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Too Much Of A Good Thing? A Governing Knowledge Commons Review Of Abundance In Context, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Madelyn Sanfilippo, Katherine J. Strandburg Jul 2022

Too Much Of A Good Thing? A Governing Knowledge Commons Review Of Abundance In Context, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Madelyn Sanfilippo, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

The economics of abundance, along with the sociology of abundance, the law of abundance, and so forth, should be re-framed, linked, and situated in a common context for empirical rather than conceptual research. Abundance may seem to be a new, big thing, between anxiety over information overload, Big Data, and related technological disruptions. But scholars know that abundance is an ancient phenomenon, which only seemed to disappear as twentieth century social science focused on scarcity instead. Restoring the study of abundance, and figuring out how to solve the problems that abundance might create, means shedding disciplinary blinders and going back …


Uselessly Accurate, Patrick Barry May 2019

Uselessly Accurate, Patrick Barry

Articles

There is an accuracy that defeats itself by the overemphasis in details," Justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote in his 1925 collection Law and Literature and Other Essays and Addresses. The problem hasn't gone away, as any reader of legal briefs, contracts, and memos can attest. This essay offers a few ways to help.


Taking Data, Michael C. Pollack Jan 2019

Taking Data, Michael C. Pollack

Articles

Technological development has created new forms of information, altered expectations of privacy, and given law enforcement more tools to examine that information and intrude on that privacy. One crucial facet of these changes involves internet service providers (ISPs): as people expose more of their lives to their ISPs—all the websites they visit, people they communicate with, emails they send, files they store, and more—law enforcement efforts to access that data become more and more common. But scholars and policymakers alike recognize that the existing statutory frameworks governing those efforts are based on obsolete technology and strike balances that are difficult …


Informed Trading And Its Regulation, Merritt B. Fox, Lawrence R. Glosten, Gabriel V. Rauterberg Jun 2018

Informed Trading And Its Regulation, Merritt B. Fox, Lawrence R. Glosten, Gabriel V. Rauterberg

Articles

Informed trading--trading on information not yet reflected in a stock's price-- drives the stock market. Such informational advantages can arise from astute analysis of varied pieces of public news, from just released public information, or from confidential information from inside a firm. We argue that these disparate types of trading are all better regulated as part of the broader phenomenon of informed trading. Informed trading makes share prices more accurate, enhancing the allocation of capital, but also makes markets less liquid, which is costly to the efficiency of trade. Informed trading thus poses a fundamental trade-off in how it affects …


Evaluating Beps: A Reconsideration Of The Benefits Principle And Proposal For Un Oversight, Reuven Avi-Yonah, Haiyan Xu Jan 2016

Evaluating Beps: A Reconsideration Of The Benefits Principle And Proposal For Un Oversight, Reuven Avi-Yonah, Haiyan Xu

Articles

The Financial Crisis of 2008 and Great Recession that followed have exacerbated income inequality within and between countries. In the aftermath of the economic turbulence, politicians have turned their attention to the twin problems of individual tax evasion and corporate tax avoidance. U.S. legislators enacted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FACTA), leading to the United States signing a series of Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs) for the exchange of tax information. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) developed the Multilateral Agreement for Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MAATM) and initiated the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project to …


Taking Public Access To The Law Seriously: The Problem Of Private Control Over The Availability Of Federal Standards, Nina A. Mendelson Jan 2015

Taking Public Access To The Law Seriously: The Problem Of Private Control Over The Availability Of Federal Standards, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

In the 1930s, Harvard professor Erwin Griswold famously complained about the enormous numbers of New Deal regulations that were obscurely published on individual sheets or in “separate paper pamphlets.” Finding these binding federal rules was difficult, leading to “chaos” and an “intolerable” situation. Congress responded, requiring that agencies publish all rules in the Federal Register and in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Currently, recent federal public laws, the entire U.S. Code, the Federal Register, and the CFR are all freely available online as well as in governmental depository libraries. But with respect to thousands of federal regulations, the clock …


Market Efficiency And The Problem Of Retail Flight, Alicia J. Davis Nov 2014

Market Efficiency And The Problem Of Retail Flight, Alicia J. Davis

Articles

In 1950, 91 % of common stock in the U.S. was owned directly by individual inves­ tors. Today, that percentage stands at only 23%. The mass exodus of retail investors and their investment dollars has negative implications not only for capital formation and investor protection, but also for market efficiency. Individual investors are often assumed to be noise traders who distort stock prices and harm market functioning. Therefore, some argue that their withdrawal from the market should be of little concern; indeed, it should be celebrated. Recent empirical evidence calls this assertion of retail noise trading into doubt, and this …


