Digital Commons Network^™

Why Renewables Need Nuclear?: A Brief Narrative, John Ratcliffe, Ruth Saurin

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No abstract provided.

Locking In Democracy: Constitutions, Commitment, And International Law, Tom Ginsburg

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No abstract provided.

Irreversible And Catastrophic, Cass R. Sunstein

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As many treaties and statutes emphasize, some risks are distinctive in the sense that they are potentially irreversible or catastrophic; for such risks, it is sensible to take extra precautions. When a harm is irreversible, and when regulators lack information about its magnitude and likelihood, they should purchase an "option" to prevent the harm at a later date-the Irreversible Harm Precautionary Principle. This principle brings standard option theory to bear on environmental law and risk regulation. And when catastrophic outcomes are possible, it makes sense to take special precautions against the worst-case scenarios-the Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle. This principle is …

Properties Of Concentration, Lee Anne Fennell

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No abstract provided.

Do We Have Too Many Intellectual Property Rights?, Richard A. Posner

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No abstract provided.

Absolute Priority, Valuation Uncertainty, And The Reorganization Bargain, Douglas G. Baird, Donald S. Bernstein

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In a Chapter 11 reorganization, senior creditors can insist on being paid in full before anyone junior to them receives anything. In practice, however, departures from "absolute priority" treatment are commonplace. Explaining these deviations has been a central preoccupation of reorganization scholars for decades. By the standard law-and-economics account, deviations from absolute priority arise because well-positioned insiders take advantage of cumbersome procedures and permissive judges. In this Essay, we suggest a different force is at work. Deviations from absolute priority are inevitable even in a world completely committed to respecting priority as long as the value of the reorganized enterprise …

Boilerplate And Economic Power In Auto Manufacturing Contracts, Omri Ben-Shahar, James J. White

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No abstract provided.

Emergencies And Democratic Failure, Eric A. Posner, Adrian Vermeule

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No abstract provided.

Judicial Autonomy In A Political Environment, Richard A. Posner

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No abstract provided.

Law School Rankings, Richard A. Posner

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Rank ordering is a crude but economical method of conveying information that assists "consumers" (such as prospective law students) to make choices; hence the popularity of the law school rankings by U.S. News & World Report ("U.S. News'). However, U.S. News's rankings are vitiated by the arbitrary weights attached to the different factors on which the rankings are based. This paper explores a variety of alternatives, beginning with the mean LSAT score of the student body, and emphasizes that the design of a ranking system is relevant to the interest of the people whom the rankings are intended to guide. …

Efficient Responses To Catastrophic Risk, Richard A. Posner

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No abstract provided.

Tax Expenditures, Principal-Agent Problems, And Redundancy, David A. Weisbach

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This Article considers tax expenditures from two related perspectives. First, it analyzes how the incentives on Congress to use a tax expenditure change when principal-agent problems are considered. For example, it considers whether tax expenditures can reduce moral hazard or adverse selection problems created by delegations to expert agencies. Second, it considers the condition under which tax expenditures should be expected to be redundant with direct expenditures, as many are. The two perspectives-principal-agent problems and redundancy-are related because redundancy is often seen as a solution to the principal-agent problem. The Article concludes that both principal-agent concerns and redundancy might lead …

Relative Access To Corrective Speech: A New Test For Requiring Actual Malice, Aaron Perzanowski

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This Article reexamines the First Amendment protections provided by the public figure doctrine. It suggests that the doctrine is rooted in a set of out-dated assumptions regarding the media landscape and, as a result, has failed to adapt in a manner that accounts for our changing communications environment.

