Law Commons^™

The Visible Hand: Coordination Functions Of The Regulatory State, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

We live in a coordination economy. As one surveys the myriad challenges of modern social and economic life, an ever increasing proportion is defined not by the need to reconcile competing interests, but by the challenge of getting everyone on the same page. Conflict is not absent in these settings. It is not, however, the determinative factor in shaping our behaviors and resulting interactions. That essential ingredient, instead, is coordination.

Such coordination is commonly understood as the function of the market. As it turns out, however, optimal coordination will not always emerge, as if led “by an invisible hand.” Even …

Freedom Of Contract Vs. Free Alienability: An Old Struggle Emerges In A New Context, Neil B. Cohen, William H. Henning

Faculty Scholarship

This article addresses a contemporary reigniting of an ages-old conundrum in Anglo-American law. The conundrum results from the collision of two concepts that are usually thought of as mainstays of the law--freedom of contract and free alienability of property--in the context of assignments of receivables.

Imperfect Alternatives: Networks, Salience, And Institutional Design In Financial Crises, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

With the benefit of hindsight — and some aspiration to foresight — it is useful to consider the type of regulatory regime that might best address financial crises. What could policymakers have done to prevent the recent crisis? And once the crisis started, what interventions might have alleviated it? These questions have been widely debated, with an eye to both substantive policy and the design of effective regulatory institutions. This Article speaks to the latter project — one of comparative institutional analysis — though with a framework that implicates our substantive policy choices as well. It begins with an account …

Framing Franchise Antitrust Litigation: The Legacy Of Kodak And Queen City Pizza, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

A decade ago, many antitrust commentators were predicting a “revival” of franchise antitrust claims flowing in the wake of Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services, Inc. The thinking was that Kodak’s recognition of a claim for monopolization of an “aftermarket” for parts and services separate from each other and from a primary product might be extended to cover franchise relationships in which the franchisee is required to purchase fungible products from its franchisor, even though those products could be purchased elsewhere on more favorable terms. Fairly quickly, though, the Third Circuit decided Queen City Pizza, Inc. v. Domino’s Pizza, …

Erisa & Uncertainty, Brendan S. Maher, Peter K. Stris

Faculty Scholarship

In the United States, retirement income and health insurance are largely provided through private promises made incident to employment. These “benefit promises” are governed by a statute called ERISA, which many healthcare and pension scholars argue is the cause of fundamental problems with our nation’s health and retirement policy. Inevitably, however, they advance narrowly tailored proposals to amend the statute. This occurs because of the widely-held view that reform should leave undisturbed the underlying core of the statute. This Article develops a theory of ERISA designed to illustrate the unavoidable need for structural reform.

Social Semiotics In The Fair Use Analysis, H. Brian Holland

Faculty Scholarship

Fair use is perhaps the most contested doctrine in all of copyright law. New technologies that not only enable increased audience engagement with cultural works, but also facilitate the use of these "raw materials" to produce new works have made fair use more controversial. At another level, these technologies have made visible an audience, not of passive content consumers, but of active participants in discourse around and about those works.

This Article presents an argument for an expansion of fair use based on social semiotic theory, rather than on theories of authorship or rights of autonomy of subsequent authors. Instead, …

Should The Patient Conquer?, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

In 1596, Robert Bainbridge carved “The patient shall conquer” into the wall of his cell in the Tower of London. It is highly unlikely that Bainbridge was an early advocate for recipients of medical care, imprisoned perhaps by a cruel sheriff denied his payroll taxes or by a domineering barber refused his fee. But its unintended meaning would immediately provoke sympathy from many health care reformers. As we confront the critical challenges of implementing national health-care reform, however, whether the patient should conquer is a legitimate topic for debate. Does the patient’s conquest risk the collapse of the health-care system …

The Economic Impact Of Local Immigration Regulation: An Empirical Analysis, Huyen Pham, Pham Hoang Van

Faculty Scholarship

A wave of local anti-immigration laws has swept the country, triggering contentious debate and raising significant legal and policy issues. One critical dimension that has been largely ignored, however, is the economic impact of these laws: Are jurisdictions with them better off economically than those without them?

