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Reforming Corporate Governance: What History Can Teach Us, Margaret M. Blair Jan 2004

Reforming Corporate Governance: What History Can Teach Us, Margaret M. Blair

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this Article, I turn to the history of corporate law for insight into the role that the corporate form plays in the organization of business enterprises. I then draw implications from this history for thinking about circumstances and situations in which corporate directors should have unimpeded control over business decisions, versus situations in which shareholders should have more input and control over business decisions. In Part I, I review historical evidence of the rapid growth in demand for the corporate form to organize businesses in the United States during the early nineteenth century. I compare the law that governed …


The President's Power To Detain "Enemy Combatants": Modern Lessons From Mr. Madison's Forgotten War, Ingrid Wuerth Jan 2004

The President's Power To Detain "Enemy Combatants": Modern Lessons From Mr. Madison's Forgotten War, Ingrid Wuerth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article uses three sets of cases from the War of 1812 to illustrate three problems with how modern courts have approached the detention of "enemy combatants" in the United States. The War of 1812 cases show that modern courts have relied too heavily on deference-based reasoning, and have failed to adequately consider both international law and congressional authorization when upholding the detentions as constitutional. The War of 1812, termed "Mr. Madison's War" by contemporary opponents, was fought largely on our own territory against a powerful foreign enemy, making it an especially rich source for comparison to the modern war …


The Blockbuster Punitive Damages Awards, W. Kip Viscusi Jan 2004

The Blockbuster Punitive Damages Awards, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This paper provides an analysis of 64 punitive damages awards of at least $100 million. Based on an inventory of these cases, there is evidence that these blockbuster awards are highly concentrated geographically, as two states account for 27 of the 64 awards. The awards also have been rising substantially over time, with the majority of these blockbuster awards taking place since 1999. An assessment of the current status of the blockbuster punitive damages awards indicates that most of these awards have been appealed, but the reversal of these punitive damages awards is the exception rather than the rule. Many …


The Denominator Blindness Effect: Accident Frequencies And The Misjudgment Of Recklessness, W. Kip Viscusi Jan 2004

The Denominator Blindness Effect: Accident Frequencies And The Misjudgment Of Recklessness, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

People seriously misjudge accident risks because they routinely neglect relevant information about exposure. Such risk judgments affect both personal and public policy decisions, e.g., choice of a transport mode, but also play a vital role in legal determinations, such as assessments of recklessness. Experimental evidence for a sample of 422 jury-eligible adults indicates that people incorporate information on the number of accidents, which is the numerator of the risk frequency calculation. However, they appear blind to information on exposure, such as the scale of a firm's operations, which is the risk frequency denominator. Hence, the actual observed accident frequency of …


Explaining The International Ceo Pay Gap: Board Capture Or Market Driven?, Randall Thomas Jan 2004

Explaining The International Ceo Pay Gap: Board Capture Or Market Driven?, Randall Thomas

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

If we look at convergence through the lens of the Risk Adjustment Theory, then international pay convergence will only occur if U.S. and foreign CEOs' firm-specific risk levels converge. Empirically, this is a difficult claim to test because of the paucity of data available on CEOs' individual wealth levels and stockholdings. The one component we can most easily observe, stock option usage, is presently quite different, with U.S. levels far exceeding those abroad. For the near future, this trend seems likely to continue, making it difficult to forecast convergence any time soon. The international executive pay gap is one of …


The Divergence Of Constitutional And Statutory Interpretation, Kevin M. Stack Jan 2004

The Divergence Of Constitutional And Statutory Interpretation, Kevin M. Stack

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

There is a peculiar point of agreement between prominent defenders of originalist and dynamic interpretive methods, that their preferred interpretive approach applies not just to statutes or to the Constitution, but to both. In this Article, I challenge this shared position - as represented by Justice Antonin Scalia's originalist textualism and Professor William Eskridge's dynamic interpretive theory. I argue that the democratic and rule-of-law values that these theories invoke in fact suggest that different interpretive approaches govern constitutional and statutory interpretation. I contend, first, that disjunctures between the democratic justification for originalism in constitutional and statutory interpretation reveal the distinct …


Is Atkins The Antithesis Or Apotheosis Of Anti-Discrimination Principles? Sorting Out The Groupwide Effects Of Exempting People With Mental Retardation From The Death Penalty, Christopher Slobogin Jan 2004

Is Atkins The Antithesis Or Apotheosis Of Anti-Discrimination Principles? Sorting Out The Groupwide Effects Of Exempting People With Mental Retardation From The Death Penalty, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In "Atkins v. Virginia", the U.S. Supreme Court held that people with mental retardation may not be executed. z Many advocates for people with disability cheered the decision, because it provides a group of disabled people with protection from the harshest punishment imposed by our society. But other disability advocates were dismayed by "Atkins", not because they are fans of the death penalty, but because they believe that declaring disabled people ineligible for a punishment that is accorded all others denigrates disabled people as something less than human. If people with disability are to be treated equally, these dissenters suggest, …


