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Articles 1 - 30 of 36
Full-Text Articles in Law
Back To The Future: Creating A Bipartisan Environmental Movement For The 21st Century, David M. Uhlmann
Back To The Future: Creating A Bipartisan Environmental Movement For The 21st Century, David M. Uhlmann
Articles
With a contentious presidential election looming amidst a pandemic, economic worries, and historic protests against systemic racism, climate action may seem less pressing than other challenges. Nothing could be further from the truth. To prevent greater public health threats and economic dislocation from climate disruption, which will disproportionately harm Black Americans, people of color, and indigenous people, this Comment argues that we need to restore the bipartisanship that fueled the environmental movement and that the fate of the planet—and our children and grandchildren—depends upon our collective action.
Sharp Lines And Sliding Scales In Tax Law, Edward Fox, Jacob Goldin
Sharp Lines And Sliding Scales In Tax Law, Edward Fox, Jacob Goldin
Articles
The law is full of sharp lines, where small changes in one’s circumstances lead to significant changes in legal treatment. In many cases, a sharp line can be smoothed out by replacing it with a sliding scale. Under a sliding scale, small changes in one’s circumstances lead to small changes in legal treatment. In this paper, we study the policy choice between sharp lines and sliding scales in tax law. We focus on considerations relating to efficiency, complexity, administration, tax planning, and the objectives of specific provisions. Although sharp lines are currently widespread in tax law, we argue that sliding …
Importing Prescription Drugs From Canada — Legal And Practical Problems With The Trump Administration's Proposal, Rachel E. Sachs, Nicholas Bagley
Importing Prescription Drugs From Canada — Legal And Practical Problems With The Trump Administration's Proposal, Rachel E. Sachs, Nicholas Bagley
Articles
As Americans report ever-growing difficulty affording their prescription drugs, President Donald Trump has come under increasing pressure to act. To date, the Trump administration has attempted to advance a number of policy initiatives by means of executive action, but it has not yet adopted a program that would meaningfully assist patients. Most recently, the administration proposed a rule that, if finalized, would allow states to develop programs to import lower-priced prescription drugs from Canada, with the intent of reducing spending on drugs by U.S. patients and states and increasing access for patients.
The Elusive Object Of Punishment, Gabriel S. Mendlow
The Elusive Object Of Punishment, Gabriel S. Mendlow
Articles
All observers of our legal system recognize that criminal statutes can be complex and obscure. But statutory obscurity often takes a particular form that most observers have overlooked: uncertainty about the identity of the wrong a statute aims to punish. It is not uncommon for parties to disagree about the identity of the underlying wrong even as they agree on the statute’s elements. Hidden in plain sight, these unexamined disagreements underlie or exacerbate an assortment of familiar disputes—about venue, vagueness, and mens rea; about DUI and statutory rape; about hate crimes, child pornography, and counterterrorism laws; about proportionality in punishment; …
Disability, Universalism, Social Rights, And Citizenship, Samuel R. Bagenstos
Disability, Universalism, Social Rights, And Citizenship, Samuel R. Bagenstos
Articles
The 2016 election has had significant consequences for American social welfare policy. Some of these consequences are direct. By giving unified control of the federal government to the Republican Party for the first time in a decade, the election has potentially empowered conservatives to ram through a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act—the landmark “Obamacare” law that marked the most significant expansion of the social welfare state since the 1960s. Other consequences are more indirect. Both the election result itself, and Republicans’ actions since, have spurred a renewed debate within the left-liberal coalition regarding the politics of social welfare …
Wrongful Benefit & Arctic Drilling, Nicolas Cornell, Sarah E. Light
Wrongful Benefit & Arctic Drilling, Nicolas Cornell, Sarah E. Light
Articles
The law contains a diverse range of doctrines — “slayer rules” that prevent murderers from inheriting, restrictions on trade in “conflict diamonds,” the Fourth Amendment’s exclusion of evidence obtained through unconstitutional search, and many more — that seem to instantiate a general principle that it can be wrong to profit from past harms or misconduct. This Article explores the contours of this general normative principle, which we call the wrongful benefit principle. As we illustrate, the wrongful benefit principle places constraints both on whether anyone should be permitted to exploit ethically tainted goods, and who may be permitted to profit …
Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson
Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson
Articles
In this section: • United States and France Sign Agreement to Compensate Holocaust Victims • United States Conducts Naval Operation Within Twelve Nautical Miles of Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, Prompting Protests from China • United States Pursues Bilateral and Multilateral Initiatives in and Around the Arctic
No Good Options: Picking Up The Pieces After King V. Burwell, Nicholas Bagley, David K. Jones
No Good Options: Picking Up The Pieces After King V. Burwell, Nicholas Bagley, David K. Jones
Articles
If the Supreme Court rules against the government in King v. Burwell, insurance subsidies available under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will evaporate in the thirty-four states that have refused to establish their own health-care exchanges. The pain could be felt within weeks. Without subsidies, an estimated eight or nine million people stand to lose their health coverage. Because sicker people will retain coverage at a much higher rate than healthier people, insurance premiums in the individual market will surge by as much as fifty percent. Policymakers will come under intense pressure to mitigate the fallout from a government loss …
Intelligence Legalism And The National Security Agency’S Civil Liberties Gap, Margo Schlanger
Intelligence Legalism And The National Security Agency’S Civil Liberties Gap, Margo Schlanger
Articles
Since June 2013, we have seen unprecedented security breaches and disclosures relating to American electronic surveillance. The nearly daily drip, and occasional gush, of once-secret policy and operational information makes it possible to analyze and understand National Security Agency activities, including the organizations and processes inside and outside the NSA that are supposed to safeguard American’s civil liberties as the agency goes about its intelligence gathering business. Some have suggested that what we have learned is that the NSA is running wild, lawlessly flouting legal constraints on its behavior. This assessment is unfair. In fact, the picture that emerges from …
Offices Of Goodness: Influence Without Authority In Federal Agencies, Margo Schlanger
Offices Of Goodness: Influence Without Authority In Federal Agencies, Margo Schlanger
Articles
Inducing governmental organizations to do the right thing is the central problem of public administration. Especially sharp challenges arise when “the right thing” means executing not only a primary mission but also constraints on that mission (what Philip Selznick aptly labeled “precarious values”). In a classic example, we want police to prevent and respond to crime and maintain public order, but to do so without infringing anyone’s civil rights. In the federal government, if Congress or another principal wants an executive agency to pay attention not only to its mission, but also to some other constraining or even conflicting value—I …
The Puzzling Presumption Of Reviewability, Nicholas Bagley
The Puzzling Presumption Of Reviewability, Nicholas Bagley
Articles
The presumption in favor of judicial review of agency action is a cornerstone of administrative law, accepted by courts and commentators alike as both legally appropriate and obviously desirable. Yet the presumption is puzzling. As with any canon of statutory construction that serves a substantive end, it should find a source in history, positive law, the Constitution, or sound policy considerations. None of these, however, offers a plausible justification for the presumption. As for history, the sort of judicial review that the presumption favors - appellate-style arbitrariness review - was not only unheard of prior to the twentieth century, but …
Formalism And Employer Liability Under Title Vii, Samuel R. Bagenstos
Formalism And Employer Liability Under Title Vii, Samuel R. Bagenstos
Articles
Most lawyers, law professors, and judges are familiar with two standard critiques of formalism in legal reasoning. One is the unacknowledged-policymaking critique. This critique argues that formalist reasoning purports to be above judicial policymaking but instead simply hides the policy decisions offstage. The other is the false-determinacy critique. This critique observes that formalist reasoning purports to reduce decision costs in the run of cases by sorting cases into defined categories, but argues that instead of going away the difficult questions of application migrate to the choice of the category in which to place a particular case.
