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Corporate Personhood And Limited Sovereignty, Elizabeth Pollman
Corporate Personhood And Limited Sovereignty, Elizabeth Pollman
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article, written for a symposium celebrating the work of Professor Margaret Blair, examines how corporate rights jurisprudence helped to shape the corporate form in the United States during the nineteenth century. It argues that as the corporate form became popular because of the way it facilitated capital lock-in, perpetual succession, and provided other favorable characteristics related to legal personality that separated the corporation from its participants, the Supreme Court provided crucial reinforcement of these entity features by recognizing corporations as rights-bearing legal persons separate from the government. Although the legal personality of corporations is a distinct concept from their …
The Supreme Court Bar At The Bar Of Patents, Paul Gugliuzza
The Supreme Court Bar At The Bar Of Patents, Paul Gugliuzza
Faculty Scholarship
Over the past two decades, a few dozen lawyers have come to dominate practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. By many accounts, these elite lawyers—whose clients are often among the largest corporations in the world—have spurred the Court to hear more cases that businesses care about and to decide those cases in favor of their clients. The Supreme Court’s recent case law on antitrust, arbitration, punitive damages, class actions, and more provides copious examples.
Though it is often overlooked in discussions of the emergent Supreme Court bar, patent law is another area in which the Court’s agenda has changed significantly …
The End Of Class Actions?, Brian T. Fitzpatrick
The End Of Class Actions?, Brian T. Fitzpatrick
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In this Article, I give a status report on the life expectancy of class action litigation following the Supreme Court's decisions in Concepcion and American Express. These decisions permitted corporations to opt out of class action liability through the use of arbitration clauses, and many commentators, myself included, predicted that they would eventually lead us down a road where class actions against businesses would be all but eliminated. Enough time has now passed to make an assessment of whether these predictions are coming to fruition. I find that, although there is not yet solid evidence that businesses have flocked to …
A Court For The One Percent: How The Supreme Court Contributes To Economic Inequality, Michele E. Gilman
A Court For The One Percent: How The Supreme Court Contributes To Economic Inequality, Michele E. Gilman
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article explores the United States Supreme Court’s role in furthering economic inequality. The Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 not only highlighted growing income and wealth inequality in the United States, but also pointed the blame at governmental policies that favor business interests and the wealthy due to their outsized influence on politicians. Numerous economists and political scientists agree with this thesis. However, in focusing ire on the political branches and big business, these critiques have largely overlooked the role of the judiciary in fostering economic inequality. The Court’s doctrine touches each of the major causes of economic inequality, …
Business-Like: The Supreme Court's 2009-2010 Labor And Employment Decisions, Melissa Hart
Business-Like: The Supreme Court's 2009-2010 Labor And Employment Decisions, Melissa Hart
Publications
The 2009-10 Term at the Supreme Court was a relatively quiet one for labor and employment law. While the Justices were in the news for decisions on corporate political donations and the Second Amendment, the Court’s work-related docket grabbed no headlines. In fact, though, the Court considered 7 work law cases this Term, in areas ranging from standards for arbitration agreements to employee privacy rights in new technology to time limitations for filing Title VII disparate impact claims. This article discusses the Court’s labor and employment cases for the Term. While they may not have made much news, several of …