In the first empirical study of this issue, we analyze the economic impact of local anti-immigration laws. The laws take different forms some authorize local police to enforce federal immigration laws, some restrict benefits like housing and employment to those with legal immigration status, and some require all government transactions to be conducted …

Uncertainties Remain For Judicial Takings Theory, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Supreme Court waded into the waters of judicial takings last summer with a divided opinion that effectively carries no precedential value but is likely to have lower courts and property scholars trying to decipher its meaning for many years to come.

In Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environment Protection, 130 S. Ct. 2592 (2010), the Court decided that some Florida gulf-front property owners are not entitled to compensation under the federal Constitution’s Takings Clause when a state beach restoration project separates their private property from the water’s edge. Although the state prevailed in this …

After The Fall: Financial Crisis And The International Order, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have challenged the international order to a degree not seen since World War II — and perhaps the Great Depression. As the U.S. housing crisis metastasized into a financial and economic crisis of grave proportions, and spread to nearly every corner of the globe, the strength of our international institutions — the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the Group of Twenty, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, and others — was tested as never before. Likewise tested, were the limits of our national commitment to those institutions, to our international obligations, and to global engagement more …

The Civil Judicial Subsidy, Brendan S. Maher

Faculty Scholarship

American society does not require civil litigants to bear the actual cost of using the court; those costs are borne almost entirely by the taxpayer (i.e., the “civil judicial subsidy”). In this Article I ask: is that right? Or is there a more desirable way to apportion court usage costs between the state and litigants?

I develop an evaluative framework that facilitates analysis of the purpose, contours, and cost of the current judicial subsidy. We subsidize court use because, in theory, there are certain “social positives” associated with public adjudication. To date the unspoken assumption has been that these social …

How Lawyers (Come To) See The World: A Narrative Theory Of Legal Pedagogy, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Even if one believes that law is not an autonomous discipline, few would dispute that it is a conservative institution and that its members are trained via a pedagogical method quite different from that of other professions. A central aspect of this training is the case method and — thus — the specialized narrative form that appellate opinions take. This essay examines the case method and suggests ways to crack it open — without discarding it — and thereby achieve one of the goals set forth in the Carnegie Report: namely, to supplement the analytical, rule-based mode of reasoning inherent …

The Dispute Settlement Process Of The Wto: A Normative Structure To Achieve Utilitarian Objectives, Brian Manning, Srividhya Ragavan

Faculty Scholarship

The paper posits that the World Trade Organization (WTO) has failed to efficiently promote mutually advantageous global relationships. The authors contend that the structure and the functioning of the Dispute Settlement Body have contributed to the failure of the WTO. The DSB’s approach to interpreting the WTO agreements has been normative, as opposed to a realistic. Consequently, decisions from the DSB have resulted in strict interpretation of WTO agreements without appropriately balancing member’s national realities. Thus, the overall goals of the organization have been compromised to reinforce existing global power structures rather than promote cooperative governance.

The authors examine two …

Economic Impact Of Local Immigration Regulation: An Empirical Analysis, Huyen Pham, Pham Hoang Van

Faculty Scholarship

A wave of local anti-immigration laws has swept the country, triggering contentious debate and raising significant legal and policy issues. One critical dimension that has been largely ignored, however, is the economic impact of these laws: Are jurisdictions with them better off economically than those without them?

In the first empirical study of this issue, we analyze the economic impact of local anti-immigration laws. The laws take differentformssome authorize local police to enforce federal immigration laws, some restrict benefits like housing and employment to those with legal immigration status, and some require all government transactions to be conducted in English …

Killing The Microphone: When Broadcast Freedom Should Yield To Genocide Prevention, Carol Pauli

Faculty Scholarship

When powerful radio broadcasts exhort listeners to kill their neighbors, may outside nations or international organizations legally interrupt the signals to prevent genocide? International law has no legal framework for assessing and responding to such broadcasts. This Article attempts to create one. The Article draws on empirical research in the field of communication to identify conditions in which media messages become so powerful that they can mobilize audience members. Using this research, it constructs a framework for determining when speech constitutes incitement to genocide such that it loses any protection under international law and perhaps even triggers an affirmative duty …

Copyright, Derivative Works, And The Economics Of Complements, Glynn S. Lunney Jr

