Law Commons^™

Independent External Review Of Health Maintenance Organizations' Medical-Necessity Decisions, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

States may have more freedom to regulate the practices of managed-care organizations than many observers previously believed. In the absence of congressional action on the federal Bipartisan Patient Protection Act, the primary source of patient-protection legislation remains at the state level. Nevertheless, the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 19742restricts state regulation of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) that serve private employee group health plans. On June 20, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Rush Prudential HMO, Inc. v. Moran, upheld an Illinois state law that requires binding independent external review when an HMO disagrees with the …

The First 'Establishment' Clause: Article Vii And The Post-Constitutional Confederation, Gary S. Lawson, Guy I. Seidman

Faculty Scholarship

It is a great pleasure for academics to realize that fellow scholars sometimes read their work and take it seriously. We are genuinely flattered that Vasan Kesavan has chosen to comment on our article, When Did the Constitution Become Law?,1 and has done so with the intellectual rigor and generosity of spirit that characterizes his prodigious scholarship. 2 We are grateful to Mr. Kesavan for engaging us and grateful to the Notre Dame Law Review for accommodating the dialogue.

Brief Of Keith N. Hylton As Amicus Curiae In Support Of The Respondents In State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, Petitioner V. Curtis B. Campbell And Inez Preece Campbell, Respondents, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

Virtually all courts accept the view that high punitive damage awards are appropriate in instances where the defendant's harmful conduct is unlikely to lead to liability. See, e.g., BMW of N. Am. Inc. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559, 582 (1996). The Utah Supreme Court reinstated the $145 million punitive damage award in this case in part on the ground that "State Farm's actions, because of their clandestine nature, will be punished at most in one out of every 50,000 cases as a matter of statistical probability." Pet App. 30a. A central issue of this case is whether the Utah Supreme …

Market Failure And Intellectual Property: A Response To Professor Lunney, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Lunney's piece in this volume is interesting enough that I forgive him for misportraying my own work. In this short reply I will clarify my position, and then examine both the place of my market failure argument and the place of some of Professor Lunney's arguments within the future of Intellectual Property scholarship as a whole.

Marbury And Judicial Deference: The Shadow Of Whittington V. Polk And The Maryland Judiciary Battle, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

On the 200th anniversary of Whittington and approaching the 200th anniversary of Marbury, this article revisits these two decisions and challenges legal scholars' assumptions that they were such strong precedents for judicial review.⁵ When one takes into account the broader contexts, both decisions were in fact judicial capitulations to aggressive legislatures and executives. The Maryland General Court asserted its judicial supremacy only in dicta, and the court failed to enforce judicial supremacy when it was legally justified. This article picks apart the court's reasoning step by step, using Whittington to illuminate Marbury and Marbury to illuminate Whittington. …

Convictions Of Innocent Persons In Massachusetts: An Overview, Stanley Z. Fisher

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars documenting the incidence and causes of wrongful convictions in the United States have focused on cases arising all across the country. Because reform of the practices that lead to such errors of justice must largely take place on the state level, there is value in examining wrongful convictions in particular jurisdictions. This article attempts to identify and briefly describe all known cases of conviction of innocent persons in Massachusetts from 1800 to the present time. Part I discusses the criteria for identifying "the innocent." For the purpose of gaining support for needed reforms in the law, the most persuasive …

Conservative Or Constitutionalist?, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The persistence of the question posed by the editors of this journal demonstrates that legal conservatives have an identity crisis. In large measure, that crisis is an artifact of the ambiguity in the term "legal conservative." I use the term roughly to mean someone who believes in a variant of original meaning for interpreting constitutions and statutes' and who views the common law as a device for securing social coordination within a spontaneous order-all overlaid with a strong respect for the Anglo-American, Rule of Law tradition. As definitions go, this is pretty imprecise. There is no single meaning for original …