The public figure doctrine, which imposes the more rigorous actual malice standard of fault on defamation plaintiffs who enjoy greater access to mass media, was constructed in an era defined by one-to-many communications media. Newspapers, broadcasters, and traditional publishers exhausted the Court's understanding of the means of communicating with mass audiences. As …

Global Macroeconomic Trends, Thomas Power

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The business of real estate is but a subset of the wider investment markets and macroeconomic trends will significantly shape the way real estate investment decisions are made. The McKinsey Institute is a global economic consultancy firm providing cutting-edge research on a wide range of macroeconomic and business trends. This article reviews macroeconomic trends that they believe will transform the global economy. McKinsey research show that “over two-thirds of organic growth of western companies can be attributed to being in the right markets and geographies” and “companies that ride the tide succeed and those that swim against it usually struggle” …

Synthesis Of High-Temperature Stable Anatase Tio2 Photocatalyst, Suresh Pillai, Declan Mccormack, Michael Seery, Pradeepan Periyat, Steven Hinder, John Colreavy, Reenamol George, Hugh Hayden

Articles

In the absence of a dopant or precursor odification, anatase to rutile transformation in synthetic TiO2 sually ccurs at a temperature of 600 700 °C. Conventionally, metal oxide dopants (e.g., Al2O3 nd SiO2 are used o tune the anatase to rutile transformation. A simple methodology is reported here to extend the anatase utile transformation by employing various concentrations of urea. XRD and Raman spectroscopy were used uring thermal treatment. A significantly higher anatase phase (97%) as been obtained at 800 C with use of a 1:1 Ti(OPr)4 urea composition and 11% anatase composition is etained even after calcining …

Digital Entrepreneurship, Clyde Hull, Yu-Ting Hung, Neil Hair

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As more companies start doing digital business - whether by selling their products online, by selling digital wares, or both - the question of how starting a digital venture differs from starting a traditional venture grows more important. We present a framework of digital entrepreneurship that includes a topology of new digital ventures, the characteristics of each type of new digital venture, and a discussion of how those characteristics shape the critical success factors of each type of venture. Specific issues addressed include digital or virtual products and services, digital or virtual workplaces and the effects of relying on computer-mediated …

Xbrl Cost-Benefit Analysis: In Theory And Application, Phillip Kloeden

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A definition of XBRL will be given, followed by a brief overview of the XBRL system. A timeline of events in the brief history of XBRL will be rendered and discussed. Based on the global perspective of the XBRL movement and the establishment of an international consortium, XBRL International, international and domestic analysis will be addressed. Standardization of coding for financial reporting information is the goal of the consortium and the required coding structure will transcend national borders in order to accomplish this goal. A prototype language, created by the early users of eXtensible Markup Language (XML), in the accounting …

Instruction Via Instant Messaging Reference: What’S Happening?, Christina M. Desai, Stephanie J. Graves

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Purpose – The purpose of this study is to analyze one Instant Messaging (IM) reference service to determine to what extent instruction is or can be offered in this medium and whether patrons want or expect it.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors surveyed IM patrons over a seven week period to determine whether they felt they could and did learn from chat transactions. Transcript content was analyzed to find out whether and how instruction is being offered.

Findings – Results show that patrons overwhelmingly welcome instruction and that it is provided in a large majority of cases, using a variety of …

U.S. Torture As Tort, Richard Henry Seamon

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Now that the United States has used torture in the war on terrorism and the victims of this torture have begun to sue, it is useful to analyze the potential liability of the United States and its officials for torture under current domestic law. This Article conducts that analysis, and, based on it, assesses the adequacy of current law. The Article concludes that the United States and its officials have no more than minimal liability for torture under current law. The Article also concludes that current law is inadequate. It is inadequate because it is based on considerations of when …

Lightening And Enlightening Exam Conferences, Richard Henry Seamon

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No abstract provided.

A New Progressivism, Cass R. Sunstein

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There are serious problems with the two twentieth-century approaches to government: the way of markets and the way of planning. The New Progressivism simultaneously offers (1) a distinctive conception of government's appropriate means, an outgrowth of the late-twentieth-century critique of economic planning, and (2) a distinctive understanding of government's appropriate ends, an outgrowth of evident failures with market arrangements and largely a product of the mid-twentieth-century critique of laissez faire. The New Progressivism emphasizes the need to replace bans and commands with appropriate incentives, and to attend to social norms and social meanings in leading human behavior in welfare-promoting directions. …

Undue Process, Adam M. Samaha

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This Article explores the relationship of the US. Constitution to the costs of government decision making. Constitutional law clearly can escalate these costs, as when the Due Process Clauses are read to mandate additional procedure not otherwise favored by decisionmakers. This much is understood But the Constitution and its doctrine sometimes put downward pressure on decision costs. We lack a systematic investigation of when this is, and should be, true. The Article makes three general claims: (1) The entire Constitution tends to reduce decision costs insofar as it is a focal point for confining disputes, and empirical work suggests that …