On The Role Of Cost-Benefit Analysis In Criminal Justice Policy: A Response To The Imprisoner's Dilemma, Sonja B. Starr
On The Role Of Cost-Benefit Analysis In Criminal Justice Policy: A Response To The Imprisoner's Dilemma, Sonja B. Starr
Articles
With one in 100 adult Americans behind bars, and prison budgets consuming an increasing share of state budgets, few social policy issues compare in significance to the debate over which criminal offenders should be incarcerated and for how long. David Abrams' article, The Impriasoner's Dilemma: A Cost-Benefit Approach to Incarceration,' makes an important contribution to that debate, offering an economic approach to assessing the net benefits of holding or freeing prisoners on the incarceration margin. In this short Response, I first highlight several strengths of Abrams' piece and discuss the possible case that could be made for incorporating formal cost-benefit …
What Does Tort Law Do? What Can It Do?, Scott Hershovitz
What Does Tort Law Do? What Can It Do?, Scott Hershovitz
Articles
It’s not hard to describe what tort law does. As a first approximation, we might say that tort empowers those who suffer certain sorts of injuries or invasions to seek remedies from those who brought about those injuries or invasions. The challenge is to explain why tort does that, or to explain what tort is trying to do when it does that. After all, it is not obvious that we should have an institution specially concerned with the injuries and invasions that count as torts.
Government Involvement In Chrysler Bankruptcy: The Least-Worst Alternative?, John A. E. Pottow
Government Involvement In Chrysler Bankruptcy: The Least-Worst Alternative?, John A. E. Pottow
Articles
As usual, my colleague Jim White has hit many nails on many heads. Also as usual, however, I’m going to be a pain and part ways with him a bit. First, was Chrysler’s bankruptcy “suspicious” in its use of section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code? You bet. Leaving aside the proliferation of 363 sales to swallow Chapter 11 as we once knew it, Chrysler was out in left field. Not only was it a “sale” of everything meaningful in the company, it was to a seller—Fiat—that put in no money. (To be fair, Fiat agreed to contribute technological know-how on …
The Gulf Spill Context: Peak Oil, Risky Oil, And Energy Strategy, Edward A. Parson
The Gulf Spill Context: Peak Oil, Risky Oil, And Energy Strategy, Edward A. Parson
Articles
As shocking as the situation in the Gulf of Mexico may be, in this broader context it must be regarded as a normal event. That’s not to say that it’s normal in relation to past experience. Rather, the Gulf spill is “the new normal,” in the sense that our current energy strategy—or lack thereof—will make such events increasingly likely, even if we assume conditions of effective regulation and responsible compliance that evidently were not present on the Deepwater Horizon.
Letting Good Deeds Go Unpunished: Volunteer Immunity Laws And Tort Deterrence, Jill R. Horwitz, Joseph Mead
Letting Good Deeds Go Unpunished: Volunteer Immunity Laws And Tort Deterrence, Jill R. Horwitz, Joseph Mead
Articles
Does tort law deter risky behavior in individuals? We explore this question by examining the relationship between tort immunity and volunteering. During the 1980s and 1990s, nearly every state provided some degree of volunteer immunity. Congress followed with the 1997 Volunteer Protection Act. This article analyzes these acts, identifying three motivations for them: the chilling effects of tort liability, limits on liability insurance, and moral concerns. Using data from the Independent Survey’s Giving and Volunteering surveys, we then identify a large and positive correlation between immunity and volunteering. We next consider the implications of the findings for tort theory and …
Thou Good And Faithful Servant, Carl E. Schneider
Thou Good And Faithful Servant, Carl E. Schneider
Articles
Lawmakers are stewards of social resources. A current debate-over screening newborns for genetic disorders-illuminates dilemmas of that stewardship that have particularly plagued bioethics. Recently in the Report, Mary Ann Baily and Thomas Murray told the story of little Ben Haygood. He died from MCADD, a genetic disorder that can make long fasting fatal. Screening at birth would have let doctors alert Ben's parents. "After Ben died," Baily and Murray wrote, "his father became a passionate advocate for expanding Mississippi's newborn screening program to add MCADD and other disorders." Soon, the Ben Haygood Comprehensive Newborn Screening Act increased the number …
Third-Party Tax Administration: The Case Of Low- And Moderate-Income Households, Michael S. Barr, Jane K. Dokko
Third-Party Tax Administration: The Case Of Low- And Moderate-Income Households, Michael S. Barr, Jane K. Dokko
Articles
Using a unique household-level data set, this article investigates the taxfiling experiences and refund behavior of low- and moderate-income (LMI) households. We document households' tax-filing behavior, attitudes about the withholding system, use of tax refunds to consume and save, and the mechanisms by which households would prefer to receive their income. We also document the prevalence of the use of tax-preparation services and the receipt of tax refunds and refund-anticipation loans. Finally, we argue that there may be a role for tax administration to enable LMI households to make welfare-improving financial decisions.
