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Articles 1 - 30 of 41
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Blockbuster Punitive Damages Awards, W. Kip Viscusi
The Blockbuster Punitive Damages Awards, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This paper provides an analysis of 64 punitive damages awards of at least $100 million. Based on an inventory of these cases, there is evidence that these blockbuster awards are highly concentrated geographically, as two states account for 27 of the 64 awards. The awards also have been rising substantially over time, with the majority of these blockbuster awards taking place since 1999. An assessment of the current status of the blockbuster punitive damages awards indicates that most of these awards have been appealed, but the reversal of these punitive damages awards is the exception rather than the rule. Many …
What's Law Got To Do With It?, Suzanna Sherry
What's Law Got To Do With It?, Suzanna Sherry
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The authors of this fascinating study modestly disclaim its significance, yet suggest that the results prove their model a success. As a legal expert, I have a rather different perspective on the results. I look at the numbers holistically, not statistically. And what I see tells a different story--if it tells any story at all.
Endangered Species Act Innovations In The Post-Babbittonian Era--Are There Any?, J.B. Ruhl
Endangered Species Act Innovations In The Post-Babbittonian Era--Are There Any?, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
One of the mysteries of environmental policy in the Bush Administration will be how and why it squandered an opportunity to continue market-based administrative reforms of the Endangered Species Act begun, ironically, in the Clinton Administration under the direction of then Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt. This article traces the momentum built for reform in the Babbittonian era and examines what has not happened since then.
Law, Evolution, And The Brain: Applications And Open Questions, Owen D. Jones
Law, Evolution, And The Brain: Applications And Open Questions, Owen D. Jones
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This essay discusses several issues at the intersection of law and brain science. If focuses principally on ways in which an improved understanding of how evolutionary processes affect brain function and human behavior may improve law's ability to regulate behavior. It explores sample uses of such "evolutionary analysis in law" and also raises questions about how that analysis might be improved in the future. Among the discussed uses are: 1) clarifying cost-benefit analyses; 2) providing theoretical foundation and potential predictive power; 3) assessing comparative effectiveness of legal strategies; and 4) revealing deep patterns in legal architecture. Throughout, the essay emphasizes …
Apology And Thick Trust: What Spouse Abusers And Negligent Doctors Might Have In Common, Erin O'Connor
Apology And Thick Trust: What Spouse Abusers And Negligent Doctors Might Have In Common, Erin O'Connor
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
As apology advocates have previously emphasized, much of the civil litigation that clogs court dockets in America today could be avoided with a simple heartfelt apology. Although sometimes difficult to offer, these expressions of remorse are profoundly powerful and valuable for humans as social animals. Nevertheless, apologies can be problematic. This Article used evolutionary theory as a tool to explore the costs of apology in two areas-spouse abuse and medical malpractice-to suggest that excessive victim forgiveness can, in some contexts, cast doubt on the effectiveness of a purely private litigation system for creating appropriate behavioral incentives. It also explored ways …
Beyond Blakely, Nancy J. King, Susan Riva Klein
Beyond Blakely, Nancy J. King, Susan Riva Klein
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Federal criminal sentencing in the wake of Blakely v. Washington is, to put it charitably, a mess. In holding that Blakely's sentence under the Washington State Sentencing Guidelines was imposed in a manner inconsistent with the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, the decision threatens the operation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and the presumptive sentencing systems in fourteen states. In Parts I and II of this article, we address how Blakely has affected the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, and how assistant U.S. attorneys, federal public defenders, and district and appellate court judges might proceed in a post-Blakely world. In …
Induced Litigation, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George
Induced Litigation, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
If "justice delayed" is "justice denied,"justice is often denied in American courts. Delay in the courts is a "ceaseless and unremitting problem of modem civil justice" that "has an irreparable effect on both plaintiffs and defendants." To combat this seemingly intractable problem, judges and court administrators routinely clamor for additional judicial resources to enable them to manage their dockets more "effectively and efficiently." By building new courthouses and adding new judgeships, a court should be able to manage its caseload more efficiently. Trial judges should be able to hold motion hearings, host settlement conferences, and conduct trials in a timely …
The New Look Of Shareholder Litigation: Acquisition-Oriented Class Actions, Randall Thomas, Robert B. Thompson
The New Look Of Shareholder Litigation: Acquisition-Oriented Class Actions, Randall Thomas, Robert B. Thompson
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Shareholder litigation is the most frequently maligned legal check on managerial misconduct within corporations. Derivative lawsuits and federal securities class actions are portrayed as slackers in debates over how best to control the managerial agency costs created by the separation of ownership and control in the modern corporation. In each instance, early hopes these suits would effectively monitor managerial misconduct have been replaced with concerns about the size of the litigation agency costs of such representative litigation, which can arise when a self-selected plaintiff's attorney and her client that are appointed to pursue the claims of an entire class of …
