Law Commons^™

Bayh-Dole Reform And The Progress Of Biomedicine, Arti K. Rai, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

Allowing universities to patent the results of government-sponsored research sometimes works against the public interest.

Se Battre Our Ses Droits Écritures, Litiges Et Discrimination Raciale En Louisiane (1888-1899), Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

Title in English: Fighting for public rights: writing, lawsuits and racial segregation in Louisiana (1888-1889).

This article explores the links between the fight against compulsory racial segregation and the day–to–day operation of the law in nineteenth century Louisiana. Using the figure of Louis A. Martinet, one of the organizers of the test case that yielded the U.S. Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson, the essay argues that Martinet’s role as notary reflects the central importance to the community of color of questions of public standing and written records. The article also identifies the concepts of "public rights" and "public liberties" …

The Reliability Of The Administrative Office Of The U.S. Courts Database: An Initial Empirical Analysis, Theodore Eisenberg, Margo Schlanger

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Researchers have long used federal court data assembled by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO) and the Federal Judicial Center (FJC). The data include information about every case filed in federal district court and every appeal filed in the twelve nonspecialized federal appellate courts. Much research using the AO data spans subject matter areas, and includes articles on appeals, caseloads and case-processing times, case outcomes, the relation between demographics and case outcomes, class actions, diversity jurisdiction, and litigation generally. Other research using the AO data covers particular subject matter areas, such as inmate cases, contract cases, corporate litigation, …

Inmate Litigation, Margo Schlanger

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In 1995, prison and jail inmates brought about 40,000 new lawsuits in federal court nearly a fifth of the federal civil docket. Court records evidence a success rate for inmate plaintiffs under fifteen percent. These statistics highlight two qualities long associated with the inmate docket: its volume and the low rate of plaintiffs' success. Then, in 1996, Congress enacted the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), which dramatically altered the litigation landscape, restricting inmates' access to federal court in a variety of ways. This Article examines inmate litigation before and after the PLRA. Looking first at the litigation process itself, it …

National Regulation Of Multinational Enterprises: An Essay On Comity, Extraterritoriality, And Harmonization, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

Despite the economic importance of multinational enterprises ("MNEs"), there is a surprising paucity of law governing foreign direct investment ("FDI"), especially in comparison with the abundance of law governing trade. There is no multilateral legal arrangement governing FDI that is similar to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ("GATT"), no organization similar to the World Trade Organization, and almost no courses in law schools on FDI law. The goal of this Article is to begin to remedy this state of affairs by proposing a conceptual model for analyzing the application of the national laws of home and host countries …

Thayerian Deference To Congress And Supreme Court Supermajority Rules: Lessons From The Past (Symposium: Congressional Power In The Shadow Of The Rehnquist Court: Strategies For The Future), Evan H. Caminker

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Over the past eight years, the Supreme Court has been unusually aggressive in its exercise ofjudicial review over federal statutes challenged on federalism grounds. Eleven times the Court has invalidated provisions in federal statutes after determining that Congress exceeded the scope of its limited regulatory authority. In ten of the eleven cases, the vote was 5-4 with the identical five-Justice conservative majority (Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas) controlling the decision.

Strangers And Brothers: A Homily On Transracial Adoption, Carl E. Schneider

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The common law speaks to us in parables. Ours is Drummond v. Fulton County Department of Family and Children's Services. Just before Christmas 1973, a boy named Timmy was born to a white mother and a black father. A month later, his mother was declared unfit, and the Department of Family and Children Services placed Timmy with white foster parents - Robert and Mildred Drummond. The Drummonds were "excellent" and "loving" parents, and Timmy grew into "an extremely bright, highly verbal, outgoing 15-month baby boy." Then the Drummonds asked to adopt Timmy. The Department's reviews of the Drummonds' devotion …

Weighing Poison Fruit, Yale Kamisar

Articles

In the simplest cases involving the exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, the items the defense is trying to suppress, such as drugs found during the search of a suspect's pocket, are direct, or primary, in their relationship to the police action. Thus, if the police have acted unlawfully, the evidence must be excluded from trial.

