Law Commons^™

How Improvements In Technology Have Affected The Entertainment Industry: Writers And Actors Fight For Compensation, Bernadette A. Safrath

Touro Law Review

The rise in the use of technology, and the creation of new media, has left the entertainment industry at a loss as to how to compensate the creative minds that are starting to work in new media. The rise in new media, a predominant factor in the 2007-2008 writers strike and this year’s almost-strikes of the two actors’ guilds, has forced the entertainment industry to adapt to the changes in technology, and create compensation plans for those that work in new media.

The Tsunami Of March 2011 And The Subsequent Nuclear Incident At Fukushima: Who Compensates The Victims, Michael Faure, Jing Liu

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

The Student-Friendly Model: Creating Cost-Effective Externship Programs, James H. Bachman, Jana B. Eliason

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Split-Recovery: A Constitutional Answer To The Punitive Damage Dilemma, Clay R. Stevens

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Taking The Wind Out Of The Government's Sails?: Forfeitures And Just Compensation, J. Kelly Strader

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The legal education crisis has already struck for many recent law school graduates, signaling potential disaster for law schools already struggling with their own economic challenges. Law schools have high fixed costs caused by competition between schools, the unchecked expansion of federal loan programs, a widely exploited information asymmetry about graduate employment outcomes, and a lack of financial discipline masquerading as innovation. As a result, tuition is up, jobs are down, and skepticism of the value of a J.D. has never been higher. If these trends do not reverse course, droves of students will continue to graduate with debt that …

The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The economist Herbert Stein once remarked that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Over the past four decades, the cost of legal education in America has seemed to belie this aphorism: it has gone up relentlessly. Private law school tuition increased by a factor of four in real, inflation-adjusted terms between 1971 and 2011, while resident tuition at public law schools has nearly quadrupled in real terms over just the past two decades. Meanwhile, for more than thirty years, the percentage of the American economy devoted to legal services has been shrinking. In 1978 the legal sector …

Kids, Counsel And Costs: An Empirical Study Of Indigent Defense Services In The Los Angeles Juvenile Delinquency Courts, Cyn Yamashiro

cyn yamashiro

In the landmark case In re Gault, the Supreme Court guaranteed juveniles virtually all of the criminal due process rights previously granted to adults. Arguably the most vital of those rights is the right to competent counsel. Scholars have studied how systems provide legal counsel and have questioned the use of certain models to provide defense services. Los Angeles County utilizes two distinct models for the provision of defense services: a contract-panel attorney model and a public defender office. This study looks at data from over 2,800 juvenile court case files from the Los Angeles juvenile courts and asks the …

Protecting The Disabled Individual Through The Use Of A Medicare Set-Aside Trust, Susan G. Haines, John J. Campbell

Marquette Elder's Advisor

In America, plaintiffs in tort settlements receive more benefits, including Medicare benefits, than plaintiffs in worker's compensation cases. A properly established Medicare set-aside trust can guarantee that a disabled worker's Medicare benefits will be available after a worker's compensation settlement. This article discusses the theory behind a Medicare set-aside trust and tips for properly using it.

New Regulations Simplify Required Distributions From Iras And Certain Qualified Deferred Compensation Plans, Richard Mandel

Marquette Elder's Advisor

In April 2002, the IRS released new regulations that greatly simplify the rules regarding required distributions from IRAs and certain qualified retirement plains. This articles summarizes these new rules by applying them to the two categories into which each retiree must fall and analyzing the effect of the four possible beneficiary designations available to retirees.

The Disjunction Between Prevention And Compensation Of Hip Fractures Among Elderly Citizens: The Law's Role In Creating Ex Ante Incentives, Janis Sarra

Marquette Elder's Advisor

This article examines the relationship between the compensation for and the prevention of hip fractures among the growing population of seniors in Canada. Sarra postulates that the current system expends funds on liability protection that would be better spent on prevention. Options explored are no-fault compensation, redirecting legal resources, negotiated risk, and adjust[ing] the tax base to ensure that there are sufficient resources to support elderly individuals.

“Oh Lord Won’T You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz?” : A Comparison Of State Wrongful Conviction Compensation Statutes, Donna J. Mckneelen Professor

Donna J McKneelen Professor

Post-conviction DNA testing has resulted in the exoneration 292 individuals in the United States. The number of those exonerated by DNA testing continues to increase every year. Most individuals exonerated by DNA testing served a considerable amount of time in prison separated from family and friends. According to the Innocence Project , “those proven to have been wrongfully convicted through postconviction DNA testing spen[t], on average, 13.5 years behind bars.” Many walked out of prison with no assistance to aid them with their reentry into society. Of those exonerated by DNA testing, “40% have not received any form of assistance” …

Eminent Domain Legislation Post-Kelo: A State Of The States, Patricia E. Salkin

Patricia E. Salkin

In Kelo v. City of New London, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the use of eminent domain for economic development is a permissible“public use” under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The decision proved controversial, as many feared that it would benefit large corporations at the expense of individual homeowners and local communities. Shortly thereafter, numerous states introduced legislation limiting the use of eminent domain.This article surveys those state initiatives that have been signed into law following the Court’s decision in Kelo.

