Digital Commons Network^™

Law, Economics, And The Theory Of The Firm, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

Economic analysis of the law assumes the "shadow of the law" influences the behavior of businesses. Thus, business people consider the costs and benefits of contract litigation when they make decisions about contract performance, they consider the costs of tort litigation when they make investments in safety, they consider the costs of violating a regulation when they make decisions about regulatory compliance, and so on. Economic models of law typically abstract from organizational detail and treat businesses as if they are represented by a single manager who controls the firm's behavior and acts to maximize its profit. This abstraction simplifies …

History In Journalism And Journalism In History: Anthony Lewis And The Watergate Crisis, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

Let me plunge right into a Lewis column to convey his marvelous craft in weaving the past into a contemporary moment. This one is from July 8, 1974. The column is about the oral argument before the Supreme Court in the Executive Privilege case, which was about to enter the constitutional canon as United States v. Nixon. Lewis writes as both eyewitness and commentator. He begins with constitutional history invoking Marbury v. Madison:

"It seemed at times like a constitutional casebook come to life. Marbury v. Madison was not only cited but, for a moment, debated. What exactly …

Conflict Of Laws (2004), James P. George, Anna K. Teller

Faculty Scholarship

States' and nations' laws collide when foreign factors appear in a lawsuit. Nonresident litigants, incidents outside the forum, parallel lawsuits, and judgments from other jurisdictions can create problems with personal jurisdiction, choice of law, and the recognition of foreign judgments. This article reviews Texas conflicts cases from Texas state and federal courts during the Survey period from October 1, 2002, through November 1, 2003. The article excludes cases involving federalstate conflicts, intrastate issues such as subject matter jurisdiction and venue, and conflicts in time, such as the applicability of prior or subsequent law within a state. State and federal cases …

Between Mandate And Market: Contract Transition In The Shadow Of The International Order, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

Boilerplate in sovereign debt contracts issued in the United States has long dictated the unanimous consent of bondholders to any debt restructuring. This requirement persisted for decades, notwithstanding wide consensus that such unanimous action provisions increased transaction costs, produced inefficient delays in debt restructuring, enhanced the moral hazards of the sovereign debt market, and otherwise encouraged collective action failures. Yet the sovereign debt markets has recently made an about-face, replacing the unanimity requirement for debt restructuring with a less demanding provision for collective, or majority, action by creditors. Completed over the course of just a few months in 2003, this …

Medical Malpractice And Contract Disclosure: An Equilibrium Model Of The Effects Of Legal Rules On Behavior In Health Care Markets, Kathryn Zeiler

Faculty Scholarship

This paper develops a theoretical model of how specific legal rules affect the types of contracts managed care organizations ("MCOs") use to compensate physicians. In addition, the analysis provides insights into how physician treatment decisions and the rate of medical malpractice lawsuits react to different legal rules. In particular, the model predicts that outcomes in jurisdictions forcing MCOs to disclose physician contract terms to patients differ from those that do not. Contracts vary depending on the disclosure rule and how treatment costs relate to expected damages and litigation costs. Moreover, the model predicts that jurisdictions forcing contract disclosure observe higher …

The Death Of Secured Lending, Edward J. Janger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reassessing The Scope Of Conduct Prohibited By Section 10(B) And The Elements Of Rule 10b-5: Reflections On Securities Fraud And Secondary Actors, Andrew S. Gold

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Securities And Exchange Commission Goes Abroad To Regulate Corporate Governance, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Death Of Secured Lending, Edward J. Janger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Securities And Exchange Commission Goes Abroad To Regulate Corporate Governance, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Perceptions Of Fairness In Negotiation, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

In all of negotiation, there is no bigger trap than "fairness." This chapter from the Negotiator's Fieldbook explains why among multiple models of fairness, people tend to believe that the one that applies here is the one that happens to favor them. This often creates a bitter element in negotiation, as each party proceeds from the unexamined assumption that its standpoint is the truly fair one. For a negotiation to end well, it is imperative for both parties to assess the fairness of their own proposals from multiple points of view, not just their instinctive one – and to consider …

Securing Deliberative Democracy, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

The brochure for the conference frames the questions for our panel on The Constitutional Essentials of Political Liberalism as "What are the implications of Rawls's conceptions of justice as fairness and political liberalism for constitutional theory? Might his account of constitutional essentials provide a useful guiding framework for conceiving the scheme of basic liberties embodied in the American Constitution? How thin are the commitments of our Constitution as compared with our richer commitments to constitutional justice and political justice? What are the implications of Rawls's work for theory of judicial review and for enforcement of constitutional rights and obligations outside …

