA"), giving firms special incentives to develop drugs for diseases afflicting fewer than 200,000 persons per year.[...][U]under the Act, drug makers receive seven years of exclusive marketing upon FDA approval of newly-developed drugs qualifying as "orphan drugs"--i.e., drugs for disorders affecting fewer than 200,000 persons.[...]Together, [the] provisions (a) increase the effective market size; and (b) reduce fixed (sunk) costs. In doing so, the Act provides a natural experiment for measuring the impact of increased …


Pdufa And Initial U.S. Drug Launches, Mary K. Olson Jan 2009

Pdufa And Initial U.S. Drug Launches, Mary K. Olson

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

In the 1970s and 1980s, many pharmaceutical firms launched new drugs abroad prior to gaining U.S. approval. Consequently, U.S. patients often faced delays in accessing important new medicines. High regulatory barriers to entry, such as a stringent regulation and a lengthy drug review process, contributed to this problem. This Article examines the impact of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), and subsequent increases in the speed of FDA review, on the likelihood of initial U.S. drug launches. These factors are hypothesized to lower regulatory barriers to entry in the U.S. pharmaceutical market. The results show that increased drug review …


Corporate Cooperation Through Cost-Sharing, Nicola Faith Sharpe Jan 2009

Corporate Cooperation Through Cost-Sharing, Nicola Faith Sharpe

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Applying a game-theoretic approach based on the classic prisoners' dilemma provides valuable insights into corporate managers' decision-making incentives under existing discovery rules. It demonstrates that the fee structure imposed by current discovery rules leads to inefficiency and motivates corporate litigants on either side of a controversy to employ abusive discovery practices, although each party would benefit from cooperation. Using this framework, this Article shows how a cost-sharing regime can motivate litigants to engage in cooperative discovery and, as a consequence, facilitate more efficient and less abusive discovery practices. To date, scholars, who have posited that cooperative behavior in the discovery …


Confidence In The Nonprofit Sector Through Sarbanes-Oxley-Style Reforms, Joseph Mead Mar 2008

Confidence In The Nonprofit Sector Through Sarbanes-Oxley-Style Reforms, Joseph Mead

Michigan Law Review

Over the past several years, the nonprofit sector suffered a series of highly visible scandals that shook the public's confidence in charitable organizations. Concerned politicians and nonprofit leaders responded with a variety of reforms inspired by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Note focuses on three such reforms: requiring nonprofit officers certify financial statements, mandating audits of nonprofits' financial statements, and imposing independent audit committees on nonprofit boards of directors. This Note argues that, contrary to the conclusions of many commentators, these reforms will provide a net benefit to the nonprofit sector by increasing donor confidence while imposing minimal costs.


Patients As Consumers: Courts, Cotnracts, And The New Medical Marketplace, Mark A. Hall, Carl E. Schneider Jan 2008

Patients As Consumers: Courts, Cotnracts, And The New Medical Marketplace, Mark A. Hall, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

The persistent riddle of health-care policy is how to control the costs while improving the quality of care. The riddle's oncepromising answer-managed care-has been politically ravaged, and consumerist solutions are now winning favor This Article examines the legal condition of the patient-as-consumer in today's health-care market. It finds that insurers bargain with some success for rates for the people they insure. The uninsured, however, must contract to pay whatever a provider charges and then are regularly charged prices that are several times insurers'pricesa nd providers' actual costs. Perhaps because they do not understand the healthcare market, courts generally enforce these …


The Moral Hazard Problem With Privatization Of Public Enforcement: The Case Of Pharmaceutical Fraud, Dayna Bowen Matthew Dec 2007

The Moral Hazard Problem With Privatization Of Public Enforcement: The Case Of Pharmaceutical Fraud, Dayna Bowen Matthew

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article takes a law and economics approach to exploring some of the costs that arise when governments rely on private enforcement to accomplish the goals of public law. The analysis focuses on qui tam enforcement under the Civil False Claims Act, because a remarkable body of empirical data demonstrates the expansive role private qui tam relators are playing in enforcing Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse laws. The Article further focuses on the application of these laws to the pharmaceutical industry. This focus is enlightening because the Government, as well as private enforcers, have recently targeted this industry so …


Rewarding Outside Directors, Assaf Hamdani, Reinier Kraakman Jun 2007

Rewarding Outside Directors, Assaf Hamdani, Reinier Kraakman

Michigan Law Review

While they often rely on the threat of penalties to produce deterrence, legal systems rarely use the promise of rewards. In this Article, we consider the use of rewards to motivate director vigilance. Measures to enhance director liability are commonly perceived to be too costly. We, however demonstrate that properly designed reward regimes could match the behavioral incentives offered by negligence-based liability regimes but with significantly lower costs. We further argue that the market itself cannot implement such a regime in the form of equity compensation for directors. We conclude by providing preliminary sketches of two alternative reward regimes. While …


The Social Construction Of Sarbanes-Oxley, Donald C. Langevoort Jun 2007

The Social Construction Of Sarbanes-Oxley, Donald C. Langevoort

Michigan Law Review

Part I will take a close look at the legitimacy of SOX by examining the two plausible stories of SOX's origins and considering the early post-SOX evidence on its costs and benefits. There is no clear-cut answer to the question of how much SOX benefits investors; both positive and critical positions are plausible. Costs have been far greater than expected, but more from SOX's implementation than from the legislative text. Before turning to how and why implementation has occurred that way-which to me is the central question of interpretation-Part II considers whether there is an alternative interpretation of SOX that …


Now, Later, Or Never: Applying Asymmetric Discount Rates In Nuisance Remedies And Federal Regulations, Yang Wang Jun 2007

Now, Later, Or Never: Applying Asymmetric Discount Rates In Nuisance Remedies And Federal Regulations, Yang Wang

Michigan Law Review

Part I of this Note reviews recent literature on the need for asymmetric discount rates in cost-benefit analysis. It observes that even though scholars disagree on the precise value of the appropriate discount rate, many agree that future costs and benefits must be discounted at different rates. Part II then constructs a simple model, consisting of two activities competing for the same resource, and analyzes the consequences of asymmetric discounting under this model. This Part proposes that, to maximize the joint social utility, the resource should be time divided between the competing activities rather than permanently allocated to one or …


Legal Fictions In Pierson V. Post, Andrea Mcdowell Feb 2007

Legal Fictions In Pierson V. Post, Andrea Mcdowell

Michigan Law Review

American courts and citizens generally take the importance of private property for granted. Scholars have sought to explain its primacy using numerous legal doctrines, including natural law, the Lockean principle of a right to the product of one's labor, Law & Economics theories about the incentives created by property ownership, and the importance of bright line rules. The leading case on the necessity of private property, Pierson v. Post, makes all four of these points. This Article argues that Pierson has been misunderstood. Pierson was in fact a defective torts case that the judges shoe-horned into a property mold …


Fixing 404, Joseph A. Grundfest, Steven E. Bochner Jan 2007

Fixing 404, Joseph A. Grundfest, Steven E. Bochner

Michigan Law Review

Although debate persists as to whether the costs of Sarbanes-Oxley's Section 404 regulations exceed their benefits, there is broad consensus that the rules have been inefficiently implemented. Substantive and procedural factors contribute to the rules' inefficiency. From a substantive perspective, the terms "material weakness" and "significant deficiency" are central to the implementing regulations and are easily interpreted to legitimize audits of controls that have only a remote probability of causing an inconsequential effect on the issuer's financial statements. As a quantitative matter the literature suggests that a control with a remote probability of causing an inconsequential effect has an expected …