Digital Commons Network^™

The Sec And The Institutional Investor: A Half-Time Report, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Nothing that the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") has done in recent years has been as controversial or significant as its efforts to reform the proxy rules to permit greater communication among shareholders. Nothing that it has undertaken recently has also been left as incompletely or equivocally realized as these same efforts. That the SEC's efforts at facilitating shareholder communication have been controversial and significant is by now a commonplace observation. That they are incomplete and equivocal requires more explanation. Although the discovery that an agency is behaving inconsistently is hardly a revelation, more than politics appears to be at …

Sameness And Subordination: The Dangers Of A Universal Solution, Susan P. Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

Judges, Behavioral Scientists, and the Demands of Humanity grapples with one of the most pressing and difficult challenges of our time – how to overcome deep and enduring conflicts that currently divide our community. Professor Burt offers insights into the importance of empathy and identification in breaking down the categories that we use to distance ourselves from the humanity of others and to justify oppression of those we define as outsiders. His solution is hopeful, almost noble. He exhorts judges, social scientists, and by implication, all of us to be our best selves, to focus on how we are part …

Solomonic Bargaining: Dividing A Legal Entitlement To Facilitate Coasean Trade, Ian Ayres, Eric Talley

Faculty Scholarship

It is a common argument in law and economics that divided ownership can create or exacerbate strategic behavior. For instance, when several persons own the land designated for a proposed stadium, individual sellers may "hold out" for a disproportionate share of the gains from trade. Alternatively, when building a public library would benefit multiple residents, individual buyers may "free ride" on the willingness of others to pay for its construction. Such transaction costs of collective action fall under a variety of analytic rubrics, including the "tragedy of the commons" and the theory of "public goods." Nonetheless, each example of market …

Trivial Rights, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

In the summer of 1789, when the House of Representatives was formulating the amendments that became the Bill of Rights, Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts argued against enumerating the right of assembly. The House, he urged, "might have gone into a very lengthy enumeration of rights; they might have declared that a man should have a right to wear his hat if he pleased, that he might get up when he pleased, and go to bed when he thought proper ... [Was] it necessary to list these trifles in a declaration of rights, under a Government where none of them were …

Taking Subsidiarity Seriously: Federalism In The European Community And The United States, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

For a principle that has dominated discussions of European federalism for over five years, subsidiarity has received surprisingly poor academic mention. Subsidiarity has been criticized as "inelegant . . .Eurospeak," "the epitome of confusion," and simple "gobbledegook." It has been described by some as nothing new and by others as quite novel and actually quite dangerous. The President of the Commission of the European Communities, said to be an enthusiast of subsidiarity, finds it used at times as an "alibi," and more specifically as "a fig leaf ... to conceal [an] unwillingness to honour the commitments which have already been …

Free Speech And The Widening Gyre Of Fund-Raising: Why Campaign Spending Limits May Not Violate The First Amendment After All Symposium On Campaign Finance Reform, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

Candidates for office spend too much of their time raising money. This is scarcely a controversial proposition. A major impetus for campaign finance reform is the frustration politicians now feel concerning how much time they must devote to courting potential donors, often by methods borrowed from the marketplace that can only be described as demeaning. The situation has gotten worse as electoral merchandising has grown ever more sophisticated and expensive.

Setting Standards For Fair Information Practice In The U.S. Private Sector, Joel R. Reidenberg

Faculty Scholarship

The confluence of plans for an Information Superhighway, actual industry self-regulatory practices, and international pressure dictate renewed consideration of standard setting for fair information practices in the U.S. private sector. The legal rules, industry norms, and business practices that regulate the treatment of personal information in the United States are organized in a wide and dispersed manner. This Article analyzes how these standards are established in the U.S. private sector. Part I argues that the U.S. standards derive from the influence of American political philosophy on legal rule making and a preference for dispersed sources of information standards. Part II …

Decoupling Sales Law From The Acceptance-Rejection Fulcrum, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

The determination of whether the buyer has accepted or rejected goods provides the sales law solution to the problems of allocating burden of proof, assigning duties to salvage goods in failed transactions, and reducing systematic undercompensation. But one doctrine is unlikely to provide the best solution to each of these distinct problems. Decoupling the rules addressing burden of proof, salvage, and undercompensation from the doctrines of acceptance and rejection, and thus from one another, would significantly improve sales law.

