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Full-Text Articles in Law

Law & Entrepreneurship: Do Courts Matter?, D. Gordon Smith, Masako Ueda Mar 2006

Law & Entrepreneurship: Do Courts Matter?, D. Gordon Smith, Masako Ueda

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, we sketch the outlines of a research agenda exploring links between courts and entrepreneurship. Our conception of law and entrepreneurship encompasses the study of positive law (including constitutions, statutes, and regulations), common law doctrines, and private ordering that relate to the discovery and exploitation of profitable opportunities by new firms. We briefly survey the economics literatures that relate to law and entrepreneurship, including the law and finance literature launched by the work of Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny (LLSV). Relying on the suggestive work of LLSV and other economists who have labored …


Examining A Comparative Law Myth: Two Hundred Years Of Riparian Misconception, Andrea B. Carroll Feb 2006

Examining A Comparative Law Myth: Two Hundred Years Of Riparian Misconception, Andrea B. Carroll

Journal Articles

This article is a first step in an effort to critically examine - and to debunk - some of the myths that persist about the degree to which the common and civil law systems differ. Specifically, the article questions the validity of recent scholarly commentary suggesting that the primary differences between the systems can be found in their substantive legal rules or in their respective "spirits." A relatively narrow issue of riparian access perfectly highlights the problem. Nearly all of the high courts in the United States that have examined this particular riparian issue have chosen to adopt either the …


“After You, My Dear Alphonse!”: Should The Courts Defer To The Fda’S New Interpretation Of § 360k(A) Of The Medical Device Amendments?, Richard C. Ausness Feb 2006

“After You, My Dear Alphonse!”: Should The Courts Defer To The Fda’S New Interpretation Of § 360k(A) Of The Medical Device Amendments?, Richard C. Ausness

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Under the provisions of the Medical Device Amendments (MDA) to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act certain medical devices are subject to premarket approval of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Section 360k(a) of the MDA provides that states may not establish “any requirement” which relates to safety or effectiveness of a medical device and "which is different from, or in addition to" any requirement imposed by the FDA. Until recently, the FDA maintained that § 360k(a) did not preempt most common law tort claims; however, in recent amici briefs, the FDA has aggressively asserted that most, if not all, …


From St. Ives To Cyberspace: The Modern Distortion Of The Medieval ‘Law Merchant’, Stephen E. Sachs Jan 2006

From St. Ives To Cyberspace: The Modern Distortion Of The Medieval ‘Law Merchant’, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

Modern advocates of corporate self-regulation have drawn unlikely inspiration from the Middle Ages. On the traditional view of history, medieval merchants who wandered from fair to fair were not governed by domestic laws, but by their own lex mercatoria, or "law merchant. " This law, which uniformly regulated commerce across Europe, was supposedly produced by an autonomous merchant class, interpreted in private courts, and enforced through private sanctions rather than state coercion. Contemporary writers have treated global corporations as descendants of these itinerant traders, urging them to replace conflicting national laws with a transnational law of their own creation. The …


Common Law Police Powers And Exclusion Of Evidence: The Renaissance Of Good Faith, Steve Coughlan Jan 2006

Common Law Police Powers And Exclusion Of Evidence: The Renaissance Of Good Faith, Steve Coughlan

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Canadian courts have become far more willing in recent years to rely on the common law as a source of new police powers. Where once the test from R. v. Waterfield was an exception and an afterthought to what was otherwise the general rule of insistence upon statutory sources for police powers, more recently that test seems to be in the forefront of judges' minds as they decide cases. That 1963 British decision has been cited by Canadian courts roughly as often in the last eight years as in the first 35 years after it was decided. Since 1999 the …


The Common Law As An Iterative Process: A Preliminary Inquiry, Lawrence A. Cunningham Jan 2006

The Common Law As An Iterative Process: A Preliminary Inquiry, Lawrence A. Cunningham

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The common law often is casually referred to as an iterative process without much attention given to the detailed attributes such processes exhibit. This Article explores this characterization, uncovering how common law as an iterative process is one of endless repetition that is simultaneously stable and dynamic, self-similar but evolving, complex yet simple. These attributes constrain the systemic significance of judicial discretion and also confirm the wisdom of traditional approaches to studying and learning law. As an iterative system, common law exhibits what physicists call sensitive dependence on initial conditions. This generates a path dependency from which it may be …


The Too Easy Historical Assumptions Of Crawford V. Washington, Randolph N. Jonakait Jan 2006

The Too Easy Historical Assumptions Of Crawford V. Washington, Randolph N. Jonakait

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.


Legal Ground Rules In Coordinated And Liberal Market Economies, Katharina Pistor Jan 2006

Legal Ground Rules In Coordinated And Liberal Market Economies, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter seeks to explain the affinity between the nature of economic systems: coordinated market economies (CMEs) and liberal market economies (LMEs) on the one hand, and legal origin (civil vs common law systems) on the other. It starts with the simple observation that LMEs tend to be common law jurisdictions, and CMEs civil law jurisdictions. It proposes that the affinity between economic and legal system offers important insights into the foundations of different types of market economies and, in particular, differences in the scope of the state vs the powers of the individual. The main argument is that the …