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Law School News: Three Rwu Law Graduates Nominated For State Judgeships 12-10-2018, Roger Williams University School Of Law

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Class Action Myopia, Maureen Carroll

Articles

Over the past two decades, courts and commentators have often treated the class action as though it were a monolith, limiting their analysis to the particular class form that joins together a large number of claims for monetary relief This Article argues that the myopic focus on the aggregated-damages class action has led to undertheorization of the other class-action subtypes, which serve far different purposes and have far different effects, and has allowed the ongoing backlash against the aggregated-damages class action to affect the other subtypes in an undifferentiated manner. The failure to confine this backlash to its intended target …

Reducing False Guilty Pleas And Wrongful Convictions Through Exoneree Compensation, Murat C. Mungan, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

A great concern with plea-bargains is that they may induce innocent individuals to plead guilty to crimes they have not committed. In this article, we identify schemes that reduce the number of innocent-pleas without affecting guilty individuals' plea-bargain incentives. Large compensations for exonerees reduce expected costs associated with wrongful determinations of guilt in trial and thereby reduce the number of innocent-pleas. Any distortions in guilty individuals' incentives to take plea bargains caused by these compensations can be off-set by a small increase in the discounts offered for pleading guilty. Although there are many statutory reform proposals for increasing exoneration compensations, …

Introductory Note To The International Court Of Justice: Ahmadou Sadio Diallo (Republic Of Guinea V. Democratic Republic Of The Congo) Compensation Owed By The Democratic Republic Of The Congo To The Republic Of Guinea, Chiara Giorgetti

Law Faculty Publications

On June 12, 2012, the International Court of Justice ("ICJ" or the "Court") ordered the Republic of the Congo ("DRC") to pay the Republic of Guinea ("Guinea") U.S. $95,000 in compensation for material and non-material injury to Guinea's national Ahmadou Sadio Diallo. The Judgment is notable for several reasons. First, the mere fact that the Court fixed an amount of compensation owned to Guinea is relevant, as this is only the second time in the history of the Court that such a measure was adopted. Second, in reaching its decision, the Court relied heavily on decisions of other international courts …

Quantification Of Harm In Private Antitrust Actions In The United States, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper discusses the theory and experience of United States courts concerning the quantification of harm in antitrust cases. This treatment pertains to both the social cost of antitrust violations, and to the private damage mechanisms that United States antitrust law has developed. It is submitted for the Roundtable on the Quantification of Harm to Competition by National Courts and Competition Agencies, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Feb., 2011.

In a typical year more than 90% of antitrust complaints filed in the United States are by private plaintiffs rather than the federal government. Further, when the individual states …

The Proper Tax Treatment Of The Transfer Of A Compensatory Partnership Interest, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

If a person receives property as payment for services, whether for past or future services, the receipt typically constitutes gross income to the recipient. If a person performs services for a partnership or agrees to perform future services, and if the person receives a partnership interest as compensation for the past or future services, one might expect that receipt to cause the new partner to recognize gross income in an amount equal to the fair market value of the partnership interest. After all, if a corporation compensated someone for services rendered or to be rendered by transferring the corporation's own …

The Growing Influence Of Tort And Property Law On Natural Resources Law: Case Studies Of Coal Bed Methane Development And Geologic Carbon Sequestration, Alexandra B. Klass

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

19 pages.

"Alexandra B. Klass, Associate Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School"

The State Of The Judiciary: A Corporate Perspective, Larry D. Thompson, Charles J. Cooper

Scholarly Works

The rule of law depends on highly talented, independent judges who conscientiously strive to ensure that the law is consistently applied in a principled and predictable manner. This Essay addresses two potential threats to judicial independence and the rule of law that we believe warrant special attention at this time. First, inadequate judicial salaries pose a threat to the quality and independence of the judiciary. Judges' real pay has declined substantially over the past generation, even as the compensation of other callings within the legal profession has risen dramatically. This growing disparity in pay has prompted an increasing number of …

