Law Commons^™

The Associate Dean For Research In The Age Of The Internet, B. Jessie Hill

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Commentaire De L'Article 19 De La Convention De Vienne De 1978 Sur La Succession D'État En Matière De Traités: Participation À Des Traités Signés Par L’État Prédécesseur Sous Réserve De Ratification, D’Acceptation Ou D’Approbation, Petros C. Mavroidis, Dr. Vassilis P. Tzevelekos

Faculty Scholarship

Commentary on Article 19 of the Vienna Convention on Succession of States in Respect of Treaties: Participation in Treaties Signed by the Predecessor State Subject to Ratification, Acceptance or Approval

French Abstract: Commentaide de l'article 19 de la Convention de Vienne sur la succession d'État en matière de traités. I. CARACTÉRISTIQUES GÉNÉRALES: 1. Les points épineux: à la recherche de fondements a) L’intention du prédécesseur et l’absence de liens suffisants entre le traité multilatéral signé sous réserve de ratification, d’acceptation ou d’approbation et le territoire b) L’absence d’une pratique étoffée II. LA JUSTIFICATION ET L’UTILITÉ DE L’ARTICLE 19: 1. But …

Leverage, Default, And Mortality: Evidence From Cancer Diagnoses, Arpit Gupta, Edward R. Morrison, Catherine Fedorenko, Scott Ramsey

Faculty Scholarship

This paper tests whether housing wealth mitigates the effects of health shocks on financial stress and mortality. We link cancer records to mortgage, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and credit report data. We find that cancer diagnoses are financially destabilizing even for households with health insurance, but the effect is driven by households without home equity. Households with equity extract it (by refinancing a mortgage or taking out a second). They are also more likely to accept recommended therapies and have higher post-diagnosis survival rates. Our findings show that housing wealth plays an important role in understanding how individuals buffer idiosyncratic shocks.

Trial And Error: Lawyers And Nonlawyer Advocates, Anna E. Carpenter, Alyx Mark, Colleen F. Shanahan

Faculty Scholarship

Nonlawyer advocates are one proposed solution to the access to justice crisis and are currently permitted to practice in some civil justice settings. Theory and research suggest nonlawyers might be effective in some civil justice settings, yet we know very little, empirically, about nonlawyer practice in the United States. Using data from more than 5,000 unemployment insurance appeal hearings and interviews with lawyers and nonlawyers, this article explores how both types of representatives learn to do their work and what this means for their effectiveness. Building on recent research regarding the importance of procedural knowledge and relational expertise as elements …

A Crib Sheet For Contracts Profs, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last two decades I have been digging into the facts on a number of contracts cases, many of them featured in casebooks. I have collected the material in two books; one appeared in 2006 and the other is hot off the presses. This brief paper provides a roadmap for professors who might want more depth on the cases than is provided in the decisions or the casebooks. A recurring theme in the two books is that parties designing their contractual relationships must deal with change. This shows up in the manner in which they price the option to …

Licensing Commercial Value: From Copyright To Trademarks And Back, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Copyright and trademarks often overlap, particularly in visual characters. The same figure may qualify as a pictorial, graphic or sculptural work on the one hand, and as a registered (or at least used) trademark on the other. The two rights, though resting on distinct foundations, tend to be licensed together. Trademarks symbolize the goodwill of the producer, and are protected insofar as copying that symbol is likely to confuse consumers as to the source or approval of the goods or services in connection with which the mark is used. For famous marks, the dilution action grants a right against uses …

Ex Ante Choice Of Jury Waiver Clauses In Mergers, Darius Palia, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines empirically why sophisticated parties in some merger and acquisition deals choose to waive their right to jury trials and some do not. We examine merger agreements for a large sample of 276 deals for the 11-year period 2001 to 2011. We exclude private company deals and those where the choice of forum and law is Delaware. First, we find that 48.2% of the deals have jury waiver clauses. Second, we find that deals in which New York is chosen as the governing law and forum state are more likely to include a jury waiver clause. No other …

Intention And Value, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

The paper sketches the role of reasons and intentions in leading to action with an intention, explaining the way possession of rational powers transforms the formation of intentions. Part One explains how when humans act with an intention they act in the belief that there is value in the action. Part Two explains the relative role of value and intention in “producing” the action, and relates their role to that of motivation.

Black Cat, White Cat: The Identity Of The Wto Judges, Louise Johannesson, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

WTO judges are proposed by the WTO Secretariat and elected to act as ‘judges’ if either approved by the parties to a dispute, or by the WTO Director-General in case no agreement between the parties has been possible. They are typically ‘Geneva crowd’, that is, they are either current or former delegates representing their country before the WTO. This observation holds for both first- as well as second-instance WTO judges (e.g. Panelists and members of the Appellate Body). In that, the WTO evidences an attitude strikingly similar to the GATT. Whereas the legal regime has been heavily ‘legalized’, the people …

When The Curtain Must Be Drawn: American Experience With Proceedings Involving Information That, For Reasons Of National Security, Cannot Be Disclosed, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

In numerous contexts today, ranging from no-fly lists, to the designation of foreign terrorist organizations, to controls over foreign investments in the United States, federal authorities reach decisions having dramatic consequences for individuals’ liberty and property on the basis of information that those individuals cannot obtain, even in summary form. Recent and pending litigation has challenged these deprivations on due process grounds, with only moderate success. Perhaps unclassified information on which the government has acted must be revealed, with an opportunity given to challenge it and to submit contrary evidence; but in the words of the DC Circuit writing last …

Teaching The Newly Essential Knowledge, Skills, And Values In A Changing World, Eliza Vorenberg, Cynthia F. Adcock, Eden E. Harrington, Elizabeth Kane, Lisa Bliss, Robin Boyle, Conrad Johnson, Susan Schechter, David Udell