Teaching A Course On Regulation Of The Police (With A Special Focus On The Sixth Amendment), Christopher Slobogin Jan 2004

Teaching A Course On Regulation Of The Police (With A Special Focus On The Sixth Amendment), Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The organizers of this symposium gave us the choice of writing about effective assistance of counsel or about teaching criminal procedure. I've decided to do both. This article discusses teaching the criminal procedure course most often called "Police Practices," for which I write a textbook entitled Regulation of Police Investigation: Legal, Historical, Empirical and Comparative Materials.' Borrowing heavily from the Teacher's Manual for that book, the first part of this article describes my general philosophy for teaching the course. The rest of the article illustrates this philosophy by describing how I teach students about the application of the Sixth Amendment …


Warning: Labeling Constitutions May Be Hazardous To Your Regime, Suzanna Sherry Jan 2004

Warning: Labeling Constitutions May Be Hazardous To Your Regime, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

What do the following cases have in common? In Boy Scouts of America v. Dale,2 the Court upheld the right of a private organization to ignore a generally applicable state statute prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston,3 the Court upheld the right of parade organizers to exclude gay-rights banners. In Zelman v. Simmons-Harri4s , the Court permitted government funding of religious schools through vouchers issued to low-income parents. And in Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, the Court required state funding of the …


What's Law Got To Do With It?, Suzanna Sherry Jan 2004

What's Law Got To Do With It?, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The authors of this fascinating study modestly disclaim its significance, yet suggest that the results prove their model a success. As a legal expert, I have a rather different perspective on the results. I look at the numbers holistically, not statistically. And what I see tells a different story--if it tells any story at all.


Public Ruses, Christopher Serkin, James E. Krier Jan 2004

Public Ruses, Christopher Serkin, James E. Krier

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Fifth Amendment's public use requirement - a dead letter for decades - has recently been resurrected by the Michigan Supreme Court, overruling Poletown, and by the United States Supreme Court, granting certiorari in Kelo v. City of New London. At issue in these cases is the government's ability to condemn property from one private property owner and retransfer it to another, usually with a justification of more-or-less indirect economic benefits to the community. This Essay first argues the legitimacy of these government actions exists on a spectrum from true public uses, to public ruses that primarily benefit private interests …


Endangered Species Act Innovations In The Post-Babbittonian Era--Are There Any?, J.B. Ruhl Jan 2004

Endangered Species Act Innovations In The Post-Babbittonian Era--Are There Any?, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

One of the mysteries of environmental policy in the Bush Administration will be how and why it squandered an opportunity to continue market-based administrative reforms of the Endangered Species Act begun, ironically, in the Clinton Administration under the direction of then Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt. This article traces the momentum built for reform in the Babbittonian era and examines what has not happened since then.


Law, Evolution, And The Brain: Applications And Open Questions, Owen D. Jones Jan 2004

Law, Evolution, And The Brain: Applications And Open Questions, Owen D. Jones

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This essay discusses several issues at the intersection of law and brain science. If focuses principally on ways in which an improved understanding of how evolutionary processes affect brain function and human behavior may improve law's ability to regulate behavior. It explores sample uses of such "evolutionary analysis in law" and also raises questions about how that analysis might be improved in the future. Among the discussed uses are: 1) clarifying cost-benefit analyses; 2) providing theoretical foundation and potential predictive power; 3) assessing comparative effectiveness of legal strategies; and 4) revealing deep patterns in legal architecture. Throughout, the essay emphasizes …


Apology And Thick Trust: What Spouse Abusers And Negligent Doctors Might Have In Common, Erin O'Connor Jan 2004

Apology And Thick Trust: What Spouse Abusers And Negligent Doctors Might Have In Common, Erin O'Connor

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

As apology advocates have previously emphasized, much of the civil litigation that clogs court dockets in America today could be avoided with a simple heartfelt apology. Although sometimes difficult to offer, these expressions of remorse are profoundly powerful and valuable for humans as social animals. Nevertheless, apologies can be problematic. This Article used evolutionary theory as a tool to explore the costs of apology in two areas-spouse abuse and medical malpractice-to suggest that excessive victim forgiveness can, in some contexts, cast doubt on the effectiveness of a purely private litigation system for creating appropriate behavioral incentives. It also explored ways …


Judicial Review Of Agency Inaction: An Arbitrariness Approach, Lisa Schultz Bressman Jan 2004

