Law Commons^™

Fidelity, Basic Liberties, And The Specter Of Lochner, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

I want to begin by frankly acknowledging that the group of scholars participating in the conference is more conservative than the crowd with whom I usually travel. Accordingly, at the outset, I want to say something ingratiating. Then, I will say something provocative. Here is the ingratiating part: economic liberties and property rights, like personal liberties, are fundamental rights secured by our Constitution. In fact, economic liberties and property rights are so fundamental in our constitutional scheme, and so sacred in our constitutional culture, that there is neither need nor good argument for aggressive judicial protection of them. Rather, such …

Bargaining In The Shadow Of Democracy, Susan P. Koniak, David Dana

Faculty Scholarship

The tobacco industry's gambit did not fail because Congress refused to trade its law-making authority for money. Rather, it failed, at least for the time being, because the parties could not agree on terms. Perhaps another industry (with a better public image than tobacco) will have better luck. Congress may have proved itself a difficult bargaining partner, but it has also demonstrated its willingness to negotiate. Before Congress goes any further down this path or other government entities decide they can bargain their law-making authority for money or other goods, we, as a nation, should consider the wisdom of such …

Waiting For Technology: Path Dependence As A Random Walk, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

The role of historical accident in technology selection has been difficult to measure. This paper develops a quantifiable model for a basic and widely applicable form of path dependence: the random walk. This real options model is applied to the transition in British cotton spinning at the beginning of the century.

In contrast to neoclassical models based on simple net present value calculations, when investment is irreversible, firms may choose to wait rather than to invest in a superior new technology. The magnitude and effect of this option to wait can be calculated. British spinning firms waited significantly before adopting …

Standards Of Care And Standard Form Contracts: Distinguishing Patient Rights And Consumer Rights In Managed Care, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

There is hardly a legislature in the country that is not currently debating the issue of patient rights in managed care. Not surprisingly, legislators, as well as reporters covering the debate, have called upon George J. Annas, Edward R. Utley Professor of Health Law and Chair of the Health Law Department at Boston University, for information and advice. Professor Annas has earned the title of "father of patient rights" for his decades of research, writing, and advocacy on behalf of individuals who need health care and deserve justice.

Today, however, one might ask whether patient rights are compatible with managed …

When Different Means The Same: Applying A Different Standard Of Proof To White Plaintiffs Under The Mcdonnell Douglas Prima Facie Case Test, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

The idea that Whites, in particular white males, are the new victims of discrimination is steadily gaining acceptance among white Americans. While only 16 percent of white individuals claim to know someone who has been the victim of reverse discrimination, more than 70 percent of Whites are convinced that reverse discrimination is a rampant problem. Additionally, although reverse discrimination cases generally constitute a small percentage of filed discrimination cases, usually about 1 to 3 percent, that number is beginning to grow. In particular, the percentage of reverse discrimination claims brought by federal workers, the very workers for whom affirmative action …

Scheherezade Meets Kafka: Two Dozen Sordid Tales Of Ideological Exclusion, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

More than two dozen immigrants' in the United States are facing deportation² or removal ³ proceedings based primarily on evidence that the Immigration and Naturalization Service ("INS") has refused to disclose because it is "classified.", ⁴ The use of secret evidence in deportation proceedings is the most powerful tool in an apparently systematic attack by U.S. governmental agencies on the speech, association and religious activities of a very defined group of people: Muslims, Arabs, and U.S. lawful permanent residents of Arab origin residing in this country. Evidence emerging from these cases indicates that the government is spending thousands of …

Genetic Privacy: There Ought To Be A Law, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

If you don't believe in privacy, you probably don't believe in genetic privacy. I believe in privacy, including the constitutional right of privacy. But my interest is not to persuade you to believe in privacy, but rather to expose the major issues involved in genetic privacy. What makes genetic information different from other sensitive medical information? Are we getting carried away? Are we just treating DNA-based information differently because it is new?

