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Articles 1 - 30 of 78
Full-Text Articles in Contracts
Exit Engineering, Rachel Landy
Exit Engineering, Rachel Landy
Articles
How do business lawyers create value? For nearly forty years, scholars have conceptualized the business lawyer as a “transaction cost engineer” who helps contracting parties efficiently break negotiation stalemates to create more valuable deals. This theory provides meaningful insights about sophisticated corporate law practice, where outside lawyers parachute in to make one-off deals happen. However, it fails to explain the behavior of startup lawyers, who develop long-term relationships with their clients and counsel them on seemingly routine matters, well before a major transaction materializes. These lawyers are not just transaction cost engineers, they are exit engineers.This Article offers a novel …
Hard Truths: Cracking Open The Case Of Whether Hard Seltzer Is Beer, Scott Fraser
Hard Truths: Cracking Open The Case Of Whether Hard Seltzer Is Beer, Scott Fraser
University of Miami Law Review
Following the line of cases asking questions such as what is a chicken, and is a burrito a sandwich, comes the next deep legal issue, what is beer? How do we determine this seemingly simple question? Do we simply know it when we see (or taste) it? Does it require a mix of specific ingredients or certain processes? Or, if we should rely on definitions, do we look to the dictionary, history, or statutes? In a dispute in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the court is asked to resolve this question. Courts have …
Provisional Measures In Aid Of Arbitration, Ronald A. Brand
Provisional Measures In Aid Of Arbitration, Ronald A. Brand
Articles
The success of the New York Convention has made arbitration a preferred means of dispute resolution for international commercial transactions. Success in arbitration often depends on the extent to which a party may secure assets, evidence, or the status quo between parties prior to the completion of the arbitration process. This makes the availability of provisional measures granted by either arbitral tribunals or by courts fundamental to the arbitration. In this Article, I consider the existing legal framework for provisional measures in aid of arbitration, with particular attention to the sources of the rules providing for such measures. Those sources …
Gender Inequality In Contracts Casebooks: Representations Of Women In The Contracts Curriculum, Deborah Zalesne
Gender Inequality In Contracts Casebooks: Representations Of Women In The Contracts Curriculum, Deborah Zalesne
FIU Law Review
Gender has always explicitly or implicitly played a critical role in contracting and in contracts opinions—from the early nineteenth century, when married women lacked the legal capacity altogether to contract, through the next century, when women gained the right to contract but continued to lack bargaining power and to be disadvantaged in the bargaining process in many cases, to today, when women are present in greater numbers in business and commerce, but face continued, yet less overt, obstacles. Typical casebooks provide ample offerings for discussions of the ways in which parties can be and have been disadvantaged because of their …
Maritime Magic: How Cruise Lines Can Avoid State Law Compliance Through Passenger Contracts, Cameron Chuback
Maritime Magic: How Cruise Lines Can Avoid State Law Compliance Through Passenger Contracts, Cameron Chuback
University of Miami Law Review
Florida Statutes section 381.00316 prohibits businesses in Florida from requiring consumers to provide documentary proof of COVID-19 vaccination to access businesses’ goods and services. Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (“NCLH”) has recently challenged section 381.00316’s applicability to its cruise operations because NCLH believes that requiring its passengers to provide documentary proof of COVID-19 vaccination is the one constant that allows NCLH’s cruise ships to smoothly access foreign ports, which have differing COVID-19 protocols and rules. In Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Ltd. v. Rivkees, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled in favor of NCLH on this …
The New Bailments, Danielle D’Onfro
The New Bailments, Danielle D’Onfro
Washington Law Review
The rise of cloud computing has dramatically changed how consumers and firms store their belongings. Property that owners once managed directly now exists primarily on infrastructure maintained by intermediaries. Consumers entrust their photos to Apple instead of scrapbooks; businesses put their documents on Amazon’s servers instead of in file cabinets; seemingly everything runs in the cloud. Were these belongings tangible, the relationship between owner and intermediary would be governed by the common-law doctrine of bailment. Bailments are mandatory relationships formed when one party entrusts their property to another. Within this relationship, the bailees owe the bailors a duty of care …
Misreading Menetti: The Case Does Not Help You Avoid Liability For Your Own Fraud, Val D. Ricks
Misreading Menetti: The Case Does Not Help You Avoid Liability For Your Own Fraud, Val D. Ricks
St. Mary's Law Journal