The Divergence Of Constitutional And Statutory Interpretation, Kevin M. Stack
The Divergence Of Constitutional And Statutory Interpretation, Kevin M. Stack
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
There is a peculiar point of agreement between prominent defenders of originalist and dynamic interpretive methods, that their preferred interpretive approach applies not just to statutes or to the Constitution, but to both. In this Article, I challenge this shared position - as represented by Justice Antonin Scalia's originalist textualism and Professor William Eskridge's dynamic interpretive theory. I argue that the democratic and rule-of-law values that these theories invoke in fact suggest that different interpretive approaches govern constitutional and statutory interpretation. I contend, first, that disjunctures between the democratic justification for originalism in constitutional and statutory interpretation reveal the distinct …
Is Atkins The Antithesis Or Apotheosis Of Anti-Discrimination Principles? Sorting Out The Groupwide Effects Of Exempting People With Mental Retardation From The Death Penalty, Christopher Slobogin
Is Atkins The Antithesis Or Apotheosis Of Anti-Discrimination Principles? Sorting Out The Groupwide Effects Of Exempting People With Mental Retardation From The Death Penalty, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In "Atkins v. Virginia", the U.S. Supreme Court held that people with mental retardation may not be executed. z Many advocates for people with disability cheered the decision, because it provides a group of disabled people with protection from the harshest punishment imposed by our society. But other disability advocates were dismayed by "Atkins", not because they are fans of the death penalty, but because they believe that declaring disabled people ineligible for a punishment that is accorded all others denigrates disabled people as something less than human. If people with disability are to be treated equally, these dissenters suggest, …
Teaching A Course On Regulation Of The Police (With A Special Focus On The Sixth Amendment), Christopher Slobogin
Teaching A Course On Regulation Of The Police (With A Special Focus On The Sixth Amendment), Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The organizers of this symposium gave us the choice of writing about effective assistance of counsel or about teaching criminal procedure. I've decided to do both. This article discusses teaching the criminal procedure course most often called "Police Practices," for which I write a textbook entitled Regulation of Police Investigation: Legal, Historical, Empirical and Comparative Materials.' Borrowing heavily from the Teacher's Manual for that book, the first part of this article describes my general philosophy for teaching the course. The rest of the article illustrates this philosophy by describing how I teach students about the application of the Sixth Amendment …
Explaining The International Ceo Pay Gap: Board Capture Or Market Driven?, Randall Thomas
Explaining The International Ceo Pay Gap: Board Capture Or Market Driven?, Randall Thomas
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
If we look at convergence through the lens of the Risk Adjustment Theory, then international pay convergence will only occur if U.S. and foreign CEOs' firm-specific risk levels converge. Empirically, this is a difficult claim to test because of the paucity of data available on CEOs' individual wealth levels and stockholdings. The one component we can most easily observe, stock option usage, is presently quite different, with U.S. levels far exceeding those abroad. For the near future, this trend seems likely to continue, making it difficult to forecast convergence any time soon. The international executive pay gap is one of …
Reforming Corporate Governance: What History Can Teach Us, Margaret M. Blair
Reforming Corporate Governance: What History Can Teach Us, Margaret M. Blair
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In this Article, I turn to the history of corporate law for insight into the role that the corporate form plays in the organization of business enterprises. I then draw implications from this history for thinking about circumstances and situations in which corporate directors should have unimpeded control over business decisions, versus situations in which shareholders should have more input and control over business decisions. In Part I, I review historical evidence of the rapid growth in demand for the corporate form to organize businesses in the United States during the early nineteenth century. I compare the law that governed …
Judicial Review Of Agency Inaction: An Arbitrariness Approach, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Judicial Review Of Agency Inaction: An Arbitrariness Approach, Lisa Schultz Bressman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article contends that the current law governing judicial review of agency inaction, though consistent with the prevailing theory of agency legitimacy, is inconsistent with the founding principles of the administrative state. The Supreme Court's reluctance to allow judicial review of agency inaction reflects the popular view that agency decision-making should be subject foremost to the scrutiny of politically accountable officials. The difficulty is that even scholars who generally support this view of agency decision-making reject the Court's treatment of agency inaction. Yet these scholars have failed to appreciate the reason. The reason is that the founding principles of the …
Hard Cases Make Good Judges, Suzanna Sherry
Hard Cases Make Good Judges, Suzanna Sherry
