Legal Profession Commons^™

Got Wheels?: Article 2a, Standardized Rental Car Terms, And Unilateral Private Ordering, Irma S. Russell

Faculty Works

This Article examines the modern system of unilateral private ordering facilitated by form contracts in the context of standard form contracts for renting a car. Modern law accepts the presumption of a free market and free bargain in the setting of form contracting despite the lack of bargaining power on the consumer side of the deal. The article assesses the importance of defaults and presumptions in contract law, and presents the results of an empirical review of standard agreement forms of ten leading rental car companies, noting examples of significant alterations to common law defaults. The article also explores the …

Finding Redemption: How Picking Up The Phone Can Change A Lawyer's Life, Sean O'Brien

Faculty Works

The winner of the 2006 ABA Ross Essay Contest debated with himself whether to take a phone call from a death row inmate scheduled to be executed in 9 hours who turned out to be calling to request help for other prisoners. "As I hung up the phone, I experienced a profound awareness that no matter what each of us had previously done in our lives, at that moment Doyle Williams was a better human being than I. If a death row inmate can find redemption, maybe a lawyer can too."

Confronting Conventional Thinking: The Heuristics Problem In Feminist Legal Theory, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

The thesis of The Heuristics Problem is that the societal problems about which identity theorists are most concerned often spring from and are reinforced by thinking riddled with heuristic errors. This article first investigates the ways heuristic errors influence popular perceptions of feminist issues. Feminists and critical race theorists have explored the cognitive bias of stereotyping, but have not examined the ways probabilistic errors can have gendered consequences. Second, The Heuristics Problem traces some of the ways cognitive errors have influenced the development of laws relating to gender issues. It explores instances in judicial decisions in which courts commit heuristic …

Do Reverse Payment Settlements Violate The Antitrust Laws, Christopher M. Holman

Faculty Works

The term "reverse payment" has been used as shorthand to characterize a variety of diverse agreements between patent owners and alleged infringers that involve a transfer of consideration from the patent owner to the alleged infringer. Reverse payment settlements are particularly associated with drug patent challenges mounted by generic drug companies under the Hatch-Waxman Act. Many, including the Federal Trade Commission, would characterize these agreements as antitrust violations. However, courts have generally declined to find these agreements in violation of the antitrust laws based solely on the presence of a reverse payment.

This article begins in Section II with an …