Law Commons^™

The Wto Legal System: Sources Of Law, David Palmeter, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

Modern discussions of the sources of international law usually begin with a reference to Article 38 (1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which provides:

The Court, whose function is to decide in accordance with international law such disputes as are submitted to it, shall apply:

1. international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting states;
2. international custom as evidence of a general practice accepted as law;
3. the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations;
4. subject to the provisions of Article 59, judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly …

The Future Of Legal Services: Legal And Ethical Implications Of The Lsc Restrictions - Foreword, Steven Epstein, Eric B. Fields, Jack E. Pace Iii, Staci Rosche

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article seeks to address issues of lawyering under Legal Services Corporation (LSC) restrictions . We organized the conference as part of Fordham's Advanced Seminar in Ethics and Public Interest Law. We comprised a student working group in the class who worked to organize the conference with the Legal Aid Society and the Stein Center for Ethics and Public Interest Law. The conference, held on May 30, 1997, brought together practitioners, academics, and law students to discuss the delivery of legal services under the federal restrictions. In the remarks that follow, participants address the issues germane to lawyering under the …

The Future Of Legal Services: Legal And Ethical Implications Of The Lsc Restrictions - Implementation Issues Panel, Staci Rosche

Fordham Urban Law Journal

A distinguished panel including Shirley Traylor, Jill Boskey, Valerie Bogart and Lucy Billings will describe how they have been directly affected in implementing the restrictions that have been handed down and how they have made their lives a little bit harder.

To Profit Or Not-To-Profit: An Examination Of Executive Compensation In Not-For-Profit Organizations Contracting With New York City

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This report examined the compensation practices of not-for profit (NFP) organizations that have contracts with New York City.It reports the compensations statistics for NFP's contracting with the city. It also reports that many of these organizations did not comply with the regulations requiring public access to NFP's Annual Returns.

Lawyering For Poor Communities In The Twenty-First Century, Matthew Diller

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Symposium focuses on a renewed focus on community lawyering. Finding new ways to work with and engage poor communities is among the most important pieces of any new agenda for poverty law. By focusing on the goal of building community institutions and organizations, poverty lawyers can help poor communities in a number of vital ways. First, they can help communities create structures for the provision of services that government has failed to provide. Thus, poverty lawyers can provide much needed legal representation in the establishment of community-based housing, health care, day care and other programs that meet vital needs. …

An Alternative And Discretionary § 1367 (Symposium: A Reappraisal Of The Supplemental Jurisdiction Statute, Title 28 U.S.C. 1367), Edward H. Cooper

Articles

Supplemental jurisdiction is a concept too complex to be captured by complicated statutory drafting. That is my proposition. Or, somewhat more accurately, that is my tentative proposition, advanced for consideration alongside the elegant but intricate statutory proposals emerging from the American Law Institute's Federal Judicial Code Revision Project. Professor John Oakley, the Reporter, knows more about supplemental jurisdiction, and has thought more deeply about it, than anyone. He has traveled many roads in continually refining proposed revisions of 28 U.S.C. § 1367. If anyone can capture all the nuances of supplemental jurisdiction in a statute, it is he, assisted by …

The Tragedy Of The Anticommons: Property In The Transition From Marx To Markets, Michael A. Heller

Articles

Why are many storefronts in Moscow empty, while street kiosks in front are full of goods? In this Article, Professor Heller develops a theory of anticommons property to help explain the puzzle of empty storefronts and full kiosks. Anticommons property can be understood as the mirror image of commons property. By definition, in a commons, multiple owners are each endowed with the privilege to use a given resource, and no one has the right to exclude another When too many owners hold such privileges of use, the resource is prone to overuse - a tragedy of the commons. Depleted fisheries …

Ted St. Antoine: An Appreciation, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

Ted's skills as a negotiator and mediator and the soundness of his judgment played a vitally important role not only in bringing the issues to a happy conclusion, but in doing so in a way that held the faculty together during a difficult time. Those qualities, together with universal respect for his integrity and confidence that he would not pursue an agenda different from its own, have repeatedly led the faculty to turn to Ted, initially to become its Dean and later to handle a variety of other sensitive assignments.