Private Control Over Access To Public Law: The Perplexing Federal Regulatory Use Of Private Standards, Nina A. Mendelson Jan 2014

Private Control Over Access To Public Law: The Perplexing Federal Regulatory Use Of Private Standards, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

To save resources and build on private expertise, federal agencies have incorporated privately drafted standards into thousands of federal regulations — but only by “reference.” These standards range widely, subsuming safety, benefits, and testing standards. An individual who seeks access to this binding law generally cannot freely read it online or in a governmental depository library, as she can the U.S. Code or the Code of Federal Regulations. Instead, she generally must pay a significant fee to the drafting organization, or else she must travel to Washington, D.C., to the Office of the Federal Register’s reading room. This law, under …


Rethinking Online Privacy In Canada: Commentary On Voltage Pictures V. John And Jane Doe, Ngozi Okidegbe Jan 2014

Rethinking Online Privacy In Canada: Commentary On Voltage Pictures V. John And Jane Doe, Ngozi Okidegbe

Articles

This article problematizes the use of the bona fide case standard as the legal standard for a court to order a third party Internet Service Provider ("ISP") to disclose subscriber information to a copyright owner in online piracy cases. It argues that ISP account holders have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their subscriber information. It contends that the current bona fide case standard affords a relatively low threshold of protection for Internet users’ subscriber information. The reason for which the article takes this position is that the bona fide case standard can be met solely by IP address evidence, …


The Irony Of A Faustian Bargain: A Reconsideration Of The Supreme Court's 1953 United States V. Reynolds Decision, David Rudenstine Jan 2013

The Irony Of A Faustian Bargain: A Reconsideration Of The Supreme Court's 1953 United States V. Reynolds Decision, David Rudenstine

Articles

No abstract provided.


Critical Legal Studies In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, Peter Goodrich, Sonia K. Kayal, Rebecca Tushnet Jan 2013

Critical Legal Studies In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, Peter Goodrich, Sonia K. Kayal, Rebecca Tushnet

Articles

No abstract provided.


How Insurance Substitutes For Regulation, Omri Ben-Shahar, Kyle D. Logue Jan 2013

How Insurance Substitutes For Regulation, Omri Ben-Shahar, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

Legal regulation of behavior requires information. Acquiring information about the regulated party's conduct, setting benchmarks by which that conduct is measured, and establishing the correct scale of payoffs for violating or following regulation are costly and require expertise and motivation. Thus, economic theories of rulemaking are often based on the relative information advantages that different regulatory bodies have and how that information can be harnessed to enhance incentives and thereby improve welfare. Government regulators, on average, do not have informational advantages. They are not paid for performance and thus may lack adequate incentives. They are not disciplined by market forces …


Can Consumers Control Health-Care Costs?, Mark A. Hall, Carl E. Schneider Sep 2012

Can Consumers Control Health-Care Costs?, Mark A. Hall, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

The ultimate aim of health care policy is good care at good prices. Managed care failed to achieve this goal through influencing providers, so health policy has turned to the only market-based option left: treating patients like consumers. Health insurance and tax policy now pressure patients to spend their own money when they select health plans, providers, and treatments. Expecting patients to choose what they need at the price they want, consumerists believe that market competition will constrain costs while optimizing quality. This classic form of consumerism is today’s health policy watchword. This article evaluates consumerism and the regulatory mechanism …


Constructing Commons In The Cultural Environment, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg Jan 2010

Constructing Commons In The Cultural Environment, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

This Essay considers the problem of understanding intellectual sharing/pooling arrangements and the construction of cultural commons arrangements. We argue that an adaptation of the approach pioneered by Elinor Ostrom and collaborators to commons arrangements in the natural environment may provide a template for the examination of constructed commons in the cultural environment. The approach promises to lead to a better understanding of how participants in commons and pooling arrangements structure their interactions in relation to the environment(s) within which they are embedded and with which they share interdependent relationships. Such an improved understanding is critical for obtaining a more complete …


Reply: The Complexity Of Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg Jan 2010

Reply: The Complexity Of Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment, and responses to that article by Professors Thráinn Eggertsson, Wendy Gordon, Gregg Macey, Robert Merges, Elinor Ostrom, and Lawrence Solum. This short Reply comments briefly on each of those responses.


