Law Commons^™

Adapting Private Law For Climate Change Adaptation, Jim Rossi, J. B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The private law of torts, property, and contracts will and should play an important role in resolving disputes regarding how private individuals and entities respond to and manage the harms of climate change that cannot be avoided through mitigation (known in climate change policy dialogue as “adaptation”). While adaptation is commonly presented as a problem needing legislative solutions, this Article presents a novel and overdue case for private law to take climate adaptation seriously.

To date, the role of private law is a significant blind spot in scholarly discussions of climate adaptation. Litigation invoking common-law doctrines in climate adaption disputes …

Still In Exile? The Current Status Of The Contract Clause, James W. Ely

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Contract Clause is no longer the subject of much judicial solicitude or academic interest.' Since the 1930s the once potent Contract Clause has been largely relegated to the outer reaches of constitutional law.2 This, of course, was not always the case. On the contrary, throughout the nineteenth century the Contract Clause was one of the most litigated provisions of the Constitution. In 1896, Justice George Shiras astutely commented: "No provision of the constitution of the United States has received more frequent consideration by this court than that which provides that no state shall pass any law impairing the obligation …

College Football Coaches' Pay And Contracts: Are They Overpaid And Unduly Privileged?, Randall S. Thomas, R. Lawrence Van Horn

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

College football coaches' employment contracts and compensation garner public attention and scrutiny in much the same way as those of corporate CEOs. In both cases, the public perception is that they must be overpaid and pampered Economic theory claims that for coaches and CEOs to be overpaid, they must be receiving compensation in excess of the value they create for their organizations. However, both receive pay-for-performance compensation, which structurally aligns their compensation with value creation. This means we need to examine the underlying structure of the contract that gives rise to the observed compensation to determine whether they are appropriately …

An Empirical Analysis Of Noncompetition Clauses And Other Restrictive Postemployment Covenants, Randall Thomas

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Employment contracts for most employees are not publicly available, leaving researchers to speculate about whether they contain postemployment restrictions on employee mobility, and if so, what those provisions look like. Using a large sample of publicly available CEO employment contracts, we are able to examine these noncompetition covenants, including postemployment covenants not to compete ("CNCs" or "noncompetes'), nonsolicitation agreements ("NSAs"), and nondisclosure agreements ("NDAs'). What we found confirms some long-held assumptions about restrictive covenants but also uncovers some surprises.

We begin by discussing why employers use restrictive covenants and examining how the courts have treated them. We then analyze an …

Comparing Ceo Employment Contract Provisions: Differences Between Australia And The United States, Randall Thomas, Jennifer G. Hill, Ronald W. Masulis

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The results of our comparison of U.S. and Australian contracts offer some interesting contrasts with several earlier studies that compare U.S. and U.K. CEO compensation. In those prior studies, the authors conclude that U.S. CEOs' compensation is significantly higher than U.K. CEOs' compensation. What is interesting about our initial results is that U.S. CEOs clearly do not have higher base salaries in comparison to Australia. On the other hand, U.S. contracts are much more likely to include restricted stock and stock option features, which generally require payment after a CEO remains at the firm a fixed number of years, typically …

Outsourcing Modularity, And The Theory Of The Firm, Margaret M. Blair, Erin O'Hara O'Connor, Gregg Kirchhoefer

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Firms have increasingly moved productive activities from within to outside the firm through outsourcing arrangements. According to some estimates, the value of outsourcing contracts has been nearly 100 billion dollars per year since 2004. Firm outsourcing happens for a number of reasons, including to save labor costs, capture the benefits of regulatory arbitrage, and take advantage of economies of scale in the provision of firm needs. We review a number of outsourcing contracts for evidence that contract techniques are used to help modularize the relationship between the firm and its service provider. Consistent with what modularity theory might predict, some …

Rethinking Contract Practice And Law In Japan, John O. Haley

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article explores "the Japanese advantage" in the enforcement of ex ante contract commitments in comparison with the United States, arguing that ostensible convergence of Japanese and United States contract practice in on-going business relationships is based on very different assumptions and conditions. Writing in the early 1960s Takeyoshi KaWashima in Japan and Stewart Macaulay in the United States described prevailing views and practices related to business agreements. Their respective observations indicated a tendency in both countries to avoid formal, legally enforceable contacts. For over four decades scholars on both sides of the Pacific have tended view these observations as …

The New Wal-Mart Effect: The Role Of Private Contracting In Global Governance, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Analysis Of Ceo Employment Contracts: What Do Top Executives Bargain For?, Randall Thomas, Stewart J. Schwab

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this paper, we examine the key legal characteristics of 375 employment contracts between some of the largest 1500 public corporations and their Chief Executive Officers. We look at the actual language of these contracts, asking whether and in what ways CEO contracts differ from what are thought of as standard employment contract features for other workers. Our data provide some empirical answers to several common assertions or speculations about CEO contracts, and shed light on whether these contracts are negotiated solely to suit the preferences of CEOs or have provisions that insure that the employers' interests are also safeguarded. …

Traditional Knowledge & Intellectual Property: A Trips-Compatible Approach, Daniel J. Gervais

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Should intellectual property provide a means for strengthening the range of incentives that local communities need for conserving and developing genetic resources and traditional knowledge (TK)? If so, how and at what cost? To be able to suggest answers, a number of issues must be resolved. They are the focus of the Article. First, one must build, and then cross, a cultural bridge to explain current forms of intellectual property to holders of traditional knowledge, including definitional efforts to determine the nature and depth of the overlap(s). This achieves a dual objective: it allows intellectual property circles to understand and …