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter of Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World has contributions from many authors:

• Section A, Professional Identity Formation, includes:
  • Teaching Knowledge, Skills, and Values of Professional Identity Formation, by Larry O. Natt Gantt, II & Benjamin V. Madison III,
  • Integrating Professionalism into Doctrinally-Focused Courses, by Paula Schaefer,
  • Learning Professional Responsibility, by Clark D. Cunningham, and
  • Teaching Leadership, by Deborah L. Rhode.
• Section B, Pro Bono as a Professional Value, is by Cynthia F. Adcock, Eden E. Harrington, Elizabeth Kane, Susan Schechter, David S. Udell & Eliza Vorenberg.
• Section C, The Relational Skills of the …

Does Google Content Degrade Google Search? Experimental Evidence, Michael Luca, Tim Wu, Sebastian Couvidat, Daniel Frank

Faculty Scholarship

While Google is known primarily as a search engine, it has increasingly developed and promoted its own content as an alternative to results from other websites. By prominently displaying Google content in response to search queries, Google is able to use its dominance in search to gain customers for this content. This may reduce consumer welfare if the internal content is inferior to organic search results. In this paper, we provide a legal and empirical analysis of this practice in the domain of online reviews. We first identify the conditions under which universal search would be considered anticompetitive. We then …

The ’73 Graft: Punishment, Political Economy, And The Genealogy Of Morals, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, I explore the place of a genealogy of morals within the context of a history of political economy. More specifically, I investigate the types of moralization – of criminals and delinquents, of the disorderly, but also of political economic systems, of workers and managers, of rules and rule-breaking – that are necessary and integral to making a population accept new styles of political and economic governance, especially the punitive institutions that accompany modern political economies in the contemporary period.

The marriage of political economy and a genealogy of morals: this essay explores how the moralization of certain …

Article Ix: The Promise And Limits Of Home Rule, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Article IX of New York State’s constitution establishes the basic constitutional framework for addressing questions of local power, local government organization, and state-local and interlocal relations in the Empire State. Premised on a commitment to “[e]ffective local self-government,” the “home rule amendment” added to the state constitution in 1963 and unamended since then, has bolstered local control over local government organization and personnel and has provided a firmer foundation for local law-making in New York. But it has not succeeded in enabling New York’s local units – its counties, cities, towns and villages – to function as efficient, effective, locally …

The Rhetorical Presidency Meets The Drone Presidency, David Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

This brief essay reflects on Kenneth Anderson and Benjamin Wittes's book "Speaking the Law: The Obama Administration's Addresses on National Security Law." It suggests that "Speaking the Law" overestimates the clarifying and constraining force of the executive branch's counterterrorism speeches, and that the legal policies they set out may be better understood not as a reticulated regulatory scheme, but rather on a common law model.

Three Essays In Criminal Justice, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

How could the New York Times call the grand jury’s decision to no bill the indictment against officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, a “verdict”? How could federal appellate judges call it a “procedural shortcut” when a state judge, in a death penalty case, signs the state attorney general’s proposed judicial opinion without even striking the word “proposed” or reviewing the full opinion? What do these incidents tell us about contemporary criminal justice? These essays explore these puzzles. The first, “Verdict and Illusion,” begins to sketch the role of illusions in justice. The second, “A Singe Voice of Justice,” interprets …

Supreme Court Amicus Brief Of 19 Corporate Law Professors, Friedrichs V. California Teachers Association, No. 14-915, John C. Coates, Iv, Lucian A. Bebchuk, Bernard S. Black, John C. Coffee Jr., James D. Cox, Ronald J. Gilson, Jeffrey N. Gordon, Lawrence A. Hamermesh, Henry Hansmann, Robert J. Jackson Jr., Marcel Kahan, Vikramaditya S. Khanna, Michael Klausner, Reinier Kraakman, Donald C. Langevoort, Edward B. Rock, Mark J. Roe, Helen S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court has looked to the rights of corporate shareholders in determining the rights of union members and non-members to control political spending, and vice versa. The Court sometimes assumes that if shareholders disapprove of corporate political expression, they can easily sell their shares or exercise control over corporate spending. This assumption is mistaken. Because of how capital is saved and invested, most individual shareholders cannot obtain full information about corporate political activities, even after the fact, nor can they prevent their savings from being used to speak in ways with which they disagree. Individual shareholders have no “opt …

Legal Institutionalism: Capitalism And The Constitutive Role Of Law, Simon Deakin, David Gindis, Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Kainan Huang, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

Social scientists have paid insufficient attention to the role of law in constituting the economic institutions of capitalism. Part of this neglect emanates from inadequate conceptions of the nature of law itself. Spontaneous conceptions of law and property rights that downplay the role of the state are criticized here, because they typically assume relatively small numbers of agents and underplay the complexity and uncertainty in developed capitalist systems. In developed capitalist economies, law is sustained through interaction between private agents, courts and the legislative apparatus. Law is also a key institution for overcoming contracting uncertainties. It is furthermore a part …

A Technical Barriers To Trade Agreement For Services?, Bernard Hoekman, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

Services are regulated for a variety of reasons. Regulation is typically influenced by political economy forces and may thus at times reflect protectionist motivations. Similar considerations arise for goods, but the potential for protectionist capture may be greater in services as many sectors are self-regulated by domestic industry. There are specific disciplines on regulation of goods (product standards) in the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). This encourages the use of international standards and requires that norms restrict trade only to the extent necessary to achieve the regulatory objective. WTO disciplines on domestic regulation of services are weaker …