When Patients Say No (To Save Money): An Essay On The Tectonics Of Health Law., Mark A. Hall, Carl E. Schneider Feb 2009

When Patients Say No (To Save Money): An Essay On The Tectonics Of Health Law., Mark A. Hall, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

The ultimate aim of health care public policy is good care at good prices. Managed care stalled at achieving this goal by trying to influence providers, so health policy has turned to the only market-based option left: treating patients like consumers. Health insurance and tax policy are now pressuring patients to spend their own money when they select health plans, providers, and treatments. Expecting patients to choose what they need at the price they want, consumerists believe that market competition will constrain costs while optimizing quality. This classic form of consumerism is today's watchword. This Article evaluates this ideal type …


The Patient Life: Can Consumers Direct Health Care?, Carl E. Schneider, Mark A. Hall Jan 2009

The Patient Life: Can Consumers Direct Health Care?, Carl E. Schneider, Mark A. Hall

Articles

The ultimate aim of health care policy is good care at good prices. Managed care failed to achieve this goal through influencing providers, so health policy has turned to the only market-based option left: treating patients like consumers. Health insurance and tax policy now pressure patients to spend their own money when they select health plans, providers, and treatments. Expecting patients to choose what they need at the price they want, consumerists believe that market competition will constrain costs while optimizing quality. This classic form of consumerism is today's health policy watchword. This article evaluates consumerism and the regulatory mechanism …


Law Lags Behind: Foia And Affirmative Disclosure Of Information, Michael Herz Jan 2009

Law Lags Behind: Foia And Affirmative Disclosure Of Information, Michael Herz

Articles

No abstract provided.


The University As Constructed Cultural Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg Jan 2009

The University As Constructed Cultural Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

This paper examines commons as socially constructed environments built via and alongside intellectual property rights systems. We sketch a theoretical framework for examining cultural commons across a broad variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts, and we apply that framework to the university and associated practices and institutions.


Operationalizing Deterrence Claims Management (In Hopsitals, A Large Retailer, And Jails And Prisons), Margo Schlanger Jan 2008

Operationalizing Deterrence Claims Management (In Hopsitals, A Large Retailer, And Jails And Prisons), Margo Schlanger

Articles

The theory that the prospect of liability for damages deters risky behavior has been developed in countless articles and books. The literature is far sparser, however, on how deterrence is operationalized. And prior work slights an equally important effect of damage actions, to incentivize claims management in addition to harm-reduction responses that are cost- rather than liabilityminimizing. This article works in the intersection of these two understudied areas, focusing on claims management steps taken by frequently sued organizations, and opening a window into the black box of deterrence to see how those steps may end up serving harm-reduction purposes as …


After Autonomy, Carl E. Schneider Apr 2006

After Autonomy, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Bioethicists today are like Bolsheviks on the death of Lenin. They have, rather to their surprise, won the day. Their principle of autonomy is dogma. Their era of charismatic leadership is over. Their work of Weberian rationalization, of institutionalizing principle and party, has begun. The liturgy is reverently recited, but the vitality of Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?" has yielded to the vacuity of Stalin's "The Foundations of Leninism." Effort once lavished on expounding ideology is now devoted to establishing associations, organizing degree programs, installing bioethicist commissars in every hospital, and staffing IRB soviets. Not-so-secret police prowl the libraries …


Hipaa-Cracy, Carl E. Schneider Jan 2006

Hipaa-Cracy, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

The Department of Health and Human Services has recently been exercising its authority under the (wittily named) "administrative simplification" part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to regulate the confidentiality of medical records. I love the goal; I loathe the means. The benefits are obscure; the costs are onerous. Putatively, the regulations protect my autonomy; practically, they ensnarl me in red tape and hijack my money for services I dislike. HIPAA (a misnomer-HIPAA is the statute, not the regulations) is too lengthy, labile, complex, confused, unfinished, and unclear to be summarized intelligibly or reliably. (Brevis esse laboro, …


Learning The Value Of Drugs - Is Rofecoxib A Regulatory Success Story?, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 2005

Learning The Value Of Drugs - Is Rofecoxib A Regulatory Success Story?, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

Controversy over recent revelations concerning the adverse cardiovascular effects of selective cyclooxygenase- 2 (COX-2) inhibitors has generally been framed as a story of regulatory failure, in which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has failed in its mission to protect the public from unsafe products. But this simplistic understanding of the mission of the FDA seems to make failure all but inevitable, if the reliable observation of the risks and benefits of a drug requires rigorous long-term studies. Perhaps in an earlier era the goal of drug regulation was simply to protect the public from poisons. Today, drug regulation guides …