Who's The Boss? Controlling Auditor Incentives Through Random Selection, David B. Kahn, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

It took the promise of knowledge to get Eve to yield to temptation. For people outside the Garden of Eden, money often does the job nicely. The U.S. capital markets are the locus of an enormous amount of money-and therefore of an enormous temptation for people who provide financial information to those markets to skew the reporting process to promote their own interests. The risk and potential consequences of skewed financial reporting are matters of grave concern.

Temporary Protection As An Instrument For Implementing The Right Of Return For Palestinian Refugees, Susan M. Akram, Terry Rempel

Faculty Scholarship

The article argues for an internationally harmonized approach to temporary protection for Palestinian refugees and stateless persons. Temporary protection offers protection rights to this huge population of refugees that they lack in any of the main regions in which they have sought refuge. The article establishes the legal framework for temporary protection in the particular historical, legal and political context of the Palestinian refugee situation. It argues for the urgency of a harmonized rights-based protection regime.

The Layers Principle: Internet Architecture And The Law, Lawrence B. Solum, Minn Chung

Faculty Scholarship

This essay addresses the fundamental questions of Internet governance: whether and how the architecture of the Internet should affect the shape and content of legal regulation of the global network of networks. Our answer to these questions is based on the concept of layers, the fundamental architectural feature of the Internet. Our thesis is that legal regulation of the Internet should be governed by the layers principle - the law should respect the integrity of layered Internet architecture. This principle has two corollaries. The first corollary is the principle of layer separation: Internet regulation should not violate or compromise the …

Negotiation As One Among Many Tools, Jennifer Gerarda Brown, Marcia Caton Campbell, Jayne Seminare Docherty, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

Article Extract

Even as this symposium examines the "canon" of negotiation, we think it is also important to consider negotiation's context. In many cases, negotiation cannot be the first or the only activity that takes place. To make significant progress in the resolution or management of some conflicts, other activities will have to precede or supplement negotiation. This can be particularly true in large-scale, multi-party public disputes.

Consider the following situation, one that might be unfolding even as you read this in any number of places in the United States. The setting is the state of Grace, a relatively small …

Legal Malpractice Insurance: Surviving The Perfect Storm, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This article serves as a practical guide to legal malpractice insurance. Part I introduces the topic of legal malpractice insurance with a brief overview of the changes that occurred in market conditions in 2000 and the subsequent effect on insurance premiums and coverage. Part II outlines the different types of insurance coverage that are available to legal professionals by describing common policy terms, exclusions, and conditions that affect coverage. Part III describes changes in law firms that may affect coverage. Part IV provides legal professionals with useful advice to consider when choosing an insurance policy. Part V reveals important factors …

The Other In International Law: 'Community' And International Legal Order, Maxwell O. Chibundu

Faculty Scholarship

There is a built-in paradox in the emergence of international law over the last decade as a core concern of academics and policy-makers. On the one hand, it is difficult to imagine any other period in history that has witnessed such a profusion of attempts to tame the anarchical society by hedging it in a straight-jacket of legalities. Throughout the 1990s, international conferences generated reams of treaties, codes, and agendas for action. International adjudicatory tribunals proliferated, and endeavored to give teeth to ideas and obligations hitherto thought to be essentially aspirational. And yet, the ability of international law to regulate …

Independent Legal Significance, Good Faith, And The Interpretation Of Venture Capital Contracts, D. Gordon Smith

Faculty Scholarship

Venture capital contracts are inherently incomplete. When interpreting such contracts, courts could deal with the expectations of parties formally by inquiring only about the plain meaning of the contract or qualitatively by enforcing the presumed expectations of the parties, regardless of whether those expectations are expressed in the contract. The Delaware courts have opted for a formal approach. In doing so, they appear to be engaged in an effort to force contracting parties toward completeness. While the duty of good faith appears to respond to the inevitable incompleteness of contracts, the courts largely ignore this duty in preferred stock cases. …

Patents And The Diffusion Of Technical Information, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

Does the disclosure requirement of the patent system encourage the diffusion of inventions? This paper builds a simple model where firms choose between patents and trade secrecy to protect inventions. Diffusion is not necessarily more likely with a patent system nor is the market for technology necessarily greater.

