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Capsule Reviews, Book Review/Updates Editor

University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Selected Current Bibliography, Book Review/Updates Editor

University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Avoiding Moral Bankruptcy, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Faced with hundreds of clergy sexual misconduct cases last year, the Archdiocese of Boston hinted that it was considering filing for bankruptcy. Although it is hard to imagine an archdiocese or church filing for bankruptcy, bankruptcy has become an important forum for many social issues that cannot be easily resolved elsewhere. This Article explores the implications of a religious organization bankruptcy filing by focusing on four problems with the bankruptcy alternative: the possibility of dismissal for being filed in bad faith; the question of what church assets are subject to the process; the fact that the church might be subject …

The Immigration Paradox: Poverty, Distributive Justice, And Liberal Egalitarianism, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

The immigration of unskilled workers poses a fundamental problem for liberals. While from the perspective of the economic welfare of natives, the optimal policy would be to admit these aliens as guest workers, this policy would violate liberal egalitarian ideals. These ideals would treat these resident workers as equals, entitled to access to citizenship and to the full set of public benefits provided to citizens. If the welfare of all incumbent residents determines admissions policies, however, and we anticipate the fiscal burden that the immigration of the poor would impose, then our welfare criterion would preclude the admission of unskilled …

Rethinking The Commitment To Free, Local Television, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

One of the most enduring tenets of U.S. television policy has been the commitment to localism. I suggest that the FCC's localism policy can be disaggregated into four, more specific commitments: (1) the preference for locally oriented over nationally oriented programming, (2) the preference for free (i.e., advertising-supported) over pay television, (3) the preference for single-channel over multi-channel television technologies, and (4) the preference for incumbents over new entrants and new technologies. I then analyze each of these commitments in light of what is perhaps the most distinctive feature of the television industry, which is the fact that its cost …

The Rise And Demise Of The Technology-Specific Approach To The First Amendment, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

This article examines how analytical, technological, and doctrinal developments are forcing the courts to reconsider their media-specific approach to assessing the constitutionality of media regulation. In particular, it offers a comprehensive reevaluation of the continuing validity of the Broadcast Model of regulation, which contains features, such as licensing and direct content regulation, that normally would be considered paradigmatic violations of the First Amendment. Specifically, the analysis assesses the theoretical coherence of the traditional justification for extending a lesser degree of First Amendment protection to broadcasting than to other media (i.e., the physical scarcity of the electromagnetic spectrum) as well as …

Corporate Policy And The Coherence Of Delaware Takeover Law, Richard E. Kihlstrom, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents a model that can be used to explain key elements of Delaware takeover law. By incorporating corporate policy as a key variable in the model, Delaware law’s management discretion rule can be shown to be best suited for maximizing the value of the corporation and the shareholders’ interest under a set of reasonable assumptions. By allowing for occasional market mispricing and the agency costs associated with managing to the market, we demonstrate that a shareholder choice regime would likely lead to suboptimal investment decisions. In our model, managers are assumed to have better information regarding alternative corporate …

Nullificatory Juries, Kaimipono David Wenger, David A. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, we argue that current debates on the legitimacy of punitive damages would benefit from a comparison with jury nullification in criminal trials. We discuss critiques of punitive damages and of jury nullification, noting the surprising similarities in the arguments scholars use to attack these (superficially) distinct outcomes of the jury guarantee. Not only are the criticisms alike, the institutions of punitive damages and jury nullification also turn out to have many similarities: both are, we suggest, examples of what we call "nullificatory juries." We discuss the features of such juries, and consider recent behavioral data relating to …

Apprendi In The States: The Virtues Of Federalism As A Structural Limit On Errors, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Converted Or Unconverted: To Whom Do We Preach?, Amy L. Wax

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Bush Administration's Response To The International Criminal Court, Jean Galbraith

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Something For Nothing: Liberal Justice And Welfare Work Requirements, Amy L. Wax

All Faculty Scholarship

Welfare reform legislation enacted in 1996, which created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, makes entitlement to federal poor relief conditional on fulfilling work requirements. The article addresses the following timely question: whether just liberal societies should require work as a condition of public assistance for the able-bodied, or whether aid should be provided unconditionally through, for example, a basic guaranteed income for all. Drawing on the work of liberal egalitarian theorists, the article investigates whether standard liberal theories of justice can help make sense of arguments commonly voiced in favor of work requirements: that unconditional welfare guarantees, …

Corporate Constitutionalism: Antitakeover Charter Provisions As Pre-Commitment, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock

