Law Commons^™

The Uncertain Future Of Legal Reform In China, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

This talk looks at how far Chinese law reform has come since 1979, possible further reforms, and obstacles to meaningful reform.

Legal Uncertainty In Foreign Investment In China: Causes And Management, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

My talk today will be based on an article – “Looking for Law in China” – that was published last year. In it, looked at Chinese law from the perspective of foreign investors that have had to cope with the uncertainty of a business environment in which legal institutions have been vague, incomplete and weak. I wrote, and today speak to you, from under two hats, that of a scholar and that of practicing lawyer, since for over thirty years I have combined those two careers. My observations here, then, are not just those from the academic ivory tower but …

Critical Acts Of Recognition: Reading Law Rhetorically, Sarah Burgess

Studio for Law and Culture

On July 11, 2002, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) set the scene for a significant shift in the way the United Kingdom legally defines sex and the status of transsexual and transgender people (trans people) within British society. The ECHR, in Christine Goodwin v. The United Kingdom, found that British laws defining sex according to a set of biological criteria applied at birth prevented trans people from enjoying the full spectrum of rights guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights. Barring individuals from changing their sex for legal purposes on official documents, such as birth certificates …

Social Life And Civic Education In The Rio De Janeiro City Jail, Amy Chazkel

Studio for Law and Culture

In the six weeks from mid-July to early September 1912, about a third of the 389 men whom guards escorted through the front doors of the Rio de Janeiro city jail had been arrested for vagrancy, or in Portuguese vadiagem, an infraction whose etymological connection to the word “vague” is not a coincidence. These men remained in detention for between five days and over a year, accused by arresting police officers of having committed the crime of doing nothing. As they awaited trial or, for the least fortunate, transportation to an offshore penal colony, they shared the crowded space …

A Woman’S Right To Be Spanked: Testing The Limits Of Tolerance Of S/M In The Socio-Legal Imaginary, Ummni Khan

Studio for Law and Culture

What conditions must be in place for s/m sexuality to be tolerated in law and culture? In this article, I consider the film Secretary as a lens to explore the imaginative limits of our socio-legal culture regarding sadomasochism. In Part One, I compare Secretary to the film 9 ½ weeks. I deconstruct the narrative and aesthetic components of the two films that uphold their contrasting normative visions, arguing that Secretary did indeed chart new ground for the sadomasochist sexual subject. Yet, a close discursive analysis reveals that the narrative relied upon other hegemonies to make the s/m couple acceptable and …

Respect And Resistance In Punishment Theory, Alice Ristroph

Studio for Law and Culture

Is it coherent to speak of a right to resist justified punishment? Thomas Hobbes thought so. This essay seeks first to (re)introduce Hobbes as a punishment theorist, and second to use Hobbes to examine what it means to respect the criminal even as we punish him. Hobbes is almost entirely neglected by scholars of criminal law, whose theoretical inquiries focus on liberal, rights-based accounts of retribution (often exemplified by Immanuel Kant) and claims of deterrence or other consequentialist benefits (elucidated, for example, by Jeremy Bentham). Writing before Kant or Bentham, Hobbes offered a fascinating account of punishment that will strike …

The Sit-Ins And The Failed State Action Revolution, Christopher W. Schmidt

Studio for Law and Culture

This article revises the traditional account of why the Supreme Court, when faced in the early 1960s with a series of cases arising out of the lunch counter sit-in movement, refused to hold racial discrimination in public accommodations unconstitutional. These cases are the great aberration of the Warren Court. At a time when the justices confidently reworked one constitutional doctrine after another, often in response to the moral challenges of the civil rights movement and often in the face of considerable public resistance, they broke pattern in the sit-in cases. And they did so despite a transformation in popular opinion …