Faculty Scholarship

From an economic perspective, copyright is irrational. In defining the scope of a copyright owner's exclusive rights, it treats situations that have similar economic consequences differently, as infringement in one case and not in the other, and situations that have radically different economic consequences similarly. This essay explores such area in which copyright exhibits economic irrationality: Copyright's treatment of complements. Where a lower price on a substitute reduces demand for the original, a lower price on a complement increases it. So defined, copyright addresses whether a copyright owner will control three different types of complements: (i) complementary products, such as …

Roll Over Langdell, Tell Llewellyn The News: A Brief History Of American Legal Education, Stephen R. Alton

Faculty Scholarship

The origin of this essay is a presentation the author made at the Office of the Attorney General of the State of Texas on December 10, 2008. This essay is derived from the author's presentation, which originally was entitled "A Brief and Highly Selective History of American Legal Education and Jurisprudence. " In this essay, the author provides an overview of the history and development of legal education in America, emphasizing the establishment and evolution of the case method of instruction in American law schools and focusing on the influence of American jurisprudence on the development of legal education in …

Wto Jurisprudence & Its Critiques: The Appellate Body's Anti-Constitutional Resistance, William Magnuson

Faculty Scholarship

In a time of financial crisis and rising demand for economic protectionism, the World Trade Organization, promoting free trade and economic growth, has never been more important. Enforcement of the WTO’s provisions has grown increasingly contentious and high-stakes, and the Appellate Body empowered to rule on violations of the treaty has received harsh criticism. Three elements of WTO jurisprudence, in particular, stand out. First, the court’s excessive use of narrow textualist argument tends to lead to short-sighted decisions that give little guidance to member states. Second, the court’s decisions have increasingly interfered with sensitive democratic processes in sovereign countries. Third, …

Holding The World Bank Accountable For The Leakage Of Funds From Africa’S Health Sector, Fatma E. Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the accountability of international financial institutions (IFIs), such as the World Bank, for human rights violations related to the massive leakage of funds from sub-Saharan Africa’s health sector. The article begins by summarizing the quantitative results of Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys performed in six African countries, all showing disturbingly high levels of leakage in the health sector. It then addresses the inadequacy of good governance and anticorruption programs in remedying this problem. After explaining how the World Bank’s Inspection Panel may serve as an accountability mechanism for addressing the leakage of funds, discussing violations of specific Bank …

The Taxation Of Cause-Related Marketing, Terri Lynn Helge

Faculty Scholarship

With the economy in turmoil, charitable organizations are looking to nontraditional sources of financing to supplement contributions and fee-based revenues. One potentially lucrative source of revenue stems from cause-related marketing. Cause-related marketing is the public association of a for-profit company with a charitable organization to promote the company’s product or service in order to raise money for the charitable organization. Introduced almost twenty-five years ago, cause-related marketing has now become a $1 billion a year industry. Cause-related marketing has evolved beyond mere use of a charitable organization’s name to an apparent union for the purpose of promoting products that carry …

The Taxation Of Emissions Permits Distributed For Free As Part Of A Carbon Cap-And-Trade Program, Gary M. Lucas Jr

Faculty Scholarship

Climate change legislation is one of the Obama administration's top priorities. The administration has proposed regulating carbon emissions using a cap-and-trade program. If adopted, the program will place a cap on the aggregate carbon emissions of certain firms. Under the program, the government will create emissions permits in an amount corresponding to the cap and will require certain firms to surrender a permit for each ton of carbon emitted. After the government initially distributes permits, firms will be able to buy and sell them on a secondary market.

Both the administration and many economists prefer that the government initially distribute …

Unpaid Furloughs And Four-Day Work Weeks: Employer Sympathy Or A Call For Collective Employee Action, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In these tough economic times, employers have responded by pursuing four-day work weeks and other mechanisms that change the components of the standard five-day work week. Although four-day work weeks provide some savings in the form of reduced operating and energy costs and have received recent notice for also being family-friendly and environmentally friendly, current dismal economic prospects have inspired employers to pursue other work week changes to achieve further savings. Furloughs, also referred to as unpaid days off, represent a form of a reduced work week as employees do not work during their furloughed time and receive no income …

