Law Commons^™

Dispute Resolution In China After Deng Xiaoping: "Mao And Mediation" Revisited, Stanley B. Lubman

Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies

This Article presents portions of a book tentatively entitled "Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China After Mao." The book explores the Western vantage point from which I have viewed institutions for dispute resolution, the imprint on them of the traditional and more recent Maoist past, the disorderly context of rapid economic and social change in which they must operate today, and the larger law reforms of which they are part. Against that background it examines the operation of extrajudicial mediation and the courts. The scope of this Article is more limited.

I have not speculated here about appropriate …

The Plenary Power Background Of Curtiss-Wright, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

In his article The Transformation of the Constitutional Regime of Foreign Relations, Professor Ted White argues that the early twentieth century saw a major shift in constitutional understandings and expectations regarding the distribution of authority in foreign affairs. According to White, until that era the foreign affairs power, like all other powers under the Constitution, were considered subject to a formalistic, essentialist world view in which powers were distributed by the text of the Constitution according to clear principles of federalism and separation of powers. Congress and the President could only exercise powers in this area that had been dedicated …

Teaching Reasoning, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

Reasoning skills of a certain sort are taught well in the traditional law school curriculum. No matter how good her previous education, the typical law student surely acquires an improved facility at testing propositions by considering hypothetical applications. Many students learn a lot about linguistic indeterminacy, unintended consequences, the allocation of decision-making responsibility, and how much turns on which questions are asked and how they are framed. It is a rare, indeed obtuse, person who completes a legal education still temperamentally inclined to refute unwelcome ideas when distinguishing them will do.

Where legal education falls short, I think, is with …

Legal Aid And Public Interest Law In China, Benjamin L. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

This article describes the evolution of legal aid and public interest law in China and examines its implications for the legal profession and the law in the context of four intertwined developments: first, China's efforts to establish a nationwide system of government-run legal aid centers; second, China's attempt to expand the availability and improve the quality of legal representation for indigent criminal defendants; third, China's bid to force the legal profession to serve poor clients via mandatory pro bono requirements for lawyers; fourth, the development of non-governmental legal aid centers and the expanding incentives for profit-oriented lawyers to take on …

Does Venture Capital Require An Active Stock Market?, Ronald J. Gilson, Bernard S. Black

Faculty Scholarship

The United States has both an active venture capital industry and well-developed stock markets. Japan and Germany have neither. We argue here that this is no accident – that venture capital can flourish especially – and perhaps only – if the venture capitalist can exit from a successful portfolio company through an initial public offering (IPO), which requires an active stock market. Understanding the link between the stock market and the venture capital market requires understanding the contractual arrangements between entrepreneurs and venture capital providers especially the importance of exit by venture capitalists and the opportunity, present only if IPO …

Issue Advocacy: Redrawing The Elections/Politics Line, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

In the closing weeks of the 1996 election, Montana's airwaves were flooded with the following television advertisement:

Who is Bill Yellowtail? He preaches family values, but he took a swing at his wife. Yellowtail's explanation? He 'only slapped her,' but her nose was broken. He talks law and order, but is himself a convicted criminal. And though he talks about protecting children, Yellowtail failed to make his own child support payments, then voted against child support enforcement. Call Bill Yellowtail and tell him we don't approve of his wrongful behavior. Call (406) 443-3620.

The anti-Yellowtail ad, financed by an organization …

Privatization And Corporate Governance: The Lessons From Securities Market Failure, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Should privatization be "fast" or "slow"? Should policymakers adopt a "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" approach that accepts the inevitability of some overreaching by controlling shareholders, but justifies this cost as necessary to realize and expedite the efficiency gains incident to privatization? Or should privatization proceed more cautiously because of the risks of market failure and political corruption that may result when control seekers are tempted to bribe and seduce the judicial and regulatory systems to achieve the private benefit of control? These tempting private benefits arise, of course, precisely to the extent that privatization preceded the creation of …

The Limits Of Discipline: Ownership And Hard Budget Constraints In The Transition Economies, Roman Frydman, Cheryl W. Gray, Marek P. Hessel, Andrzej Rapaczynski