Judicial Review Of Agency Inaction: An Arbitrariness Approach, Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article contends that the current law governing judicial review of agency inaction, though consistent with the prevailing theory of agency legitimacy, is inconsistent with the founding principles of the administrative state. The Supreme Court's reluctance to allow judicial review of agency inaction reflects the popular view that agency decision-making should be subject foremost to the scrutiny of politically accountable officials. The difficulty is that even scholars who generally support this view of agency decision-making reject the Court's treatment of agency inaction. Yet these scholars have failed to appreciate the reason. The reason is that the founding principles of the …


Hard Cases Make Good Judges, Suzanna Sherry Jan 2004

Hard Cases Make Good Judges, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Not every constitutional case requires recourse to first principles, and indeed, most require more subtlety than such recourse can produce. The Rehnquist Court's free speech cases provide an example of the benefits of a more nuanced and pragmatist approach in the context of a mature jurisprudence. Rigid tiers of scrutiny are simply not flexible enough to accommodate both the legitimate goals of the legislature and the need to guard against illicit attempts at pure censorship of unpopular ideas. Some form of balancing-whether identified as such or simply evident in the application of intermediate scrutiny-is necessary to avoid either too much …


Prescribing The Right Dose Of Peer Review For The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl Jan 2004

Prescribing The Right Dose Of Peer Review For The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

....what I examine here is whether scientific-style peer review, depending on how it is dosed out, could be counterproductive for environmental law.The use of peer review as a component of regulatory procedure has not received much discrete attention in environmental law literature, but it is truly the sleeping dog of the "sound science" movement. Understanding this concept requires some background on science and administrative law. The "sound science" movement, as its name suggests, advocates that environmental law decisions be based principally on scientific information and conclusions that have been derived through the rigorous, unbiased practice of science. Science is generally …


Past, Present, And Future Trends Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl Jan 2004

Past, Present, And Future Trends Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

this article is designed to convince readers that the past, present, and future trends of the ESA are all the same. To provide context, Part I presents a brief overview of the structure of the statute and the kinds of decisions that must be made under it. Part II delves more deeply into each of the topics covered in the NR&E issues, eight in all, providing in each case the necessary legal background followed by a discussion of how the topic played out in the two NR&E issues. Finally, I conclude with a brief summary of my own perspectives on …


Taking Adaptive Management Seriously: A Case Study Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl Jan 2004

Taking Adaptive Management Seriously: A Case Study Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

If one compares the way in which the ESA was implemented in 1982 to the way it is today, the list of differences would far outweigh the similarities. Indeed, the ESA has been transformed so much through administrative reform toward the ecosystem management model, I have dared to suggest elsewhere that it has earned the seal of eco-pragmatism. In this Article, I explore the related question such an assertion necessarily begs-has the ESA also earned the seal of adaptive management?... Part I of the Article provides the legal and ecological background necessary to appreciate the need for ecosystem management, and …


The Battle Over Endangered Species Act Methodology, J.B. Ruhl Jan 2004

The Battle Over Endangered Species Act Methodology, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The substantive contours of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have been largely worked out for quite some time. Starting in the mid-1990s, however, opponents of Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service decisions realized that the methodological contours of the ESA were not nearly as settled as their substantive kin. Industry and environmental interests alike appreciate that how these methodological rules get worked out could revolutionize the ESA for decades to come, and during the 1990s they opened the debate over ESA methodology and have been going strong at it ever since. This Article explores the breadth and …


Other Disciplines, Methodologies, And Countries: Studying Courts And Crisis, Tracey E. George Jan 2004

Other Disciplines, Methodologies, And Countries: Studying Courts And Crisis, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

How do governments and their citizens respond to fear and risk in times of crisis? Dr. Lee Epstein and Professor Christina Wells, in papers presented on the final symposium panel focus in particular on the Supreme Court's response to government encroachment on individual liberties during a national emergency. Their work is made particularly timely by three Supreme Court decisions this past term. In this essay, I begin by framing the issue very briefly. I then argue that understanding this issue requires scholars to follow Epstein and Wells by looking to other disciplines, methodologies, and countries.


