Digital Commons Network^™

Conjoining International Human Rights Law With Enterprise Liability For Accidents, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Braking The Merger Momentum: Reforming Corporate Law Governing Mega-Mergers, James A. Fanto

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Universal City Studios, Inc. V. Reimerdes: Promoting The Progress Of Science And The Useful Arts By Demoting The Progress Of Science And The Useful Arts?, Eric W. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Of Theory And Practice, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

Much has been written about theory and practice in the law, and the tension between practitioners and theorists. Judges do not cite theoretical articles often; they rarely "apply" theories to particular cases. These arguments are not revisited. Instead the Essay explores the working and interaction of theory and practice, practitioners and theorists.

The Essay starts with a story about solving a legal issue using our intellectual tools - theory, practice, and their progenies: experience and "gut." Next the Essay elaborates on the nature of theory, practice, experience and "gut." The third part of the Essay discusses theories that are helpful …

Publication Rules In The Rulemaking Spectrum: Assuring Proper Respect For An Essential Element, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

Imagine a visitor who seeks to catalog the variety of written texts American government uses to communicate its powers and its citizens' rights and obligations. She might organize those texts into the following pyramid:

• A Constitution, adopted by "the people"

• Hundreds of statutes, adopted by an elected Congress

• Thousands of regulations, adopted by politically responsible executive officials

• Tens of thousands of interpretations and other guidance documents, issued by responsible bureaus

• Countless advice letters, press releases, and other statements of understanding, generated by individual bureaucrats

On inquiry she would find that we understand passably well the …

The Soul Of A New Political Machine: The Online, The Color Line And Electronic Democracy, Eben Moglen, Pamela S. Karlan

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, we want to suggest two ways in which people's experience with the Internet may affect how they think politics ought to be organized, and to consider the consequences for the political aspirations of minority communities. First, the notion of "virtual communities” – that is, communities that affiliate along nongeographic lines – may provide new support for alternatives to traditional geographic districting practices. As Americans become more comfortable with the idea that people can belong to voluntarily created, overlapping, fluid, nongeographically defined communities, which may be as important as the physical communities in which they live, they may …

Feminism At The Millennium, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

Sexism of all kinds – subtle and blatant, criminal and legal, commercial and private – is the topic of the three books under review. The books initially sort themselves out by discipline: Everyday Sexism and Subtle Sexism are anthologies whose editors and contributors are primarily sociologists; Speaking of Sex is written by a law professor and offers a more focused argument about the persistence of gender inequalities. Distinctions in authorship aside, the three books pose a pair of similar and painfully familiar questions: Why is so much still organized to the disadvantage of women, and what can (feminist) academics contribute …

Regulatory Initiatives And The Internet: A New Era Of Oversight For The Securities And Exchange Commission, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Company Registration And The Private Placement Exemption, Merritt B. Fox

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last twenty years, there has been a steady shift in securities disclosure regulation away from its traditional transactional basis toward a system of company registration. Under the transaction based approach, each new public offering of a security has to be registered under the Securities Act of 1933 (the "1933 Act"), a requirement that reflects the SEC's traditional concern that the most important time to have high-quality disclosure is at the moment of a securities offering. Under the company registration approach, an established, publicly traded issuer would register just once, provide information thereafter on a periodic basis, and then …

Challenges To Fragile Democracies In The Americas: Legitimacy And Accountability, Martin Böhmer, A.R. Brewer-Carías, Helen Beatriz Mack Chang, Sarah H. Cleveland, Francisco Cox, Lourdes Flores Nano, H.W. Perry Jr., Steven Ratner, Carlos Rosenkrantz, Roberto Saba, Dean Michael Sharlot, Nicolas Shumway, Gerald Torres

Faculty Scholarship

February 25, 2000, the University of Texas School of Law hosted an extraordinary gathering to discuss the fragility of democracies in Latin America and the dangers that they face. The event was sponsored by several institutions at the University of Texas: the School of Law, the Institute of Latin American Studies, the Office of the Provost, the College of Liberal Arts Democracy in the Third Millennium Program, and the International Law Society at the School of Law.