Faculty Scholarship

This paper, based on a large sample of mid-sized manufacturing firms in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, argues that the imposition of financial discipline is not sufficient to remedy ownership and governance-related deficiencies of corporate performance. The study offers three main conclusions. First, we find that state enterprises represent a higher credit risk both because of their inferior economic performance and because of their lesser willingness or propensity to meet their payment obligations. Second, the brunt of the state firms' lower creditworthiness is borne by their state creditors, as state enterprises deflect the higher risk away from private creditors. …

In Defense Of The Incorporation Strategy, Jody S. Kraus, Steven D. Walt

Faculty Scholarship

Contract law must provide rules for interpreting the meaning of express terms and default rules for filling contractual gaps. Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code provides the same response to both demands: It incorporates the norms of commercial practice. This "incorporation strategy" has recently come under attack. Although the incorporation strategy for gap-filling seems to have survived criticism, the incorporation strategy for interpretation remains heavily criticized. Critics charge that the expected rate of interpretive error under an incorporationist interpretive regime is so excessive that almost any plain meaning regime would be preferable.

The attack on the incorporation strategy for …

Retaining Mandatory Securities Disclosure: Why Issuer Choice Is Not Investor Empowerment, Merritt B. Fox

Faculty Scholarship

This Article advances the reopened debate over mandatory disclosure in two ways. First, it demonstrates that the proponents of issuer choice have not effectively countered the arguments that have formed the basis of the prevailing consensus for retaining mandatory disclosure. While this consensus was formed when the alternative to mandatory disclosure was total abandonment of regulation, the proponents of issuer choice have not shown how the arguments that form the basis of this consensus have any less force when applied to the new alternative of issuer choice. Nor have the proponents offered persuasive, more general rebuttals to these arguments. Second, …

Introduction: Reconnecting Labor And Civil Rights Advocacy, Susan P. Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

Labor and civil rights movements in the United States share the aspiration of empowering workers to attain economic and social justice in the workplace. From their inception, both movements have articulated goals that link individual dignity and group empowerment, economic access and fair treatment, legal entitlements and political mobilization. They proceed on the premise that the workplace is a site where vital economic interests and possibilities for self-development come together. Put otherwise, both forms of advocacy strive for a regime that links these concerns to do justice to the workplace as a site for the expression of democratic citizenship.

Optimal Timing And Legal Decisionmaking: The Case Of The Liquidation Decision In Bankruptcy, Douglas G. Baird, Edward R. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

Until the firm is sold or a plan of reorganization is confirmed, Chapter 11 entrusts a judge with the decision of whether to keep a firm as a going concern or to shut it down. The judge revisits this liquidation decision multiple times. The key is to make the correct decision at the optimal time. This paper models this decision as the exercise of a real option and shows that it depends critically on particular types of information about the firm and its industry. Liquidations take place too soon if we merely compare the liquidation value of the assets with …

Three Limitations Of Deliberative Democracy: Identity Politics, Bad Faith, And Indeterminancy, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

In Democracy and Disagreement, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson elaborate a liberal political style designed to complement the substantive liberalism they and others have developed in recent years. The style they portray is deliberative, and its essence is the appeal to principle.

The Political Economy Of Recognition: Affirmative Action Discourse And Constitutional Equality In Germany And The U.S.A., Kendall Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

This paper undertakes a comparative exploration of affirmative action discourse in German and American constitutional equality law. The first task for such a project is to acknowledge an important threshold dilemma. The difficulty in question derives not so much from dissimilarities between the technical legal structures of German and American affirmative action policy. The problem stems rather from the different social grounds and groupings on which those legal structures have been erected. Because German "positive action"' applies only to women, gender and its cultural meanings have constituted the paradigmatic subject of the policy. The legal discussion of positive action has …

Ecology And The Jewish Spirit: Where Nature And The Sacred Meet, Michael Burger

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

It's a real shame, but all political and social movements, at some point, break up into factions. The factions debate their relative necessity, claim authority over areas of discourse and action, and generally vie for power. They stop coordinating and communicating with each other. There are occasional acts of sabotage. The competition of the market economy (including the grant-funded non-profit sector) and the expanse of human vanity demand this distinction. Everyone needs to find their niche. An ecologist understands this as well as an economist, an activist as well as a lobbyist, a rabbi as well as a lawyer.