Credible Coercion, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
Credible Coercion, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
Articles
The ideal of individual freedom and autonomy requires that society provide relief against coercion. In the law, this requirement is often translated into rules that operate "postcoercion" to undo the legal consequences of acts and promises extracted under duress. This Article argues that these ex post antiduress measures, rather than helping the coerced party, might in fact hurt her. When coercion is credible-when a credible threat to inflict an even worse outcome underlies the surrender of the coerced party-ex post relief will only induce the strong party to execute the threatened outcome ex ante, without offering the choice to surrender, …
Understanding Climatic Impacts, Vulnerabilities, And Adaptation In The United States: Building A Capacity For Assessment, Edward A. Parson, Robert W. Corell, Eric J. Barron, Virginia Burkett, Anthony Janetos, Linda Joyce, Thomas R. Karl, Michael C. Maccracken, Jerry Melillo, M. Granger Morgan, David S. Schimel, Thomas Wilbanks
Understanding Climatic Impacts, Vulnerabilities, And Adaptation In The United States: Building A Capacity For Assessment, Edward A. Parson, Robert W. Corell, Eric J. Barron, Virginia Burkett, Anthony Janetos, Linda Joyce, Thomas R. Karl, Michael C. Maccracken, Jerry Melillo, M. Granger Morgan, David S. Schimel, Thomas Wilbanks
Articles
Based on the experience of the U.S. National Assessment, we propose a program of research and analysis to advance capability for assessment of climate impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptation options. We identify specific priorities for scientific research on the responses of ecological and socioeconomic systems to climate and other stresses; for improvement in the climatic inputs to impact assessments; and for further development of assessment methods to improve their practical utility to decision-makers. Finally, we propose a new institutional model for assessment, based principally on regional efforts that integrate observations, research, data, applications, and assessment on climate and linked environmental-change issues. …
Contract Reading' In Labor Arbitration, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Contract Reading' In Labor Arbitration, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
A quarter century ago, I used the phrase "contract reader" to characterize the role an arbitrator plays in construing a collective bargaining agreement. This phrase has almost invariable been misunderstood to refer to reading or interpreting the contract. When I spoke of the "contract reader," it was in the context of judicial review of an award. My point was this: When a court has before it an arbitrator's award applying a collective bargaining agreement, it is as if the employer and the union had signed a stipulation stating: "What the arbitrator says this contract means is exactly what we meant …
Analyze This: A Law And Economics Agenda For The Patent System, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Analyze This: A Law And Economics Agenda For The Patent System, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
Legal scholars and economists might enhance the value and impact of their work by making more effective use of each other's knowledge and capabilities. Legal scholars can offer a more nuanced understanding of the legal rules that underlie the patent system and the doctrinal levers that might be manipulated in furtherance of public policy goals. Economists bring to bear a set of analytical and methodological tools that could shed considerable light on what these doctrinal levers are doing and which of them we ought to be manipulating. Together, we have a better chance of asking the right questions and thinking …
Public Research And Private Development: Patents And Technology Transfer In Government-Sponsored Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Public Research And Private Development: Patents And Technology Transfer In Government-Sponsored Research, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
This article revisits the logical and empirical basis for current government patent policy in order to shed light on the competing interests at stake and to begin to assess how the system is operating in practice. Such an inquiry is justified in part by the significance of federally-sponsored research and development to the overall U.S. research effort. Although the share of national expenditures for research and development borne by the federal government has declined since 1980, federal funding in 1995 still accounted for approximately thirty-six percent of total national outlays for research and development' and nearly fifty-eight percent of outlays …
