Digital Commons Network^™

Homosexuality And The Constitution, Cass R. Sunstein

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No abstract provided.

Panel Ii: Public Versus Private Environmental Regulation - Fourth Panelist, Cass R. Sunstein

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No abstract provided.

Political Equality And Unintended Consequences, Cass R. Sunstein

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No abstract provided.

The First Amendment In Cyberspace, Cass R. Sunstein

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No abstract provided.

A New Deal For Speech, Cass R. Sunstein

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No abstract provided.

The Ubiquity Of The Benefit Principle, Richard A. Epstein

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No abstract provided.

Strength In Diversity: Feminist Theoretical Approaches To Child Custody And Same-Sex Relationships, Mary E. Becker

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No abstract provided.

The President And The Administration, Cass R. Sunstein, Lawrence Lessig

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Race And The War On Drugs, Michael Tonry

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Labor Law And Its Reform, Daniel J. Gifford

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U.S. private sector unionism is in decline. From a high watermark in 1953 of around 35.7% of the private nonagricultural workforce, union membership has fallen to 11.5% and unions represent under 13% of private sector workers. 1 Absent reform of the labor relations system, the trend is clear. Unions will remain a significant force in government employment, big-city commercial construction, rail and air transportation, and certain shrinking mining and manufacturing industries. Aside from these pockets of unionism, however, workplace-based representation of the interests of working people will become a distinctly marginal phenomenon in our society.

Interpersonal Distrust In The Modified Rawlsian Society, Daniel J. Gifford

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JOHN RAWLS, the author of the widely acclaimed A Theory of Justice, 1 has modified and supplemented his theory of the just society in his new book Political Liberalism. Rawls's theory of justice, which he calls "justice as fairness," continues to consist essentially of two principles: a liberty principle under which each person is entitled to the maximum possible liberty consistent with equal liberty for others, and a difference principle, under which social and economic inequalities are justified only to the extent that they contribute to raising the absolute level of well being of the least advantaged class over the …

Corporate Cooperation, Relationship Management, And The Trialogical Imperative For Corporate Law, John H. Matheson, Brent A. Olson

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For large publicly held corporations, “corporate governance,” a common term in current law review articles, is an outdated term. It is outdated because it emphasizes the tensions and power struggles between corporate constituencies and implies an inevitable and immutable governance tug-of-war. It is also outdated because it masks the economic reality of the corporate enterprise: that the raison d’etre of large publicly held corporations is to maximize “longterm shareholder” and corporate value. Finally, it is outdated because today’s globally competitive marketplace requires a corporate focus on long-term performance rather than on divisive factionalism. Accordingly, this Article suggests steps toward minimizing …

From Tax-Favored To Tax-Penalized: The Challenge Of Estate Planning For Qualified Plan Benefits In The Face Of Shifting Federal Tax Policy, Robert Stein

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Lawyers face a difficult challenge in effectively planning for their clients' estates in light of the constant shifts in federal tax policy. No area of tax law illustrates this challenge better than the law governing the estate taxation of qualified plan benefits. Even within a single tax act, the policy decisions often are inconsistent. In a recent law review article, Charles McLure described this phenomenon in the following manner: Even if Congress begins its deliberations with a menu of proposals that are defensible on policy grounds, at some point, the process is likely to become driven by revenue estimates, rather …

Unesco Human Rights Procedure: An Evaluation, David Weissbrodt, Rose Farley

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Analysis of United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) human rights review procedures and cases within the UNESCO process indicates that many violations are not being addressed effectively. Improvements to the procedures should include implementing fast track and expedited procedures for certain cases, looking for complete solutions to violations, making the Committee on Conventions and Recommendations smaller and less politicized, allowing major abuses to be referred to the Director-General and defining the phases of the review process more clearly.

The Role Of Legal Education In Instilling An Ethos Of Public Service Among Law Students: Towards A Collaboration Between The Profession And The Academy On Professional Values, Stephen F. Befort, Eric Janus

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n the United States, a significant part of the debate over passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) focused on the agreement's potential effects on the American worker. United States labor organizations and their congressional supporters opposed NAFTA based on their belief that Mexico's low wages and minimal worker protection would entice U.S. companies to move to Mexico, resulting in a loss of American jobs. An underlying assumption of their argument was that Mexican labor laws were either inadequate to protect workers' interests or inadequately enforced.

The Parameters, Progressions, And Paradoxes Of Baron Bramwell, Anita Ramasastry

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No abstract provided.

The Seven Statutory Wonders Of U.S. Environmental Law: Origins And Morphology, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

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Students from around the world often ask my opinion on the most influential or effective of the United States environmental laws. I offer an opinion based on two criteria: What laws have contributed most to protection of the natural world and what laws have been most emulated? The second criterion is obviously an indicator of output, not of direct consequence. However, a linkage between the spread of strong laws and degree of environmental protection is assumed.

In theory, of course, the questions of "how much protection" and "how many laws" can be answered empirically. But this story is available only …

Relational Practices And The Marginalization Of Law: Informal Financial Practices Of Small Businesses In Taiwan, Jane Kaufman Winn

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This article looks at one component of Taiwan's development experience, the informal financing techniques used by small businesses, to clarify the interaction between the formal Republic of China (ROC) legal system and the network structure of Taiwanese society. The ROC legal system has supported the economic development process directly by regulating economic activity, and indirectly by facilitating the networks of relationships that also regulate economic activity.