Law And The Ideal Citizen, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

The theme identified for this lecture series is the subject of responsibility. I assume Washington and Lee has selected that topic out of a sense that it has not received sufficient attention, as compared, for example, to the subject of "rights." I select "rights" as the counter-example because we often hear of the two in tandem – "rights and responsibilities." As such, the concept of responsibility connotes a sense of obligation as to what is due from us to others and to the community. It is, in that sense, easier to be in favor of rights than it is of …

Application-Centered Internet Analysis, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

There is a now-standard debate about law and the Internet. One side asserts that the Internet is so new and different that it calls for new legal approaches, even its own sovereign law. The other side argues that, although it is a new technology, the Internet nonetheless presents familiar legal problems. It is a battle of analogies: One side refers to Cyberspace as a place, while the other essentially equates the Internet and the telephone.

In my view, these two positions are both wrong and right: wrong in their characterization of the Internet as a whole, yet potentially right about …

Context And Culpability In Adolescent Crime, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay merges the perspectives of context and decision-making to assess the role of contextual factors in the unfolding of violent events by adolescents. The framework for decision-making assumes that context is a dynamic rather than a static feature of the cognitive landscape. Decisions by adolescents to engage in crime or violence are shaped through interactions with features of their environments, are contingent on responses emanating from that context, and are filtered through the unique lens of adolescence. Rather than assuming discrete and independent components in a decision framework, this Essay assumes that decisions are the product of interactions across …

Copyright And Intermediate Users' Rights, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The impending "Digital Millennium" has amplified the assertion of users' rights in U.S. copyright law. Copyright has been reimagined as a "law of users' rights" whose acolytes caution copyright owners not to stand as piggish impediments to the progress of learning and culture in the Digital Age. Proponents advance a variety of arguments in support of a user rights construct of copyright law, from the historical to the philosophical to the pragmatic. I propose to address some of these. But first it is important to specify what I mean by "users' rights" in U.S. copyright law today.

User rights in …

Progressive Constitutionalism: Conceptions Of Interpretation And The Religion Clauses, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, I concentrate on the narrower, more typical topic of judicial interpretation. At least in regard to the religion clauses, this may be warranted because any progressive constitution would probably include something similar to the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, and these would be judicially enforceable to some degree.

The first part of this essay explores relations between progressive values and interpretive approaches. When I asked myself how a judge, committed to progressive values, would interpret the Federal Constitution, I was troubled by whether a progressive approach would be activist or restrained in relation to legislative authority. I …

Moral Icons: A Comment On Steven Lubet's Reconstructing Atticus Finch, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Atticus Finch's conduct would have been justified by the bar's conventional norms even if he had known Tom Robinson to be guilty. That fact, however, is not the source of the admiration for him that To Kill a Mockingbird has induced in so many readers. That admiration depends on the clear premise of the novel that Finch plausibly believes that Tom Robinson is innocent. Thus, the bar's invocation of Finch as a sympathetic illustration of its norms is misleading. The ethics of the novel are quite different from those of the bar.

A Government For Our Time? Business Improvement Districts And Urban Governance, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The emergence and rapid spread of business improvement districts ("BIDs") is one of the most important recent developments in American cities. BIDs have been controversial, with both supporters and proponents viewing the districts as part of a trend toward the privatization of the public sector. By examining the legal and political structures that determine BID formation, functions, finances and governance, this Article determines that BIDs are not private entities but are, instead, a distinctive hybrid of public and private elements. Moreover, although the particular fusion of public and private institutions, values and concerns embodied in the BID is unique, Professor …

Economic Development, Legality, And The Transplant Effect, Katharina Pistor, Daniel Berkowitz, Jean-Francois Richard

Faculty Scholarship

This paper analyzes the determinants of effective legal institutions (legality) and their impact on economic development today using data from 49 countries. We show that the way the law was initially transplanted and received is a more important determinant than the supply of law from a particular legal family (i.e. English, French, German, or Scandinavian). Countries that have developed legal orders internally, adapted the transplanted law to local conditions, and/or had a population that was already familiar with basic legal principles of the transplanted law have more effective legality than "transplant effect" countries that received foreign law without any similar …