Many times, however, evidence is derivative, or secondary, in character. For example, an illegal search may turn up a key to an airport locker where the proceeds of a bank robbery are being kept. Or a coerced confession may reveal the place where a suspect …

Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. And The Counterrevolution In The Federal Securities Laws, Adam C. Pritchard

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The confirmation of Lewis F. Powell, Jr., to the Supreme Court coincided with a dramatic shift in the Court's approach to securities law. This Article documents Powell's influence in changing the Court's direction in securities law. Powell's influence was the product of his extensive experience with the securities laws as a corporate lawyer, which gave him much greater familiarity with that body of law than his fellow Justices had. That experience also made him skeptical of civil liability, particularly class and derivative actions. Powell's skepticism led him to interpret the securities law in a consistently narrow fashion to reduce liability …

Why We Need The Independent Sector: The Behavior, Law, And Ethics Of Not-For-Profit Hospitals, Jill R. Horwitz

Articles

Among the major forms of corporate ownership, the not-for-profit ownership form is distinct in its behavior, legal constraints, and moral obligations. A new empirical analysis of the American hospital industry, using eleven years of data for all urban general hospitals in the country, shows that corporate form accounts for large differences in the provision of specific medical services. Not-for-profit hospitals systematically provide both private and public goods that are in the public interest, and that other forms fail to provide. Two hypotheses are proposed to account for the findings, one legal and one moral. While no causal claims are made, …

Equal Protection And Disparate Impact: Round Three, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Prior inquiries into the relationship between equal protection and disparate impact have focused on whether equal protection entails a disparate impact standard and whether laws prohibiting disparate impacts can qualify as legislation enforcing equal rotection. In this Article, Professor Primus focuses on a third question: whether equal protection affirmatively forbids the use of statutory disparate impact standards. Like affirmative action, a statute restricting racially disparate impacts is a race-conscious mechanism designed to reallocate opportunities from some racial groups to others. Accordingly, the same individualist view of equal protection that has constrained the operation of affirmative action might also raise questions …

Constitutional Sunsetting?: Justice O'Connor's Closing Comments On Grutter, Vikram David Amar, Evan H. Caminker

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Most Supreme Court watchers were unsurprised that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's vote proved pivotal in resolving the University of Michigan affirmative action cases; indeed, Justice O'Connor has been in the majority in almost every case involving race over the past decade, and was in the majority in each and every one of the 5-4 decisions the Court handed down across a broad range of difficult issues last Term. Some smaller number of observers were unsurprised that Justice O'Connor decided (along with the four Justices who in the past have voted to allow latitude with regard to race-based affirmative action programs) …

Gifts, Gafts And Gefts: The Income Tax Definition And Treatment Of Private And Charitable 'Gifts' And A Principled Policy Justification For The Exclusion Of Gifts From Income, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn

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Gifts have been given special treatment by the income tax laws since the first post-16th Amendment tax statute was adopted in 1913. The determination of how the income tax law should treat gifts raises a number of issues. For example: should gifts be given special treatment? If so, what should qualify as a gift? Should gifts to a private party be taxable to the donee? Should gifts to a private party be deductible by the donor? Should the donee's basis in a gift of property be determined by reference to the basis that the donor had, and should any modifications …

Self-Regulation And Securities Markets, Adam C. Pritchard

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Enron, Arthur Andersen, Tyco, ImClone, WorldCom, Adelphia - as American investors reel from accounting scandals and self-dealing by corporate insiders, the question of trust in the securities markets has taken on a new urgency. Securities markets cannot operate without trust. Markets known for fraud, insider trading, and manipulation risk a downward spiral as investors depart in search of safer investments. Today, many investors are rethinking the wisdom of entrusting their financial futures to the stock market. Absent trust in the integrity of the securities markets, individuals will hoard their money under the proverbial mattress.

The Appearance Of Right And The Essence Of Wrong: Metaphor And Metonymy In Law, Jeanne L. Schroeder, David G. Carlson

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No abstract provided.

Jurisdictional Competition To Abolish The Rule Against Perpetuities: R.I.P. For The R.A.P, Stewart E. Sterk

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No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Conference On Fundamentalisms, Equalities, And The Challenge To Tolerance In A Post-9/11 Environment, Richard H. Weisberg

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No abstract provided.

A Progressive Consumption Tax For Individuals: An Alternative Hybrid Approach, Mitchell L. Engler

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Dissatisfaction with the existing income tax has increased in recent years. Practical problems with the income tax base create numerous loopholes, increasingly exploited by well-advised taxpayers. For the most part, these gaps are attributable to the income tax's "realization" requirement, under which taxpayers report gains and losses as "realized" through market transactions. A consumption tax appeals as a response to these significant current loopholes since "realization" loses its significance under a consumption-based tax. The consumption tax's appeal has been further enhanced by the recent and growing recognition of the narrow difference between income and consumption taxes, assuming away practical problems. …

What Did Punitive Damages Do? Why Misunderstanding The History Of Punitive Damages Matters Today, Anthony J. Sebok

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In 2001 the Supreme Court, in Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. suggested that, although modern punitive damages punish, in earlier times they almost exclusively compensated for noneconomic damages that were ignored by a less progressive legal system. This article demonstrates that the historical foundation upon which the Supreme Court bases its argument is groundless. In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries punitive damages served a number of functions, but none of them were to provide the noneconomic damages identified by the court. Instead, as the article shows, the sort of injuries for which punitive damages were once demanded …

On The Theory Class's Theories Of Asbestos Litigation: The Disconnect Between Scholarship And Reality, Lester Brickman

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No abstract provided.

