Law Commons^™

Busting Up The Pretrial Industry, Andrew S. Pollis

Faculty Publications

It is by now axiomatic that the objective of the civil lawsuit has evolved. Litigants no longer routinely resolve their disputes through trial but instead engage in pretrial battles designed to extract favorable settlements. Modern litigation revolves around protracted discovery and dispositive motions, driven by two primary dynamics: (1) the maximization of fees for lawyers who charge their clients by the hour; and (2) the desire to make litigation as painful as possible for an adversary so that settlement becomes the adversary’s better option. We have, in short, fostered a pretrial industry that can relegate the merits of a dispute …

What We Buy When We "Buy Now", Aaron K. Perzanowski, Chris Jay Hoofnagle

Faculty Publications

Retailers such as Apple and Amazon market digital media to consumers using the familiar language of product ownership, including phrases like “buy now,” “own,” and “purchase.” Consumers may understandably associate such language with strong personal property rights. But the license agreements and terms of use associated with these transactions tell a different story. They explain that ebooks, mp3 albums, digital movies, games, and software are not sold, but merely licensed. The terms limit consumers' ability to resell, lend, transfer, and even retain possession of the digital media they acquire. Moreover, unlike physical media products, access to digital media is contingent …

Selling Stock And Selling Legal Claims: Alienability As A Constraint On Managerial Opportunism, Charles R. Korsmo

Faculty Publications

Scholars have long recognized the importance of market forces as a tool for disciplining the management of public corporations and reducing agency costs. If managers loot or otherwise mismanage the firm, the firm’s stock price will suffer, raising its cost of capital and leaving managers exposed to the threat of a hostile takeover. In recent decades, changing patterns of stock ownership have threatened the viability of this market check on mismanagement. Institutional investors, and particularly index funds, own an increasing portion of publicly traded firms, and face substantial liquidity and other barriers to simply selling their positions. To the extent …

Big Data And The Americans With Disabilities Act: Amending The Law To Cover Discrimination Based On Data-Driven Predictions Of Future Illnesses, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

While big data holds great promise to improve the human condition, it also creates new and previously unimaginable opportunities for discrimination. Employers, financial institutions, marketers, educational institutions, and others can now easily obtain a wealth of big data about individuals’ health status and use it to make adverse decisions relating to data subjects.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal law that prohibits employers and other public and private entities from discriminating against individuals because of their disabilities. This chapter argues that in the era of big data, the ADA does not go far enough. While the ADA …

The Coalition Model, A Private-Public Strategic Innovation Policy Model For Encouraging Entrepreneurship And Economic Growth In The Era Of New Economic Challenges, Anat Alon-Beck

Faculty Publications

Innovation driven entrepreneurial firms have an important role in contributing to job creation, to generating technological innovation and to stimulating the United States economy. However, there is a notable recent decline in emerging growth entrepreneurial activity in the United States. The Coalition Model proposes ways to maximize opportunities for industry, academia and government to collaborate and build sustainable relationships, in order to help convert the current challenges in the U.S. market into opportunities.

Designing a new innovation strategy policy will lead the United States in generating innovation, technology and economic growth, as well as help the federal government harness new …

Tribute To Ken Margolis - Renaissance Man, Matthew Rossman

Faculty Publications

Tribute to Ken Margolis.

Invisible Error, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

When trial becomes a luxury, retrial can start to look downright decadent. Scholars have documented the “vanishing trial” in recent decades, exploring the various causes and effects of declining trial rates. Retrial, if mentioned at all, is portrayed as a relatively inefficient vehicle for error correction at best. At worst, it is seen as a threat to the sanctity of the ever-rarer jury verdict.

But the jury trial is only endangered, not yet extinct. And continuing to protect the constitutional right to a jury requires appreciating the role of retrial within the due-process framework. When the jury’s verdict contradicts the …

Foreword: The Art Of International Law, Michael P. Scharf, Katie Steiner

Faculty Publications

September 16, 2016, Case Western Reserve University School of Law’s Frederick K. Cox International Law Center, in conjunction with the celebration of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s centennial anniversary, convened a day-long conference with leading scholars and practitioners from around the world to explore topics at the intersection of art and international law.

Tribute To Professor Jonathan L. Entin, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

Tribute to Professor Jonathan Entin.