Public Ruses, James E. Krier, Christopher Serkin

Articles

The public use requirement of eminent domain law may be working its way back into the United States Constitution. To be sure, the words "public use" appear in the document-and in many state constitutions as well, but the federal provision applies to the states in any event-as one of the Fifth Amendment's limitations on the government's inherent power to take private property against the will of its owners. (The other limitation is that "just compensation" must be paid, of which more later.) Any taking of private property, the text suggests, must be for public use. Those words, however, have amounted …

Should State Corporate Law Define Successor Liability - The Demise Of Cercla's Federal Common Law, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

During the 1980s and early 1990s, a series of decisions broadly interpreting the liability provisions of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCIA) appeared destined to transform corporate law practice. CERCIA does not directly address successor liability, but the statute's complex and contradictory legislative history arguably implies that Congress wanted federal courts to apply broad liability principles to achieve the statute's fundamental remedial goal of making polluters and their successors pay for cleaning up hazardous substances.

Notably, a number of courts rejected state corporate law principles that usually limit the liability of successor corporations and instead …

Uncoupling The Law Of Takings, Michael A. Heller, James E. Krier

Articles

The law of takings couples together matters that should be treated independently. The conventional view, shared by courts and commentators alike, has been that any takings case can be resolved in one of two ways: either there is a taking and compensation is due, or there is no taking and no compensation is due. These results are fine as long as one holding or the other serves the two central concerns of the Takings Clause - eficiency and justice. But a problem arises when the two purposes behind the law of takings come into cordhct, as they readily might. It …

What A Federal Natural Resource Management Agency Can Do To Avoid Takings, John D. Leshy

Regulatory Takings and Resources: What Are the Constitutional Limits? (Summer Conference, June 13-15)

6 pages.

Property Rights And Public Resources, Mark L. Pollot

Regulatory Takings and Resources: What Are the Constitutional Limits? (Summer Conference, June 13-15)

4 pages.

Regulatory Taking Of Public Water And Land Resource Development Rights After Lucas, Jerome C. Muys

Regulatory Takings and Resources: What Are the Constitutional Limits? (Summer Conference, June 13-15)

7 pages.

Making Uncle Sam Pay: A Review Of Equal Access To Justice Act Cases In The Sixth Circuit, 1983-1987, Martin Geer, Paul D. Reingold

Articles

Despite the recent admonition of the Supreme Court that a "request for attorneys' fees should not result in a second major litigation,"12 the courts have been frequently called on to interpret the often ambiguous language of the EAJA. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has not been spared this difficult chore. While the 1985 amendments have clarified some provisions of the Act and affected some major decisions in the Sixth Circuit, the recent changes have also left other previously settled areas in a state of flux. This article will review the Sixth Circuit's EAJA decisions from 1983-1987, …

Water Development, Wildlife And Recreation: Panel, Charles W. Howe

Water as a Public Resource: Emerging Rights and Obligations (Summer Conference, June 1-3)

32 pages.

Contains 5 pages of footnotes and tables and 2 pages of references.

Includes a paper: "Option Value: Empirical Evidence from a Case Study of Recreation and Water Quality" by Douglas A. Greenley, Richard G. Walsh and Robert A. Young. A final version of this paper was published in 96(4) The Quarterly Journal of Economics (1981): 657-673.

Taking Of Equitable Easements For Public Use, Edgar N. Durfee

Articles

The case of Flynn v. New York &c Railway Co., decided by the Court of Appeals of New York in April last, involves the right of an owner of land to which is appurtenant a so-called equitable easement, arising under a covenant restricting the use of other land, to compensation upon the taking of the servient land for a public use inconsistent with the restriction. A tract of land was laid out in accordance with a plan, and all, lots therein were sold and conveyed by deeds containing covenants, inter alia, that, "No building or structure for any business purpose …

Compensation Of Experts, Henry W. Rogers

Articles

The law relating to the compensation of experts is somewhat unsettled, and the cases are not numerous in which the subject has been considered. This very fact, however, lends additional interest to the subject, and the question is one of great importance. In some of the States the law expressly provides that when a witness is summoned to testify as an expert he shall be entitled to extra compensation. Such a provision may be found in the laws of Iowa, of North Carolina, and of Rhode Island.