Lost Classics Of Intellectual Property Law,
2014
University of PIttsburgh School of Law
Lost Classics Of Intellectual Property Law, Michael J. Madison
Articles
Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” American legal scholarship often suffers from a related sin of omission: failing to acknowledge its intellectual debts. This short piece attempts to cure one possible source of the problem, in one discipline: inadequate information about what’s worth reading among older writing. I list “lost classics” of American scholarship in intellectual property law. These are not truly “lost,” and what counts as “classic” is often in the eye of the beholder (or reader). But these works may usefully be found again, and intellectual property law scholarship would be …
Giving Meaning To 'Meaningful Access' In Medicaid Managed Care,
2014
University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Giving Meaning To 'Meaningful Access' In Medicaid Managed Care, Mary Crossley
Articles
As states seek to shift Medicaid recipients with disabilities out of traditional fee-for-service settings and into managed care plans, vexing questions arise about the impact on access to needed care and providers for beneficiaries with medically complex needs. With many states expanding their Medicaid program as part of health care reform and cost-containment pressures continuing to mount, this movement will likely accelerate over the next several years. This Article examines the possibility that disability discrimination law might provide a mechanism for prodding states in the planning stage to anticipate and plan for likely access issues, as well as for challenging …
The Impossible, Highly Desired Islamic Bank,
2014
University of PIttsburgh School of Law
The Impossible, Highly Desired Islamic Bank, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Articles
The purpose of this Article is to explore, and explain the stubborn persistence of, a central paradox that is endemic to the retail Islamic bank as it operates in the United States. The paradox is that retail Islamic banking in the United States is impossible, and yet it remains highly desired. It is impossible because the principles that are supposed to underlie the practice of Islamic finance deal with the trading of assets and the equitable sharing of risks, profits and losses among bank, depositor and portfolio investment. It is true that much of this can be, and is, circumvented …
Economic Interest Convergence In Downsizing Imprisonment,
2014
University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Economic Interest Convergence In Downsizing Imprisonment, Spearit
Articles
This Essay employs a variation of the “interest convergence” concept to examine the competing interests at stake in downsizing imprisonment in the United States. In the last few decades, the country has become the world leader in both incarceration rates and number of inmates. Reversing these trends is a common goal of multiple parties, who advocate prison reform under different rationales. Some advocate less imprisonment as a means of tempering the disparate effects of imprisonment on individual offenders and the communities to which they return. Others support downsizing based on conservative values that favor reduced government size, spending, and interference …
"Sea Water Fish In A Freshwater Pond:" An Institutional Approach To Understanding Cooperative Scarcity In The United States,
2014
Scripps College
"Sea Water Fish In A Freshwater Pond:" An Institutional Approach To Understanding Cooperative Scarcity In The United States, Caroline E. Malone
Scripps Senior Theses
There is remarkable cooperative organization scarcity in the United States. Particularly in the credit union and worker cooperative sectors, this scarcity is not satisfactorily explained by neo-classical economic models that assume competitive conditions and profit-maximizing organizations. This paper supplements the conventional economic understandings of credit union and worker cooperative scarcity with an institutional analysis. Mechanisms of coercive, mimetic, and normative institutional isomorphism developed in DiMaggio and Powell’s theory of organizational isomorphism are applied to provide greater understanding of credit union and worker cooperative scarcity in the US. It appears that these forces of isomorphism work in conjunction with one another, …
Wickard For The Internet? Network Neutrality After Verizon V. Fcc,
2014
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Wickard For The Internet? Network Neutrality After Verizon V. Fcc, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
The D.C. Circuit’s January 2014 decision in Verizon v. FCC represented a major milestone in the debate over network neutrality that has dominated communications policy for the past decade. This article analyzes the implications of the D.C. Circuit’s ruling, beginning with a critique of the court’s ruling that section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 gave the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the authority to mandate some form of network neutrality. Examination of the statute’s text, application of canons of construction such as ejusdem generis and noscitur a sociis, and a perusal of the statute’s legislative history all raise questions …
The Bankruptcy Code’S Safe Harbors For Settlement Payments And Securities Contracts: When Is Safe Too Safe?,
2014
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
The Bankruptcy Code’S Safe Harbors For Settlement Payments And Securities Contracts: When Is Safe Too Safe?, Charles W. Mooney Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article addresses insolvency law-related issues in connection with certain financial-markets contracts, such as securities contracts, commodity contracts, forward contracts, repurchase agreements (repos), swaps and other derivatives, and master netting agreements. The Bankruptcy Code provides special treatment—safe harbors—for these contracts (collectively, qualified financial contracts or QFCs). This special treatment is considerably more favorable for nondebtor parties to QFCs than the rules applicable to nondebtor parties to other contracts with a debtor. Yet even some strong critics of the safe harbors concede that some special treatment may be warranted. This Article offers a critique of the safe harbor for settlement payments, …