Recording Artists, Work For Hire, Employment, And Appropriation, Matt Stahl

Studio for Law and Culture

Authorship and ownership exist in a curious relation in U.S. copyright law. In theory and common sense, authorship underwrites and is the condition of ownership, but in practice ownership can establish authorship retroactively. Distinctions between proprietary and non-proprietary creative cultural workers, in this view, turn in no essential way on evidence of “creativity” or the investment of “personality” in cultural creation. This paper examines a legislative struggle between recording artists and the recording industry over the status of their stock-in-trade, sound recordings. In 2000, recording artists obtained the repeal of a 1999 law allocating authorship and ownership of recordings to …

Divorcing Family Law From The Nation, Philomila Tsoukala

Studio for Law and Culture

This paper examines the contribution of law and legal narrative in the generation of national identities, using modern Greece as a case study. It explores how claims of family law continuity and unity in nineteenth century Greece became the main mode of arguing for the existence of a Greek people, culturally distinct from their Ottoman oppressors. I argue that far from embodying any truth about Greek family law, these legal historical narratives constituted a reconceptualization of social relations on the national basis giving content to the relatively new concept of the “Greek people”. These narratives also made possible and reflected …

Blood Quantum And Equal Protection, Rose Cuison Villazor

Studio for Law and Culture

Modern equal protection doctrine treats laws that make distinctions on the basis of indigeneity defined on blood quantum terms along a racial/political paradigm. This dichotomy may be traced to Morton v. Mancari and more recently to Rice v. Cayetano. In Mancari, the Supreme Court held that laws that privilege members of Native American tribes do not constitute racial discrimination because the preferences have a political purpose – to further the right to self-government of tribes. Rice v. Cayetano crystallized the juxtaposition of the racial from the political nature of indigeneity by invalidating a law that privileged Native Hawaiians. That …

Kernochan Center News - Fall 2008, Kernochan Center For Law, Media And The Arts

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

No abstract provided.

Talking Governance: Board-Shareowner Communications On Executive Compensation, Stephen Davis, Stephen Alogna

Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership

Advantages stemming from board-shareowner communications on governance and executive pay outweigh the potential risks and costs of such dialogue. Regulation FD in the US should be seen as a caution rather than a barrier to such communication. Prompted by universal adoption of advisory ‘say on pay’ resolutions, UK companies have moved to integrate regular engagement with domestic investors into the annual process of framing corporate remuneration policies. Most US companies have not fully endeavored to engage their shareowners in the same manner, but some—motivated sometimes by crises—are experimenting with various models of dialogue. Companies can best manage effective engagement when …

Human Rights, Social Justice And State Law: A Manual For Creative Lawyering, Program On Human Rights And The Global Economy, National Economic And Social Rights Initiative (Nesri), Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

This manual is written to help lawyers consider the role of transnational law as an interpretive tool in state constitutional and other state law litigation to protect economic and social rights.9 In Chapter I, the manual provides an overview of the relationship between state law and transnational law. In Chapter II, the manual covers key economic and social rights and provides examples of how courts have found those rights to be justiciable in a range of contexts. The principal economic and social rights discussed in Chapter II are:

• The right to health
• The right to housing
• The right to food …

Public Symbol In Private Contract: A Case Study, Anna Gelpern, Mitu Gulati

Center for Contract and Economic Organization

This Article revisits a recent shift in standard form sovereign bond contracts to promote collective action among creditors. Major press outlets welcomed the shift as a milestone in fighting financial crises that threatened the global economy. Officials said it was a triumph of market forces. We turned to it for insights into contract change and crisis management. This article is based on our work in the sovereign debt community, including over 100 interviews with investors, lawyers, economists, and government officials. Despite the publicity surrounding contract reform, in private few participants described the substantive change as an effective response to financial …

Network Neutrality And The False Promise Of Zero-Price Regulation, C. Scott Hemphill

Center for Contract and Economic Organization

This Article examines zero-price regulation, the major distinguishing feature of many modern "network neutrality" proposals. A zero-price rule prohibits a broadband Internet access provider from charging an application or content provider (collectively, "content provider") to send information to consumers. The Article differentiates two access provider strategies thought to justify a zero-price rule. Exclusion is anticompetitive behavior that harms a content provider to favor its rival. Extraction is a toll imposed upon content providers to raise revenue. Neither strategy raises policy concerns that justify implementation of a broad zero-price rule. First, there is no economic exclusion argument that justifies the zero-price …

