Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Law

From Court-Surrogate To Regulatory Tool: Re-Framing The Empirical Study Of Employment Arbitration, W. Mark C. Weidemaier Jul 2008

From Court-Surrogate To Regulatory Tool: Re-Framing The Empirical Study Of Employment Arbitration, W. Mark C. Weidemaier

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A growing body of empirical research explores the use of arbitration to resolve employment disputes, typically by comparing arbitration to litigation using relatively traditional outcome measures: who wins, how much, and how quickly. On the whole, this research suggests that employees fare reasonably well in arbitration. Yet there remain sizeable gaps in our knowledge. This Article explores these gaps with two goals in mind. The first and narrower goal is to explain why it remains exceedingly difficult to assess the relative fairness of arbitration and litigation. The outcome research does not account for a variety of 'filtering" mechanisms that influence …


Arbitration Costs And Forum Accessibility: Empirical Evidence, Christopher R. Drahozal Jul 2008

Arbitration Costs And Forum Accessibility: Empirical Evidence, Christopher R. Drahozal

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, written for this symposium issue on "Empirical Studies of Mandatory Arbitration," I examine the available empirical evidence on these two questions. I take "mandatory arbitration" to refer to pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer and employment (and maybe franchise) contracts. Accordingly, I limit my consideration of the empirical evidence to those types of contracts. I do not discuss empirical studies of international arbitrations, which almost always arise out of agreements between commercial entities. Nor do I discuss empirical studies of court-annexed arbitrations, which may not derive from party agreement and do not ordinarily proceed to a binding award.


Bankruptcy Vérité, Lynn M. Lopucki, Joseph W. Doherty Feb 2008

Bankruptcy Vérité, Lynn M. Lopucki, Joseph W. Doherty

Michigan Law Review

In the empirical study we report in Bankruptcy Fire Sales, we compared the recoveries from the going-concern bankruptcy sales of twenty-five large, public companies with the recoveries from the bankruptcy reorganizations of thirty large, public companies. We found that, controlling for the asset size of the company and its presale or pre-reorganization earnings ("EBITDA"), reorganization recoveries were more than double sale recovenes. We are honored that Professor James J. White has chosen to comment on our study. White is an eloquent defender of the status quo, pulls no punches, and always has something interesting to say. Bankruptcy Noir is …


Did Bankruptcy Reform Fail? An Empirical Study Of Consumer Debtors, Robert M. Lawless, Angela K. Littwin, Katherine M. Porter, John A. E. Pottow, Deborah K. Thorne, Elizabeth Warren Jan 2008

Did Bankruptcy Reform Fail? An Empirical Study Of Consumer Debtors, Robert M. Lawless, Angela K. Littwin, Katherine M. Porter, John A. E. Pottow, Deborah K. Thorne, Elizabeth Warren

Articles

Before 2005, many people went broke and many filed for bankruptcy. After 2005, many people still go broke, but not so many file for bankruptcy. Why has the number of bankruptcies declined? Surely it is not the economy. All throughout the 2000s, families have been under increasing economic pressure. Median family incomes have declined, basic expenses have risen, and families are shouldering unprecedented debt loads. Defaults remain high for credit cards and car loans, while mortgage foreclosures have soared. By 2008, over half of all Americans reported that their incomes were falling behind their cost of living. These data all …


Noncompliance, Nonenforcement, Nonproblem? Rethinking The Anticommons In Biomedical Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 2008

Noncompliance, Nonenforcement, Nonproblem? Rethinking The Anticommons In Biomedical Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

A decade ago the biomedical research community was sounding alarm bells about the impact of intellectual property (IP) rights on the ability of scientists to do their work. Controversies and delays in negotiating terms of access to patented mice and genes, databases of scientific information, and tangible research materials all pointed toward the same conclusion: that IP claims were undermining traditional sharing norms to the detriment of science. Michael Heller and I highlighted one dimension of this concern: that too many IP rights in "upstream" research results could paradoxically restrict "downstream" research and product development by making it too costly …


Principal Investigator Views Of The Irb System, Simon N. Whitney, Kirsten Alcser, Carl E. Schneider, Laurence B. Mccullough, Amy L. Mcguire, Robert J. Volk Jan 2008

Principal Investigator Views Of The Irb System, Simon N. Whitney, Kirsten Alcser, Carl E. Schneider, Laurence B. Mccullough, Amy L. Mcguire, Robert J. Volk

Articles

We undertook a qualitative e-mail survey of federally-funded principal investigators of their views of the US human subjects protection system, intended to identify the range of investigator attitudes. This was an exploratory study with a 14% response rate. Twenty-eight principal investigators responded; their comments were analyzed to show underlying themes, which are here presented along with supporting quotations. There was consensus that it is important to protect human subjects from research abuse, but disagreement over how well the IRB system is functioning. Some researchers felt that the system is effective and serves its purpose well. Of those who support the …


Third-Party Tax Administration: The Case Of Low- And Moderate-Income Households, Michael S. Barr, Jane K. Dokko Jan 2008

Third-Party Tax Administration: The Case Of Low- And Moderate-Income Households, Michael S. Barr, Jane K. Dokko

Articles

Using a unique household-level data set, this article investigates the taxfiling experiences and refund behavior of low- and moderate-income (LMI) households. We document households' tax-filing behavior, attitudes about the withholding system, use of tax refunds to consume and save, and the mechanisms by which households would prefer to receive their income. We also document the prevalence of the use of tax-preparation services and the receipt of tax refunds and refund-anticipation loans. Finally, we argue that there may be a role for tax administration to enable LMI households to make welfare-improving financial decisions.


Frequency And Predictors Of False Conviction: Why We Know So Little, And New Data On Capital Cases, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien Jan 2008

Frequency And Predictors Of False Conviction: Why We Know So Little, And New Data On Capital Cases, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien

Articles

In the first part of this article, we address the problems inherent in studying wrongful convictions: our pervasive ignorance and the extreme difficulty of obtaining the data that we need to answer even basic questions. The main reason that we know so little about false convictions is that, by definition, they are hidden from view. As a result, it is nearly impossible to gather reliable data on the characteristics or even the frequency of false convictions. In addition, we have very limited data on criminal investigations and prosecutions in general, so even if we could somehow obtain data on cases …


Bankruptcy Noir, James J. White Jan 2008

Bankruptcy Noir, James J. White

Articles

In Bankruptcy Fire Sales, Professor LoPucki and Dr. Doherty do two things. First, they present provocative data about the relative payoff to be had in Chapter 11 by a full reorganization compared with the payoff from a section 363 sale without a full reorganization. Second, they give a yet more provocative explanation for their data. Taking a page from Professor LoPucki's recent book, they blame the meager return that they observe on 363 sales on the unprincipled behavior of the lawyers, managers, creditors, investment bankers, and even judges involved in the sales. Messrs. LoPucki and Doherty's data appear to …