Rights, Wrongs, And Recourse In The Law Of Torts, Benjamin C. Zipursky

Vanderbilt Law Review

Cardozo's opinion in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co.' hinges on a stark assertion about rights and wrongs: A plaintiff has no right of action unless she can show "'a wrong' to herself; i.e., a violation of her own right." Cardozo himself made this principle the core of his analysis, yet scholars typically regard it as impenetrable, circular, vacuous, or, as Posner put it, "eloquent bluff." Small wonder, then, that readers typically turn to "reasonable foreseeability" as the essence of the case. Leading scholars treat Palsgraf as a proximate cause case, despite Cardozo's pronouncement that "W[the law of causation, remote …

Towards A Model Penal Code, Second (Federal?): The Challenge Of The Special Part, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

The Model Penal Code is among the most successful academic law reform projects ever attempted. In the first two decades after its completion in 1962, more than two-thirds of the states undertook to enact new codifications of their criminal law, and virtually all of those used the Model Penal Code as a starting point. The Model Penal Code was influential in a variety of different ways. First, the very notion of a systematic codification of criminal law received a dramatic boost from the Model Penal Code. Apart from the degree to which any particular state recodification resembled the Model Penal …

Human Rights And Maternal-Fetal Hiv Transmission Prevention Trials In Africa, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The human rights issues raised by the conduct of maternal-fetal human immunodeficiency virus transmission trials in Africa are not unique to either acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or Africa, but public discussion of these trials presents an opportunity for the United States and other wealthy nations to take the rights and welfare of impoverished populations seriously. The central issue at stake when developed countries perform research on subjects in developing countries is exploitation. The only way to prevent exploitation of a research population is to insist not only that informed consent be obtained but also that, should an intervention be proven beneficial, …

Controlling Corporate Agency Costs: A United States-Israeli Comparative Law, Zohar Goshen

Faculty Scholarship

The "Corporation" assumes a central position in modem economic life. This is due mainly to the fact that major portions of our economic activities are performed by corporations. Numerous authors have pondered the essence of the corporate phenomenon, proposing various theories for the uniqueness of the corporation as opposed to other possible structures for operating a business. The main line of analysis focuses on the central characteristic of the modem corporation: the separation of ownership and control. Managing a business through the means of a corporation allows one to exploit the advantages of specialization. On one hand, shareholders benefit from …

Authors As "Licensors" Of "Informational Rights" Under U.C.C. Article 2b, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

U.C.C. Articles 2B of the Uniform Commercial Code was designed primarily to regulate online and mass market transactions, particularly the licensing of computer software. Its effects, however, will extend to authors of works other than computer software. This Article considers the effects Article 2B would have on dealings between those authors and the exploiters of the authors' works. By reducing procedural barriers to the formation of licenses, Article 2B would make it all too easy for an author to assent to contract terms that may heavily favor an exploiter of the author's work. On the other hand, default contract terms …

Demons And Angels In Hazardous Waste Regulation: Are Justice, Efficiency, And Democracy Reconcilable?, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The Superfund program is perhaps environmental law's best Rorschach test, in which those who write about the national effort to clean up contaminated sites disclose as much about their own philosophies of justice, democracy, and economic efficiency as about environmental legislation. The ten books reviewed here show deep conflicts among these values. I argue, based on these disparate judgments, that many of the Superfund debates have an almost religious character. The law has been shaped to fit the view that demonic polluters were, and remain, at work. The law also reflects a sense of higher duty to future generations – …

Dogmas Of The Model Penal Code, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The Model Penal Code has become the central document of American criminal justice. It has had some effect on law reform in over 35 states. More significantly, it provides the lingua franca of most people who teach criminal law in the United States. Most academics think that the precise definitions of culpability states in section 2.02(2) are really neat, and they applaud the liberal rules that restrict the use of strict liability to administrative fines. Indeed, all things considered, for a code drafted with almost total indifference to what might be learned from European models, the Model Penal Code is …

