Law Commons^™

Shareholder Primacy Versus Shareholder Accountability, William Wilson Bratton

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When corporations inflict injuries in the course of business, shareholders wielding environmental, social, and governance ("ESG") principles can, and now sometimes do, intervene to correct the matter. In the emerging fact pattern, corporate social accountability expands out of its historic collectivized frame to become an internal subject matter-a corporate governance topic. As a result, shareholder accountability surfaces as a policy question for the first time. The Big Three index fund managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, responded to the accountability question with ESG activism. In so doing, they defected against corporate legal theory's central tenet, shareholder primacy. Shareholder primacy builds …

A Further Look At A Hague Convention On Concurrent Proceedings, Paul Herrup, Ronald A. Brand

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The current project of the Hague Conference on Private International Law has reached a critical juncture that requires careful consideration of the terms that delineate the scope of the proposed convention. Work to date has not followed the mandate of the Council on General Affairs and Policy to produce a convention that would deal with concurrent proceedings, understood as including pure parallel proceedings and related actions. In two previous articles we have addressed the practical needs that should be addressed by the concurrent proceedings project and the general architecture of such a convention. The process is now mired in terminological …

Restoring Indian Reservation Status: An Empirical Analysis, Michael K. Velchik, Jeffery Zhang

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In McGirt v. Oklahoma, the Supreme Court held that the eastern half of Oklahoma was Indian country. This bombshell decision was contrary to settled expectations and government practices spanning 111 years. It also was representative of an increasing trend of federal courts recognizing Indian sovereignty over large and economically significant areas of the country, even where Indians have not asserted these claims in many years and where Indians form a small minority of the inhabitants.

Although McGirt and similar cases fundamentally turn on questions of statutory and treaty interpretation, they are often couched in consequence-based arguments about the good …

In Search Of The First-Round Knockout A Rule 12(B) Primer, Kate Rogers, Leonard Niehoff

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Boxing enthusiasts define success not just by wins and losses but also by knockouts. Many of the greatest fighters in the history of boxing—Rocky Marciano, Mike Tyson, Jack Dempsey, and Sugar Ray Robinson—were known for their knockout punching power. Within the category of knockouts, the gold standard is the first-round knockout, the moment when stunned fans watch a fighter take the opponent out of the contest before either of them has broken a sweat.

Beyond Bristol-Myers: Personal Jurisdiction Over Class Actions, Adam Steinman

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The Supreme Court's 2017 decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court threatens a sea change in the relationship between personal jurisdiction and aggregate litigation. The most crucial concern has been what the decision means for class actions. Must a court subject the claims of every unnamed class member to separate jurisdictional scrutiny? If so, it could be impossible for a plaintiff who sues in her home state to represent class members outside that state; instead, the Constitution would permit multistate or nationwide class actions only in states where the defendant is subject to general jurisdiction. For claims against a …

A Hague Parallel Proceedings Convention: Architecture And Features, Paul Herrup, Ronald A. Brand

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In Paul Herrup and Ronald A. Brand, A Hague Convention on Parallel Proceedings, 63 Harvard International Law Journal Online 1(2022), available at https://harvardilj.org/2022/02/a-hague-convention-on-parallel-proceedings/ and https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3894502, we argued that the Hague Conference on Private International Law should not undertake a project to require or prohibit exercise of original jurisdiction in national courts. Rather, the goal of current efforts should be to improve the concentration of parallel litigation in a “better forum,” in order to achieve efficient and complete resolution of disputes in transnational litigation. The Hague Conference is now taking this path. As the Experts Group and Working Group …

Liberalism Triumphant? Ideology And The En Banc Process In The Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals, Arthur D. Hellman

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There are two things that everyone knows about the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: it is very large, and it is very liberal. But common knowledge is sometimes wrong. Is that the case here?

About the first point – the Ninth Circuit’s size – there can be no dispute. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has 29 authorized judgeships, almost twice as many as the second-largest court. But what about the second point – the liberalism? Knowledgeable commentators, including Professor (now Dean) Erwin Chemerinsky, have disputed the characterization, calling it a “myth.”