An Asymmetric Information Model Of Litigation, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This paper presents a cradle-to-grave model of tort liability, incorporating the decision to comply with the due-care standard, the decision to file suit, and the decision to settle. I use the model primarily to examine settlement rates, plaintiff win rates, and compliance with the due-care standard. The key results of the model are as follows: (1) litigation to judgment occurs only when some but not all actors comply with the due-care standard, and (2) if defendants have the information advantage at trial, plaintiff win rates generally will be less than 50 percent. I apply the model and its simulation results …

Administrative-Law-Like Obligations On Private[Ized] Entities, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

Privatization is often promoted as a cure for many of the problems of government. In this Article, Professor Beermann argues that the effect of privatization is likely to be muted by the fact that several related phenomena have, in recent years, reduced the differences between government and the private sector, especially when privatization is involved. First, private entities are often compelled to make public or provide to government a great deal of information about themselves, much as the Freedom of Information Act and related statutes require transparency in government. Second, discovery in litigation subjects a great deal of private information …

The Aftermath Of September 11, 2001: The Targeting Of Arabs And Muslims In America, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

THE DEMONIZING OF ARABS AND Muslims in America began well before the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001. It can be traced to deliberate mythmaking by film and media,² stereotyping as part of conscious strategy of 'experts' and polemicists on the Middle East,³ the selling of a foreign policy agenda by US government officials and groups seeking to affect that agenda,⁴ and a public susceptible to images identifying the unwelcome 'other* in its midst.⁵ Bearing the brunt of these factors are Arab and Muslim non-citizens in this country. A series of government laws and policies since …

Privacy And The Post-September 11 Immigration Detainees: The Wrong Way To A Right (And Other Wrongs), Sadiq Reza

Faculty Scholarship

In forthcoming work, I argue that this common-law privacy right should indeed attach to individuals arrested for or suspected of crime.9 I also argue that support for the right exists in a variety of judicial, statutory, and other sources, and that legislation to formally protect the right is warranted and constitutional. The reasoning is simple: being publicly named in connection with criminal allegations is stigmatizing, and the resultant personal harm-social, professional, emotional, other-lasts, and is difficult to justify when it is visited upon someone who is acquitted of the charges or against whom the charges are dismissed. Equally troubling is …

Notes On Dissemination: The Prop/Tort Distinction - 2002, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

Most of the proviso-based reasons for restricting property rights come into play after dissemination.[1] Is there any other way in which dissemination matters? Yes; the point of dissemination demarks a crucial shift in the Kind of legal protection that must be given- and thus the Kind of institutional decisions that must be made- if the creator is to be protected.

The Lawyer As Citizen, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

The moral schizophrenia of the lawyer-person wrought by the American adversarial system's differentiation of professional morality from personal morality is at once alienating and anesthetizing. Alienating in that it separates a person from her/his actions taken in performing a professional role by attributing responsibility for these actions and their consequences to the role itself rather than to the individual. Anesthetizing in that it permits if not requires a professional to constrict the moral universe inhabited on the job, extruding moral sentiments that she/he otherwise might feel, numbing the moral sense of ordinary personal responsibility.

The Unhappy History Of Civil Rights Legislation, Fifty Years Later, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

Seldom, if ever, have the power and the purposes of legislation been rendered so impotent.... All that is left today are afew scattered remnants of a once grandiose scheme to nationalize the fundamental rights of the individual.

These words were written fifty years ago by Eugene Gressman, now William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus, University of North Carolina School of Law, as a description of what the courts, primarily the Supreme Court of the United States, had done with the civil rights legislation passed by Congress in the wake of the Civil War. Professor Gressman's article, The Unhappy History of …

The Law Of Cross-Border Securitization: Lex Juris, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the process by which the law of crossborder securitization evolves and becomes uniform. In a former article entitled Cross-Border Securitization: Without Law, but Not Lawless, I posited that "the laws governing cross-border securitization are developed first by decentralized lawmaking 'markets," and then absorbed by centralized lawmaking of communities, large intermediaries, and corporations."¹ I suggested that a cyclical process is involved. New forms of cross-border securitization and new legal issues emerge while old forms and settled issues solidify into rules. This article continues the inquiry. The first part of the article also defines the meaning of a …

Welfare Implications Of Costly Litigation Under Strict Liability, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines a model of strict liability with costly litigation and presents conditions under which (1) potential injurers take optimal precautions, (2) increasing the cost of litigation enhances precaution and social welfare, (3) the optimal level of liability exceeds the compensatory level, and (4) increasing the rate of settlement enhances social welfare. The results have implications for controversies surrounding fee shifting, optimal damage awards (e.g., punitive damages), and the social desirability of settlement. The most striking implication is that fee shifting in favor of prevailing plaintiffs is socially desirable in low-transaction-cost settings.