The relational structure of traditional, rural Chinese society has survived in a modified form in modem Taiwan, and this modem form selectively blends elements of the modem legal system, networks of relationships, and the …

Interpreting Oriental Cases: The Law Of Alterity In The Colonial Courtroom, Kunal Parker

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No abstract provided.

Interstate Consolidation: A Comparison Of The Ali Project With The Uniform Transfer Of Litigation Act (American Law Institute Complex Litigation Project: A Symposium, In Memoriam Donald Theodore Trautman), Edward H. Cooper

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The Uniform Transfer of Litigation Act (UTLA) was undertaken for purposes simpler than the mass consolidation of multiparty, multiforum litigation. It seeks to create an effective tool that can be used to reduce some of the artificial barriers that tradition has erected around the sovereign separateness of the many different court systems in this country. The fact of separate sovereignty must be recognized, however, and to this end consent of both transferring and receiving courts is required. Within the consent requirement, transfer from the court system of one sovereign to the court system of another can improve on present practices …

A Technology Policy Perspective On The Nih Gene Patenting Controversy, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

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This article will use the NIH patent controversy as a focal point for considering when the results of government-sponsored research should be patented and when they should be dedicated to the public domain. First, this article will review the recent history of federal government policy on patenting the results of government-sponsored research. Next, this article will highlight some of the complexities involved in achieving technology transfer from the public sector to the private sector that current policy may oversimplify. With this background, this article will return to a more detailed analysis of the NIH cDNA patenting controversy and consider the …

Hardening Of The Attitudes: Americans' Views On The Death Penalty, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Samuel R. Gross

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American support for the death penalty has steadily increased since 1966, when opponents outnumbered supporters, and now in the mid-1990s is at a near record high. Research over the last 20 years has tended to confirm the hypothesis that most people’s death penalty attitudes (pro or con) are based on emotion rather than information or rational argument. People feel strongly about the death penalty, know little about it, and feel no need to know more. Factual information (e.g., about deterrence and discrimination) is generally irrelevant to people’s attitudes, and they are aware that this is so. Support for the death …

Property Rights: A View From The Trenches, Michael A. Heller

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How do governments create - or in some countries recreate - basic property rights that citizens demand in the transition to a market economy? My first comment, quite briefly, is on the debate within this Symposium on the relationship between constitutional reforms and the emergence of new property regimes. Second, I will comment on the counterintuitive property rights regime that is emerging from the "big bang" - the post-1989 collapse of the old socialist legal order in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and its replacement with a new, market-oriented system of property rights.

Tribute To William F. Fratcher: Marital Property Rights In Transition, Lawrence W. Waggoner

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"Marital property rights," a term that covers a vast multitude of rights or interests conferred by law on persons who occupy the status of spouse, are in a state of transition. To discuss the themes and trends that are emerging, this Article is divided into four discrete, yet related segments. The first segment addresses how the law allocates original ownership between spouses in a marriage. The second segment turns to the intestate share of the surviving spouse. This is not a topic that much concerns high-powered estate planners because intestate estates are usually fairly small. But to the surviving spouse, …

The Making Of The Model Employment Termination Act, Theodore J. St. Antoine

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Courts in about 45 states have ameliorated the harshness of employment at will, but the common-law modifications still exhibit serious deficiencies. Legislation is needed. The Model Employment Termination Act proposes a balanced compromise. It would protect most employees against discharge without good cause and it would relieve employers of the risk of devastating financial losses When liability is imposed. Arbitration procedures under the Model Act would also be simpler, faster, and cheaper than existing court proceedings.

Section 338 And Its Foolish Consistency Rules - The Hobgoblin Of Little Minds, Douglas A. Kahn

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The purposes of this Article are to examine whether there is any longer a reason for concern because a target corporation can choose selected assets for nonrecognition and to what extent the 1994 regulations properly deal with potentially abusive circumventions of tax goals. Before examining the current status of the consistency requirements, the historical background that led to the adoption of Section 338 and the operation of the section is discussed. The historical background includes: the judicially created Kimbell-Diamond rule, the codification and modification of that rule by the old version of Section 334(b)(2), the operation of the old version …

Switching Time And Other Thought Experiments: The Hughes Court And Constitutional Transformation, Richard D. Friedman

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For the most part, the Supreme Court's decisions in 1932 and 1933 disappointed liberals. The two swing Justices, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Justice Owen J. Roberts, seemed to have sided more with the Court's four conservatives than with its three liberals. Between early 1934 and early 1935, however, the Court issued three thunderbolt decisions, all by five-to-four votes on the liberal side and with either Hughes or Roberts writing for the majority over the dissent of the conservative foursome: in January 1934, Home Building & Loan Ass'n v. Blaisdell' severely limited the extent to which the Contracts Clause …

'I Can Take A Hint': Social Ineptitude, Embarrassment, And The King Of Comedy, William I. Miller

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The phrase "I can take a hint," when said seriously, contains its own denial. It reveals that the speaker has not been very adept at recognizing the hints already given, nor very graceful about not making a scene once he has recognized them. Its very utterance has the effect of punishing the hint-giver by making her hint fail as a hint. The truly successful hint works by gaining its end with no extra awkwardness added to the social encounter. The good hint should be barely perceived by the person toward whom it is directed. We could even say that it …

A Matter Of Opinion: Milkovich Four Years Later, Kathryn D. Sowle

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No abstract provided.

Settle Or Sue: What Else Can I Do?, Lela P. Love

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No abstract provided.