Reaching Disclosure, Carl E. Schneider Jan 2005

Reaching Disclosure, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

It is easy to forget but crucial to remember that when lawmakers decide to regulate an activity, they must select a method. The law of bioethics particularly favors one method-requiring disclosure of information. The doctrine of informed consent obliges doctors to tell patients their treatment choices. The administrative law of research ethics insists that researchers warn subjects of the risks of experiments. The Patient Self-Determination Act compels medical institutions to remind patients about advance directives. The federal government's new privacy regulations instruct medical institutions to describe their privacy regime to patients. Not just the law of bioethics, but health law …


Collateralizing Internet Privacy, Xuan-Thao Nguyen Jan 2004

Collateralizing Internet Privacy, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

Collateralizing privacy is a pervasive conduct committed by many on-line companies. Yet most don't even realize that they are engaging in collateralizing privacy. Worse yet, governmental agencies and consumer groups are not even aware of the violation of on-line consumer privacy by the collateralization of privacy. Professor Nguyen argues that collateralizing privacy occurs under the existing privacy regime and the architecture of article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Professor Nguyen critiques the violation of privacy through collateralization dilemmas and proposes a solution involving modifications of the contents of the financing statement and security agreement in secured transactions where consumer …


Seeking Truth For Power: Informational Strategy And Regulatory Policymaking, Cary Coglianese, Richard Zeckhauser, Edward A. Parson Jan 2004

Seeking Truth For Power: Informational Strategy And Regulatory Policymaking, Cary Coglianese, Richard Zeckhauser, Edward A. Parson

Articles

Information is the lifeblood of regulatory policy. The effective use of governmental power depends on information about conditions in the world, strategies for improving those conditions, and the consequences associated with deploying different strategies. Indeed, this need for information has led legislatures to create specialized committee structures, delegate policy authority to expert agencies, and develop administrative procedures that encourage analysis. Although legal scholars have extensively debated procedures and reforms designed to improve the analytic and scientific basis of regulatory policymaking, they have paid relatively little attention to how regulators gain the information they need for making and implementing regulatory policy. …


Information Production And Rent-Seeking In Law School Administration: Rules And Discretion, Stewart E. Sterk Jan 2003

Information Production And Rent-Seeking In Law School Administration: Rules And Discretion, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

No abstract provided.


Going To Pot, Carl E. Schneider Jan 2003

Going To Pot, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

In several earlier columns, I suggested that judges are usually poorly placed to make good biomedical policy, not least because the law so rarely offers them direct and cogent guidance. Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit proffered a new example of this old problem. In 1996, California's voters approved Proposition 215. Its "Compassionate Use Act of 1996" provided -that a patient "who possesses or cultivates marijuana for the personal medical purposes of the patient upon the written or oral recommendation or approval of a physician" committed no crime.


Rights Of Access And The Shape Of The Internet, Michael J. Madison Jan 2003

Rights Of Access And The Shape Of The Internet, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Article reviews recent developments in the law of access to information, that is, cases involving click-through agreements, the doctrine of trespass to chattels, the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and civil claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Though the objects of these different doctrines substantially overlap, the different doctrines yield different presumptions regarding the respective rights of information owners and information consumers. The Article reviews those presumptions in light of different metaphorical premises on which courts rely: Internet-as-place, in the trespass, DMCA, and CFAA contexts, and contract-as-assent, in the click-through context. It argues that …


How Underlying Patient Beliefs Can Affect Physician-Patient Communicaion About Prostate-Specific Antigen Testing, Michael H. Farrell, Margaret Ann Murphy, Carl E. Schneider May 2002

How Underlying Patient Beliefs Can Affect Physician-Patient Communicaion About Prostate-Specific Antigen Testing, Michael H. Farrell, Margaret Ann Murphy, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Routine cancer screening with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is controversial, and practice guidelines recommend that men be counseled about its risks and benefits. OBJECTIVE. To evaluate the process of decision making as men react to and use information after PSA counseling. DESIGN. Written surveys and semistructured qualitative interviews before and after a neutral PSA counseling intervention. PARTICIPANTS. Men 40 to 65 years of age in southeastern Michigan were recruited until thematic saturation—that is, the point at which no new themes emerged in interviews (n = 40). RESULTS. In a paper survey, 37 of 40 participants (93%) said that they interpreted the …