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Faculty, University Of Michigan Law School

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

• Faculty adopts new admissions policy
• Reimann, co-editor assay the ‘state of the art’ of comparative law
• New books by Santacroce, West

On Amending Executive Order 12866, Sally Katzen

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

During the last six years, there has been a slow but steady change in the process by which regulations are developed and issued—specifically, in the balance of authority between the federal regulatory agencies and the Office of Management and Budget.

Back Cover, University Of Michigan Law School

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

No abstract provided.

A Response To Professor Laycock, Marci A. Hamilton

Michigan Law Review

Almost a hundred years ago, the American Association of University Professors established guidelines for civility among scholars, saying that academic exchanges "should be set forth with dignity, courtesy, and temperateness of language." I agree wholeheartedly with these principles, and I will not succumb to the temptation to respond in kind to Professor Laycock's review. Tone is much less important than having a frank exchange of views. It is well known that Professor Laycock and I have very different perspectives on the proper interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause. His review and my response should be an opportunity for us to …

A Syllabus Of Errors, Douglas Laycock

Michigan Law Review

Modern American society is pervasively regulated. It is also religiously diverse to a degree that is probably unprecedented in the history of the world. It is inevitable that some of these diverse religious practices will violate some of these pervasive regulations, and equally inevitable that if we ask whether all these regulations are really necessary, sometimes the answer will be no. If we take free exercise of religion seriously, sometimes it will make sense to exempt sincere religious practices from generally applicable laws - but only some laws, and only some applications. Hardly anyone thinks that human sacrifice should be …

Life-Giving Speech Amid An Empire Of Silence, Walter Brueggemann

Michigan Law Review

It will come as no surprise to readers of the Law Review that James Boyd White is a daring and wise practitioner of what Clifford Geertz terms "blurred genres." By appeal to Kenneth Burke, Victor Turner, and Paul Ricoeur, among others, Geertz envisions a broad interpretive venture that breaks out of the rigid regulations of a particular discipline to the larger constructive enterprise that entertains life and its meaning as a "game" of face-to-face engagement, or as a "drama" that presses on to the next scene. White's work fits that vision precisely. In Living Speech: Resisting the Empire of Force, …

"Quotidian" Judges Vs. Al-Qaeda, Mark S. Davies

Michigan Law Review

In Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts, University of Chicago law professors Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule invite those of us worried about the American response to al-Qaeda to consider the proper role of judges. Judges, of course, are not being dispatched to the hills of Pakistan nor are they securing our borders or buildings. But as the executive seeks to implement a range of new policies in the name of protecting us from al-Qaeda, the judicial treatment of these policies shapes the American response. Posner and Vermeule suggest a kind of Hippocratic view of …

The Theory And Practice Of Tax Reform, Lawrence Zelenak

Michigan Law Review

On January 7, 2005, President Bush-flush with recent electoral victory- issued an Executive Order creating the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform. The Order instructed the bipartisan Panel to recommend one or more plans for major reform of the federal income tax. The president did not, however, permit the Panel to begin its work on a blank slate. Instead, the Order required (among other things) that the Panel's proposals be revenue-neutral, simpler than current law, "appropriately progressive," and supportive of homeownership and charity. Although the Order contemplated that the Panel might offer more than one tax reform plan, it …

Young Associates In Trouble, William D. Henderson, David Zaring

Michigan Law Review

Large law firms have reputations as being tough places to work, and the larger the firm, the tougher the firm. Yet, notwithstanding the grueling hours and the shrinking prospects of partnership, these firms perennially attract a large proportion of the nation's top law school graduates. These young lawyers could go anywhere but choose to work at large firms. Why do they do so if law firms are as inhospitable as their reputations suggest? Two recent novels about the lives of young associates in large, prestigious law firms suggest that such a rational calculation misapprehends the costs. Law professor Kermit Roosevelt's …

Classic Revisited: Penal Theory In Paradise Lost, Jillisa Brittan, Richard A. Posner

