Digital Commons Network^™

Obama's Aumf Legacy, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack Landman Goldsmith

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

How Corporate Governance Is Made: The Case Of The Golden Leash, Matthew D. Cain Ph.D., Jill E. Fisch, Sean J. Griffith, Steven D. Solomon

Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents a case study of a corporate governance innovation — the incentive compensation arrangement for activist-nominated director candidates colloquially known as the “golden leash.” Golden leash compensation arrangements are a potentially valuable tool for activist shareholders in election contests. In response to their use, several issuers adopted bylaw provisions banning incentive compensation arrangements. Investors, in turn, viewed director adoption of golden leash bylaws as problematic and successfully pressured issuers to repeal them. The study demonstrates how corporate governance provisions are developed and deployed, the sequential response of issuers and investors, and the central role played by governance intermediaries …

Being Good Lawyers: A Relational Approach To Law Practice, Eli Wald, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

In response to past generations of debates regarding whether law is a business or profession, we advance an alternative approach that rejects the dichotomies of business and profession, or hired gun and wise counselor. Instead, we propose a relational account of law practice. Unlike frameworks grounded in assumptions of atomistic individualism or communitarianism, a relational perspective recognizes that all actors, whether individuals or organizations, have separate identities yet are intrinsically inter-connected and cannot maximize their own good in isolation. Through the lens of relational self-interest, maximizing the good of the individual or business requires consideration of the good of the …

Prosecutorial Accountability 2.0, Bruce A. Green, Ellen Yaroshefsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Question Concerning Technology In Compliance, Sean J. Griffith

Faculty Scholarship

In this symposium Essay, I apply insights from philosophy and psychology to argue that modes of achieving compliance that focus on technology undermine, and are undermined by, modes of achieving compliance that focus on culture. Insisting on both may mean succeeding at neither. How an organization resolves this apparent contradiction in program design, like the broader question of optimal corporate governance arrangements, is highly idiosyncratic. Firms should therefore be accorded maximum freedom in designing their compliance programs, rather than being forced by enforcement authorities into a set of de facto mandatory compliance structures.

Gender Indicators As Global Governance: Not Your Father's World Bank, Catherine Powell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fracking In Louisiana: The Missing Process/Land Use Distinction In State Preemption And Opportunities For Local Participation, Alex Ritchie

Faculty Scholarship

Oil and gas development is testing and defining the boundaries of local government authority and autonomy as concerned municipal entities and citizens seek to limit oil and gas operations. Advances in high-volume hydraulic fracturing have increased domestic oil and gas production to historic levels.) At the same time, national and international concerns about irreversible man-made global warming have focused on fossil fuel combustion. National groups opposed to continued reliance on oil and gas as an energy source have found willing partners in many local governments and their citizens, who are anxious about the local implications of drilling and fracking. Many …

An Opt-In Option For Class Actions, Scott Dodson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

First Do No Harm: Protecting Patients Through Immunizing Health Care Workers, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Rene F. Najera

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Glass Ceiling For Female Professionals, Executives, And Managerial Employees In Japan: 30th Anniversary Of The Eeao And Prime Minister Abe's Womenomics– Introduction To The Symposium Issue– Introduction To The Symposium Issue, Setsuo Miyazawa

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rebellious Heroes, Ascanio Piomelli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Shining A Light On Shadow Money, John Crawford

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

South Africa And The Human Right To Water: Equity, Ecology, And The Public Trust Doctrine, David Takacs

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Startups And Unmet Legal Needs, Robin Feldman, Alice Armitage, Evan Frondorf, Christopher Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brief For Amici Curiae Professors Of Law In Support Of Petitioner, Barbara Allen Babcock, Jeffrey Bellin, Robert P. Burns, Sherman J. Clark, James E. Coleman Jr., Lisa Kern Griffin, Robert P. Mosteller, Deborah Tuerkheimer, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Pricing Disintermediation: Crowdfunding And Online Auction Ipos, A. Christine Hurt

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Adopting The Gay Family, Cynthia Godsoe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Political Uncertainty And The Market For Ipos, Jay B. Kesten, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents a simple theory and model of the effects of political uncertainty on the market for IPOs. Our model generates four central predictions: (i) increased political uncertainty reduces the frequency of IPOs; (ii) firms that choose to conduct an IPO during periods of political uncertainty are, on average, of higher quality and generate greater return on investment in the secondary market; (iii) political uncertainty increases the cost of capital for IPO firms; but (iv) underpricing is less pronounced during periods of heightened political uncertainty. We demonstrate that each of these predictions is consistent with available empirical evidence.

Our …

Time To Say Local Cheese And Smile At Geographical Indications Of Origin? International Trade And Local Development In The United States, Irene Calboli

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I offer some considerations on a possible compromising solution for the controversy between the European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.) on the regulation of geographical indications of origin (GIs) as part of the negotiations in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Notably, I advocate that the EU and the U.S. consider adopting a solution similar to that adopted in the Canada and European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). In particular, I note that, even though CETA accepted several of the EU's requests to claw-back names that were not previously protected in Canada, …

Common Law Fundamentals Of The Right To Abortion, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Just Another Little Black Boy From The South Side Of Chicago": Overcoming Obstacles And Breaking Down Barriers To Improve Diversity In The Law Professoriate, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

As I reflected on my personal experience to help address the persistence of discrimination in legal academia, I chose to focus on five areas of discussion for the open mic portion of the program held at the Association of American Law Schools Cross-Cutting Program, “The More Things Change ...: Exploring Solutions to Persistent Discrimination in Legal Academia,” held on January 4, 2015, in Washington, D.C. First, I decided to address my personal development as an only child and male in a family of mostly black women struggling through the socioeconomic challenges of being poor and black. To add to that …