This strategy has a distinguished precedent in the history of sales law. Karl Llewellyn based his objection to the doctrine of …

Constructing The Substantive Constitution, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

I. Introduction A. The Flights from Substance in Constitutional Theory A specter is haunting constitutional theory-the specter of Lochner v. New York.' In the Lochner era, the Supreme Court gave heightened judicial protection to substantive economic liberties through the Due Process Clauses.2 In 1937, during the constitutional revolution wrought by the New Deal, West Coast Hotel v. Parrish3 officially repudiated the Lochner era, marking the first death of substantive due process.4 Nevertheless, the ghost of Lochner has perturbed constitutional theory ever since, manifesting itself in charges that judges are "Lochnering" by imposing their own substantive fundamental values in the guise …

Malpractice Liability And Physician Autonomy, Frances H. Miller, Anthony Harrison

Faculty Scholarship

Opinion. Discusses legal modifications concerning liability for medical negligence evolving in similar ways in the United States and Great Britain. Parallel and divergent trans-Atlantic trends; Ailing and increasingly costly health care systems; Traditional relationships among doctors, hospitals and other health sector players.

Environmental Law In The Supreme Court: Highlights From The Marshall Papers, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

Justice Marshall served on the Court from 1967 until 1991. During that period, Congress passed all of the major federal environmental statutes and environmental regulation mushroomed. As a result, the Marshall papers reveal how the Court reached decisions that have shaped modern environmental law. The author, a former law clerk to former Justice Byron White and an associate professor of law at the University of Maryland, begins by describing the history of the Court's treatment of environmental disputes. He then discusses the steps the Justices take in deciding whether to accept cases for review; in reaching decisions on the merits …

Just The Facts, Ma'am: Lying And The Omission Of Exculpatory Evidence In Police Reports,, Stanley Z. Fisher

Faculty Scholarship

George Jones's ordeal was the product of, and in turn sheds light upon, police practices of investigating crimes and writing reports. Written police reports of criminal incidents and arrests give details such as the time, place, and nature of criminal conduct; the names and addresses of victims and witnesses; physical characteristics of the perpetrator(s) or arrestee(s); weapons used; property taken, recovered, or seized from the arrestee; and injuries to persons and property. Through their reports, the police "have fundamental control over the construction of [the] 'facts' for a case, and all other actors (the prosecutor, the judge, the defense lawyer) …

Preempting Justice Through Binding Arbitration Of Future Disputes: Mere Adhesion Contracts Or A Trap For The Unwary Consumer, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

When individual consumers with little or no bargaining power have not consented to particular contractual terms, the use of the courts and judicial interpretations may be the only way to promote justice and allow consumers to protect themselves. Unfortunately, the trend, as established in recent United States Supreme Court decisions, is to apply the deferential standards of enforcement from commercial transactions to situations involving adhesion contracts between an individual consumer and a business entity where equal bargaining power is clearly lacking.

Perhaps the most pervasive example of this trend has been the Supreme Court's zealous enforcement of arbitration clauses under …

The Social Origins Of Property, Joseph William Singer, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The takings clause of the United States Constitution requires government to pay compensation when private property is taken for public use.' When government regulates, but does not physically seize, property, the Supreme Court of the United States has had trouble defining when individuals have been deprived of property rights so as to give them a right to compensation. The takings clause serves "to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens that, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole."' To determine when a regulation amounts to a "taking" of property …

Truth And Consequences: The Force Of Blackmail's Central Case, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Blackmail commentary continues to proliferate. One purpose of this paper is to show what we agree on. Its primary tool will be to define what I call the "central case" of blackmail literature, and to supply the connecting links that will allow us to see how various normative theories converge in condemning central case blackmail. Admittedly, the law criminalizes more than my central case. But once we recognize that the central case is neither puzzling nor paradoxical, it may be easier to handle the border cases that arise.