Can The Dark Arts Of The Dismal Science Shed Light On The Empirical Reality Of Civil Procedure?,
2014
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Can The Dark Arts Of The Dismal Science Shed Light On The Empirical Reality Of Civil Procedure?, Jonah B. Gelbach
All Faculty Scholarship
Litigation involves human beings, who are likely to be motivated to pursue their interests as they understand them. Empirical civil procedure researchers must take this fact seriously if we are to adequately characterize the effects of policy changes. To make this point concrete, I first step outside the realm of civil procedure and illustrate the importance of accounting for human agency in empirical research. I use the canonical problem of demand estimation in economics to show how what I call the “urn approach” to empirical work fails to uncover important empirical relationships by disregarding behavioral aspects of human action. I …
Remittances From Puerto Rico: Unsuspected Transnational Locality In Times Of Crisis,
2014
University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Remittances From Puerto Rico: Unsuspected Transnational Locality In Times Of Crisis, Sheila I. Velez Martinez
Articles
This paper looks at immigrant remittances from Puerto Rico as a tool to understand how immigrant communities have faced and engaged the economic crisis. For example, from the data reviewed, it stems that immigrant remittances sent from Puerto Rico do not follow the same patterns as remittances sent from the United States and Europe inasmuch as they seem less affected by the global financial crisis and local unemployment rates. The research conducted also tends to indicate that money transfers from Puerto Rico might allow us to grasp the growing economic transnational relationships that are being maintained by varied immigrant communities …
Transnational Marriage: Modern Imaginings, Relational Realignments, And Persistent Inequalities,
2014
Bucknell University
Transnational Marriage: Modern Imaginings, Relational Realignments, And Persistent Inequalities, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
In the context of shifting cultural anchors as well as unstable global economic conditions, new practices of intimacy and sexuality may become tactics in an individual’s negotiation of conflicting desires and potentials. This article offers reflection on the interface between global forces, powerful transcultural narratives, and state policies, on the one hand, and local, even individual, constructions and tactics in regard to sexuality, marriage, migration, and work, on the other. The article focuses on the life trajectory of Gudiya, an ambitious young Hindu woman who started out life with little social capital and few economic resources in a dusty corner …
Advancing The Empirical Research On Lobbying,
2014
Duke Law School
Advancing The Empirical Research On Lobbying, John M. De Figueiredo, Brian Kelleher Richter
Faculty Scholarship
This essay identifies the empirical facts about lobbying which are generally agreed upon in the literature. It then discusses challenges to empirical research in lobbying and provides examples of empirical methods that can be employed to overcome these challenges—with an emphasis on statistical measurement, identification, and casual inference. The essay then discusses the advantages, disadvantages, and effective use of the main types of data available for research in lobbying. It closes by discussing a number of open questions for researchers in the field and avenues for future work to advance the empirical research in lobbying.
Symbolic Corporate Governance Politics,
2014
New York University School of Law
Symbolic Corporate Governance Politics, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock
All Faculty Scholarship
How are we to understand the persistent gap between rhetoric and reality that characterizes so much of corporate governance politics? In this Article, we show that the rhetoric around a variety of high profile corporate governance controversies (including shareholder proposals asking boards to redeem poison pills, proxy access, majority voting in director elections, and shareholder proposals to remove supermajority voting requirements) cannot be justified by the material interests at stake. At the same time, shareholder activists are oddly reluctant to pursue issues that may have a more material impact, such as anti-pill charter provisions or mandatory bylaw amendments. We consider …
Corporate Governance And Social Welfare In The Common Law World,
2014
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Corporate Governance And Social Welfare In The Common Law World, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
The newest addition to the spate of recent theories of comparative corporate governance is Corporate Governance in the Common-Law World: The Political Foundations of Shareholder Power, an important new book by Christopher Bruner. Focusing on the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia, Bruner argues that the robustness of the country’s social welfare system is the key determinant of the extent to which its corporate governance is shareholder-centered. This explains why corporate governance is so shareholder-oriented in the United Kingdom, which has universal healthcare and generous unemployment benefits, while shareholders’ powers are more attenuated in the United States, with its …
Performance Track’S Postmortem: Lessons From The Rise And Fall Of Epa’S “Flagship” Voluntary Program,
2014
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Performance Track’S Postmortem: Lessons From The Rise And Fall Of Epa’S “Flagship” Voluntary Program, Cary Coglianese, Jennifer Nash