Transforming The Debate: Why We Need To Include Transgender Rights In The Struggles For Sex And Sexual Orientation Equality, Taylor Flynn

Faculty Scholarship

The Author observes that sex and sexual orientation equality jurisprudence is premised upon the traditional understanding of "sex" as determined by anatomy at birth. The presumption typically following from this reduction of sex to anatomy is the notion that certain gendered attributes are inherent in biological male- or femaleness. The Author asserts that these erroneous and unduly narrow views significantly hamper courts' ability to address the core of sex and sexual orientation discrimination-hostility based on failure to conform to conventional gender norms. Surveying workplace, public accommodation, asylum, marriage, and custody cases, Flynn explains how conventional jurisprudence fails a wide array …

Prospects For Chiral Nonlinear Optical Media, Rolfe G. Petschek, Kenneth D. Singer

Faculty Scholarship

This paper describes the development and optimization of chiral, nonpolar media with large second-order nonlinear optical responses. We employ molecular engineering, quantum-mechanical sum-over-states theory, and measurements of molecular hyperpolarizability by means of Kleinman-disallowed hyper-Rayleigh scattering in order to understand molecular properties. Then we analyze the appropriate arrangement of the chromophores that produce an optimum axial nonlinear optical medium. Chromophores with large Kleinman disallowed traceless symmetric second-rank tensor hyperpolarizabilities /spl beta/ can be aligned so as to result in large susceptibilities /spl chi//sup (2)/ in structures that lack polar order. We found that /spl Lambda/-shaped chromophores with C/sub 2v/ or similar …

Title Vii And Religious Liberty, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids religious discrimination in employment, raises in microcosm some extremely thorny questions about religious liberty; questions more familiar to most of us in constitutional settings. In focusing on these questions in their Title VII context, I am more interested in fundamental conceptual issues than in the precise details of what that law should be taken to provide.

Among the questions are: What is discrimination because of religion? How should religion be "defined"? How far should employers accommodate the religious exercise of workers? Under the First Amendment, how much accommodation can the …

Regulation Fd And Foreign Issuers: Globalization's Strains And Opportunities, Merritt B. Fox

Faculty Scholarship

The globalization of the market for securities has a persistent way of straining the traditional rationales for securities regulation. At the same time, the choices it forces upon us create the opportunity to better test empirically the desirability of the regulations being imposed. Regulation FD, which stands for "fair disclosure," is the most recent example where these twin effects of globalization arise. Regulation FD is arguably the most important change to the U.S. disclosure regime since the adoption of integrated disclosure almost two decades ago. Regulation FD is intended to stop the practice of "selective disclosure," whereby an issuer withholds …

The Role Of Law In The Functioning Of Federal Systems, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Federal systems are about the distribution of legal and political power, but law is not only one of the currencies of federalism, it is also one of federalism's most important supports; this chapter considers the role that law plays in establishing and enforcing the system by which both legal and political power are distributed within the USA and the EU. Bermann explores the various ways in which the courts can, and choose to, enforce the principles of federalism beyond the classical ‘political’ and ‘procedural’ safeguards provided by the institutional structures themselves and the constraints on the deliberative process. He describes …

Quality Control, Enterprise Liability, And Disintermediation In Managed Care, John V. Jacobi, Nicole Huberfeld

Faculty Scholarship

The authors examine the potential of enterprise liability for managed care organizations in light of current health-care finance realities. They conclude that, despite the recent trend toward more loosely structured managed care organizations, such as disintermediated or patient-directed plans, plan-based enterprise liability best serves the goal of reducing medical injury by permitting a focus on entities with sufficient scope to translate liability pressure into support for systemic risk-reduction measures. Advancing plan-based enterprise liability in an era of disengaged managed care organizations will require an extension of tort liability to firms with little control but much influence over their business partners.

Choice And Boundary Problems In Logerquist, Hummert, And Kumho Tire, David H. Kaye

Faculty Scholarship

This article, part of a symposium on the opinion of the Arizona Supreme Court in Logerquist v. McVey, questions that court’s rationales for refusing to apply heightened scrutiny to psychiatric testimony about the retrieval of repressed memories. It also challenges the court’s use of a “personal observations” exception to the heightened scrutiny standard of Frye v. United States. It proposes that a better solution to problems of scientific and expert evidence would be to adopt a sliding scale that attends to the use to which the evidence is put and the degree to which it has been shown to be …

Rulemaking's Promise: Administrative Law And Legal Culture In The 1960s And 1970s, Reuel E. Schiller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