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Not every constitutional case requires recourse to first principles, and indeed, most require more subtlety than such recourse can produce. The Rehnquist Court's free speech cases provide an example of the benefits of a more nuanced and pragmatist approach in the context of a mature jurisprudence. Rigid tiers of scrutiny are simply not flexible enough to accommodate both the legitimate goals of the legislature and the need to guard against illicit attempts at pure censorship of unpopular ideas. Some form of balancing-whether identified as such or simply evident in the application of intermediate scrutiny-is necessary to avoid either too much …
Prescribing The Right Dose Of Peer Review For The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Prescribing The Right Dose Of Peer Review For The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
....what I examine here is whether scientific-style peer review, depending on how it is dosed out, could be counterproductive for environmental law.The use of peer review as a component of regulatory procedure has not received much discrete attention in environmental law literature, but it is truly the sleeping dog of the "sound science" movement. Understanding this concept requires some background on science and administrative law. The "sound science" movement, as its name suggests, advocates that environmental law decisions be based principally on scientific information and conclusions that have been derived through the rigorous, unbiased practice of science. Science is generally …
Principles Of Influence In Negotiation, Chris Guthrie
Principles Of Influence In Negotiation, Chris Guthrie
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Negotiation is often viewed as an alternative to adjudication. In fact, however, negotiation and adjudication may be more alike than different because each is a process of persuasion. Both in the courtroom and at the bargaining table, the lawyer's primary task is to persuade someone other than her own client that her client's positions, interests, and perspectives should be honored. Despite this apparent similarity, persuasion operates differently in adjudication and negotiation because the lawyer seeks to influence a different party in each process. In adjudication, the lawyer seeks primarily to persuade the judge or jury hearing the case. The judge …
United States' Trade Policy And The Exportation Of United States' Culture, Beverly I. Moran
United States' Trade Policy And The Exportation Of United States' Culture, Beverly I. Moran
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The United States Trade Representative and the policies that he (or she) attempt to impose on our trading partners have the serious and perhaps unintended effect of destroying local culture particularly in the area of film production.
Felony Jury Sentencing In Practice: A Three-State Study, Nancy J. King, Rosevelt L. Noble
Felony Jury Sentencing In Practice: A Three-State Study, Nancy J. King, Rosevelt L. Noble
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Jury sentencing in non-capital cases is one of the least understood procedures in contemporary American criminal justice. This Article looks beyond idealized visions of jury sentencing to examine for the first time how felony jury sentencing actually operates in three different states - Kentucky, Virginia, and Arkansas. Dozens of interviews with prosecutors, defenders, and judges, as well as an analysis of state sentencing data, reveal that this neglected corner of state criminal justice provides a unique window through which one can observe some of the most fundamental forces operating in criminal adjudication today. It turns out that jury sentencing in …
The Impact Of The Impact Bias On Negotiation, Chris Guthrie, David Sally
The Impact Of The Impact Bias On Negotiation, Chris Guthrie, David Sally
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The theory of principled or problem-solving negotiation assumes that negotiators are able to identify their interests (or what they really want) in a negotiation. Recent research on effective forecasting calls this assumption into question. In this paper, which will appear in a forthcoming symposium issue of the Marquette Law Review devoted to the Emerging Interdisciplinary Canon of Negotiation, we explore the impact of this research on negotiation and lawyering.
Heuristics And Biases At The Bargaining Table, Chris Guthrie, Russell Korobkin
Heuristics And Biases At The Bargaining Table, Chris Guthrie, Russell Korobkin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In this essay, written for a symposium on The Emerging Interdisciplinary Cannon of Negotiation, we examine the role of heuristics in negotiation from two vantage points. First, we identify the way in which some common heuristics are likely to influence the negotiator's decision-making processes. Namely, we discuss anchoring and adjustment, availability, self-serving evaluations, framing, the status quo bias, contrast effects, and reactive devaluation. Understanding these common heuristics and how they can cause negotiators' judgments and choices to deviate from the normative model can enable negotiators to reorient their behavior so it more closely aligns with the normative model or, alternatively, …
Damages: Using A Case Study To Teach Law, Lawyering, And Dispute Resolution, Chris Guthrie
Damages: Using A Case Study To Teach Law, Lawyering, And Dispute Resolution, Chris Guthrie
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Seven law school faculty members and one practicing attorney recently developed and taught a wholly new kind of law course based on an already published case study, Damages: One Family's Legal Struggles in the World of Medicine, by Barry Werth, an investigative reporter who spent several years researching to write the book. Damages, an in-depth account of a medical malpractice case, presents the perspectives of the injured family, the defendant physician, the lawyers, and the three mediators. In this Symposium Introduction, the authors provide a summary of Werth's book, explain why they decided to create a course based on his …
Induced Litigation, Tracey E. George, Chris Guthrie
Induced Litigation, Tracey E. George, Chris Guthrie
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