One Size Does Not Fit All: A Contextual Approach To Fiduciary Duties Owed To Preferred Stockholders From Venture Capital To Public Preferred To Family Business, Juliet P. Kostritsky

Faculty Publications

This Article examines whether corporations should owe fiduciary duties to its preferred stockholders as preferred stockholders across all settings of preferred stock holding. In one context, sophisticated venture capitalists purchase preferred stock after carefully negotiating the stock price, control over the corporate governance, and other key stipulations by contract. Additionally, because the initial preferred stockholder could protect its interests through staged financing or board control, the preferred stockholder might not discount the stock even if it lacked protection since the other protective devices made the lack of such protections inconsequential so the initial holders won’t pay for these added fiduciary …

The Business Of Personal Jurisdiction, Cassandra Burke Robertson, Charles W. (Rocky) Rhodes

Faculty Publications

This contribution to a symposium on business and the Roberts Court examines the recent significant reshaping of the contours of personal jurisdiction. Although the changes limit the scope of jurisdiction in ways that may favor defendants overall, the Court does not appear directly motivated by a desire to favor business—and, in fact, the Court erected significant obstacles to business interests in some contexts. Instead, the results in the cases may be better explained by the Court’s commitment to a formalist approach with respect for territorial boundaries and by a skepticism of transnational litigation not clearly related to a U.S. forum. …

Tribute To Professor Jonathan L. Entin, Jessica W. Berg, Michael P. Scharf

Faculty Publications

Tribute for Professor Jonathan Entin.

Big Data And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

While big data offers society many potential benefits, it also comes with serious risks. This Essay focuses on the concern that big data will lead to increased employment discrimination. It develops the novel argument that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) should be amended in response to the big data phenomenon in order to protect individuals who are perceived as likely to develop physical or mental impairments in the future. Employers can obtain medical data about employees not only through the traditional means of medical examinations and inquiries, but also through the non-traditional mechanisms of social media, wellness programs, and …

Restoring Chevron's Domain, Jonathan Adler

Faculty Publications

For some three decades, Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council has stood at the center of administrative law. Today, however, there are doubts about the doctrine’s continued vitality, and perhaps even its ultimate desirability. This brief article, based upon remarks delivered at Missouri Law Review symposium, suggests the scope of Chevron’s domain should be determined by its doctrinal grounding. Specifically, insofar as the Court’s subsequent application and elucidation of Chevron have indicated that the doctrine is predicated on a theory of delegation, courts should only provide such deference when the relevant power has been delegated by Congress. Correspondingly, …

E. B. White Could Nod Too: Thoughts Occasioned By Reading “Death Of A Pig”, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This is an essay on grammar and writing, with extended consideration of the value of Strunk & White as a guide. Although the essay defends Strunk & White against several of that volume’s strongest critics, it also illustrates that even the best writers—and E. B. White was terrific, as was Antonin Scalia—sometimes make mistakes. (At great, perhaps excessive, length, the essay dissects a problematic passage in White’s “Death of a Pig.”) We should learn from those mistakes, not accept them as inevitable.

Symposium: Business In The Roberts Court - Introduction: Still In Search Of The Pro-Business Court, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roberts is often described as a “pro-business” court. Many commentators believe that Court is particularly sympathetic to business interests in concerns. A 2016 volume, Business and the Roberts Court turned a critical eye to this hypothesis. In September 2016, the Center for Business Law & Regulation at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law hosted a symposium to further explore how the Roberts Court deals with business issues. Papers from this conference were published in the Case Western Reserve Law Review, and this brief article served as the Introduction for this symposium.

Exploitation In Medical Research: The Enduring Legacy Of The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Ruqaiijah Yearby

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

In Search Of Smarter Homeowner Subsidies, Matthew Rossman

Faculty Publications

Critics have long assailed the federal tax code’s principal homeowner subsidies as lucrative tax breaks for upper income households that are essentially worthless to those financially constrained from purchasing a home. This article examines the subsidies through a different lens and reveals another serious flaw. It demonstrates how the homeowner subsidies, which represent a massive federal investment in homeownership, do very little to contain and instead probably increase costs on others that result from certain types of housing choices and that other federal policies seek to remedy. These negative housing externalities include: (i) blight, deterioration, and public health risks in …

Tribute To Professor Jonathan L. Entin, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

Tribute to Professor Jonathan Entin.

Us–Cool: How The Appellate Body Misconstrued The National Treatment Principle, Severely Restricting Agency Discretion To Promulgate Mandatory, Pro-Consumer Labeling Rules, Juscelino F. Colares, William P. Canterberry

Faculty Publications

In United States–Certain Country of Origin Labeling Requirements, the Appellate Body ("AB") of the World Trade Organization ("WTO") ruled that the United States' country-of-origin labeling regulations ("COOL") on beef and pork products violated the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade's ("TBT") National Treatment ("NT") Principle. Aimed at promoting informed consumer choice, COOL required retailers to disclose the covered products' origin. In prior decisions under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ("GATT") art. III:4, the AB correctly rejected protectionist rules that unnecessarily encumbered consumer choice by adversely affecting conditions of competition for imports. In US–COOL, however, the AB …