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Perttu V. Richards: Brief Of Law Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondent, Margo Schlanger

Appellate Briefs

Amici are professors of law who have studied, taught, and written about prisoner litigation and about rights to jury trials. They submit this brief to share their views, based on that experience, on the proper interpretation of the Prison Litigation Reform Act) in light of the important jury trial rights at stake and the practical realities of prisoner litigation.

Perttu V. Richards: Brief Of Law Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondent, Margo Schlanger

Appellate Briefs

Amici are professors of law who have studied, taught, and written about prisoner litigation and about rights to jury trials. They submit this brief to share their views, based on that experience, on the proper interpretation of the Prison Litigation Reform Act) in light of the important jury trial rights at stake and the practical realities of prisoner litigation.

Altering Rules: The New Frontier For Corporate Governance, Gabriel Rauterberg, Sarath Sanga

Law & Economics Working Papers

Corporate law has taken a contractarian turn. Shareholders are increasingly contracting around its foundational rules—statutory rights, the fiduciary duty of loyalty, even the central role of the board—and Delaware courts are increasingly enforcing these contracts. In the one case where they did not, the legislature swiftly overruled the decision and adopted a new statutory provision permitting boards to completely cede their powers to a shareholder by contract. These developments have sparked a polarized debate, with some calling for a return to mandatory rules, while others push for total contractual freedom.

We argue, however, that the solution lies neither in rigid …

Three Implications Of Moore., Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In his majority opinion in Moore, Justice Brett Kavanaugh listed several provisions of the code that could be subject to a constitutional challenge if realization were a constitutional requirement, as suggested by Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas, and Neil M. Gorsuch. Kavanaugh wrote: In short, the Moores cannot meaningfully distinguish the [mandatory repatriation tax] from similar taxes such as taxes on partnerships, on S corporations, and on subpart F income. The upshot is that the Moores’ argument, taken to its logical conclusion, could render vast swaths of the Internal Revenue Code unconstitutional. See, e.g., 26 …

Federal Communications Commission V. Consumers' Research: Brief Of Julian Davis Mortenson And Nicholas Bagley As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioners, Julian Mortenson, Nicholas Bagley

Appellate Briefs

Julian Davis Mortenson and Nicholas Bagley are professors at the University of Michigan Law School. Mortenson is a specialist on the history of executive authority and the separation of powers. Bagley is a leading scholar in administrative law. They are the co-authors of Delegation at the Founding, 121 Colum. L. Rev. 277 (2021), a leading article examining Founding- era constitutional principles regarding legislative delegations of authority, and Delegation at the Founding: A Response to the Critics, 122 Colum. L. Rev. 2323 (2022).

Copyright Doctrine Before The Tribunal Of Science: A Response To Professor Silbey, Matt Blaszczyk

Fellow, Adjunct, Lecturer, and Research Scholar Works

This is a response to Jessica Silbey’s article, A Matter of Facts: The Evolution of the Copyright Fact-exclusion and Its Implications for Disinformation and Democracy, which appeared in Volume 70(3) of the Journal of the Copyright Society.

100th Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition: Final Round, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

Nearly a century has passed since Henry Munroe Campbell’s law partners met with the dean of the University of Michigan Law School to establish a memorial for their friend and colleague. As a result, the Law School’s nascent “case club competition” was named in Mr. Campbell’s honor, a fitting way to combine his love for Michigan Law, oral advocacy, and the training of young lawyers.

I do not know what Mr. Campbell’s law partners envisioned when they met with the dean. They couldn’t have envisioned this beautiful room we are in today for the Final Round—Hutchins Hall didn’t even exist …

Law In Society: Defending Hart, Alma Diamond

Fellow, Adjunct, Lecturer, and Research Scholar Works

I revisit the debate between Joseph Raz and H. L. A. Hart concerning the nature of legal content and reasoning. Raz contended that legal reasoning should be analyzed as a form of moral reasoning. In contrast, Hart emphasized the distinction between legal and moral content, proposing that legal reasoning is a form of what I will call social-institutional reasoning. I characterize social-institutional reasoning in terms of the agent-relative, domain-specific, universal, and content-insensitive justifications it draws upon. I evaluate Raz’s moralized analysis and argue that it obscures the distinctive contribution that law’s social and institutional grounds play in our understanding of …

Empirical Essays On Mobility-Restricting Covenants, Lorenzo G. Luisetto

SJD Dissertations

This thesis, which consists of four essays, uses empirical methods to study questions on the use of mobility-restricting covenants in business and employment contracts.

