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Full-Text Articles in Law
Moral Diversity And Efficient Breach, Matthew A. Seligman
Moral Diversity And Efficient Breach, Matthew A. Seligman
Michigan Law Review
Most people think it is morally wrong to breach a contract. But sophisticated commercial parties, like large corporations, have no objection to breaching contracts and paying the price in damages when doing so is in their self-interest. The literature has ignored the profound legal, economic, and normative implications of that asymmetry between individuals’ and firms’ approaches to breach. To individuals, a contract is a promise that cannot be broken regardless of the financial stakes. For example, millions of homeowners refused to breach their mortgage contracts in the aftermath of the housing crisis even though doing so could have saved them …
The Cost Of Nothing Trumps The Value Of Everything: The Failure Of Regulatory Economics To Keep Pace With Improvements In Quantitative Risk Analysis, Adam M. Finkel
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
The entire U.S. federal regulatory apparatus, especially that part devoted to reducing (or deciding not to reduce) risks to the environment, health, and safety (EHS), relies increasingly on judgments of whether each regulation would yield benefits in excess of its costs. These judgments depend in turn upon empirical analysis of the potential increases in longevity, quality of life, and environmental quality that the regulation can confer, and also of the economic resources needed to “purchase” those benefits—analyses whose quality can range from extremely fine to disappointingly poor. The quality of a risk analysis (from which the benefits of control are …
Dilution At The Patent And Trademark Office, Jeremy N. Sheff
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 Moral Hazard Problem With Privatization Of Public Enforcement: The Case Of Pharmaceutical Fraud, Dayna Bowen Matthew
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 …
Bankruptcy Fire Sales, Lynn M. Lopucki, Joseph W. Doherty
Bankruptcy Fire Sales, Lynn M. Lopucki, Joseph W. Doherty
Michigan Law Review
For more than two decades, scholars working from an economic perspective have criticized the bankruptcy reorganization process and sought to replace it with market mechanisms. In 2002, Professors Douglas G. Baird and Robert K. Rasmussen asserted in The End of Bankruptcy that improvements in the market for large public companies had rendered reorganization obsolete. Going concern value could be captured through sale. This Article reports the results of an empirical study comparing the recoveries in bankruptcy sales of large public companies in the period 2000 through 2004 with the recoveries in bankruptcy reorganizations during the same period. Controlling for company …
Theorizing Behavioral Law And Economics: A Defense Of Evolutionary Analysis And The Law, Neel P. Parekh
Theorizing Behavioral Law And Economics: A Defense Of Evolutionary Analysis And The Law, Neel P. Parekh
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Behavioral law and economics (BLE) provides a steady stream of empirical evidence that counters the predictions of law and economics. Despite this research and data, however, many theorists argue that BLE ultimately fails because it posits no underlying theory. This Note argues that perspectives from evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and the brain sciences can provide the missing motivational theory for BLE's empirical findings. The Note also examines the implications a more consistent and reasoned consideration of evolutionary analysis and the law (EA) has for our legal regime. In theorizing BLE and defending EA, this Note aims to show how evolutionary …
The Future Of Enterprise Organizations, Eric W. Orts
The Future Of Enterprise Organizations, Eric W. Orts
Michigan Law Review
Both the law and business schools at the University of Michigan offer a basic course in Enterprise Organization. This tradition owes to the influence of Professor Alfred Conard, one of the leading scholars of his generation, who taught during most of his career at the University of Michigan Law School. The tradition persists in part because Enterprise Organization suggests an appropriately broad view of its topic, unlike more common course titles such as Corporations or Business Associations. We live in a world populated not only by people but also the organized legal entities we create. Business firms and nonprofit organizations …
The Effectiveness Of Measures To Increase Appellate Court Efficiency And Decision Output, Thomas B. Marvell, Carlisle E. Moody
The Effectiveness Of Measures To Increase Appellate Court Efficiency And Decision Output, Thomas B. Marvell, Carlisle E. Moody
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Article will examine the effectiveness of measures commonly employed to increase appellate court productivity. Part I of the Article sets forth some common design problems and explains how the research technique employed in the present study avoids these problems by using a multiple time-series research design. Part II applies this design to state court data. Part II also describes the dependent variable, the number of appeals decided per judge, used in the regression analysis. Part III discusses the results of that analysis-the impact of each change listed above on judicial productivity. The Article, although not advocating the adoption of …