When Should We Prefer Tort Law To Environmental Regulation?, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

There are two broad models of regulation: statutory schemes carried out by administrative agencies with the help of public enforcement agents, and highly discretionary common law rules developed over time through litigation. Environmental regulation is dominated by the first model, with relatively little of it done through litigation of tort claims. The reason may be largely historical: tort law has always been viewed as local in design and impact, while environmental law has always had a global aim. But it need not be this way. More than anything, tort law has been flexible, and thus capable of responding to new …

Ruminations On Tenure, Ronald E. Wheeler

Faculty Scholarship

As a newer law librarian having just completed by first year in a non-tenure track position, I often find myself wondering what my professional life would be like if my position were tenure track. After some reflection and discussion with peers, I've formulated the following thoughts on the subject of tenure for academic law librarians.

Are Agreements To Keep Secret Information In Discovery Legal, Illegal Or Something In Between?, Susan P. Koniak

Faculty Scholarship

For at least eight years before the public and government authorities learned of the apparently dangerous combination of Ford Explorer sport utility vehicles ("SUVs") and their Bridgestone/Firestone brand of tires, Firestone had been settling lawsuits involving injuries and deaths caused by their tires failing on Ford SUVs. These settlements included terms requiring the plaintiffs and their lawyers to keep quiet about the settlements and about information learned through discovery, including information that might have alerted the public or the government to just how unsafe the Explorer/Firestone combination actually was. In some cases, these secrecy provisions were reinforced by court protective …

Infringement Once Removed: The Perils Of Hyperlinking To Infringing Content, Stacey Dogan

Faculty Scholarship

This Article contends that the basic premise of Sony---that context and effect must play a role in evaluating allegations of secondary liability for copyright infringement-has application beyond the isolated case of equipment manufacture. More specifically, I propose a modified Sony framework for evaluating secondary liability for linking to infringing content. While this approach repudiates the strict view of secondary liability in favor of a more nuanced analysis, it stops short of advocating wholesale immunity for linkers. To the contrary, I contend that certain links, like certain acts of direct infringement, threaten copyright law's incentives with few compensating benefits to the …

Hold-Up And Patent Licensing Of Cumulative Innovations With Private Information, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

When innovation is cumulative, early patentees hold claims against later innovators. Then potential hold-up may cause prospective second stage innovators to forego investing in R&D. It is sometimes argued that ex ante licensing (before R&D) avoids hold-up. This paper explores ex ante licensing when information about development cost is private. In this case, contracts may not be written ex ante. Moreover, the socially optimal division of profit occurs with weak patents and ex post licensing. Empirical evidence on licensing conforms to a model with private information. In some innovative industries, little ex ante licensing occurs, suggesting hold-up remains a problem.

Income Tax Treaty Arbitration, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

Notwithstanding similar fiscal objectives, countries that conclude income tax treaties often arrive at radically different results when treaty language is applied to a practical problem. The task of resolving disagreement on treaty interpretation falls either to national courts or to joint efforts by the tax administrations to work out differences on a voluntary basis. Neither alternative is satisfactory. Judicial proceedings lack political neutrality and yield inconsistent results. And the process for "mutual agreement" among competent fiscal authorities is fraught with delays and uncertainty.