Several decades ago, an incorrect legal idea surfaced in Texas jurisprudence: that business entity actors are immune from liability for fraud that they themselves commit, as if the entity is solely responsible. Though the Supreme Court of Texas has rejected that result several times, it keeps coming back. The most recent manifestation is as a construction of Texas’s unique veil-piercing statute. Many lawyers have suggested that this view of the veil-piercing statute originated in Menetti v. Chavers, a San Antonio Court of Appeals case decided in 1998. Menetti has in fact played a prominent role in the movement to …
Leases As Forms, David A. Hoffman, Anton Strezhnev
Leases As Forms, David A. Hoffman, Anton Strezhnev
All Faculty Scholarship
We offer the first large scale descriptive study of residential leases, based on a dataset of ~170,000 residential leases filed in support of over ~200,000 Philadelphia eviction proceedings from 2005 through 2019. These leases are highly likely to contain unenforceable terms, and their pro-landlord tilt has increased sharply over time. Matching leases with individual tenant characteristics, we show that unlawful terms are surprisingly likely to be associated with more expensive leaseholds in richer, whiter parts of the city. This result is linked to landlords' growing adoption of shared forms, originally created by non-profit landlord associations, and more recently available online …
De Facto Shareholder Primacy, Jeff Schwartz
Justifying Bad Deals, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
Justifying Bad Deals, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
All Faculty Scholarship
In the past decade, psychological and behavioral studies have found that individual commitment to contracts persists beyond personal relationships and traditional promises. Even take-it-or-leave it consumer contracts get substantial deference from consumers — even when the terms are unenforceable, even when the assent is procedurally compromised, and even when the drafter is an impersonal commercial actor. Indeed, there is mounting evidence that people import the morality of promise into situations that might otherwise be described as predatory, exploitative, or coercive. The purpose of this Article is to propose a framework for understanding what seems to be widespread acceptance of regulation …
Bitcoin: Order Without Law In The Digital Age, John O. Mcginnis, Kyle Roche
Bitcoin: Order Without Law In The Digital Age, John O. Mcginnis, Kyle Roche
Indiana Law Journal
Modern law makes currency a creature of the state and ultimately the value of its currency depends on the public’s trust in that state. While some nations are more capable than others at instilling public trust in the stability of their monetary institutions, it is nonetheless impossible for any legal system to make the pre-commitments necessary to completely isolate the governance of its money supply from political pressure. This proposition is true not only today, where nearly all government institutions manage their money supply in the form of central banking, but also true of past private banking regimes circulating their …
Hushing Contracts, David A. Hoffman, Erik Lampmann
Hushing Contracts, David A. Hoffman, Erik Lampmann
All Faculty Scholarship
The last few years have brought a renewed appreciation of the costs of nondisclosure agreements that suppress information about sexual wrongdoing. Recently passed bills in a number of states, including New York and California, has attempted to deal with such hush contracts. But such legislation is often incomplete, and many courts and commentators continue to ask if victims of harassment can sign enforceable settlements that conceal serious, potentially metastasizing, social harms. In this Article, we argue that employing the public policy doctrine, courts ought to generally refuse to enforce hush agreements, especially those created by organizations. We restate public policy …
A (Thigh) Gap In The Law: Addressing Egregious Digital Manipulation Of Celebrity Images, Jessica L. Williams-Vickery
A (Thigh) Gap In The Law: Addressing Egregious Digital Manipulation Of Celebrity Images, Jessica L. Williams-Vickery
Georgia State University Law Review
In 2012, world-renowned supermodel Coco Rocha agreed to be photographed for the cover of one of Elle’s magazine publications, Elle Brazil. Rocha posed for the pictures in a dress with significant cutouts, covered only by a sheer layer of skin-toned fabric. In keeping with her firm policy of no full or partial nudity, Rocha wore a bodysuit underneath the dress to limit her exposure. When Elle published the magazine, the final product shocked Rocha; the magazine had altered the image to remove her bodysuit, giving the impression Rocha had shown more skin than she in fact had. Rocha took to …
Relational Contracts Of Adhesion, David A. Hoffman
Relational Contracts Of Adhesion, David A. Hoffman
All Faculty Scholarship
Not all digital fine print exculpates liability: some exhorts users to perform before the consumer relationship has soured. We promise to choose strong passwords (and hold them private); to behave civilly on social networks; to refrain from streaming shows and sports; and to avoid reverse-engineering code (or, worse, deploying deadly bots). In short: consumers are apparently regulated by digital fine print, though it’s universally assumed we don’t read it, and even if we did, we’ll never be sued for failing to perform.