The Other Way Round, Susan P. Koniak

Faculty Scholarship

There have always been sexy subjects, and there always will be. Some topics are sexy for a time and then fade into obscurity or become quaint anachronisms; the now-omnipresent Y2K problem is sure to meet some such fate. But there are other topics, such as, the connection between identical twins, incest, extraterrestrial life, dinosaurs, the American Civil War and evil, which just stay in vogue. Topics guaranteed to draw a crowd.

I am just as likely to be in that crowd as the next person. Having spent part of this afternoon watching a History Channel presentation on the Lizzie Borden …

A Note On Trend-Spotting In The Case Law, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Robert Hillman tells us that he "will not try to resolve whether ... we should be enthusiastic or lament the recent judicial trend to apply rules that favor written contracts." This is a refreshingly non-dogmatic approach in a field where scholars are continually asserting reasons to celebrate or lament some new judicial trend. Moreover, Professor Hillman, again admirably in my view, is not even sure such a trend exists. If there is a trend in favor of written contracts, however, he believes that it has resulted because (1) "judicial decisions applying private law reflect changes in public opinion," and …

Delegation And The Constitution, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

In 1690, John Locke wrote that legislators “can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws and place it in other hands.” A century later, in 1789, the federal Constitution provided that “all legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” A little more than a hundred years later, in 1892, the Supreme Court declared in Field v. Clark: “That Congress cannot delegate legislative power to the President is a principle universally recognized as vital to the integrity and maintenance of the system of government ordained by the Constitution.”

In 1989, nearly …

Open Texture And The Possibility Of Legal Interpretation, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

This essay concerns the possibility of interpreting law. It is always possible to interpret law in the weak sense, which assigns meaning it is not assumed the law previously possessed. My concern here is interpretation in the strong sense, which, if successful, reveals meaning that lies hidden in the law. Theories of legal interpretation have recently received much theoretical attention. The received theory of law's open texture suggests that this interest is misplaced.

Comments On Rooker-Feldman Or Let State Law Be Our Guide, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

I feel privileged to have been asked to be a commentator on the three principal papers in this symposium. These are three excellent papers, and although there has been some valuable commentary on the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, there will be no need to go beyond these papers to gain a full appreciation of the doctrine, its applications, and its problems, which run as deep as the problems of any doctrine.

The Liberal Future Of Relational Feminism: Robin West's Caring For Justice, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Robin West is one of the most prolific1 and creative members of the legal academy. Her distinctive voice, as expressed in several books and numerous scholarly articles, informs and shapes debates within such diverse areas as constitutional theory (West 1990b; West 1994), feminist jurisprudence (West 1987; West 1988), and law and literature (West 1993). Indeed, some of her early articles concerning feminist jurisprudence (West 1987, West 1988) are now "classics" in a relatively new field of inquiry and appear in virtually every anthology or textbook in the field (Bartlett and Kennedy 1991, 201; Becker, Bowman, and Torrey 1994, 90; Fineman …

The Verdict On Roberts V. Texaco, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

When I first heard that Bari-Ellen Roberts had written a book about the race discrimination lawsuit against Texaco, I was ecstatic. I was eager to read about the legal strategies that had resulted in the highest settlement award ever given in a class action race discrimination lawsuit. After reading the first few pages of the book, however, I became somewhat disappointed. The first few chapters made it clear that Roberts's book was not about the actual details of the class action lawsuit against Texaco but about Roberts's personal experiences at home, in school, and in the corporate world. As I …

Religion And The Public Defender, Sadiq Reza

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay will argue that the public defender, or any other attorney appointed by the court to defend adults or juveniles charged with criminal offenses, should not undertake, or fail to undertake, any action to the legal detriment of a client on the basis of a conflict the attorney perceives between religious and professional imperatives, except in the rare case of imminent death or serious bodily harm to another. This argument rests on the following four premises: (1) the public defender occupies a unique position in our legal system, and options that may be available to lawyers who serve private …

Municipal Responsibility For Constitutional Torts, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The fundamental principle in the law of municipal liability under § 1983 is that municipalities may be held liable only for their own conduct, not for the conduct of municipal employees. Stated somewhat differently, municipalities may not be held vicariously liable for the conduct of municipal employees but rather can be held liable only when municipal policy is the moving force behind the violation. While this principle is simple to state, it has proven difficult to apply.