Copyright On The Internet: A Comparison Of U.S. And E.C. Protection, Erik Daems

LLM Theses and Essays

The advancement in technology, the information super highway and the internet have threatened the intellectual property of copyright owners. There is now, a relative ease in the copying, reproduction and transmission of copyrighted work through digitization. This thesis explores the legal systems of the United States, and the European Community, and their proposals towards adequate protection of works from copyright infringement. The thesis examines the competing interests of the copyright owner, the rights of users of the internet, and the role of the legislators in the United States and the European Community in balancing and protecting these interests.

The Impact Of The Kodak Decision To Antitrust Tying Challenges In Trademark Licensing: The Search For Legal Certainty, Clotilde Forest

LLM Theses and Essays

The recent increase in trademark licensing has drawn the attention of antitrust authorities. This paper focuses on establishing patterns as to the validity, under antitrust law, of “hot” clauses present in medium to long term marketing programs especially in the light of the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services, Inc., 504 U.S. 451 (1992). The paper explores the contractual policy of having stable legal standards to ensure an efficient implementation of contractual terms that are immunized from adverse antitrust challenges throughout the term of the contract. This paper …

"The Worst Of Both Worlds" Or Was The Therapeutic Mission Of The Juvenile Court System A One-Way-Street? - The German Juvenile Court System Compared To The American Situation, Joerg Fries

LLM Theses and Essays

Juvenile delinquency and convictions are on a record high in the United States and Germany, and there are concerns about balancing the diversionary interests of the juvenile justice system with the need for public safety. This thesis focuses on a comparison between the German and American Juvenile Court systems by exploring the different theories of punishment, sentencing, criminal law, juvenile delinquency and public safety. The thesis examines the birth of the parens patriae concept and establishment of the American juvenile court, as well as the problems of balancing the penal nature of the criminal law, rehabilitative goals of the juvenile …

Conflicts Consent And Allocation After Amchem Products – Or Why Attorneys Still Need Consent To Give Away Their Clients' Money, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

If it was the goal of Silver and Baker to write a provocative article, they have succeeded. They ask probing questions; they are appropriately scornful of superficial answers; and they seek to relate their view of legal ethics to what they perceive to be the prevailing standards in the legal marketplace. All this is good. They also usefully focus on an underappreciated dichotomy: the ethical rules governing aggregated settlements in consensual litigation versus the rules applicable in aggregated nonconsensual litigation (i.e., class actions). Essentially, they argue that the rules in both contexts should be the same or very similar, the …

Turning Servile Opportunities To Gold: A Strategic Analysis Of The Corporate Opportunities Doctrine, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Perhaps no single motif permeates corporate law and governance literature like the problem of agency costs. Though modest in concept, the canonical principal-agent framework yields fundamental insights into virtually every economic relationship involving the firm. These insights, in turn, not only animate prevailing positive accounts of the modern corporation, but they also provide a normative basis for regulating the oft-lamented gulf between ownership and control.

Despite their pervasiveness, problems of agency costs are rarely more vexing than when an agent is also a potential competitor. A notable example of such a scenario occurs when a corporate manager acquires information about …

Empowering And Protecting Patients: Lessons For Physician-Assisted Suicide From The African-American Experience, Leslie E. Wolf, Patricia A. King

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

A Dynasty Weaned From Biotechnology: The Emerging Face Of China

Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce

No abstract provided.

Saddam Hussein As Hostes Humani Generis? Should The U.S. Intervene?, Edieth Y. Wu

Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce

This article discusses several jurisdictional principles which may assist the United States in its efforts to acquire jurisdiction in certain situations that are declared, by the United States, egregious enough to warrant intervention. The United States has long used the "effects doctrine" 1 to assert extraterritorial jurisdiction. This article concentrates on developing and employing the Hostes Humani Generis Theory 2 and its past and possible future use. The central focus is to determine whether the possibility exists that the United States may use the theory in an effort to acquire physical jurisdiction over Saddam Hussein.