If "justice delayed" is "justice denied,"justice is often denied in American courts. Delay in the courts is a "ceaseless and unremitting problem of modem civil justice" that "has an irreparable effect on both plaintiffs and defendants." To combat this seemingly intractable problem, judges and court administrators routinely clamor for additional judicial resources to enable them to manage their dockets more "effectively and efficiently." By building new courthouses and adding new judgeships, a court should be able to manage its caseload more efficiently. Trial judges should be able to hold motion hearings, host settlement conferences, and conduct trials in a timely …
The Public And Private Faces Of Derivative Lawsuits, Randall S. Thomas, Robert B. Thompson
The Public And Private Faces Of Derivative Lawsuits, Randall S. Thomas, Robert B. Thompson
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Derivative suits, long the principal vehicle for discussions about representative litigation in corporate and securities law, now share the stage with younger cousins - securities fraud class actions and state law fiduciary duty class actions. At the same time alternative governance vehicles - independent directors, auditors and other reforms that have followed in the wake of Enron - potentially diminish the relative place of litigation such as derivative suits. This article presents data from all derivative suits filed in Delaware over a two-year period. We find a relatively small number, certainly as compared to fiduciary class action and securities fraud …
The Myth Of What Is Inevitable Under Ecosystem Management: A Response To Pardy, J.B. Ruhl
The Myth Of What Is Inevitable Under Ecosystem Management: A Response To Pardy, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article, second in a five-part dialogue appearing in the Pace ELR, responds to Professor Bruce Pardy's initial evaluation of ecosystem management. I defend ecosystem management, arguing it is not directed at changing nature as Pardy suggests.
The Denominator Blindness Effect: Accident Frequencies And The Misjudgment Of Recklessness, W. Kip Viscusi
The Denominator Blindness Effect: Accident Frequencies And The Misjudgment Of Recklessness, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
People seriously misjudge accident risks because they routinely neglect relevant information about exposure. Such risk judgments affect both personal and public policy decisions, e.g., choice of a transport mode, but also play a vital role in legal determinations, such as assessments of recklessness. Experimental evidence for a sample of 422 jury-eligible adults indicates that people incorporate information on the number of accidents, which is the numerator of the risk frequency calculation. However, they appear blind to information on exposure, such as the scale of a firm's operations, which is the risk frequency denominator. Hence, the actual observed accident frequency of …
The President's Power To Detain "Enemy Combatants": Modern Lessons From Mr. Madison's Forgotten War, Ingrid Wuerth
The President's Power To Detain "Enemy Combatants": Modern Lessons From Mr. Madison's Forgotten War, Ingrid Wuerth
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article uses three sets of cases from the War of 1812 to illustrate three problems with how modern courts have approached the detention of "enemy combatants" in the United States. The War of 1812 cases show that modern courts have relied too heavily on deference-based reasoning, and have failed to adequately consider both international law and congressional authorization when upholding the detentions as constitutional. The War of 1812, termed "Mr. Madison's War" by contemporary opponents, was fought largely on our own territory against a powerful foreign enemy, making it an especially rich source for comparison to the modern war …
Public Ruses, Christopher Serkin, James E. Krier
Public Ruses, Christopher Serkin, James E. Krier
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The Fifth Amendment's public use requirement - a dead letter for decades - has recently been resurrected by the Michigan Supreme Court, overruling Poletown, and by the United States Supreme Court, granting certiorari in Kelo v. City of New London. At issue in these cases is the government's ability to condemn property from one private property owner and retransfer it to another, usually with a justification of more-or-less indirect economic benefits to the community. This Essay first argues the legitimacy of these government actions exists on a spectrum from true public uses, to public ruses that primarily benefit private interests …
Past, Present, And Future Trends Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Past, Present, And Future Trends Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
this article is designed to convince readers that the past, present, and future trends of the ESA are all the same. To provide context, Part I presents a brief overview of the structure of the statute and the kinds of decisions that must be made under it. Part II delves more deeply into each of the topics covered in the NR&E issues, eight in all, providing in each case the necessary legal background followed by a discussion of how the topic played out in the two NR&E issues. Finally, I conclude with a brief summary of my own perspectives on …
Taking Adaptive Management Seriously: A Case Study Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Taking Adaptive Management Seriously: A Case Study Of The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
If one compares the way in which the ESA was implemented in 1982 to the way it is today, the list of differences would far outweigh the similarities. Indeed, the ESA has been transformed so much through administrative reform toward the ecosystem management model, I have dared to suggest elsewhere that it has earned the seal of eco-pragmatism. In this Article, I explore the related question such an assertion necessarily begs-has the ESA also earned the seal of adaptive management?... Part I of the Article provides the legal and ecological background necessary to appreciate the need for ecosystem management, and …