Draft Of Ralph Sharp Brown, Intellectual Property And The Public Interest - 1999, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Ralph Sharp Brown crossed out the "Junior" that followed his name after his father died. In explanation of the hand-altered stationery, he said (if my recollection holds), "I'm the only one left now." Now, after Ralph's death, there may remain no Ralph Sharp Browns. But there are many law teachers who continue to wage the campaign that Ralph made his life work: to save an interdependent society from unnecessary and stagnating restraints on liberty. In the intellectual property area, Ralph sought to teach us that it can be both right and necessary to give individuals the liberty to "reap without …

New Thoughts And Excerpt From On Commodifying Intangibles - 1999, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Here is a ten-page excerpt from! a published piece, followed by some more recent and more random thoughts. Community is not civility. That is, I imagine my ideal community as one where people aren't always sweet to each other; I imagine a community where truth is more important than hurt feelings, and fun is more important than money. I imagine a community of individualists: raucous, iconoclastic. Steve Shiffrin's ROMANCE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT and Ed Baker's work seems to have the kind of community in mind that I am interested in.

Procompetitive Theories Of Vertical Control, Andy C.M. Chen, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, we survey procompetitive theories of vertical arrangements, and examine how these theories could be organized to aid interpretation of antitrust law. Given the ever-expanding body of literature in this area, this is a daunting task which we cannot hope to complete in a single article. Nevertheless, we find a market-structure based survey a helpful approach. We have introduced various procompetitive theories in connection with the market structures in which they are likely to be applicable, though we do not claim they could only operate within a specific market context. Our approach should aid antitrust courts in setting …

Reconstructive Tasks For A Liberal Feminist Conception Of Privacy, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

If liberal conceptions of privacy survive appropriately vigorous feminist critique and re-emerge in beneficially reconstructed forms, then why haven't more feminists gotten the message and embraced, rather than spurned, such privacy? If liberal privacy survives feminist critique, does it face an even more serious threat if contemporary society has both diminishing expectations of and taste for privacy? Does the transformation of the very notion of "private life," due in part to the rise of such new technologies as the Internet and its seemingly endless possibilities for making oneself accessible to others and gaining access to others, suggest the need for …

Employer Liability For Harassment Under Title Vii: A Functional Rationale For Faragher And Ellerth, Michael C. Harper

Faculty Scholarship

In two decisions concerning sexual harassment, Faragher v. City of Boca Raton' and Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth,² the Supreme Court, on the last day of its 1997-1998 term finally articulated coherent vicarious liability rules critical for bounding the scope of the discrimination prohibitions in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.³ The Court did so by explaining the meaning of the inclusion of "any agent" in Title VII's definition of "employer.'" The meaning of "agent" in this definition is critical for establishing employer liability because almost all Title VII-protected employees work for corporations and other …

Book Preface, Hendrik Hartog, Thomas A. Green

Manuscript of Women, Church, and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

At her death in December 1997, Betsy Clark had been working for more than a dozen years on a study tentatively entitled "Women, Church and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America." Between 1987 and 1995, several of the planned chapters had appeared in law reviews and in history journals. Another chapter had been written and revised before and during the first stages of her illness. Two chapters can be found in preliminary form in her 1989 Princeton dissertation and had been presented to a colloquium at Harvard Law School. But other chapters planned for the …

Outline Of Epstein's Possession As The Root Of Title, And Other Matters - 1999, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