Self-Defense And The Psychotic Aggressor, George P. Fletcher, Luis E. Chiesa

Faculty Scholarship

This brief essay, written for the Criminal Law Conversations Project, examines whether one can justifiably kill a faultless, insane assailant to save oneself or another from imminent and serious harm. Although scholars on both sides of the Atlantic agree that the person attacked should not be punished for defending herself from the psychotic aggressor, there is significant disagreement with regards to whether the defensive response should be considered justified or merely excused. Furthermore, amongst those who argue that the appropriate defense in such cases is a justification, there is disagreement regarding whether the specific ground of acquittal should be self-defense …

Designing The Architecture For Integrating Accommodation: An Institutionalist Commentary, Susan P. Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

Integrating Accommodation, by Elizabeth F. Emens, reshapes the framework for evaluating workplace accommodations to assure consideration of their third-party benefits. In an ingenious move, the article extends the contact hypothesis, which conventionally emphasizes the attitudinal benefits of integrating diverse groups, to the impact of integrating the accommodations made so that disabled people can effectively participate in the workplace. The article shows how accommodations benefit third parties by improving their workplace conditions and thus have the potential to change attitudes toward disability, accommodation, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Kernochan Center News - Spring 2008, Kernochan Center For Law, Media And The Arts

Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

No abstract provided.

Just One Click: The Reality Of Internet Retail Contracting, Ronald J. Mann, Travis Siebeneicher

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the enforceability and presence of pro-seller contract terms in internet retail contracts. Analyzing case law on internet contract enforceability and a survey of 500 firms'websites, it demonstrates that even the enforceability of many internet contracts is questionable. It then presents new data that suggest that the prevalence of pro-seller contract terms is far less than usually assumed. It suggests that the benefit of making these terms enforceable is outweighed by the loss of user friendliness required for the necessary interface changes. Finally, it uses fresh statistical analyses to determine what relationship, if any, exists between enforceability, pro-seller …

Deconstructing Equity: Public Ownership, Agency Costs, And Complete Capital Markets, Ronald J. Gilson, Charles K. Whitehead

Faculty Scholarship

The traditional law and finance focus on agency costs presumes that the premise that diversified public shareholders are the cheapest risk bearers is immutable. In this Essay, we raise the possibility that changes in the capital markets have called this premise into question, drawn into sharp relief by the recent private equity wave in which the size and range of public companies being taken private expanded signficantly. In brief, we argue that private owners, in increasingly complete markets, can transfer risk in discrete slices to counterparties who, in turn, can manage or otherwise diversify away those risks they choose to …

Market Damages, Efficient Contracting, And The Economic Waste Fallacy, Alan Schwartz, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Market damages are the best default rule when parties trade in thick markets: They induce parties to contract efficiently and to trade if and only if trade is efficient, and they do not create ex ante inefficiencies. Courts commonly overlook these virtues, however, when promisors bundle services that are not separately priced. For example, a promisor may agree to pay royalties on a mining lease and later to restore the promisee's property. When the cost of completion is large relative to the "market delta " – the increase in market value – courts concerned with avoiding "economic waste" limit the …

Climate Change And The Limits Of The Possible, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

Climate change looks to be more than just another environmental problem. It threatens to test the limits of our dominant ways of understanding and solving, not just environmental problems, but problems of political economy generally. Climate change has distinctive temporal and spatial features – how long it takes to unfold and the ways in which its effects are distributed across the globe – which may outstrip the capacity of our basic principles of economic and political decision-making. If so, then understanding the issue in a static way may ensure that we expect to fail in addressing it and are inarticulate …

Legitmacy And Criminal Justice, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Surveys of public opinion over four decades consistently show that Americans have little confidence in the fairness or effectiveness of the criminal justice system and criminal law more generally. This crisis of confidence is most acute among racial minorities: surveys show that more than one in three Whites have little confidence in the police, compared to more than half of Black respondents. Both the lack of confidence and the racial breach in perceptions of the law and legal actors have persisted for nearly four decades, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling.