Punitive Damages: How Judges And Juries Perform, Joni Hersch, W. Kip Viscusi Jan 2004

Punitive Damages: How Judges And Juries Perform, Joni Hersch, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This paper presents the first empirical anatysis that demonstrates that juries differ from judges in awarding punitive damages. Our review of punitive damages awards of $100 million or more identified 63 such awards, of which juries made 95 percent. These jury awards are highly unpredictable and are not significantly correlated with compensatory damages. Using data on jury and bench verdicts from the Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, 1996, we find that juries are significantly more likely to award punitive damages than are judges and award higher levels of punitive damages. Jury awards are also less strongly related to compensatory …


Risk Realization, Emotion, And Policy Making, Chris Guthrie Jan 2004

Risk Realization, Emotion, And Policy Making, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In their study of terrorism and SARS, Professor Feigenson and his colleagues report "significant positive correlations between people's risk perceptions and their negative affect." In their review of the judgment and decision-making literature, Professor Slovic and his colleagues document the interplay between reason and emotion in assessing risk. And in the context of a soldier's concerns for himself and his family, Professor Moran provides a powerful narrative of fear. But what happens when such threats are actually realized? Do we accurately predict the emotional impact of such events? Or are there meaningful and predictable differences between the feelings we forecast …


Principles Of Influence In Negotiation, Chris Guthrie Jan 2004

Principles Of Influence In Negotiation, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Negotiation is often viewed as an alternative to adjudication. In fact, however, negotiation and adjudication may be more alike than different because each is a process of persuasion. Both in the courtroom and at the bargaining table, the lawyer's primary task is to persuade someone other than her own client that her client's positions, interests, and perspectives should be honored. Despite this apparent similarity, persuasion operates differently in adjudication and negotiation because the lawyer seeks to influence a different party in each process. In adjudication, the lawyer seeks primarily to persuade the judge or jury hearing the case. The judge …


Insights From Cognitive Psychology, Chris Guthrie Jan 2004

Insights From Cognitive Psychology, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

My goal in this paper is to explore cognitive psychology's place in the dispute resolution field. To do so, I first look back and then look forward. Looking back, I identify the five insights from cognitive psychology that have had the biggest impact on my own dispute resolution teaching and scholarship. Looking forward, I identify my five hopes for the future of cognitive psychology in the dispute resolution field.


United States' Trade Policy And The Exportation Of United States' Culture, Beverly I. Moran Jan 2004

United States' Trade Policy And The Exportation Of United States' Culture, Beverly I. Moran

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The United States Trade Representative and the policies that he (or she) attempt to impose on our trading partners have the serious and perhaps unintended effect of destroying local culture particularly in the area of film production.


How Different Is Death? Jury Sentencing In Capital And Non-Capital Cases Compared, Nancy J. King Jan 2004

How Different Is Death? Jury Sentencing In Capital And Non-Capital Cases Compared, Nancy J. King

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Drawing upon a recent study of felony jury sentencing in Kentucky, Virginia, and Arkansas, this essay highlights some of the similarities and differences between jury sentencing in capital cases and jury sentencing in non-capital cases. Unlike jury sentencing in capital cases, jury sentencing in non-capital cases includes functional differentials in judge and jury options for sentencing, and fewer controls on arbitrary decision-making. Jury sentencing in both contexts shares the potential for reluctance on the part of elected judges to reduce jury sentences, information gaps on the part of jurors in setting sentences, and, above all, service as a tool in …


Felony Jury Sentencing In Practice: A Three-State Study, Nancy J. King, Rosevelt L. Noble Jan 2004

Felony Jury Sentencing In Practice: A Three-State Study, Nancy J. King, Rosevelt L. Noble

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Jury sentencing in non-capital cases is one of the least understood procedures in contemporary American criminal justice. This Article looks beyond idealized visions of jury sentencing to examine for the first time how felony jury sentencing actually operates in three different states - Kentucky, Virginia, and Arkansas. Dozens of interviews with prosecutors, defenders, and judges, as well as an analysis of state sentencing data, reveal that this neglected corner of state criminal justice provides a unique window through which one can observe some of the most fundamental forces operating in criminal adjudication today. It turns out that jury sentencing in …


Induced Litigation, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George Jan 2004

Induced Litigation, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

If "justice delayed" is "justice denied,"justice is often denied in American courts. Delay in the courts is a "ceaseless and unremitting problem of modem civil justice" that "has an irreparable effect on both plaintiffs and defendants." To combat this seemingly intractable problem, judges and court administrators routinely clamor for additional judicial resources to enable them to manage their dockets more "effectively and efficiently." By building new courthouses and adding new judgeships, a court should be able to manage its caseload more efficiently. Trial judges should be able to hold motion hearings, host settlement conferences, and conduct trials in a timely …


The Impact Of The Impact Bias On Negotiation, Chris Guthrie, David Sally Jan 2004

The Impact Of The Impact Bias On Negotiation, Chris Guthrie, David Sally

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The theory of principled or problem-solving negotiation assumes that negotiators are able to identify their interests (or what they really want) in a negotiation. Recent research on effective forecasting calls this assumption into question. In this paper, which will appear in a forthcoming symposium issue of the Marquette Law Review devoted to the Emerging Interdisciplinary Canon of Negotiation, we explore the impact of this research on negotiation and lawyering.