All Faculty Scholarship
For nearly a decade, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) considered its National Environmental Performance Track to be its “flagship” voluntary program — even a model for transforming the conventional system of environmental regulation. Since Performance Track’s founding during the Clinton Administration, EPA officials repeatedly claimed that the program’s rewards attracted hundreds of the nation’s “top” environmental performers and induced these businesses to make significant environmental gains beyond legal requirements. Although EPA eventually disbanded Performance Track early in the Obama Administration, the program has been subsequently emulated by a variety of state and federal regulatory authorities. To discern lessons …
Harmonizing Choice-Of-Law Rules For International Insolvency Cases: Virtual Territoriality, Virtual Universalism, And The Problem Of Local Interests,
2014
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Harmonizing Choice-Of-Law Rules For International Insolvency Cases: Virtual Territoriality, Virtual Universalism, And The Problem Of Local Interests, Charles W. Mooney Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
This paper explores the potential content and feasibility of a set of harmonized choice of law rules (HICOL Rules) that would apply in insolvency proceedings. It contemplates a main insolvency proceeding opened in a debtor’s center of main interests (“COMI”) and the existence of (or possibility of opening) one or more non-main (or secondary) proceedings. It also contemplates the possibility that an insolvency representative in a main or non-main proceeding may seek and be granted recognition in another state under the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency (codified as Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code in the U.S.) Under HICOL …
Merger Review By The Federal Communications Commission: Comcast-Nbc Universal,
2014
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Merger Review By The Federal Communications Commission: Comcast-Nbc Universal, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
The Communications Act of 1934 created a dual review process in which mergers in the communications industry are reviewed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as well as the antitrust authorities. Commentators have criticized dual review not only as costly and redundant, but also as subject to substantive and procedural abuse. The process of clearing the 2011 Comcast-NBC Universal merger provides a useful case study to examine whether such concerns are justified. A review of the empirical context reveals that the FCC intervened even though the relevant markets were not structured in a way that would ordinarily raise anticompetitive concerns. …
Endogenous Decentralization In Federal Environmental Policies,
2014
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Endogenous Decentralization In Federal Environmental Policies, Howard F. Chang, Hilary Sigman, Leah G. Traub
All Faculty Scholarship
Under most federal environmental laws and some health and safety laws, states may apply for “primacy,” that is, authority to implement and enforce federal law, through a process known as “authorization.” Some observers fear that states use authorization to adopt more lax policies in a regulatory “race to the bottom.” This paper presents a simple model of the interaction between the federal and state governments in such a scheme of partial decentralization. Our model suggests that the authorization option may not only increase social welfare but also allow more stringent environmental regulations than would otherwise be feasible. Our model also …
An Empirical Analysis Of Cost Recovery In Superfund Cases: Implications For Brownfields And Joint And Several Liability,
2014
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
An Empirical Analysis Of Cost Recovery In Superfund Cases: Implications For Brownfields And Joint And Several Liability, Howard F. Chang, Hilary Sigman
All Faculty Scholarship
Economic theory developed in the prior literature indicates that under the joint and several liability imposed by the federal Superfund statute, the government should recover more of its costs of cleaning up contaminated sites than it would under nonjoint liability, and the amount recovered should increase with the number of defendants and with the independence among defendants in trial outcomes. We test these predictions empirically using data on outcomes in federal Superfund cases. Theory also suggests that this increase in the amount recovered may discourage the sale and redevelopment of potentially contaminated sites (or “brownfields”). We find the increase to …
The Youth Unemployment Crisis Facing Welfare Regimes: How States Develop New Social Policy,
2014
The College of Wooster
The Youth Unemployment Crisis Facing Welfare Regimes: How States Develop New Social Policy, Andrew C. Campbell
Senior Independent Study Theses
No abstract provided.
The Evolution Of English Language Teaching During Societal Transition In Finland – A Mutual Relationship Or A Distinctive Process?,
2014
University of Tampere
The Evolution Of English Language Teaching During Societal Transition In Finland – A Mutual Relationship Or A Distinctive Process?, Riitta Jaatinen, Toni Saarivirta
Australian Journal of Teacher Education
This study describes the evolution of English language teaching in Finland and looks into the connections of the societal and educational changes in the country as explanatory factors in the process. The results of the study show that the language teaching methodology and the status of foreign languages in Finland are clearly connected to the changes in society and its education system. Since the first decade of the 20th century, Finnish society has developed from an inward-looking agrarian country into an economically and technologically advanced and industrialized society joining in various ways to the rest of Europe and global …