A Technology Policy Perspective On The Nih Gene Patenting Controversy, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
A Technology Policy Perspective On The Nih Gene Patenting Controversy, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
This article will use the NIH patent controversy as a focal point for considering when the results of government-sponsored research should be patented and when they should be dedicated to the public domain. First, this article will review the recent history of federal government policy on patenting the results of government-sponsored research. Next, this article will highlight some of the complexities involved in achieving technology transfer from the public sector to the private sector that current policy may oversimplify. With this background, this article will return to a more detailed analysis of the NIH cDNA patenting controversy and consider the …
At-Will Employment: An Overview, Theodore J. St. Antoine
At-Will Employment: An Overview, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
The most dramatic development of the last decade has been the rapid judicial expansion of modifications in at-will employment doctrine.
Patents And The Progress Of Science: Exclusive Rights And Experimental Use, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Patents And The Progress Of Science: Exclusive Rights And Experimental Use, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
In this article I analyze the proper scope of an experimental use exemption from patent infringement liability by comparing the rationales behind promoting technological progress through granting exclusive patent rights in inventions with competing arguments for promoting scientific progress by allowing all investigators to enjoy free access to the discoveries of other scientists. I begin by reviewing key features of the patent laws and theoretical justifications for granting patent monopolies in order to clarify the implications of existing patent doctrine and theory for an experimental use exemption. I then look to the literature in the sociology, history, and philosophy of …
A Seed Germinates: Unjust Discharge Reform Heads Toward Full Flower, Theodore J. St. Antoine
A Seed Germinates: Unjust Discharge Reform Heads Toward Full Flower, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
In this paper, I shall briefly review the nature and limitations of the theories most frequently invoked by the courts in dealing with wrongful dismissal. I shall then examine the major arguments for and against a general overhaul of the doctrine of employment at will. Lastly, I shall discuss some of the particular questions that will have to be addressed in fashioning a statutory solution.
The Twilight Of Employment At Will? An Update, Theodore J. St. Antoine
The Twilight Of Employment At Will? An Update, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
A 55-year-old white male, who has spent thirty years working his way up to a responsible middle-management position in his company, is asked for his resignation. No reason given. Even though the employee could demonstrate that he still is qualified to perform his duties, the employer's action in dismissing him would be quite unexceptionable under the conventional American common law doctrine of employment at will. The situation could be even more disturbing. If the employment-at-will principle were allowed its full scope, an employee would have no recourse even if he knew he was being discharged because he had refused to …
The Revision Of Employment-At-Will Enters A New Phase, Theodore J. St. Antoine
The Revision Of Employment-At-Will Enters A New Phase, Theodore J. St. Antoine
Articles
The most significant development in the whole field of labor law during the past decade was the growing willingness of the courts to modify the traditional doctrine of employment-at-will. Applying either tort or contract theory, or both, judges in some thirty jurisdictions declared their readiness to blunt the worst rigors of the rule that an employment contract of indefinite duration can be terminated by either party at any time for any reason. These dramatic breakthroughs evoked almost universal acclaim from disinterested commentators, primarily on the grounds of simple justice. Now we may be entering a new phase of consolidation, refinement, …