The Problem Of Action And Interest Alignment: Beyond Job Requirements And Incentive Compensation, Alexander Colvin, Wendy R. Boswell

Alexander Colvin

We introduce two concepts, action alignment and interest alignment, that we propose to help explain the linkages between employee behaviors and organizational strategy. We first examine the problem of action alignment, developing employee ability to identify and engage in behaviors that most effectively lead to the realization of the goals of organizational strategy. In particular, our discussion of action alignment focuses on the issues of employee line of sight to organizational strategy and the development of shared mindsets within the organization. We argue that aligned actions involving employee behaviors that are discretionary and difficult to specify in advance are especially …

Employee Voice, Human Resource Practices, And Quit Rates: Evidence From The Telecommunications Industry, Rosemary Batt, Alexander J.S. Colvin, Jeffrey Keefe

Alexander Colvin

The authors draw on strategic human resource and industrial relations theories to identify the sets of employee voice mechanisms and human resource practices that are likely to predict firm-level quit rates, then empirically evaluate the predictive power of these variables using data from a 1998 establishment level survey in the telecommunications industry. With respect to alternative voice mechanisms, they find that union representation predicts lower quit rates, even after they control for compensation and a wide range of other human resource practices that may be affected by collective bargaining. Also predicting lower quit rates is employee participation in offline problem-solving …

The Mediated Settlement: Is It Always Just About The Money? Rarely!, Steven L. Schwartz

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Since our legal system of dispute resolution tends to remedy wrongs only by payment of money, most settlements will eventually involve negotiations over the amount to be paid and received. Yet, in both the theory and actual practice of mediation that has lead this writer to conclude that it is never just about the money. Effective lawyer representation of clients in mediation requires a different kind of investigation and preparation than lawyers may be accustomed to conducting. Similarly, an effective mediator must be adept in identifying the clues that reveal the "below the water line" interests at work and which …

The Legislation Of Unintended Consequences, Rena I. Steinzor

Rena I. Steinzor

No abstract provided.

Effectiveness Of Environmental Law: What Does The Evidence Tell Us?, Michael Faure

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

Tortious Interference With The Expectancy Of Entitlement Benefits, Paul Caritj

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note proposes a new tort to address employers' and their agents' increasing abuse of the Unemployment Insurance appeals process, which interferes with employees' expectancy of entitlement benefits. Though existing state Unemployment Compensation statutes sanction both unemployed workers claiming benefits and employers for making fraudulent statements, these provisions approach the issue of fraud too narrowly to combat this growing problem. Meanwhile, no existing remedy properly compensates victims of this sort of abuse, adequately deters abusive behavior by scaling the penalty to the harm, and is accessible to economically disadvantaged plaintiffs. As well as providing an analysis of the specific problem …

Remedying Wrongful Execution, Meghan J. Ryan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The first legal determination of wrongful execution in the United States may very well be in the making in Texas. One of the state's district courts is in the midst of investigating whether Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004, was actually innocent. The court's investigation has been interrupted by objections from Texas prosecutors, but if the court proceeds, this may very well become a bona fide case of wrongful execution. Texas, just like other jurisdictions, is ill equipped to provide any relief for such an egregious wrong, however. This Article identifies the difficulties that the heirs, families, and …

Introduction: Benefits Of Private Enforcement: Empirical Background, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This short piece takes a first step toward providing the empirical bases for an assessment of the benefits of private enforcement. It presents evidence showing that private enforcement of the antitrust laws is serving its intended purposes and is in the public interest. Private enforcement helps compensate victimized consumers, and it also helps deter anticompetitive conduct. This piece demonstrates this by briefly summarizing a more detailed analysis of forty of the largest recent successful private antitrust cases.

To analyze these cases' compensation effects this presents, inter alia, the amount of money each action recovered, what proportion of the money was …

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 …

Singapore Law Watch - Govt Has An Override In Land Ownership (Forum), Linus Koh

Linus Koh

No abstract provided.

Touring The Punitive Damages Forest: A Proposed Roadmap, Dr. Yehuda Adar

Yehuda Adar Dr.

Punitive damages have for years been one of the most hotly debated legal topics around the common law world. In recent years, however, the interest in this subject seems to be shared increasingly by continental scholars. The scholarly literature on punitive damages is immense. It covers almost every aspect of the punitive damages phenomenon, from almost every angle (doctrinal, conceptual, philosophical, political, economic, historical, empirical, constitutional, and comparative). Surprisingly, however, there has been little academic effort to systematically organize the punitive damages field. What seems to be especially lacking is a roadmap which would be able to encapsulate the various …

Postjudgment “Water Interest”: Lifting The Headgate To Let Appropriate Compensation Flow For Unlawful Diversions, Jeffrey T. Matson

Jeffrey T Matson

Irrigators overdraw many Western streams to the detriment of tribal and environmental uses; these conflicting interests regularly battle in state and federal court over water allocation. This article profiles United States v. Bell (Bell) —the latest such skirmish among warring parties in the Truckee and Carson River basins of northern Nevada. In Bell, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit faced persistent excessive irrigation diversions by the Truckee Carson Irrigation District (TCID) in violation of applicable federal court decrees, administrative Operating Criteria and Procedures (OCAPs), and the Congressional Settlement Act of 1990. The Court discussed an unprecedented …

The Young Report: An Australian Perspective On The Latest Response To Britain's "Compensation Culture", James Goudkamp

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This article addresses the Young Report, which is an important recent response to Britain's putative ‘compensation culture’. This report is examined with reference to the far-reaching reforms of tort law that occurred in Australia at the start of the twenty-first century. The analysis reveals that while there are certain similarities in the way in which tort law has been reformed in Australia and Britain, the reform experience in these jurisdictions has been quite different. The main difference is that attention in Britain has centred on the system of procedure by which tort law is administered whereas in Australia the focus …

What Does Tort Law Do? What Can It Do?, Scott Hershovitz

Articles

It’s not hard to describe what tort law does. As a first approximation, we might say that tort empowers those who suffer certain sorts of injuries or invasions to seek remedies from those who brought about those injuries or invasions. The challenge is to explain why tort does that, or to explain what tort is trying to do when it does that. After all, it is not obvious that we should have an institution specially concerned with the injuries and invasions that count as torts.