Michigan Law Review

Milton's great poem can be enjoyed as a supernatural adventure story in the epic tradition-indeed almost as a science-fiction fantasy. An incredibly powerful supernatural figure-call him Father-lives on planet Heaven somewhere in outer space, surrounded by lesser supernatural beings, called Angels. Father begets Son asexually, and declares his intent to give him vice regal authority. Infuriated at Son's being promoted over him, the foremost Angel, L leads a third of the Angels in violent rebellion against Father and Son. At first it seems the rebels will best the loyal Angels. But Father sends in Son to defeat the rebels all …

Capital Defense Lawyers: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Sean D. O'Brien

Michigan Law Review

Professor Welsh S. White's book Litigating in the Shadow of Death: Defense Attorneys in Capital Cases collects the compelling stories of "a new band of dedicated lawyers" that has "vigorously represented capital defendants, seeking to prevent their executions" (p.3). Sadly, Professor White passed away on New Year's Eve, 2005, days before the release of his final work. To the well-deserved accolades of Professor White that were recently published in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, I can only add a poignant comment in a student blog that captures his excellence as a scholar and educator: "I wanted to …

Antitrust Modesty, Daniel A. Crane

Michigan Law Review

Given Hovenkamp's influence and intellect, the publication of The Antitrust Enterprise is a major event, particularly since he sets out, according to the book's jacket, to provide "the first authoritative and compact exposition of antitrust law since Robert Bork's classic The Antitrust Paradox was published more than thirty years ago." Nevertheless, one could quibble with the jacket's claim. Richard Posner substantially updated his own authoritative and compact exposition of antitrust law in 2001. In a 2003 book review, Hovenkamp called Posner's second edition a "marvelous and important book." So, before beginning a review of Hovenkamp's new work, it seems necessary …

Property, Contracts, And Politics, Mark Tushnet

Michigan Law Review

Rebecca Scott is a historian, not an economist. Describing how a dispute over a mule's ownership was resolved, Professor Scott reproduces a receipt two claimants left when they took the mule from the plantation whose manager claimed it as well (p. 185). By contrast, analyzing property relations in the pre-Civil War American South, economic historian Jenny Wahl observes, "[E]conomic historians tend to [use] ... frequency tables, graphs, and charts." The differences in visual aids to understanding indicate the various ways historians and economists approach a single topic-the relation between markets and politics, the latter defined to include the deployment of …

Looking Backward: Richard Epstein Ponders The "Progressive" Peril, Michael Allan Wolf

Michigan Law Review

In the 1888 novel Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy dreamed up a twentieth century America that was a socialist utopia, a vision invoked four years later by the conservative Justice David J. Brewer as a warning against government regulation. In How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution, Richard Epstein, looking back at the twentieth century through an interpretive lens much more similar to Brewer's than Bellamy's, sees and bemoans the growth of a dominant big government of which the novelist could only dream. Epstein pulls no punches in his attack on those he deems responsible for the shift in the American …

Keeping The State Out: The Separation Of Law And State In Classical Islamic Law, Lubna A. Alam

Michigan Law Review

The implementation and enforcement of Islamic law, especially Islamic criminal law, by modem-day Muslim nation-states is fraught with controversy and challenges. In Pakistan, the documented problems and failures of the country's attempt to codify Islamic law on extramarital sexual relations have led to efforts to remove rape cases from Islamic law courts to civil law courts. In striking contrast to Pakistan's experience, the Republic of the Maldives recently commissioned a draft of a penal law and sentencing guidelines based on Islamic law that abides by international norms. The incorporation of Islamic law into the legal systems of various countries around …

The Bureaucratic Court, Benjamin C. Mizer

Michigan Law Review

In August 2006, the New York Times caused a stir by reporting that the number of female law clerks at the United States Supreme Court has fallen sharply in the first full Term in which Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is no longer on the bench. In an era in which nearly fifty percent of all law school graduates are women, the Times reported, less than twenty percent of the clerks in the Court's 2006 Term - seven of thirty-seven - are women. In interviews, Justices Souter and Breyer viewed the sharp drop in the number of female clerks as an …