Until now, no one has empirically tested whether …

The Myth Of The Great Writ, Leah M. Litman

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Habeas corpus is known as the “Great Writ” because it supposedly protects individual liberty against government overreach and guards against wrongful detentions. This idea shapes habeas doctrine, federal courts theories, and habeas-reform proposals.

It is also incomplete. While the writ has sometimes protected individual liberty, it has also served as a vehicle for the legitimation of excesses of governmental power. A more complete picture of the writ emerges when one considers traditionally neglected areas of public law that are often treated as distinct—the law of slavery and freedom, Native American affairs, and immigration. There, habeas has empowered abusive exercises of …

Appraising The U.S. Supreme Court’S Philipp Decision, Vivian Grosswald Curran

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This article assesses the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) after the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Germany v. Philipp. Philipp’s rejection of a genocide exception for a foreign state’s act of property expropriation comports with the absence of such an exception in the FSIA’s text. The article also suggests that the genocide exception as it had been developing was a detrimental development in FSIA interpretation, and was also harmful to international human rights law, inasmuch as it distorted the concept of genocide. The Philipp Court’s renewed focus on the international law of property, rather than of human rights, should …

From The Frying Pan To The Fire: Scotus’ Fsia Inaction As Further Permitting Executive Branch Intervention In “Takings Exception” Cases And Its Consequences In Forcing Holocaust Plaintiffs To Return To Europe, Richard H. Weisberg

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The Supreme Court of the United States (“SCOTUS”) very recently punted and left wide a circuit split on a key question under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”): Do plaintiff Holocaust victims need to return to the country that wronged them in order to proceed in a United States federal court that otherwise had jurisdiction over their claims? While sending down unresolved a conflict between the D.C. and Seventh Circuits, in a companion case also involving Holocaust victims, SCOTUS essentially ended an action against Germany by taking the strong suggestion of the Executive Branch through its Solicitor General that a …

Counterterrorism 2.0, Deborah Pearlstein

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Are there any lessons to be gleaned for combatting the rising threat of white nationalist terrorism today from the U.S. response to the attacks of 9/11 twenty years on? This symposium reflection suggests that among the most important lessons may be in avoiding the conceptually defining characteristics of the early U.S. response in 2001. Detainee torture and abuse, the embrace of trial by newly formed military commission, and other misguided policies and practices whose effects are still felt today were set in motion in the first few weeks after the attacks, driven by the instinct to do something, bolstered by …

The Hague Judgments Convention In The United States: A “Game Changer” Or A New Path To The Old Game?, Ronald A. Brand

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The Hague Judgments Convention, completed on July 2, 2019, is built on a list of “jurisdictional filters” in Article 5(1), and grounds for non-recognition in Article 7. If one of the thirteen jurisdictional tests in Article 5(1) is satisfied, the judgment may circulate under the Convention, subject to the grounds for non-recognition found in Article 7. This approach to Convention structure is especially significant for countries considering ratification and implementation. A different structure was suggested in the initial Working Group stage of the Convention’s preparation which would have avoided the complexity of multiple rules of indirect jurisdiction, each of which …

The Vulnerable Sovereign, Ronald A. Brand

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The connection between sovereignty and law is fundamental for both domestic (internal sovereignty) and the international (external sovereignty) purposes. As the dominant forms of government have evolved over time, so has the way in which we think about sovereignty. Consideration of the historical evolution of the concept of sovereignty offers insight into how we think of sovereignty today. A term that was born to represent the relationship between the governor and the governed has become a term that is used to represent the relationships between and among states in the global legal order. This article traces the history of the …

A Hague Convention On Parallel Proceedings, Paul Herrup, Ronald A. Brand

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The Hague Conference on Private International Law has engaged in a series of projects that, if successful, could provide the framework for critical aspects of trans-national litigation in the Twenty-first Century. Thus far, the work has resulted in the 2005 Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements and the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters. Work now has begun to examine the need, desirability and feasibility of additional instruments in the area, with discussions of an instrument that would either require or prohibit the exercise of jurisdiction by national courts, and …