Revaluing Restitution: From The Talmud To Postsocialism, Michael A. Heller, Christopher Serkin

Faculty Scholarship

Whatever happened to the study of restitution? Once a core private law subject along with property, torts, and contracts, restitution has receded from American legal scholarship. Few law professors teach the material, fewer still write in the area, and no one even agrees what the field comprises anymore. Hanoch threatens to reverse the tide and make restitution interesting again. The book takes commonplace words such as "value" and "gain" and shows how they embody a society's underlying normative principles. Variations across cultures in the law of unjust enrichment reflect differences in national understandings of sharing, property, and even personhood. As …

Reforming Labor Law For The New Century, Lance Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

The two articles that follow are the first published fruit of a conversation that was initiated in 1998 under the auspices of "Labor Law Reform for Developed Countries in the 21st Century," several years of conferences leading to the May 2000 Tokyo Conference of the International Industrial Relations Association. This project has had generous support from the Center for Global Partnership of the Japan Foundation and from the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law at Columbia Law School.

The participants have been labor law professors from Europe, Japan, and the United States. The group has focused its research and …

The Supreme Court, Sexual Citizenship And The Idea Of Progress, Kendall Thomas

Faculty Scholarship

Is American Progressive Constitutionalism dead ... yet? I propose to seek the beginnings of an answer to this question in the pages of a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court. I do feel obliged to say this, not because I am committed to a court-centered adjudicative conception of American constitutionalism; to the contrary. But rather, because the decision on which I want to focus seems to me to offer a rich resource for critical reflection on the idea of self-government whose connections to Progressive Constitutionalism give us our topic this afternoon.

Public Funding And Democratic Elections, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Our existing federal campaign finance system – the product of Watergate Era legislation and the Supreme Court's 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo – is in a state of disarray. The system is no longer capable of accomplishing the goals pursued by Congress and embraced by the Court a quarter-century ago: full disclosure of the sources of campaign money; limitations on large contributions by individuals; prohibitions on the use of corporate and union treasury funds; and voluntary, partial public funding, with spending limits, in the Presidential election. Indeed, the current law may actually have negative consequences, with unindexed contribution limits …

Impeachment As A Technique Of Parliamentary Control Over Foreign Affairs In A Presidential System, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

The central inquiry for this essay is the proper use of the impeachment tool in foreign relations contexts, including war powers. In Part I, the essay begins with a brief review of British impeachment practice (limited to war and foreign policy concerns) known to the Founding generation and reflected in certain fundamental texts of the Founding; this treatment does not betoken any originalist orientation on my part (au contraire) but will set the context for later developments. Part II then turns to the travails of President Andrew Johnson as seen through the eyes of Walter Bagehot, the author of …

Reforming Social Security: A Practical And Workable System Of Personal Retirement Accounts, Fred T. Goldberg, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

This paper details a method for implementing personal retirement accounts (PRAs) as a part of Social Security reform. The approach described here answers the following questions: how funds are collected and credited to each participants' retirement account; how money is invested; and how funds are distributed to retirees. It is designed to accommodate a variety of answers to a wide range of important policy questions; to minimize administrative costs and distribute those costs in a fair and reasonable way; to minimize the burden on employers, especially small employees who do not now maintain a qualified retirement plan; and to meet …

So Much For Savages: Navajo 1, Government 0 In Final Moments Of Play, Eben Moglen

Faculty Scholarship

Dame i gospodo, uvaˇzene kolege, poˇcastvovan sam vaˇsim pozivom da prisustvujem ovom znaˇcajnom skupu. Danas ´cu govoriti o ograniˇcenjina baziranim na ustavnim pravima regulacije naˇse komunikacije, od strane vlade, a u interesu signorsti. Ali na kraju, kao ˇsto ´cete i vi sami shvatiti nemo puno toga da se kaˇze, samo na osnovu toga ˇsto je na´cin komunikacije nov. Pre svega treba se reˇsiti pitanje jezika. After all, every act of linguistic communication occurs in a social context. And the single most important choice that we make when we communicate with one another is the choice of the language in which …