A survey, though not comprehensive, …

State Common-Law Choice-Of-Law Doctrine And Same-Sex "Marriage": How Will States Enforce The Public Policy Exception?, L. Lynn Hogue

Faculty Publications By Year

Growth in the number of states legalizing same-sex marriages and civil unions that increasingly mirror the rights afforded married partners has brought renewed focus on the issue of extra-territorial recognition of those relationships. The public policy exception is a primary, state-law-based impediment to the recognition of foreign marriages that do not conform to the forum state's definition of marriage. This article discusses the role of the public policy exception in rejecting recognition of foreign marriages and argues that the public policy exception has constitutional underpinnings that are rooted in principles of federalism and the protection of state sovereignty which inheres …

Crime In Public Housing: Clarifying Research Issues, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Tamara Dumanovsky, J. Phillip Thompson, Garth Davies

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, crime and public housing have been closely linked in our political and popular cultures. Tragic episodes of violence have reinforced the notion that public housing is a milieu with rates of victimization and offending far greater than other locales. However, these recent developments belie the complex social and political evolution of public housing from its origins in the 1930s, through urban renewal, and into the present.

Stereotypes abound about public housing, its management, residents, and crime rates. In reality, variation is the norm, and it is these variations that affect crime. The study of crime in public …

Deutsche Telekom, German Corporate Governance, And The Transition Costs Of Capitalism, Jeffrey N. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

In November 1996, Deutsche Telekom AG, the government-owned German telephone company, sold common stock representing approximately 25 percent of the company in a global stock offering that raised approximately DM 20 billion ($13 billion), the largest equity offering ever in Europe. In selling off this equity stake, the German government (i.e., the Federal Republic) had a number of motives. First, the sale was an important step in converting a government-run telephone monopoly into a nimble competitor in the emerging European and world telecommunications market. In anticipation of a fully competitive European telecommunications regime in 1998, Deutsche Telekom ("DT") had been …

Race, Gender, And The Law In The Twenty-First Century Workplace: Some Preliminary Observations, Susan P. Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

This article seeks to move beyond the debate between informal and formal legal regulation. Both approaches reflect essential but limited components of a legal regulatory regime. Neither approach adequately responds to the simultaneous challenges of changing organizational structure, racial and gender dynamics, and market-driven demands for flexibility and adaptiveness. The next step requires that we take account of the critiques of formality and informality. This requires embracing the challenge of developing new forms of legal regulation that treat organizational decision makers and incentive structures explicitly as part of the legal regulatory regime. In this view, law consists of a set …

The Courts And The Congress: Should Judges Disdain Political History?, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

In an earlier article in these pages, Professor John Manning argued that the use of legislative materials by courts in effect permits Congress to engage in delegation of its authority to subunits of the legislature, in violation of the separation of powers. Professor Strauss, acknowledging that the previous generation of courts may have excessively credited the minutiae of legislative history, responds that judicial attention to the political history of legislation is required, not forbidden, by considerations of constitutional structure. Only awareness of that history will promote interpretation reflective of the context and political moment of Congress's action. Our history of …

Book Review, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce

Book Review: Richard Haas, The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States After the Cold War, New York, Council on Foreign Relations (1997)

Kann Das Deutsche Verfassungsrechtsdenken Vorbild Fur Die Vereinigten Staaten Sein?, Donald P. Kommers

Journal Articles

Mein Thema läßt sich am besten als Frage formulieren: Was können wir Amerikaner von der Erfahrung der Deutschen mit dem Grundgesetz lernen? Diese Frage wurde für gewöhnlich in der anderen Richtung gestellt, näm lich: Was haben die Deutschen vom amerikanischen Verfassungsrecht ge lernt oder was sollten sie von ihm lernen?