Implications Of The Stakeholder Model, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Implications Of The Stakeholder Model, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Weak Radiative Decay Λ→Nγ And The Radiative Capture Reaction K‾P→∑(1385)Γ, William J. Fickinger, D. K. Robinson

Faculty Scholarship

The branching ratio for the Λ weak radiative decay Λ→nγ has been measured. Three statistically independent results from the same experiment (Brookhaven E811) are reported here. They are combined with a previously published measurement, also from Brookhaven E811, to yield a result of (Λ→nγ)/(Λ→anything)=(1.75±0.15)×10-3, based on 1800 events after background subtraction. This represents a factor of 75 increase in statistics over the previous world total. A comparison with recent theoretical papers shows that no existing model provides a completely satisfactory description of all data on weak radiative decays. A search is also reported for the radiative capture process K-p→Σ(1385)γ at …

Ion-Director Coupling In A Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal, Min-Hua Lu, Charles Rosenblatt, Rolfe G. Petschek

Faculty Scholarship

The coupling between the motion of ionic impurities and the bend-type director distortion in a ferroelectric liquid crystal is examined theoretically. We calculate the relaxation rate of the (fast) director mode to lowest order in the ion concentration. Moreover, we calculate the ratio Kfast(=0)/K(=0), where K() is the amplitude of the temporal autocorrelation function for director fluctuations, is the correlation time, and Kfast() is the corresponding value for the quickly decaying component of this quantity. The ratio, which can be measured in a light-scattering experiment, yields the inverse Debye-Hückel screening length.

The Nonmajoritarian Difficulty: Legislative Deference To The Judiciary, Mark A. Graber

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of The European Community On Labor Law: Some American Comparisons, Marley S. Weiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Federal Court Abstention And State Administrative Law From Burford To Ankenbrandt: Fifty Years Of Judicial Federalism Under Burford V. Sun Oil Co. And Kindred Doctrines, Gordon G. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The New Spectrum Auction Law, Nick Allard

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Barriers To Foreign Issuer Entry Into U.S. Markets, Roberta S. Karmel, Mary S. Head

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Enslaved To Judicial Supremacy?, H. Jefferson Powell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Building And Maintaining A Statewide Mediation Program: A View From The Field, Sharon Press

Faculty Scholarship

Written in 1992, this article attempts to provide guidance to states seeking to improve the judicial system through increased use of alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) mechanisms. The format most often selected is the establishment of statewide mediation offices. Part I of this article identifies the issues that should be addressed by any group wishing to establish a statewide court-connected mediation program. Part II presents an analysis of Florida’s experience in establishing a statewide court mediation program as an example of how these issues were resolved in practice by a state that has implemented a court-connected mediation program. This article concludes …

Exile On Main Street: Inmate Transfers From Puerto Rico To The Continental United States Violate Due Process, Justin P. Brooks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Pc Harangue, James Boyle

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Teach Your Students Well: Valuing Clients In The Law School Clinic., Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

Law schools, teaching primarily by the casebook method, generally avoid the thorny issues that real clients pose.' Recently, however, law review articles and the ""regular classroom"" have referred more frequently to real client stories. Law school clinics are a primary source of client stories. Despite increased attention to clinical programs, client interests are frequently subordinated to the goals of students, clinical law teachers and law schools. This article urges clinicians to constantly evaluate whether and how well they and their students take their clients' interests and perspectives on clinical education into account. It argues that clinic teachers must learn to …

Extending The Guiding Lefthand Of Counsel: The Minnesota Supreme Court Provides Protection Against Uncounseled Waivers Of The Right To Counsel During Interrogations, Edwin J. Butterfoss, Lisa J. Burkett

Faculty Scholarship

It is the thesis of this Article that the cases on which the Minnesota Supreme Court in Lefthand relied and the policy concerns that motivated the court suggest that the rule of Lefthand should apply to any suspect who has asserted her right to counsel, regardless of whether that suspect is in custody, formally charged, or formally represented by counsel. If the court's ruling in Lefthand is carried to its logical scope, law enforcement officers and prosecutors in Minnesota may find that very early in the criminal justice process they are precluded from obtaining waivers of the right to counsel …