What Is "(Im)Partial Enough" In A World Of Embedded Neutrals?, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s decision in Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co. highlighted the fragility of judicial independence and impartiality in the United States. A similar, less-noticed fragility of independence and impartiality exists among the arbitrators, mediators and administrative hearing officers who resolve an increasing number of disputes. Everywhere one looks, there is unremarked yet remarkable evidence of the rise of - embedded neutrals, particularly in uneven contexts between one-time and repeat players. This phenomenon becomes particularly worrisome when the embedded neutral’s role is due to their special relationship with the repeat player, and the one-time player is not as …

Privacy Paradox 2.0, H. Brian Holland

Faculty Scholarship

As a starting point, this essay offers six basic propositions. First, "the 'privacy paradox' " refers to inconsistencies "between individuals' [asserted] intentions to disclose personal information and [individuals'] actual ... disclosure behaviors." Put simply, we indicate-at a granular level-specific items of personal information that we will not disclose, but we then give away that same data with what appears to be little regard for the risks of doing so and for little in return. Second, the privacy paradox is a wellestablished concept in many fields of the social sciences, even though the precise contours and causes of the paradox are …

Leaks, Lies, And The Moonlight: Fiduciary Duties Of Associates To Their Law Firms, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium article examines the fiduciary duties of law firm associates. After applying agency principles to the firm-associate relationship, the article analyzes specific duties and discusses cases involving alleged breaches of fiduciary duties by associates. It explores associate duties in the current legal, organizational, and socio-technological environment in which associates practice. The article closes with observations on the importance of firm principals considering the effect of firm culture on associate attitudes and conduct.

Pining For Sustainability, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

The survey results discussed in Part I below reveal substantial paper consumption excesses in the existing law journal system. Though only thirty-three primary law journals responded to the survey, making extrapolation across the general population of all law journals difficult, the aggregate data is illuminating nonetheless. Based upon a very conservative evaluation of the data set, the respondent journals reported printing nearly seventeen million pages of paper in the one-year term of the 2008-2009 editorial boards. Isolated practices proved particularly disconcerting. For instance, one journal reported printing a full, single-sided copy of each of the more than two thousand electronically …

The Remnants Of Exaction Takings, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the ability of local governments to impose discretionary permit conditions, or "exactions, " to offset the burdens that new development places upon existing infrastructure and the environment. Over fifteen years ago, in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard, a deeply divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment significantly restricts this governmental authority, for the clause requires the judiciary to apply a more stringent level of scrutiny in reviewing permit conditions than is accorded outright permit denials. These "regulatory takings " decisions provide land use regulators with …

Conflict Of Laws (2010), James P. George, Wm Frank Carroll, Stephanie K. Marshall

Faculty Scholarship

States' and nations' laws collide when foreign factors appear in a lawsuit. Nonresident litigants, incidents outside the forum, parallel lawsuits, and judgments from other jurisdictions can create problems with personal jurisdiction, choice of law, and the recognition of foreign judgments. This Article reviews Texas conflict cases from Texas state and federal courts during the Survey period from November 1, 2008, through October 31, 2009. The Article excludes cases involving federal-state conflicts; intrastate issues, such as subject matter jurisdiction and venue; and conflicts in time, such as the applicability of prior or subsequent law within a state. State and federal cases …

Combating Antimicrobial Resistance: Regulatory Strategies And Institutional Capacity, William M. Sage, David A. Hyman

Faculty Scholarship

Amnesia is a common, important, but rarely noted side effect of antibiotics. Apart from medical historians, few recall the severe morbidity and mortality once associated with acute bacterial infection. However, decades of antibiotic overuse and misuse have compromised the long-term availability and efficacy of these life-saving therapies. If designed and implemented appropriately, regulation can reduce the risk of bacterial infection, reserve antibiotics for circumstances where they are necessary, and rationalize the use of the most powerful agents. Regulation of antibiotic resistance can be justified, and should be guided, by both efficiency and fairness. A range of regulatory options are available--some …

The Political Economy Of Data Protection, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

Information is the lifeblood of a knowledge-based economy. The control of data and the ability to translate them into meaningful information is indispensable to businesspeople, policymakers, scientists, engineers, researchers, students, and consumers. Having useful, and at times exclusive, information improves productivity, advances education and training, and helps create a more informed citizenry. In the past two decades, those who collected or obtained access to a large amount of data began to explore ways to use the collected data as an income stream. Because the then-existing laws did not offer adequate protection for that particular purpose, they actively lobbied for stronger …