Federal Rule 44.1: Foreign Law In U.S. Courts Today, Vivian Grosswald Curran

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This article presents an in-depth analysis of the latent methodological issues that are as much a cause of U.S. federal court avoidance of foreign law as are judicial difficulties in obtaining foreign legal materials and difficulties in understanding foreign legal orders and languages. It explores Rule 44.1’s inadvertent introduction of a civil-law method into a common-law framework, and the results that have ensued, including an incomplete transition of foreign law from being an issue of fact to becoming an issue of law. It addresses the ways in which courts obtain information about foreign law today, suggesting among others the methodological …

Family Law Disputes Between International Couples In U.S. Courts, Rhonda Wasserman

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Increasing mobility, migration, and growing numbers of international couples give rise to a host of family law issues. For instance, when marital partners are citizens of different countries, or live outside the country of which they are citizens, or move between countries, courts must first determine if they have jurisdiction to hear divorce or child custody actions. Given that countries around the world are governed by different legal regimes, such as the common law system, civil codes, religious law, and customary law, choice of law questions also complicate family litigation. This short article addresses the jurisdictional and other conflicts issues …

A Knock On Knick's Revival Of Federal Takings Litigation, Stewart Sterk, Michael C. Pollack

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In Knick v. Township of Scott, the United States Supreme Court held that a landowner who claimed to have suffered a taking at the hands of state or local officials could seek redress in federal court without the need to first seek compensation through state proceedings. This holding raises serious theoretical and practical concerns. On the theoretical side, Knick rests on the implicit assumption that states separate powers among branches of government in the same way the federal government does. It also relies on a second assumption: that relegating taking claims to state court makes them unique. Neither is …

Comparative Method And International Litigation 2020, Ronald A. Brand

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In this article, resulting from a presentation at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Comparative Law, I apply comparative method to international litigation. I do so from the perspective of a U.S.-trained lawyer who has been involved for over 25 years in the negotiations that produced both the 2005 Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements and the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters. The law of jurisdiction and judgments recognition is probably most often taught in a litigation context. Nonetheless, that law has as much or more …

Erie Doctrine, State Law, And Civil Rights Litigation, Alexander A. Reinert

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How should state law questions and claims be resolved when they arise in federal civil rights litigation? In prior work, I have criticized the given wisdom that the Erie doctrine, while originating in diversity cases, applies in all cases whatever the basis for federal jurisdiction. In that work, I proposed a framework, “Erie Step Zero,” to place Erie questions in their jurisdictional context. As I have argued, the concern with forum shopping and unequal treatment that prompted Erie have less salience in federal question cases. Different concerns emerge when one focuses on the presence of state law issues in …

The Circulation Of Judgments Under The Draft Hague Judgments Convention, Ronald A. Brand

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The 2018 draft of a Hague Judgments Convention adopts a framework based largely on what some have referred to as “jurisdictional filters.” Article 5(1) provides a list of thirteen authorized bases of indirect jurisdiction by which a foreign judgment is first tested. If one of these jurisdictional filters is satisfied, the resulting judgment is presumptively entitled to circulate under the convention, subject to a set of grounds for non-recognition that generally are consistent with existing practice in most legal systems. This basic architecture of the Convention has been assumed to be set from the start of the Special Commission process, …

Forgotten Statutes: Trade Law's Domestic (Re)Turn, Kathleen Claussen

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Since the first half of the twentieth century, the U.S. Congress has increasingly delegated its authority over tariffs to the U.S. president. Some of these statutes permit private actors to petition for tariff relief. Some also permit the president to initiate an investigation and subsequently to take trade-related or other action when certain criteria are met. Since the 1990s, however, a robust multilateral trading system has required the United States and others to resolve disputes over trade measures in Geneva, rather than through unilateral policy steps under these tariff authorities. In a stark departure from this movement away from unilateral …

The Cisg: Applicable Law And Applicable Forums, Ronald A. Brand

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Despite being in effect for over thirty years, a debate continues on whether the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) has been a success. With 89 Contracting States, it clearly is widely accepted. At the same time, empirical studies show that private parties regularly opt out of its application. It has served as a model for domestic sales law, and as an important educational tool. But has it been a success? In this article I consider that question, and suggests that the scorecard is not yet complete; and that it will perhaps take significantly …