Negligence And Two-Sided Causation, Keith N. Hylton, Haizhen Lin, Hyo-Youn Chu

Faculty Scholarship

We extend the economic analysis of negligence and intervening causation to "two-sided causation" scenarios. In the two-sided causation scenario the effectiveness of the injurer's care depends on some intervention, and the risk of harm generated by the injurer's failure to take care depends on some other intervention. We find that the distortion from socially optimal care is more severe in the two-sided causation scenario than in the one-sided causation scenario, and generally in the direction of excessive care. The practical lesson is that the likelihood that injurers will have optimal care incentives under the negligence test in the presence of …

The Women Of The Wall: A Metaphor For National And Religious Identity, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

The Women of the Wall wish to participate in communal prayer in the women’s section of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Their practice is to pray as a group, wrap themselves in a tallit, and read from the Torah scroll. They represent Jewish pluralism in that their group includes Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and secular women. They represent openness to change in that they base their claims on Halakhic interpretation, thereby embracing the capacity of Jewish law to evolve. This article reviews the resistance of the religious and political establishment in Israel to their claim and their struggle, unsuccessful so far, …

Blinding Prosecutors To Defendants’ Race: A Policy Proposal To Reduce Unconscious Bias In The Criminal Justice System, Sunita Sah, Christopher Robertson, Shima Baughman

Faculty Scholarship

Racial minorities are disproportionately imprisoned in the United States. This disparity is unlikely to be due solely to differences in criminal behavior. Behavioral science research has documented that prosecutors harbor unconscious racial biases. These unconscious biases play a role whenever prosecutors exercise their broad discretion, such as in choosing what crimes to charge and when negotiating plea bargains. To reduce this risk of unconscious racial bias, we propose a policy change: Prosecutors should be blinded to the race of criminal defendants wherever feasible. This could be accomplished by removing information identifying or suggesting the defendant’s race from police dossiers shared …

The Novel New Jersey Eyewitness Instruction Induces Skepticism But Not Sensitivity, Athan Papailiou, David Yokum, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

In recent decades, social scientists have shown that the reliability of eyewitness identifications is much worse than laypersons tend to believe. Although courts have only recently begun to react to this evidence, the New Jersey judiciary has reformed its jury instructions to notify jurors about the frailties of human memory, the potential for lineup administrators to nudge witnesses towards suspects that they police have already identified, and the advantages of alternative lineup procedures, including blinding of the administrator. This experiment tested the efficacy of New Jersey’s jury instruction. In a 2×2 between-subjects design, mock jurors (N = 335) watched a …

The Psychology Of Patent Protection, Stephanie Plamondon Bair

Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers the first comprehensive assessment of the major justifications for our patent system using a behavioral psychology framework. Applying insights from the behavioral literature that I argue more accurately account for the realities of human action than previous analytical tools, I critically evaluate each of the major justifications for patents — incentive theory, disclosure theory, prospect theory, commercialization theory, patent racing theory, and non-utilitarian theories. I ask whether our current patent system is an effective regime for meeting the stated goals of these accounts. When the answer to this question is no, I again turn to the behavioral …

Institutional Triage: Reflections On Being Acquired, Aric K. Short

Faculty Scholarship

On June 25, 2012, I walked into the dean's office at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. He and I had been summoned by our university president to a hastily called meeting to discuss the law school's "academic program." Since I helped oversee our academic program as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the time, I was not particularly looking forward to the meeting. I assumed there would be bad news of some sort.

Instead, we were told that Texas Wesleyan University ("TWU") and Texas A&M University ("TAMU") were in negotiations that, it was expected, would result in a "strategic …

State-Created Immigration Climates And Domestic Migration, Huyen Pham, Pham Hoang Van

Faculty Scholarship

With comprehensive immigration reform dead for the foreseeable future, immigration laws enacted at the subfederal level -- cities, counties, and states -- have become even more important. Arizona has dominated media coverage and become the popular representation of the states' response to immigration by enacting SB 1070 and other notoriously anti-immigrant laws. Illinois, by contrast, has received relatively little media coverage for enacting laws that benefit the immigrants within its jurisdiction. The reality on the ground is that subfederal jurisdictions in the United States have taken very divergent paths on the issue of immigration regulation.

Compiling city, county, and state …

Assessing The Deployment Of Home Visiting: Learning From A State-Wide Survey Of Home Visiting Programs, Robert L. Fischer, Elizabeth R. Anthony, Nina Lalich, Paul Bakaki, Siran Koroukian-Hajinazarian

Faculty Scholarship

Objectives: Large-scale planning for health and human services programming is required to inform effective public policy as well as deliver services to meet community needs. The present study demonstrates the value of collecting data directly from deliverers of home visiting programs across a state. This study was conducted in response to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which requires states to conduct a needs assessment of home visiting programs for pregnant women and young children to receive federal funding. In this paper, we provide a descriptive analysis of a needs assessment of home visiting programs in Ohio. Methods: All …

A Tale Of Two Reports: What Recent Publications From The Alzheimer’S Association And Institute Of Medicine Say About The State Of The Field, Peter J. Whitehouse

Faculty Scholarship

Scientific reports hold a mirror up to a culture, reflecting the beliefs, values, assumptions, practices, technologies, and political-economic interests that shape discourse around particular diseases in particular cultural moments [1]. Indeed, despite their authoritative patina, such reports are “living documents” that invite critical analysis about where discourse in a particular field has been and where it is going. In this spirit, two recent reports from the Alzheimer’s Association (Changing the Trajectory of Alzheimer’s Disease: How a Treatment by 2025 Saves Lives and Dollars) and the Institute of Medicine in the United States (Cognitive Aging: Progress in Understanding and Opportunities for …