The Screening Effect Of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Stephen Choi, Karen K. Nelson, Adam C. Pritchard

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

Prior research shows that the PSLRA increased the significance of merit-related factors, such as the presence of an accounting restatement or insider selling, in determining the incidence and outcomes of securities fraud class actions. (Johnson, Nelson, and Pritchard, 2007). This result, however, is consistent with two possible hypotheses. First, the PSLRA may have reduced solely the incidence of non-meritorious litigation. Second, the PSLRA may have changed the definition of merit, effectively precluding claims that would have survived and produced a settlement pre-PSLRA. This paper tests these alternative hypotheses. We find that pre-PSLRA claims that settled for nuisance value would be …

Vol. 57, No. 11, March 20, 2007, University Of Michigan Law School

Res Gestae

•Exams Face Changes •Moot Court •Ask Sandra D. •Prom Pictures •LSSS Elections •SFF Pictures •Build Green for a Better Law School •Green Eggs and Pizza •ABA Concludes Visit •Guest Op-Ed: Michigan Law Review, How Do I Love Thee? •Crossword

Vol. 57, No. 9, February 20, 2007, University Of Michigan Law School

Res Gestae

•The Best Kept Secret in Michigan: Curacao •You Are Not Your GPA •New Building Plan Changes Direction •Introducing Miss Sandra D. •March Madness Hits Career Services •Insider Advice and Perspectives •No Other Warranties, Expressed or Implied •Washtenaw County Workers' Center •2nd Annual Juan Luis Tienda Banquet Photos •Grade Curves •You Know Everything About Same-Sex Marriage •Crossword

A Creditable Vat?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In the early 1990s, Bolivia tried to adopt a popular U.S. tax reform proposal: replacing its corporate income tax with a cash-flow -type consumption tax, broadly similar in structure to taxes proposed by a long line of theorists from Prof. William Andrews in 1974 to the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform in 2006. Unfortunately, the Bolivian experiment ran into an insuperable obstacle: the U.S. foreign tax credit (FTC) rules. The U.S. Treasury decided that the Bolivian tax would not be creditable for U.S. corporations investing in Bolivia. Given the importance of U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) for Bolivia, …

Can Corporate Governance Reforms Increase Firms' Market Values: Evidence From India, Bernard S. Black, Vikramaditya Khanna

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

A central problem in studying the valuation effects of corporate governance reforms is that most reforms affect all firms in a country. Thus, if share prices move when governance reforms are announced, the price changes may reflect the reforms, but could also reflect other new information. We address this identification issue by studying India’s adoption in 2000 of major governance reforms (Clause 49), a number of which resemble and predate Sarbanes Oxley. Clause 49 requires, among other things, audit committees, a minimum number of independent directors, and CEO/CFO certification of financial statements and internal controls. The reforms were sponsored by …

Voter Identification, Spencer Overton

Michigan Law Review

In the wake of closely contested elections, calls for laws that require voters to present photo identification as a condition to cast a ballot have become pervasive. Advocates tend to rely on two rhetorical devices: (1) anecdotes about a couple of elections tainted by voter fraud; and (2) "common sense" arguments that voters should produce photo identification because identification is required to board airplanes, buy alcohol, and engage in other activities. This Article explains the analytical shortcomings of anecdote, analogy, and intuition, and applies a cost-benefit approach generally overlooked in election law scholarship. Rather than rushing to impose a photo-identification …

Legal Fictions In Pierson V. Post, Andrea Mcdowell

Michigan Law Review

American courts and citizens generally take the importance of private property for granted. Scholars have sought to explain its primacy using numerous legal doctrines, including natural law, the Lockean principle of a right to the product of one's labor, Law & Economics theories about the incentives created by property ownership, and the importance of bright line rules. The leading case on the necessity of private property, Pierson v. Post, makes all four of these points. This Article argues that Pierson has been misunderstood. Pierson was in fact a defective torts case that the judges shoe-horned into a property mold …