But we might reasonably ask whether and …

Legal Accountability In The Service-Based Welfare State: Lessons From Child Welfare Reform, Kathleen G. Noonan, Charles F. Sabel, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Current trends intensify the longstanding problem of how the rule-of-law should be institutionalized in the welfare state. Welfare programs are being re-designed to increase their capacities to adapt to rapidly changing conditions and to tailor their responses to diverse clienteles. These developments challenge the understanding of legal accountability developed in the Warren Court era. This Article reports on an emerging model of accountable administration that strives to reconcile programmatic flexibility with rule-of-law values. The model has been developed in the reform of state child protective services systems, but it has potentially broad application to public law. It also has novel …

Making Sense Of Nation-Level Bankruptcy Filing Rates, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

Increased rates of consumer bankruptcy filings are a policy concern around the world. It is not easy, however, to explain the variations in per capita filing rates from country to country. Some of the variation is attributable to different levels of indebtedness. Some is attributable to different cultural attitudes about financial failure. And some is attributable to the accessibility of the legal system as a remedy for irremediable financial distress.

This paper analyzes the differences in nation-level, per capita filing rates. I start with a model that uses economic variables to explain nation-level variations in filing rates. The economic and …

Relational Tax Planning Under Risk-Based Rules, Alex Raskolnikov

Faculty Scholarship

Risk-based rules are the tax system's primary response to aggressive tax planning. They usually grant benefits only to those taxpayers who accept risk of changes in market prices (market risk) or business opportunities (business risk). Attempts to circumvent these rules by hedging, contractual safeguards, and diversification are well-understood. The same cannot be said about a very different type of tax planning. Instead of reducing risk directly, some taxpayers change the nature of risk. They enter into informal, legally unenforceable agreements with contractual counterparties that are designed to eliminate market or business risk entirely. The new uncertainty these tax planners inevitably …

Reason, Reasons And Normativity, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

All normative phenomena are normative in as much as, and because, they provide reasons or are partly constituted by reasons. This makes the concept of a reason key to an understanding of normativity. Believing that, I will here present some thoughts about the connection between reasons and Reason and between Reason and normativity.

Cleaning Up Lake River, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

A casebook favorite for exploring the liquid dated damage/penalty clause distinction is Lake River Corp. v. Carborundum Co. in which Judge Posner found a minimum quantity clause to be an unenforceable penalty clause. In this paper I argue that the case was framed improperly. Had the litigators recognized that the contract afforded one party an option, the result should have been different. The contract was for the provision of a service – setting aside capacity – which was valuable to the buyer and costly for the seller to provide. The primary purpose of the minimum quantity clause was the pricing …

Recent Developments In Us Copyright Law – Part Ii, Caselaw: Exclusive Rights On The Ebb?, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The 1976 Act announces broad exclusive rights, offset by a myriad of specific exemptions, and one wide exception for "fair use." In words and intent, the exclusive rights are capacious, but new technologies may have caused some of the general phrases to become more constraining than might have been expected from a text whose drafters took pains to make forward-looking. Thus, the scope of the reproduction right turns on the meaning of "copy;" the reach of the distribution right on "distribute copies" and "transfer of ownership;" the range of the public performance right on "public" and "perform." Entrepreneurs and users …

Homes With Tails: What If You Could Own Your Internet Connection?, Tim Wu, Derek Slater

Faculty Scholarship

America's communications infrastructure is stuck at a copper wall. For the vast majority of homes, copper wires remain the principal means of getting broadband services. The deployment of fiber optic connections to the home would enable exponentially faster connections, and few dispute that upgrading to more robust infrastructure is essential to America's economic growth. However, the costs of such an upgrade are daunting for private sector firms and even for governments. These facts add up to a public policy challenge.

Our intuition is that an innovative model holds unrealized promise: household investments in fiber. Consumers may one day purchase and …