Stepping Back Through The Looking Glass: Real Conversations With Real Disputants About Institutionalized Mediation And Its Value, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

This Article describes what a group of real disputants perceives as most valuable about agency-connected mediation before, soon after, and eighteen months after they participated in the process. The Article is based primarily upon qualitative data from in-depth interviews with parents and school officials who participated in special education mediation sessions. Though the specific context of these interviews is obviously important, these disputants and their disputes share many commonalities with disputants and disputes in other contexts and, as a result, these disputants' views have relevance for the broader field of mediation.

These interviews suggest that both before and after disputants …

The Escalating Copyright Wars, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

Piracy is one of the biggest threats confronting the entertainment industry today. Every year, the industry is estimated to lose billions of dollars in revenue and faces the potential loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. To protect itself against Internet pirates, the entertainment industry has launched the latest copyright war. So far, the industry has been winning. Among its trophies are the enactment of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Vivendi Universal's defeat and purchase of MP3.com, the movie studios' victory in the DeCSS litigation, the bankruptcy and subsequent sale of Napster and its recent relaunch as a legitimate subscription-based …

Interviewing Ex-Employees: One Answer, New Questions, Susan P. Koniak

Faculty Scholarship

In Clark v. Beverly Health and Rehabilitation Services, Inc., 440 Mass. 270, 797 N.E.2d 905 (2003), the Supreme Judicial Court held that a lawyer for a party may contact former employees of the opposing party without violating Mass. r. Prof. C. 4.2. Lawyers who represent entities with former employees are not happy because, where 4.2 applies, the Rule makes it harder for the other side's lawyers to obtain information that might be damaging to the organization. Understandable. But some purport to be aghast, which is ridiculous. The Clark holding is in line with the ABA's position, the text of …

The Place Of Court-Connected Mediation In A Democratic Justice System, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

A justice system, and the processes located within it, ought to deliver justice. That seems simple enough. But, of course, delivering justice is never so simple. Justice and the systems that serve it are the creatures of context.

This Article considers mediation as just one innovation within the much larger evolution of the judicial system of the United States. First, this Article outlines how the values of democratic governance undergird our traditional picture of the American justice system, presumably because the invocation of such values helps the system to deliver something that will be respected by the nation’s citizens as …

Labor And Finance As Inevitably Transnational: Globalization Demands A Sophisticated And Transnational Lens, Timothy A. Canova, Claire Moore Dickerson, Katherine V.W. Stone

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tax Code Section 527 Groups Not An End-Run Around Mccain-Feingold, Edward B. Foley, Donald B. Tobin

Faculty Scholarship

This article ... will analyze both the statutory and constitutional questions concerning whether 527organizations are ‘‘political committees’’ under FECA and thus subject to the $5,000 cap on the contributions they receive from each donor. The article will also consider whether other forms of tax-exempt organizations besides 527s—most notably so-called 501(c)(4) organizations—provide an alternative means of circumventing this $5,000 contribution limit.

Comparisons Compared: A Methodological Survey Of Comparisons Of Religion From ‘A Magic Dwells’ To A Magic Still Dwells, David M. Freidenreich

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Defendant Veto" Or "Totality Of The Circumstances?": It's Time For The Supreme Court To Straighten Out The Personal Jurisdiction Standard Once Again, Robert J. Condlin

Faculty Scholarship

Commentators frequently claim that there is no single, coherent doctrine of extra-territorial personal jurisdiction, and, unfortunately, they are correct. The International Shoe case, commonly (but inaccurately) thought of as the wellspring of the modern form of the doctrine, announced a relatively straightforward, two-factor, four-permutation test that worked well for resolving most cases. In the nearly sixty-year period following Shoe, however, as the Supreme Court expanded and refined the standard, what was once straightforward and uncomplicated became serendipitous and convoluted. Two general, and generally incompatible, versions of the doctrine competed for dominance. The first, what might best be described as …

Building A Digital Collection: The Making Of Historical Publications Of The United States Commission On Civil Rights, Bill Sleeman

Faculty Scholarship

This article briefly explores the technical and administrative tasks required to create a digital resource devoted to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Law Is The Answer? Do We Know That For Sure? Questioning The Efficacy Of Legal Interventions For Battered Women, Leigh S. Goodmark

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.