Patent Settlement Agreements: Preliminary Views, Joseph F. Brodley, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

Settlements between S competitors in patent cases raise important and sensitive antitrust issues. Patent settlement agreements may create or maintain a monopoly in technology or innovation markets and may also effectuate a monopoly or cartel in related goods markets. Indeed, absent the patent rights, certain terms of patent settlement agreements may be per se antitrust violations. Further, anticompetitive patent settlements-unlike most antitrust conspiracies-are enforceable in court, providing the parties with an effective means of preventing the cheating that is the bane of cartels. Thus, the antitrust risk that a settlement agreement may operate as a disguised cartel has long been …

Excuse And Justification In The Law Of Fair Use: Commodification And Market Perspectives, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Over twenty years ago, the Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. reprinted my article, "Fair Use as Market Failure" (82 Columbia Law Review 1600 (1982), available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3577724. That 1982 piece suggested that an underlying pattern governs the protean forms of "fair use", and I employed the notion of market failure to reveal and explain how the pattern functioned. Since then, some misunderstandings of my argument have arisen.

I am pleased to publish in this, the Fiftieth Anniversary issue of the Journal of the Copyright Society, a clarification – and partial amendment – of my position. As …

Common Law And Statutory Restrictions On Access: Contract, Trespass, And The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

Is copyright law relevant to the terms of access to information? Certainly, few would seriously contend that breaking into a locked filing cabinet to obtain access to a manuscript is not sanctionable, even if the intruder had some purpose that copyright law would applaud with respect to the information contained in the manuscript itself. Many instinctively believe that one must pay the asking price and respect the terms that accompany a copyrighted work or face the consequences under some set of laws like copyrights or contracts. In short, society likely generally believes that market forces regulate the conditions of access …

Osad Moralny A Teoria Prawa (Moral Judgment And Legal Theory), David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

My theme is the role of moral judgment in legal theory. My thesis is that moral judgment provides an important constraint on various aspects of legal theory. I shall illustrate that thesis by discussing, first, the so-called "separation" of law and morals (Section I); secondly, legal interpretation (Section II); and thirdly, the "rule of law" ideal (Section III).

The Magic Lantern Revealed: A Report Of The Fbi's New Key Logging Trojan And Analysis Of Its Possible Treatment In A Dynamic Legal Landscape, Woodrow Hartzog

Faculty Scholarship

Magic Lantern presents several difficult legal questions that are left unanswered due to new or non-existent statutes and case law directly pertaining to the unique situation that Magic Lantern creates. ²⁵ The first concern is statutory. It is unclear what laws, if any, will apply when Magic Lantern is put into use.²⁶ The recent terrorist attacks in the United States have brought the need for information as a matter of national security to the forefront. Congress recently passed legislation (i.e. USA PATRIOT Act) ²⁷ that dramatically modifies current surveillance law, thus further complicating the untested waters of a …

The Managing Lawmaker In Cyberspace: A Power Model, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is about power - the ability to gain obedience whether by captivating followers, persuading skeptics or awarding and withdrawing economic benefits. The purpose of this Article is to analyze how the power of the Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers ("ICANN") was created, augmented, strengthened and reined in. Many controversies surround ICANN, including the very foundation of its existence - the need for a single "root" in the Internet naming infrastructure - its organizational form and accountability, and the utterances, policies and actions of its management.

The purpose of this Article is not to argue and prescribe but …

Regulation And Investors' Trust In The Securities Market, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

The subject of investor confidence in the securities markets has received wide attention recently as details of fraud and avarice continue to emerge. Investors' trust in the securities markets is important for the reasons discussed in Professor Stout's marvelous paper.¹ This Comment focuses on the relationship between investors' trust and government regulation of the markets. By regulation I mean congressional legislation and actions by federal agencies. I exclude the courts mainly because their lawmaking is not primarily policy-based, and my aim is to sound the alarm for legislative and regulatory policy-directed actions. Many an economist and academic have argued …

Lessons From The World Conference Against Racism, Peggy Maisel

Faculty Scholarship

It is difficult to get people to remember, let alone focus on the accomplishments and ongoing challenges that emerged during the United Nations sponsored World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (the WCAR) held just over a year ago in Durban, South Africa. The reason is simple: that conference ended on September 8, 2001, and what we remember about that period is now permanently obscured by what happened just three short days later. But the events of September 11 make it more imperative than ever that we address the evils of racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia. It …