From Difference To Dominance To Domesticity: Care As Work, Gender As Tradition, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Embracing The Darkness: Logerquist V. Mcvey And The Doctrine Of Ignorance Of Science Is An Excuse, David L. Faigman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Water Rights For New Federal Land Conservation Programs: A Turn-Of-The-Century Evaluation, John D. Leshy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Technologies Of Property Rights: Choice Among Alternative Solutions To Tragedies Of The Commons, Bruce Yandle, Andrew P. Morriss

Faculty Scholarship

Garrett Hardin's classic description of the tragedy of the commons tells us that all environmental problems require a property rights solution. The property solution or rule may call for the definition and enforcement of common, public, or private property rights, but any escape from the tragedy requires some rationing mechanism that allocates a form of property rights to some entity. These solutions fall into one of two broad traditions within economics: the Pigouvian, or regulatory tradition, and the Coasean, or market-based tradition. Any proposal for action in either tradition implies some definition of property rights. The difference lies in the …

Lessons From The Development Of Western Water Law For Emerging Water Markets: Common Law Vs. Central Planning, Andrew P. Morriss

Faculty Scholarship

The story of water in the American West shows that political intervention is unnecessary. Local institutions and rules could be the basis for a legal regime sufficient to deal with water issues that arise. The importation of central planning regimes for water can thus not only lead to the allocation of water in ways that harm the interests of indigenous peoples, but also can contribute to the destruction of customary legal systems, which themselves form a valuable part of indigenous people's cultural heritage. Failing to resist the attempts by special interests at a water grab may thus leave both the …

All In The Family: Darwin And The Evolution Of Mediation, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

Maybe I’ve been thinking about evolution more than is normal for the average lawyer. I have a 5-year-old son who is fascinated by every species of dinosaur. As a result, I read to my son nearly every night about the events and the evolving cast of creatures that populated the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Since the Triassic period began 240 million years ago, this provides a real sense of perspective.

I wonder how Charles Darwin would use his theory of evolution to explain the many strange and wonderful variations of mediation that have flowered in the past decade. And …

The Future Of Corporate Governance Listing Requirements, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Regulation Of Securities And Security Exchanges In The Age Of The Internet, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Antitrust Intent, Ronald A. Cass, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

Many legal rules turn on a party's state of mind or intent with respect to some action or consequence. Legal scholars have long debated the contours of such requirements and the sorts of proof required for them. Intent has been an especially controversial issue in antitrust law. This paper provides a theory of legal standards that explains the role of intent analysis in antitrust and in other areas of the law. We argue that intent requirements, and many other legal rules, can be understood by focusing on the goal of minimizing the expected costs from legal errors. After developing a …

Party As A "Political Safeguard Of Federalism": Martin Van Buren And The Constitutional Theory Of Party Politics, Gerald F. Leonard

Faculty Scholarship

In the last decade or so, the Supreme Court has revitalized judicial enforcement of federalism. This development has spurred the partisans of Herbert Wechsler's "political safeguards of federalism" to begin a serious investigation of the ways in which extra-judicial politics can and does substitute for and complement the judicial role in enforcing federalism and the Constitution. Similarly, constitutional scholars have turned in increasing numbers to the question of how even judicially promulgated doctrines of constitutional law turn out to be more derivative of popular politics than vice versa. Necessarily, much of the investigation on both fronts has turned historical and …

Tying Law And Policy: A Decision-Theoretic Approach, Keith N. Hylton, Michael Salinger

Faculty Scholarship

This paper offers a decision theoretic framework for analyzing tying law, and presents a critical assessment of post-Chicago tying theory. The decision theoretic framework takes into account the likelihood of judicial error in the application of rules and the costs of such error. We use the decision theoretic framework to assess the proper legal rules regarding tying and technological integration. Three general themes run throughout much of our analysis. First, the per se rule against tying simply has no economic foundation. Second, while the post-Chicago literature established the theoretical possibility of anticompetitive tying, one must know the frequency of anticompetitive …

Is Virtual Trespass An Apt Analogy?, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

Legal doctrine often evolves both more slowly than the conduct and the technology it is intended to regulate and by analogy. When parties argue that previously unheard-of behavior should generate some legal response, the relevant institution often seeks guidance from past experience. Earlier decisions addressing a specific actual context give some confidence that applying the legal rules from these prior situations to the new fact pattern will produce a sensible result. But principles developed to deal with one set of facts can only imperfectly fit another. This imperfect fit often becomes more evident over time, sometimes raising the question of …