Mostly Harmless: An Analysis Of Post-Aedpa Federal Habeas Corpus Review Of State Harmless Error Determinations, Jeffrey S. Jacobi

Michigan Law Review

Sixty years ago, in Kotteakos v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that a small class of so-called harmless errors committed by courts did not require correction. The Court acknowledged that some judicial errors, though recognizable as errors, did not threaten the validity of criminal convictions and therefore did not quite require reversal. Specifically, the Court held that errors that violated federal statutes should be deemed harmless unless they had a "substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict." While Kotteakos represented the Supreme Court's first treatment of the concept of harmlessness, other courts had a …

Scrutinizing The Second Amendment, Adam Winkler

Michigan Law Review

One overlooked issue in the voluminous literature on the Second Amendment is what standard of review should apply to gun control if the Amendment is read to protect an individual right to bear arms. This lack of attention may be due to the assumption that strict scrutiny would necessarily apply because the right would be "fundamental" or because the right is located in the Bill of Rights. In this Article, Professor Winkler challenges that assumption and considers the arguments for a contrary conclusion: that the Second Amendment's individual right to bear arms is appropriately governed by a deferential, reasonableness review …

Keeping The Door Ajar For Foreign Plaintiffs In Global Cartel Cases After Empagran, Jeremy M. Suhr

Michigan Law Review

In many ways, the Supreme Court's opinion of F. Hoffmann-LaRoche Ltd. V. Empagran S.A. raised more questions than it answered. Growing out of the massive international vitamins cartel uncovered in the 1990s, Empagran presented a scenario in which all parties were foreign and all conduct occurred abroad. Although it is "well established by now that the Sherman Act applies to foreign conduct that was meant to produce and did in fact produce some substantial effect in the United States," Empagran presented the Court with the first truly foreign antitrust case. It involved not only foreign conduct, but also foreign plaintiffs …

Vol. 57, No. 7, January 23, 2007, University Of Michigan Law School

Res Gestae

•Deans Dish: Prop 2 and Mr. Wolverine •Alternatives to Pricey Textbooks •Where are the Sinks? •Upcoming Events •The New 138 Hutchins Hall •Photos from Mr. Wolverine •Mini-Seminar Scoop

Tax Competition, Tax Arbitrage, And The Internation Tax Regime, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

This paper argues that a coherent international tax regime exists, embodied in both the tax treaty network and in domestic laws, and that it forms a significant part of international law (both treaty-based and customary). The practical implication is that countries are not free to adopt any international tax rules they please, but rather operate in the context of the regime, which changes in the same ways international law changes over time. Thus, unilateral action is possible, but is also restricted, and countries are generally reluctant to take unilateral actions that violate the basic norms that underlie the regime. Those …

Sex-Separation In Public Restrooms: Law, Architecture, And Gender, Terry S. Kogan

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article challenges the common assumption that legally mandated sex-separation of public restrooms is a benign recognition of natural anatomical differences between men and women. Relying on legal history, gender history, and architectural theory, my central thesis is that, contrary to common intuitions, there was nothing benign or gender neutral about the social and historical origins of the first laws adopted at the end of the nineteenth century that mandated such separation.

The R.F.I.D. Act Of 2006 And E-Pedigrees: Tackling The Problem Of Counterfeit Drugs In The United States Wholesale Industry, Suchira Ghosh

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Gaps within the drug distribution system make it increasingly vulnerable to bad actors, such as counterfeiters and terrorists. Congress intended the Prescription Drug Marketing Act (PDMA) of 1987 to close these gaps, but the PDMA has not fully succeeded. Important PDMA provisions that require tracking of drugs throughout the distribution chain in the form of "pedigrees" were set to be implemented as of Dec. 1, 2006, although a recent court order has stayed complete implementation. However, these PDMA requirements do not apply uniformly to all drug distributors in the United States. Moreover, since paper pedigrees can be forged, the pedigree …