The first chapter investigates the spillover effects of the so-called “No-Poach Initiative,” an enforcement action launched by the Antitrust Division of the State of Washington Attorney General’s Office in January 2018 that led 237 franchisors to agree to stop using no-poaching clauses—i.e., provisions in franchise contracts that prohibit franchisees from hiring each other’s employees—nationwide. I document that approximately one third of the franchisors not targeted by the No-Poach Initiative removed the no-poaching clause from their franchise …

Identifying The Guilty, Protecting The Innocent: Amending The Federal Rules Of Evidence To Address Admissibility Of Eyewitness Identification, Louisa M. A. Heiny

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Mistaken eyewitness identification is among the most common factors in wrongful conviction cases. Indeed, hundreds of innocent defendants have been convicted for a crime they did not commit, their fate sealed by an eyewitness who convincingly, but mistakenly, testified, “That’s the one!”

Scientific researchers have documented the fallibility of eyewitness identification for decades. Their collective work has produced recommendations for eyewitness identification reform, focusing on procedural problems most likely to result in mistaken identification. The law in this area, however, has not kept pace with the science. Rather than representing a cohesive series of safeguards against inaccurate eyewitness identifications, federal …

Generative Artificial Intelligence: Legal Ethics Issues, Kincaid Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is transforming nearly every sector of society including the practice of law. Legal professionals are increasingly using AI tools for research, drafting, contract review, and even predicting judicial outcomes with as many as one third of respondents to a survey using GenAI daily. But with this rapid adoption come questions that go beyond efficiency and instead point to the core of legal ethics including issues such as competence, confidentiality, and professional judgment.

Accessibility For All?, Jessica Pasquale

Law Librarian Scholarship

There are new Americans with Disabilities Act requirements for state and local governments, so as employees of the University of Michigan, my colleagues and I have been preparing to meet them for over a year. Recently, I began wondering about the accessibility of websites for law firms in Michigan, so I conducted a brief and informal survey of randomly selected firms based on affiliations listed in the State Bar of Michigan’s ‘Find a Lawyer’ directory. I ran each site through the automated tool offered by AccessibilityChecker.org and found that 100% of the sites I checked were rated as noncompliant with …

Free To Be You But Not Me?, Leah Litman

Reviews

In Gendered Liberty, Prof. Laura Portuondo presents a doctrinal puzzle: While claims to individual liberty are in decline in some spaces, they are ascendant in others. As Portuondo describes things, constitutional law has become increasingly hostile to claims by people who seek to defy gendered stereotypes. That includes the women who, for whatever reason, do not want to become mothers when they are pregnant, as well as the women whose lives, health, or fertility would be in jeopardy if they became mothers. The Supreme Court overruled their claims to liberty in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Front Matter, University Of Michigan Law School

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Front Matter for Volume 58, Issue 2 of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Taming The Kangaroos, Matt Garcia

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Low-level state courts frequently disregard federal law. And though the judgments of these courts have profound legal consequence for millions of Americans, they receive little oversight. Rather than bastions of justice, low-level state courts are too often sites of lawlessness, earning them the shameful label “kangaroo courts.” This article proposes a path forward by which advocates can curb that lawlessness and enforce critically important federal protections.