On reflection, this ordinary phenomenon is perplexing. Why would firms persist in deploying uncommunicative behavioral spurs? The conventional …
Amending Corporate Charters And Bylaws, Albert H. Choi, Geeyoung Min
Amending Corporate Charters And Bylaws, Albert H. Choi, Geeyoung Min
All Faculty Scholarship
Recently, courts have embraced the contractarian theory that corporate charters and bylaws constitute a “contract” between the shareholders and the corporation and have been more willing to uphold bylaws unilaterally adopted by the directors. This paper examines the contractarian theory by drawing a parallel between amending charters and bylaws, on the one hand, and amending contracts, on the other. In particular, the paper compares the right to unilaterally amend corporate bylaws with the right to unilaterally modify contract terms, and highlights how contract law imposes various limitations on the modifying party’s discretion. More generally, when the relationship of contracting parties …
Bridging The Gap Between Intent And Status: A New Framework For Modern Parentage, Yehezkel Margalit
Bridging The Gap Between Intent And Status: A New Framework For Modern Parentage, Yehezkel Margalit
Hezi Margalit
The last few decades have witnessed dramatic changes in the conceptualization and methodologies of determining legal parentage in the U.S. and other countries in the western world. Through various sociological shifts, growing social openness and bio-medical innovations, the traditional definitions of family and parenthood have been dramatically transformed. This transformation has led to an acute and urgent need for legal and social frameworks to regulate the process of determining legal parentage. Moreover, instead of progressing in a piecemeal, ad-hoc manner, the framework for determining legal parentage should be comprehensive. Only a comprehensive solution will address the differing needs of today’s …
From Baby M To Baby M(Anji): Regulating International Surrogacy Agreements, Yehezkel Margalit
From Baby M To Baby M(Anji): Regulating International Surrogacy Agreements, Yehezkel Margalit
Hezi Margalit
In 1985, when Kim Cotton became Britain’s first commercial surrogate mother, Europe was exposed to the issue of surrogacy for the first time on a large scale. Three years later, in 1988, the famous case of Baby M drew the attention of the American public to surrogacy as well. These two cases implicated fundamental ethical and legal issues regarding domestic surrogacy and triggered a fierce debate about motherhood, child-bearing, and the relationship between procreation, science and commerce. These two cases exemplified the debate regarding domestic surrogacy - a debate that has now been raging for decades. Contrary to the well-known …
Contract Development In A Matching Market: The Case Of Kidney Exchange, Kimberly D. Krawiec, Wenhao Liu, Marc L. Melcher
Contract Development In A Matching Market: The Case Of Kidney Exchange, Kimberly D. Krawiec, Wenhao Liu, Marc L. Melcher
Faculty Scholarship
We analyze a new transplant innovation — Advanced Donation, referred to by some as a kidney “gift certificate,” “layaway plan,” or “voucher — as a case study offering insights on both market and contract development. Advanced Donation provides an unusual window into the evolution of the exchange of a single good — a kidney for transplantation — from gift, to simple barter, to exchange with a temporal separation of obligations that relies solely on trust and reputational constraints for enforcement, to a complex matching market in which the parties rely, at least in part, on formal contract to define and …
Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel
Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel
Nehal A. Patel
AbstractOver thirty years have passed since the Bhopal chemical disaster began,and in that time scholars of corporate social responsibility (CSR) havediscussed and debated several frameworks for improving corporate responseto social and environmental problems. However, CSR discourse rarelydelves into the fundamental architecture of legal thought that oftenbuttresses corporate dominance in the global economy. Moreover, CSRdiscourse does little to challenge the ontological and epistemologicalassumptions that form the foundation for modern economics and the role ofcorporations in the world.I explore methods of transforming CSR by employing the thought ofMohandas Gandhi. I pay particular attention to Gandhi’s critique ofindustrialization and principle of swadeshi (self-sufficiency) …
Health Care And The Balance Billing Problem: The Solution Is The Common Law Of Contracts And Strengthening The Free Market For Health Care., George A. Nation Iii