All Faculty Scholarship

Constitutions constitute a polity and create and entrench power. A corporate constitution - the governance choices incorporated in state law and the certificate of incorporation - resembles a political constitution. Delaware law allows parties to create corporations, to endow them with perpetual life, to assign rights and duties to "citizens" (directors and shareholders), to adopt a great variety of governance structures, and to entrench those choices. In this Article, we argue that the decision to endow directors with significant power over decisions whether and how to sell the company is a constitutional choice of governance structure. We then argue that …

No Other Gods: Answering The Call Of Faith In The Practice Of Law, Howard Lesnick

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Shareholder Value And Auditor Independence, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article questions the practice of framing problems concerning auditors’ professional responsibility inside a principal-agent paradigm. If professional independence is to be achieved, auditors cannot be enmeshed in agency relationships with the shareholders of their audit clients. As agents, the auditors by definition become subject to the principal’s control and cannot act independently. For the same reason, auditors’ duties should be neither articulated in the framework of corporate law fiduciary duty, nor conceived relationally at all. These assertions follow from an inquiry into the operative notion of the shareholder-beneficiary. The Article unpacks the notion of the shareholder and tells a …

Introduction, Matthew D. Adler, Claire Finkelstein, Peter H. Huang

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

No abstract provided.

Inevitable Mens Rea, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The A.L.I.'S Proposed Distributive Principle Of 'Limiting Retributivism': Does It Mean In Practice Anything Other Than Pure Desert?, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

Robinson supports the proposed "purposes" text of the New American Law Institute Report on Sentencing Reform but argues that in practice it will not mean what traditional utilitarians, like those supporting "limiting retributivism," are expecting. First, the proposed text allows reliance upon non-desert distributive principles only to the extent that they serve their stated goals. As the ALI Report concedes, there are limits to the effectiveness one can expect from rehabilitation and, as is now becoming apparent from social science research, our realistic expectations for the effectiveness of deterrence are similarly fading. It is true that incapacitation undoubtedly works to …

Performance-Based Regulation: Prospects And Limitations In Health, Safety And Environmental Protection, Cary Coglianese, Jennifer Nash

All Faculty Scholarship

Regulation aims to improve the performance of individual and organizational behavior in ways that reduce social harms, whether by improving industry's environmental performance, increasing the safety of transportation systems, or reducing workplace risk. With this in mind, the phrase "performance-based regulation" might seem a bit redundant, since all regulation should aim to improve performance in ways that advance social goals. Yet regulators can direct those they govern to improve their performance in at least two basic ways. They can prescribe exactly what actions regulated entities must take to improve their performance. Or they can incorporate the regulation's goal into the …

The Securities Analyst As Agent: Rethinking The Regulation Of Analysts, Jill E. Fisch, Hillary A. Sale

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent press has highlighted shocking examples of bias, self-dealing, and inaccuracy in the behavior of the securities analyst. Critics have attributed the bubble and subsequent crash in the technology sector to analyst hype and posited that undue analyst optimism contributed to scandals such as Enron. After many years of minimal regulator oversight analysts are now the subject of extensive regulatory reform proposals, including a mandate in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requiring that the Securities and Exchange Commission adopt a variety of restrictions on analyst behavior.

Despite the media attention, there have been few attempts to conceptualize carefully the analyst's …

Immigration Restrictions As Employment Discrimination, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, I analyze restrictions on immigration to the United States as a form of government-mandated employment discrimination against aliens. Through our immigration laws, we deny aliens access to valuable employment opportunities that are open to natives. Under our immigration and nationality laws, we base this discrimination explicitly on circumstances of birth beyond the control of the alien. I argue that immigration restrictions thereby violate our liberal ideals of equality, which require a cosmopolitan perspective that extends equal concern to all individuals. Furthermore, even if we assume a less demanding moral theory that allows us to give the interests …

Direct And Collateral Federal Court Review Of The Adequacy Of State Procedural Rules, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Containing The Promise Of Insurance: Adverse Selection And Risk Classification, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Insurance law, risk pools, adverse selection

Harmonizing Substantive-Criminal Law-Values And Criminal Procedure: The Case Of Alford And Nolo Contendere Pleas, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Too Close To The Rack And The Screw: Constitutional Constraints On Torture In The War On Terror, Seth F. Kreimer

University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law

No abstract provided.

Corporate Control Transactions: Introduction, Edward B. Rock, Michael L. Wachter

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

No abstract provided.

Creditors' Ball: The New New Corporate Governance In Chapter 11, David A. Skeel Jr.

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Domain Of Preference, Lewis A. Kornhauser

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Paradoxes Of The Safe Society: A Rational Actor Approach To The Reconceptualization Of Risk And The Reformation Of Risk Regulation, Jason Scott Johnston

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

No abstract provided.

Before And After: Temporal Anomalies In Legal Doctrine, Leo Katz

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

No abstract provided.