As part of the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, a broad legislative effort to protect the national economy and public health infrastructure, Congress altered mandatory procedures in eviction suits. Evictions …

Solving The Proxy Advisory Problem: Minimum Regulation For Maximum Competition, Dominic P. Keilty

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

The proxy advisory industry is often criticized on two primary accounts: the lack of accountability for informational accuracy in the development of voting standards and the conflicts of interest faced by advisors when they make proxy voting recommendations on issuers to which they have previously provided corporate governance consulting services. The industry has also been accused of having “anemic” levels of competition, since only two advisors command a vast majority of the market share. While much has been written about curtailing the prevalence and effects of proxy advisor conflicts of interest through increased regulation, the regulatory route toward increased informational …

Institutionalized Ostracism, Danieli Evans

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Belonging is a fundamental need, like food or water. Hundreds of social psychology studies find that people who are ostracized (excluded, rejected, or ignored) experience severe pain and suffering. Ostracism threatens basic needs, triggers the same neurocognitive processing system as physical pain, and impairs functioning. Furthermore, ostracized people may cope in ways that beget “deviant” labeling and further ostracism.

Belonging and ostracism are prevalent themes in social psychology research, but these constructs have received relatively little attention in law. This Article begins to explore the implications of this research for law. I make three contributions: First, I name and describe …

The Carceral State(S), Esther K. Hong

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The carceral state is everywhere. Legal and social science scholars are increasingly using the carceral state concept to criticize various aspects, or even the entirety, of the United States. But despite how popular and common this term has become in writings about mass incarceration, criminal processes and punishments, and other forms of social control, the definition, conceptualization, and theorization of the carceral state are far from settled. This Article analyzes and contributes to this discussion by highlighting the diversity and fluidity of ideas surrounding the carceral state.

Although the term often appears without an express definition, the limited ones that …

Tribal Legal Licensing Of Attorneys, House Counsel Status, And The Opportunity To Redefine The Jd Preferred Position And The Entire Lawyer Ecosystem, Nicholas J. Stamates

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The recognized right of Indian Tribes to license has been a known reality dating back to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832) where state law was found inapplicable on the lands of the Cherokee. However, the modern implications of tribal licensing and regulation have only just begun to be explored in the context of the modern American regulatory system. In fact, the ability of Indian Tribes to license attorneys to practice law within their court systems has largely gone unexamined outside of a few exceptions such as the Tribal Law and Order Act …

Celebrating The Fiske Fellowship Program: 2001-2025, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

This program contains statements of impact from the 2001-2025 recipients of Fiske Fellowships.

Some information was shared in 2022 and may not reflect current roles and/or responsibilities of Fiske Fellows.

What’S Left Of The New Deal State?, Sandeep Singh Dhaliwal

Michigan Law Review Online

A vast body of scholarship situates itself in the New Deal era. Another extensive collection explores the history of criminal justice in the United States. To date, however, there has been little effort to bring these conversations together. New Deal Law and Order, written by legal historian Anthony Gregory, fills this conspicuous gap. Gregory remarkably narrates the New Deal era through the lens of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “war on crime” (p. 1), challenging how we think about both the New Deal’s legacy and the foundations of the modern security state.

The Birth Of The Franchised Dealer Model, Daniel A. Crane

Book Chapters

Chapter 1 traces the history of the franchise dealer model of car distribution, from the early wild west days of the internal combustion automobile to the political confrontations between Detroit’s Big Three and the “mom and pop” car dealers during the mid-twentieth century. The chapter examines the thinking of legendary management figures such as Henry Ford and Alfred P. Sloan, explains the dealer protection rationale behind state franchise dealer laws, and shows how the legacy car companies largely acquiesced in those laws until Tesla’s entry onto the scene.