Health Care And The Balance Billing Problem: The Solution Is The Common Law Of Contracts And Strengthening The Free Market For Health Care., George A. Nation Iii
George A Nation III
A large and growing group of insured patients is being unfairly burdened by hospitals’ exorbitant chargemaster prices. The burden is brought to bear on these patients through a process known as balance billing. For a variety of reasons hospital networks are becoming narrower as hospital systems contract with fewer insurers, and as a result, more and more patients are receiving balance bills. The practice of balance billing puts upward pressure on health care prices in general. That is, this practice leads to higher prices across the board for the uninsured, the out-of-network insured and even the in-network insured. This article …
Trust And Good-Faith Taken To A New Level: An Analysis Of Inconsistent Behavior In The Brazilian Legal Order, Thiago Luis Sombra
Trust And Good-Faith Taken To A New Level: An Analysis Of Inconsistent Behavior In The Brazilian Legal Order, Thiago Luis Sombra
Thiago Luís Santos Sombra
With the changes in the paradigm of voluntarism developed under the protection of liberalism, the bases for legal acts have reached an objective dimension, resulting in the birth of a number of mechanisms of control of private autonomy. Among these mechanisms, we can point out the relevance of those reinforced by the Roman Law, whose high ethical value underlines one of its biggest virtues in the control of the exercise of subjective rights. The prohibition of inconsistent behavior, conceived in the brocard venire contra factum proprium, constitutes one of the concepts from the Roman Law renown for the protection …
Trust And Good-Faith Taken To A New Level: An Analysis Of Inconsistent Behavior In The Brazilian Legal Order, Thiago Luis Sombra
Trust And Good-Faith Taken To A New Level: An Analysis Of Inconsistent Behavior In The Brazilian Legal Order, Thiago Luis Sombra
Thiago Luís Santos Sombra
With the changes in the paradigm of voluntarism developed under the protection of liberalism, the bases for legal acts have reached an objective dimension, resulting in the birth of a number of mechanisms of control of private autonomy. Among these mechanisms, we can point out the relevance of those reinforced by the Roman Law, whose high ethical value underlines one of its biggest virtues in the control of the exercise of subjective rights. The prohibition of inconsistent behavior, conceived in the brocard venire contra factum proprium, constitutes one of the concepts from the Roman Law renown for the protection …
Mistakes, Airfares, And Consumers: Restoring The Department Of Transportation's Role In Regulating Unfair Trade Practices, Terence Lau
Terence Lau
This Article traces the problem of mistake airfares and the federal government’s response to airlines that cancel tickets for erroneous fares. Part I of the Article explores airline pricing generally, and argues that airline tickets are a unique form of commodity good, one where there is no consumer expectation of a reasonable price. The dynamic nature of airline yield management means that prices for the exact same seat on an airplane can range dramatically on a variety of circumstances and factors that are beyond the knowledge, control or comprehension of the ordinary consumer. The Article investigates several well-known examples of …
Shared Responsibility Regulation Model For Cross-Border Reproductive Transactions, Sharon Bassan
Shared Responsibility Regulation Model For Cross-Border Reproductive Transactions, Sharon Bassan
Sharon Bassan
The term “cross-border reproductive transactions” refers to the phenomenon of tens of thousands of people who travel from one country to another to purchase reproductive services, in order to have a child. The foci of this paper are the lion share of cross-border reproductive transactions, specifically between consumers, i.e., intended parents from affluent countries, and suppliers of reproductive services, egg sellers and surrogate mothers, the majority of whom are from lower middle-income countries. Strong concerns regarding the morality of consumers’ states’ policy arise when a country nationally restricts or bans commercial surrogacy, while accepting the results of cross-border reproductive transactions …
Broad Shareholder Value And The Inevitable Role Of Conscience, Paul D. Weitzel, Zachariah J. Rodgers
Broad Shareholder Value And The Inevitable Role Of Conscience, Paul D. Weitzel, Zachariah J. Rodgers
Paul D. Weitzel
