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Measuring The Costs And Benefits Of Patent Pools, Michael Mattioli, Robert P. Merges

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article addresses a policy question that has challenged scholars and lawmakers since the 1850s: Do the transaction cost benefits of patent pools outweigh their potential for consumer harm? This question has special importance today. Patent pools are on the increase, due to large numbers of patents in critical industries such as software and mobile phones. In this Article, we present the first empirically-based estimate of the transaction costs savings engendered by patent pools. Drawing on interviews with administrators of prominent pools, we document the costs of assembling and administering a functioning pool. We then estimate the transaction costs that …

Railroad Land Grants In An Incongruous System: Corporate Subsidies, Bureaucratic Governance, And Legal Conflict In The United States, 1850-1903, Sean Kammer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Josiah Philips Attainder And The Institutional Structure Of The American Revolution, Matthew J. Steilen

Journal Articles

This Article is a historical study of the Case of Josiah Philips. Philips led a gang of militant loyalists and escaped slaves in the Great Dismal Swamp of southeastern Virginia during the American Revolution. He was attainted of treason in 1778 by an act of the Virginia General Assembly, tried for robbery before a jury, convicted and executed. For many years, the Philips case was thought to be an early example of judicial review, based on a claim by St. George Tucker that judges had refused to enforce the act of attainder. Modern research has cast serious doubt on Tucker’s …

Representing The United States Government: Reconceiving The Federal Prosecutor's Role Through A Historical Lens, Scott Ingram

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

For nearly 100 years courts and legal scholars have held prosecutors to the “justice” standard, meaning that the prosecutor’s first duty is to ensure that justice is done. With this command, prosecutors have increased their discretion. The modern prosecutor’s power is unrivaled in the criminal justice system. Judges and defense attorneys have ceded some of their power to prosecutors. The prosecutor’s power has led a host of commentators to critique prosecutorial use of power for a variety of reasons. Rather than add to this voluminous literature by defending or critiquing prosecutorial power, this Article challenges the underlying assumption of prosecutorial …

Brother, Can You Spare A Dollar? Designing An Effective Framework For Foreign Currency Liquidity Assistance, Dan Awrey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The core principles of financial crisis management call upon central banks to lend freely, against good quality collateral, and at a penalty rate of interest, to solvent but illiquid banks and other financial institutions during periods of widespread panic and instability. While often taken for granted, these principles were designed for a world in which central banks have the capacity to create money denominated in the same currency as the one in which domestic banks and other financial institutions issue deposits and other short-term liabilities.

Unfortunately, this is not the world in which we live. The application of these principles …

Our Criminal Laws, Our Constitution, Sarah Seo

Faculty Scholarship

This essay reviews three recently published books that further explore this insight in the twentieth century. At first glance, vagrancy laws, the free will problem, and criminal records may seem to share little in common. But each study illuminates how criminal laws have defined our nation by creating what historian Barbara Welke has termed "borders of belonging," a boundary that laws create between people who enjoy full citizenship and those who do not. After all, a conviction and imprisonment are acts of social and political exclusion. Even the policing of suspected offenders often reveals who does not completely belong.

The …

Lifecycles Of Competition Systems: Explaining Variation In The Implementation Of New Regimes, William E. Kovacic, Marianela Lopez-Galdos

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

The Church And Magna Carta, R. H. Helmholz

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Detecting Good Public Policy Rationales For The American Rule: A Response To The Ill-Conceived Calls For “Loser Pays” Rules, Peter Karsten, Oliver Bateman

Duke Law Journal

Several critiques have been leveled at the American Rule—that is, the rule that each party to a lawsuit should pay for its attorneys. Some claim that there were no principled justifications offered by the nineteenth-century jurists who authored the opinions marking the rule’s origins. Instead, these jurists only cited their states’ “taxable costs” statutes. Others claim that the American Rule—as well as its close relative, the contingency-fee contract—contributed to a “liability explosion” in that century. This Article offers a comprehensive examination of the origins of, rationales given for, and impact of the American Rule; then it evaluates instances in which …

The Church And Magna Carta, Richard H. Helmholz

Articles

No abstract provided.

Grasping At Origins: Shifting The Conversation In The Historical Study Of Human Rights, Christopher N.J. Roberts

Chicago Journal of International Law

In recent years, scholars from a range of disciplinary orientations have invested considerable time exploring a very basic question: Where did human rights come from? The answers have not been so basic. There exists an extraordinary range of conflicting historical accounts. The hotly debated question of the moment within this field of study centers on figuring out which version of the history is the correct one. However, given the dramatic distance between the historical accounts, it is very unlikely that the matter will be settled in the near future. This Article argues that it is time to shift the focal …

The Birth Of A Legal Economy: Lawyers And The Development Of American Commerce, Justin Simard

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Class Roots: The Genesis Of The Ontario Class Proceedings Act, 1966 - 1993, Suzanne Erica Chiodo

LLM Theses

Nearly 25 years since its passage, the Ontario Class Proceedings Act has become one of the most frequently debated procedural mechanisms of its kind. The CPA came about following the release of the Attorney Generals Advisory Committee (AGAC) Report in 1990. None of the current narratives explain how this Report pulled together so many divergent interests where previous attempts had failed. My thesis answers this question with reference to the historical sources and the legal, political and social changes that took place throughout this period.