While it may be premature to expect a full working out of detail, it is surely time enough for some semblance of a unified theory of intellectual property law to have emerged. That it has not is due to some extent to the very evil which the existence of such a theory (or the beginnings of one) would prevent, namely, the errors that opinions are heir to. Recognizing common themes would help to isolate deviations, and thus help to clarify their nature; whether in a given context a deviation is justified could then be discussed on its own merits, wihout …

Chapter 2 - Anticlericalism And Antistatism, Elizabeth B. Clark

Manuscript of Women, Church, and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

Note: This is the first draft of the second chapter of a manuscript which through the lens of abolitionism and women's rights, traces the transformation of the ideology of individual rights over the course of the nineteenth century as it expanded to encompass, not just rights in the civil sphere, but rights of the person in private life. Part I of this paper examines nineteenth-century intellectual movements that located moral authority in the individual; Part II outlines the attack on authority within liberal Protestantism; Part III traces the extension of that critique to the state; and Part IV discusses the …

Notes On Trademark Monopolies, Wendy J. Gordon, Glynn S. Lunney Jr.

Scholarship Chronologically

Since 1742, when Lord Hardwicke seemingly equated trademark protection with monopoly in one of the first trademark cases, until the mid- 1950s, concerns that trademarks represented a form of illegitimate monopoly effectively constrained the growth of trademark protection. In the twentieth century, Edward Chamberlain became the leading proponent of the trademark as monopoly view with the publication of his work, The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, in 1933. In his work, Chamberlain argued that a trademark enabled its owner to differentiate her products and then to exclude others from using the differentiating feature. By doing so, trademark protection can effectively …

Burden Of Proof: Judging Science And Protecting Public Health In (And Out Of) The Courtroom, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The breast implant cases alleging systemic disease would in all likelihood have been lost had recipients been properly warned of potential dangers by the manufacturer or their surgeons.

Duty And Discretion In International Arbitration, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

International arbitration implicates complex relationships between the law of the place of arbitration and the law of the country where the parties' assets are located. The interaction of these legal orders has been highlighted by cases recognizing foreign awards notwithstanding their vacatur at the arbitral situs. The author examines the extent to which enforcement of vacated awards comports with the parties' expectations and arbitration's treaty framework. This Article suggests that the United States enact a statute clarifying the role and scope of federal judicial supervision of international commercial arbitration.

Fair Division, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

In this article I introduce legal scholars to concepts of fairness developed by microeconomic theorists. My starting point is a review of the books: Cooperative Microeconomics: A Game-Theoretic Introduction, by Herve Moulin, and Equity: In Theory and Practice, by H. Peyton Young. The books explain how to use cooperative game theory to study the fair allocation of benefits and costs. I illustrate the use of cooperative game theory by applying it to various problems of fair division in the law. I believe formal analysis of fair division is valuable because it allows scholars to connect their intuitive sense of fairness …

Original Intent And Legal Interpretation, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

This paper offers a close analysis of intentionalism -- the idea that the meaning or proper application of written law is determined by certain historical facts about the mental states of those who made the law, at the time they did so. Unrestricted intentionalism faces deep-seated problems: it offers no guidance for resolving its own ambiguities, it almost certainly generates contradictions, and it almost certainly implies that some meaningful laws lack meaning or proper application. On purely theoretical grounds, therefore, the unrestricted theory is almost certainly untenable. I suggest further that there's little prospect of refining intentionalism so that it …

The Prosecutor's Ethical Duty To Seek Exculpatory Evidence In Police Hands: Lessons From England, Stanley Z. Fisher

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court in Kyles v. Whitley affirmed the prosecutor's duty under Brady v. Maryland to discloseexculpatory evidence to the defense, even if the police have not revealed the evidence to the prosecutor. According to the Court, prosecutors are responsible for ensuring that police communicate relevant evidenceto her office. How should prosecutors implement that responsibility? Both England and the United States require prosecutors to disclose exculpatory evidence known to the police, but they take radically different approaches to implementing the prosecutor's duty. The English have legislated a comprehensive regulatory framework for police record keeping and revelation of case information to …