This article proposes an integrative solution to the modern debate on corporate purpose, the question of whether directors and officers must solely maximize profits or whether they may consider the effects on employees, the environment or the community. Many find pure profit maximization unseemly and suggest alternative theories, typically arguing that corporations owe a duty to a broader range of stakeholders. This position is inconsistent with the case law and unnecessary to allow conscience in the board room. We resolve the issue more simply by acknowledging that the purpose of a corporation is to promote the shareholders’ interests, which includes …
Commodification And Contract Formation: Placing The Consideration Doctrine On Stronger Foundations
Commodification And Contract Formation: Placing The Consideration Doctrine On Stronger Foundations
David Gamage
Under the traditional consideration doctrine, a promise is only legally enforceable if it is made in exchange for something of value. This doctrine lies at the heart of contract law, yet it lacks a sound theoretical justification – a fact that has confounded generations of scholars and created a mess of case law. This paper argues that the failure of traditional justifications for the doctrine comes from two mistaken assumptions. First, previous scholars have assumed that anyone can back a promise with nominal consideration if they wish to do so. We show how social norms against commodification limit the availability …
Sketches Of A Redemptive Theory Of Contract Law, Emily Houh
Sketches Of A Redemptive Theory Of Contract Law, Emily Houh
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
This Article is about the game we call contract law and what it does and means to those who, at one time or another, have been categorically barred from play. How have "outsider" players-such as racial minorities, women, and sexual minorities -entered the game and, subsequently, how have its governing rules-that is, contract doctrines applied or not applied to them? On the flipside, how have common law contract doctrines responded to the entry of new players in the game? And, to the extent contract law has so responded, why has it done so? In asking and responding to these questions, …
The Common Sense Of Contract Formation, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, David A. Hoffman
The Common Sense Of Contract Formation, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, David A. Hoffman
All Faculty Scholarship
What parties know and think they know about contract law affects their obligations under the law and their intuitive obligations toward one another. Drawing on a series of new experimental questionnaire studies, this Article makes two contributions.First, it lays out what information and beliefs ordinary individuals have about how to form contracts with one another. We find that the colloquial understanding of contract law is almost entirely focused on formalization rather than actual assent, though the modern doctrine of contract formation takes the opposite stance. The second Part of the Article tries to get at whether this misunderstanding matters. Is …
Dirty Debts Sold Dirt Cheap, Dalie Jimenez
Dirty Debts Sold Dirt Cheap, Dalie Jimenez
Dalie Jimenez
More than 77 million Americans have a debt in collections. Many of these debts will be sold to debt buyers for pennies, or fractions of pennies, on the dollar. This Article details the perilous path that debts travel as they move through the collection ecosystem. Using a unique dataset of 84 consumer debt purchase and sale agreement, it examines the manner in which debts are sold, oftentimes as simple data on a spreadsheet, devoid of any documentary evidence. It finds that in many contracts, sellers disclaim all warranties about the underlying debts sold or the information transferred. Sellers also sometimes …
Context Matters--What Lawyers Say About Choice Of Law Decisions In Merger Agreements, Juliet P. Kostritsky
Context Matters--What Lawyers Say About Choice Of Law Decisions In Merger Agreements, Juliet P. Kostritsky
Juliet P Kostritsky
ABSTRACT: The study of choice of law provisions in merger agreements yields various theories as to how much thought parties put into them, and what factors influence such decisions. Eisenberg and Miller found a shift to New York law and other scholars later hypothesized that parties specify New York law rather than Delaware law because New York law is more formalistic. However, a study of 343 merger agreements, consisting of 15 lawyer interviews and a survey sent to 812 lawyers, suggests differently. First, there is no shift from Delaware to New York. Second, a desire for formalistic law is not …