This thesis also highlights the unique nature of the AGAC consultation process, which saw the …

When Sex Trafficking Victims Turn Eighteen: The Problematic Focus On Force, Fraud, And Coercion In U.S. Human Trafficking Laws, Julianne Siegfriedt

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Interest And Irritation: Brown V. Maryland And The Making Of A National Economy, Henry P. Callegary

Legal History Publications

This paper examines the United States Supreme Court case Brown v. Maryland, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 419 (1827), which struck down Maryland’s licensing fee on wholesalers of imported goods. In doing so, the Court reaffirmed its commitment to a national economic policy, instead of a state-centric system. This paper explores the context of the decision, including profiles of the parties involved, the attorneys for both sides, the lower court decisions, and the majority opinion and dissent from the United States Supreme Court. Additionally, this paper follows the lineage of the case through to the present day, examining its doctrinal impact …

International Trade V. Intellectual Property Lawyers:Globalization And The Brazilian Legal Profession, Vitor Martins Dias

Journal of Civil Law Studies

In the context of globalization, this work analyzes a distinctive characteristic of the Brazilian legal profession. Namely, intellectual property (IP) lawyers, who played important roles in opening the Brazilian economy and who were key players in cross-border transactions, are now losing ground to their peers with respect to expertise in international trade. The thesis of this article is that the manner in which Brazilian lawyers are being educated is problematic. Generally, Brazilian legal education has become degraded and provincial. Yet, Brazilian international trade lawyers, unlike Brazilian IP lawyers, have overcome their deficient legal training by seeking legal education abroad. By …

Book Review: Legalist Empire: International Law And American Foreign Relations In The Early Twentieth Century By Benjamin Allen Coates, William Heisey

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This is a book review of Legalist Empire: International Law and American Foreign Relations in the Early Twentieth Century by Benjamin Allen Coates.

Writing The Short Paper, Andrew Jensen Kerr

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Are Universities Special?, Shubha Ghosh

Akron Law Review

Universities offer a space for development of ideas, exploration of basic research, and productive outlets for creation and invention. As such, they are key to the innovation environment within which intellectual property laws operate. Although scholarship has focused on universities as institutions counter to other institutions like markets and government, less attention has been paid to universities as organizations, a site for governance through detailed rules and commonly understood norms. When understood as an organization, universities display three overlapping, but distinct models: one of pure research, one of pure commercialization, and one of public purpose. These three models together define …

An Innovative Matrix For Dispute Resolution: The Dubai World Tribunal And The Global Insolvency Crisis, Jayanth K. Krishnan, Harold Koster

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This study examines a legal experiment that occurred during the height of the global financial crisis. As markets from the United States to Europe to the Global South shook, one country – the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) – found itself on the brink of economic collapse. In particular, in 2009 the U.A.E.’s Emirate of Dubai (Emirate) was contemplating defaulting on $60 billion of debt it had amassed. Recognizing that such a default would have cataclysmic reverberations across the globe, Dubai’s governmental leaders turned to a small group of foreign lawyers, judges, accountants, and business consultants for assistance. Working in a …

Big Questions Comparative Law, Anna Di Robilant

Faculty Scholarship

This essay reflects on Ran Hirschl’s book "Comparative Matters." Feeling that historical comparative law methodologies have been found wanting it looks to newer methods. For example, the critical approach to comparative law relies on comparison to expose the implicit biases and assumptions of the observer’s own system and to denounce the illusory and ideological nature of “legalism,” namely, the claim that law is both neutral and necessary. Comparative law and economics seeks to explain in precise terms the convergence of legal rules by using efficiency as a key metric. Comparative law and economics also gives a comparative twist to the …

Plumb Lines Instead Of A Wrecking Ball: A Model For Recalibrating Patent Scope, F. Russell Denton

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

The International League For Human Rights: The Strategy Of A Human Rights Ngo, Laurie S. Wiseberg, Harry M. Scoble

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Incentivizing Armed Non-State Actors To Comply With The Law: Protecting Children In Times Of Armed Conflict, Sarah Hafen

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Defining The Patent And Copyright Term: Term Limits And The Intellectual Property Clause, Edward C. Walterscheid

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Conceptions Of Authority And The Anglo-American Common Law Divide, Dan Priel

Articles & Book Chapters

This essay seeks to explain the puzzle of the divergence of American law from the rest of the common law world through the lens of legal theory. I argue that there are four competing ideal-type theories of the authority of the common law: reason, practice, custom, and will. The reason view explains the authority of the common law in terms of correspondence to the demands of pure practical reason; the practice view sees the authority of the common law as derived from the expertise of practitioners (especially judges and practice-oriented academics) who try to develop the common law as a …

Pre-Twombly Precedent: Have Leatherman And Swierkiewicz Earned Retirement Too?, Lucas F. Tesoriero

Duke Law Journal

In theory, a complaint is a relatively minor part of a lawsuit, intended to initiate the litigation process. In practice, federal courts are struggling to implement the Supreme Court’s opinions in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal. This struggle is due, in part, to the fact that neither Twombly nor Iqbal expressly overruled the Court’s pre-Twombly pleading jurisprudence. This Note focuses on how lower courts are assessing the continued vitality of two major pre-Twombly cases: Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence and Coordination Unit and Swierkiewicz v. Sorema N.A. It finds that lower courts …

Of Rules And Representation (And Dysfunction) In The United States Senate, Daniel Wirls

Tulsa Law Review

Reviewing Wendy J. Schiller & Charles Stewart III, Electing the Senate: Indirect Democracy Before the Seventeenth Amendment (Princeton University Press 2015); and Steven S. Smith, The Senate Syndrome: The Evolution of Procedural Warfare in the Modern U.S. Senate (University of Oklahoma Press 2014).

The Evolution Of Copyright Law And Inductive Speculations As To Its Future, Orit Fischman-Afori

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Copyrighting Shakespeare: Jacob Tonson, Eighteenth Century English Copyright, And The Birth Of Shakespeare Scholarship, Jeffrey M. Gaba

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.