The Future Of The Legal Profession, Robert Stein

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It is a pleasure to be with you this evening and share some thoughts with you. Sandy and I are delighted to see so many wonderful friends here. I hope we have an opportunity to greet each of you before the evening is over. I include my wife, Sandy, in our network of friends because she has been my partner throughout my association with the Law School - during the time I was a student, then a faculty member, and eventually as Dean - and so many friends here tonight are friends of both of ours. I'd like to ask …

The Procompetitive Interest In Intellectual Property Law, Thomas F. Cotter

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When government recognizes intellectual property (IP) rights, it is often viewed as sanctioning the existence of private “monopolies,” in contrast to the general antimonopoly thrust of the antitrust laws. And yet, on occasion IP law itself condemns conduct on the part of IP owners-or excuses otherwise infringing activity on the part of IP defendants-expressly for the purpose of promoting competition. It does so even though antitrust law-if one were to apply it at all under analogous circumstances-would not find anticompetitive harm without conducting a more thorough analysis of whether the antitrust defendant possesses power over a well-defined market. Salient examples …

The Regulatory Void Of Contingent Work, Stephen F. Befort

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No abstract provided.

Using Court Records For Research, Teaching, And Policymaking: The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, Margo Schlanger, Denise Lieberman

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The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is, wisely, planning the future of its enormous collection of relatively recent court records. The pertinent regulation, a “records disposition schedule” first issued in 1995 by the Judicial Conference of the United States in consultation with NARA, commits the Archives to keeping, permanently, all case files dated 1969 or earlier; all case files dated 1970 or later in which a trial was held, and “any civil case file which NARA has determined in consultation with court officials to have historical value.” Other files may be destroyed 20 years after they enter the federal …

Lost In Translation? Data Mining, National Security And The Adverse Inference Problem, Anita Ramasastry

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To the extent that we permit data mining programs to proceed, they must provide adequate due process and redress mechanisms that permit individuals to clear their names. A crucial criteria for such a mechanism is to allow access to information that was used to make adverse assessments so that errors may be corrected. While some information may have to be kept secret for national security purposes, a degree of transparency is needed when individuals are trying to protect their right to travel or access government services free from suspicion.

Part II of this essay briefly outlines the government's ability to …

The Use Of Mtas To Control Commercialization Of Stem Cell Diagnostics And Therapeutics, Sean O'Connor

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The recent focus on patents as a hindrance to stem cell research may turn out to be a red herring. The real culprits are material transfer agreements (MTAs), which govern the transfer of cell lines and other biological materials. The MTA’s primary purpose in life sciences research is to set contractual rights and obligations between parties where one party transfers biological materials to the other. For example, MTAs often focus on the physical handling, use, and distribution of the materials by the recipient, ensuring that the recipient complies with regulations for research involving humans or animals.

Although these interests are …

Usability Testing And Instruction Librarians: A Perfect Pair., Stephanie J. Graves, Margie D. Ruppel

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This study examines how librarians are experiencing usability testing and how their observations are influencing library instruction. A survey of instruction librarians illustrates how usability testing and library instruction are connected. Survey results prove instruction librarians are involved in usability testing. Furthermore, their participation in usability studies has led instruction librarians to alter their instructional methods. An overwhelming majority changed one or more instructional tools as a result of usability testing, and many reported creating new instructional resources. The authors add their own insights as both instruction librarians and participants in usability testing.

Post-Admissions Educational Programming In A Post-Grutter World: A Response To Professor Brown, Evan H. Caminker

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When asked to provide commentary on another scholar's reflections on Grutterl and Gratz and affirmative action, I am usually struck by two fears. First, because so much ink has been spilled on this topic, I worry the main presenter will have nothing new and interesting to say. Today this worry has been put to rest; I am so pleased that Professor Dorothy Brown offers a number of novel and intriguing observations and, in the end, advances a novel and intriguing proposal about the role Critical Race Theory ought to play in our nation's law school classrooms. Second, for the same …