Do World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Reports Affect The Obligations Of Non-Parties? -- Response To Mcnelis, Donald H. Regan

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In the June 2003 issue of this Journal, Natalie McNelis argued that when a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute is settled by a Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) report, even Members who are not parties to the dispute have an obligation to conform their behaviour to legal principles laid down in the report. 1 Although I am generally sympathetic to McNeis's conclusion-and although I think she does a great service by directing our attention to the question of how Members, as opposed to later tribunals, should respond to DSB reports-I think her argument cannot stand as she presents it. After explaining …

Further Thoughts On The Role Of Regulatory Purpose Under Article Iii Of The General Agreement On Tariffs And Trade: A Tribute To Bob Hudec, Donald H. Regan

Articles

My topic in this article is the role of regulatory purpose under Article III of the GATT, and I regard Bob [Hudec] as the patron saint of efforts to establish the relevance of purpose. His famous "Requiem for an 'Aims and Effects' Test" may have been called a requiem, but it was reluctant and sceptical. Bob thought dispute settlement tribunals ought to consider the regulator's purpose, and he thought they would do so, whatever they said. As decisions on Article III accumulate, we are in the process of learning that he was right on both counts.

How To Be A Moorean, Donald H. Regan

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G. E. Moore’s position in the moral philosophy canon is paradoxical. On the one hand, he is widely regarded as the most influential moral philosopher of the twentieth century. On the other hand, his most characteristic doctrines are now more often ridiculed than defended or even discussed seriously. I shall discuss briefly a number of Moorean topics—the nonnaturalness of “good,” the open question argument, the relation of the right and the good, whether fundamental value is intrinsic, and the role of beauty—hoping to explain how a philosophically informed person could actually be a Moorean even today.1

Why Theories Of Law Have Little Or Nothing To Do With Judicial Restraint, Philip E. Soper

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The question I explore here, stated in its broadest form, is this: What is the connection between theory and practice between academic claims about how judges should decide cases and the actual behavior of judges as revealed in the opinions they write? More particularly, do theories about the nature of law have any implications for the question whether a judge should adopt an "activist" or a "restrained" approach to deciding cases? As you might infer from my title, I defend here what I call "the skeptical thesis" in answer to both the general and particular questions. Judges pay little or …

Gender, Human Rights, And Peace Agreements, Christine M. Chinkin

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I would first like to thank the organizers for the very great honor of being asked to present the annual Schwartz Lecture in 2002. It is especially apposite to discuss issues of international peace agreements in Ohio, not far from Dayton which is famous as the location of the process that brought an end to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. However this lecture is going to examine issues that were not explored at Dayton, that is, some relationships between gender, peace agreements, and international human rights. In addition, because the function of peace agreements in today's world has become the broader …

Hegel’S Theory Of Measure, David G. Carlson

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The final segment in Hegel's analysis of "being" is measure - the unity of quality and quantity. At stake in these chapters is the difference between quantitative and qualitative change. A being or thing is indifferent to quantitative change, which comes from the outside. For instance, a legislature can increase the stringency of zoning regulations, and yet the legislation is still constitutional "zoning." But there comes a point at which quantitative change effects a qualitative change - zoning becomes an uncompensated "taking" of property. This paper analyzes how Hegel, in the "Science of Logic," derives measure from the categories of …

The Admissibility Of Expert Testimony About Cognitive Science Research On Eyewitness Identification, Edward Stein

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Eyewitness identifications are important to jurors, especially in criminal trials. Psychological research has shown, however, that eyewitness testimony is systematically fallible in ways that undermine the goals of the rules of evidence. This article assesses the arguments for and against admitting expert testimony concerning cognitive science research about eyewitness identification. The article concludes that experts should in many instances be allowed to testify about the problems with eyewitness identification testimony.

Can Lawyers Be Cured?: Eternal Recurrence And The Lacanian Death Drive, Jeanne L. Schroeder

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No abstract provided.

Nietzsche And The Nazis: The Impact Of National Socialism On The Philosophy Of Nietzsche, Charles M. Yablon

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No abstract provided.