Commonsense Consent And Action Representation: What Is “Essential” To Consent?, Roseanna Sommers

Book Chapters

Recent empirical work demonstrates that some instances of material deception are perceived by ordinary people as consent-defeating, whereas other instances are not. One hypothesized account of these divergent lay intuitions draws on the notion of “essence”: roughly speaking, lies that pertain to the “core” or “nature” of a consented-to act are perceived as precluding consent, whereas lies that pertain to features that are “nonessential” or “collateral” to the act are perceived as compatible with consent. To assess this hypothesized account, an independent measure of “essence”—one that does not rely with problematic circularity on notions of consent—is needed. This chapter draws …

Blood Quantum And The Auto-Colonization Of The Michigan Anishinaabek, Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Book Chapters

Anishinaabe storyteller Basil Johnston described the chronological path of life in four stages, what he called the four hills of life. The first stage, linked to the East, is infancy and early childhood, a time of preparation and listening. The second stage, linked to the South, is youth, a time of doing things. The third stage, linked to the West, is adulthood, a time of vision. The fourth stage, linked to the North, is Old Age, a time of the fulfillment of the vision and a time of sacred learning and teaching.

The twelve Michigan Anishinaabek tribal nations are in …

How Artificial Intelligence Will Shape Securities Regulation, Gabriel Rauterberg

Other Publications

How will the increasing prevalence and sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) change the doctrine and practice of securities law? My main thesis is that it will push securities regulation toward a more systems-oriented approach. This approach will replace securities law's emphasis, in areas like manipulation, on forms of enforcement targeted at specific individuals and accompanied by punitive sanctions with a greater focus on ex ante rules designed to shape an ecology of actors and information.

Law Enforcement Privilege, Rebecca Wexler

Michigan Law Review

You can’t question a secret you haven’t been told. The criminal legal system depends on fair and open proceedings to expose and regulate unlawful and unconstitutional police conduct through the courts. If police can use claims of secrecy to systematically thwart criminal defendants’ access to evidence, judicial review will fail. And yet that is exactly what is happening under a common-law doctrine called the “law enforcement privilege.” The privilege empowers police and prosecutors to rely on the results of secret investigative methods while withholding information from the defense about how those methods work. It risks perpetuating unconstitutional conduct, enabling wrongful …

John P. Davis And The Joint Committee, Pamela A. Izvănariu

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article uses archival research and social movement theory to recover a critical but untold story about how John P. Davis innovated novel modes of organizational mobilization and multidimensional advocacy to build power and movement at the intersection of race and the economy in the Jim Crow and New Deal era. It examines Davis’s mobilization of the Joint Committee on National Recovery (JCNR), recovers the mobilization and advocacy models Davis engineered, and tells of the fight Davis and the JCNR waged to achieve racial and economic justice and effect a new— and truly emancipatory—New Deal.

Police Gatekeeping, Emily M. Poor

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The role of policing in American society is more pervasive (and less visible) than many acknowledge. Police do not just patrol, arrest, and keep peace – they also gatekeep. Many and varied ostensibly non-criminal processes rely on police fact-finding to adjudicate claims, establish eligibility for resources, and take adverse action against individuals. This Article examines the phenomenon of police gatekeeping, both as a practical barrier to resources and remedies and as a hegemonic mechanism to construct the social conception of truth.

Recognizing the ways in which civil society relies upon police as gatekeepers of both practical resources and the social …

An Ecofeminist Approach To Climate Risks, Angela Hefti

Michigan Journal of International Law

Climate change poses significant risks to the human right to life. However, international adjudicators have either neglected to examine right to life claims in the context of climate risks or dismissed them as prospective and speculative. International human rights bodies have long applied the standard of imminence to determine whether a threat to the right to life exists and the extent to which it constitutes a violation. In climate change cases, this standard has hardened, requiring a tight temporal connection between climate risks and a violation of the right to life. This article argues that failing to recognize the impact …

Transparency, Accountability, And Influence In The International Investment Law System, Jarrod Wong, Jason Yackee

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article offers the first interdisciplinary critique of transparency in international investment law (“IIL”) that draws on transparency-skeptical and accountability scholarship in political science and public administration. Not only has the expansive IIL literature overlooked these disciplines, but much of it fails to define the core concept of transparency. Building on contributions from the fields of administrative law, international relations, and system theory in classic political science, we provide a novel functionalist account of transparency that traces a line from transparency to accountability to influence in the IIL system.

We make three arguments. First, transparency involves access to data that …