An Unfinished Dialogue: Congress, The Judiciary, And The Rules For Federal Judicial Misconduct Proceedings, Arthur D. Hellman

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Federal judges can be impeached and removed from office for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but what can be done to investigate and remedy less serious misconduct? Congress gave its answer 40 years ago when it passed the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980. The Act emerged from a series of complex interactions between Congress and the judiciary that could hardly be replicated today. Initially there was strong support, particularly in the Senate, for a centralized, “strictly adjudicatory” system, including a provision for removal of judges without impeachment. Over the course of several years, however, the judiciary persuaded Congress to …

Erisa Preemption After Gobeille V. Liberty Mutual: Completing The Retrenchment Of Shaw, Edward A. Zelinsky

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Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. is the U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent preemption decision under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). In Gobeille, the Court completed the process of reconciling the restrained approach to ERISA preemption announced in New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Insurance Co. with the Court’s literal and expansive approach adopted earlier in Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc. Gobeille consummated this reconciliation by confirming the sub silentio retrenchment of Shaw and its “plain language” approach in favor of Traveler’s broader construction of ERISA preemption. …

How Privacy Distorted Standing Law, Felix T. Wu

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No abstract provided.

Defining Residence For Income Tax Purposes: Domicile As Gap-Filler, Citizenship As Proxy And Gap-Filler, Edward A. Zelinsky

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The states' income tax systems are important repositories of experience which confirm the administrative benefits of citizenship-based taxation. Domicile today plays an important role in state tax systems as a gap-filler when more objective statutory residence laws fail to assign any state of residence to the taxpayer. Citizenship is an administrable proxy for domicile and serves a similar gap-filling role in the federal taxation of individuals whose income and activities straddle across national boundaries.

The states' difficulties enforcing domicile-based taxation highlight the administrative benefits of citizenship-based taxation. As long as residence is understood for tax purposes in terms of domicile, …

Land Use Federalism's False Choice, Michael C. Pollack

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Debates about land use federalism — like those about federalism more broadly — often focus on whether policies and priorities ought to be set at the national or local level. But such categorical judgments about national intervention are inadequate because they obscure the diversity of mechanisms by which nationalization can and does occur. This Article draws attention to the importance of this underappreciated legislative design choice and develops a framework within which to evaluate it. This Article observes that nationalization can take the form of rules that either displace local decisionmaking or channel it, and that those rules can be …

The Continuing Evolution Of U.S. Judgments Recognition Law, Ronald A. Brand

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The substantive law of judgments recognition in the United States has evolved from federal common law, found in a seminal Supreme Court opinion, to primary reliance on state law in both state and federal courts. While state law often is found in a local version of a uniform act, this has not brought about true uniformity, and significant discrepancies exist among the states. These discrepancies in judgments recognition law, combined with a common policy on the circulation of internal judgments under the United States Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, have created opportunities for forum shopping and litigation strategies that …

U.S. Discovery In A Transnational And Digital Age And The Increasing Need For Comparative Analysis, Vivian Grosswald Curran

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U.S. Courts generally prefer applying the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure over The Hague Evidence Convention for the taking of documentary evidence located abroad. With respect to the French blocking statute with which the Supreme Court was dealing in the seminal case of Aérospatiale, and under the powerful influence of stare decisis, a line of cases developed dismissing the French blocking statute for having been intended by its legislature principally to thwart the sovereignty of the U.S. trial court, and never having been intended to be enforced. Criteria for the general assessment of blocking statutes have emerged from the courts’ …

Landowners' Fcc Dilemma: Rereading The Supreme Court's Armstrong Opinion After The Third Circuit's Depolo Ruling, Gerald S. Dickinson

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In Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Ctr., Inc., the Supreme Court took a turn in its refusal to provide avenues for relief to private actors against the state in federal court, finding that the Supremacy Clause does not provide for an implied right of action to sue to enjoin unconstitutional actions by state officers. Many critics of that decision, including the four dissenting Justices, question the wisdom of the ruling generally. However, from a property rights perspective, the decision sheds light on a dilemma unforeseen by many scholars and made most apparent by a recent Third Circuit decision, Jeffrey DePolo …