Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

Just A Bit Aside, Howard Wasserman

Faculty Publications

In "Time to Drop the Infield Fly Rule and End a Common Law Anomaly," Judge Andrew Guilford and Joel Mallord offer the first cohesive scholarly critique of baseball's venerated and venerable Infield Fly Rule. They argue that the rule is grounded in outdated notions of sportsmanship and opposition to deception and that the game would be more exciting if players could be left to their own strategic and skillful devices on infield fly balls. This Response Essay builds on my previous work to argue that, properly understood, the Infield Fly Rule is justified, necessary, and appropriate in order to to …

Catalyzing Fans, Howard Wasserman, Dan Markel, Michael Mccann

Faculty Publications

This paper proposes the development of Fan Action Committees (“FACs”), which, like their political counterpart ("PACs"), could mobilize and empower fans to play a larger role in the decision-making associated with which “production teams” the talent will work.

We outline two institutional options: FACs could directly compensate talent by crowdfunding, or they could make donations to charities favored by talent. We then discuss both obstacles and objections from a variety of policy and legal perspectives ranging from competitive balance to distributive justice. Finally, we consider possible extensions of the FAC model as well as offer some ruminations on why FACs …

Football And The Infield Fly Rule, Howard M. Wasserman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Economics Of The Infield Fly Rule, Howard M. Wasserman

Faculty Publications

No sports rule has generated as much legal scholarship as baseball's Infield Fly Rule. Interestingly, however, no one has explained or defended the rule on its own terms as part of the internal rules and institutional structure of baseball as a game. This Article takes on that issue, explaining both why baseball should have the Infield Fly Rule and why a similar rule is not necessary or appropriate in seemingly comparable, but actually quite different, baseball situations., The answer lies in the dramatic cost-benefit disparities present in the infield fly and absent in most other game situations.

The-infield fly is …