Digital Commons Network^™

Up In The Air Over Taxing Frequent Flyer Benefits: The American, Canadian, And Australian Experiences, Lawrence A. Zelenak

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Who Can’T Raise Capital? The Scylla And Charybdis Of Capital Formation, James D. Cox

Faculty Scholarship

There has long been complaints that the heavy regulatory hand of Blue Sky Law administrators prevents capital formation by small issuers. Using data recently collected by the SEC, the article reasons that the problems capital starved small issuers encounter is not the state regulator. The problems are elsewhere. The paper explores whether intermediation may ultimately enable more startups to raise needed funds. For this to occur, however, the paper explores the formidable obstacles the broker must overcome in meeting demanding suitability requirements.

Gerald Bard Tjoflat: A Profile, Daniel S. Bowling Iii

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

U.S. Executive Branch Patent Policy, Global And Domestic, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Common Sense And Key Questions, Stuart M. Benjamin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Completing The Energy Innovation Cycle: The View From The Public Utility Commission, Jonas J. Monast, Sarah K. Adair

Faculty Scholarship

Achieving widespread adoption of innovative electricity generation technologies involves a complex system of research, development, demonstration, and deployment, with each phase then informing future developments. Despite a number of non-regulatory programs at the federal level to support this process, the innovation premium—the increased cost and technology risk often associated with innovative generation technologies—creates hurdles in the state public utility commission (“PUC”) process. These state level regulatory hurdles have the potential to frustrate federal energy goals and prevent the learning process that is a critical component to technology innovation. This Article explores how and why innovative energy technologies face challenges in …

Diagnostic Patents At The Supreme Court, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Turning The World Upside Down: How Frames Of Reference Shape Environmental Law, James Salzman, Martin Doyle

Faculty Scholarship

Models and representations help us understand complex phenomena. The Mercator map presents a familiar, two-dimensional view of our three-dimensional world, for example, but it can distort as much as it clarifies. In the natural sciences, too, there are very different ways of framing reality. The classic method developed by Leonard Euler measures a system from a fixed point. A competing method developed by Joseph Louis Lagrange measures from the perspective of a particle moving within the system. These Eulerian and Lagrangian methods of measurement dominate the physical sciences and provide different, though equally valid, measures of how the system operates. …

Elhauge On Tying: Vindicated By History, Barak D. Richman, Steven W. Usselman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Do Racial Disparities Exist During Pretrial Decisionmaking? Evidence From North Carolina, Guangya Liu, Chloe Johnson, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System are well documented in that minority defendants are over-represented compared with white defendants. The present authors argue that it is crucial to study the pretrial stages because they are a pivotal point in the criminal justice process continuum and racial disparities may begin to take root at an early stage of the process.

We find some evidence of racial disparities in pretrial decisionmaking. The type of bond assigned differs by race. Black defendants who were unable to post bond spent more days in jail, compared to white counterparts. However, race is not a …

Extraterritorial Impacts Of Recent Financial Regulation Reforms: A Complex World Of Global Finance, Lawrence G. Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Contours And Composition Of Agency Doctrine: Perspectives From History And Theory On Inherent Agency Power, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the history of formulations of agency doctrine, arguing that agency law can best be rationalized as a distinctive subject by recognizing that an agent acts as an extension of the principal. The Essay relies on historical material related to the drafting of the Restatements of Agency, the disagreements among Reporters and other participants about the contours agency law, and the intellectual backdrop against which these experts worked. Their disputes, preceded as they were by challenges to the fundamental coherence of agency law, led to successive formulations of agency doctrine; while attempting to provide a comprehensive level of …

“Robbing Peter To Pay Paul”: Economic And Cultural Explanations For How Lower-Income Families Manage Debt, Laura M. Tach, Sara Sternberg Greene

Faculty Scholarship

This article builds upon classic economic perspectives of financial behavior by applying the narrative identity perspective of cultural sociology to explain how lower-income families respond to indebtedness. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 194 lower-income household heads, we show that debt management strategies are influenced by a desire to promote a financially responsible, self-sufficient social identity. Families are reluctant to ask for assistance when faced with economic hardship because it undermines this identity. Because the need to pay on debts is less acute than the need to pay for regular monthly expenses like rent or groceries, debts receive a lower …

Exit, Voice, And Loyalty As Federalism Strategies: Lessons From The Same-Sex Marriage Debate, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Financial Economists As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Unidroit Principles As Global Background Law, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

After twenty years of existence, it becomes apparent that the role actually played by the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts (PICC) is quite different from the one originally intended. This article first presents nine surprising findings concerning the actual use of the PICC, as it can be assessed on the basis of published opinions, legislation, and scholarship. It then uses these findings to suggest that the PICC should not be viewed as a code or even a non-state law. Instead, their nature is that of a Restatement of global general contract law, and their function is that of a …

Clever Or Clueless? Observations About Bombing Norm Debates, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Domestic And International Enforcement Of The Oecd Anti-Bribery Convention, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

International corruption law is a growing, if understudied, area of international economic law. This Article examines two aspects of governments' enforcement of the OECD's Anti-Bribery Convention. The first aspect is the member state's efforts to enforce its own national legislation prohibiting foreign corruption within its territory and with regards to its nationals doing business abroad. The OECD Treaty's obligation concerning member states' enforcement of their own national legislation is somewhat ambiguous. While the obligation to pass particular national legislation is quite clear and specific, the treaty does not specify what resources that a state must dedicate to internally enforcing these …

A State Preferences Account Of Customary International Law Adjudication, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

The standard account today of customary international law (CIL) is that it arises from the widespread and consistent practice of states followed out of a sense of legal obligation. Although commonly recited, this account is plagued by evidentiary, normative, and conceptual difficulties, and it has been subjected to increasing criticism in recent years. This paper posits a different account of CIL, considered from the perspective of international adjudication. A fundamental problem with much of the theorizing about CIL, the paper contends, is that it fails to identify which decisionmaker it has in mind. Instead, the discussion proceeds as if CIL …

Compliance Of Canada’S Utility Doctrine With International Minimum Standards Of Patent Protection, Jerome H. Reichman

Faculty Scholarship

This article analyzes the Canadian court case of Eli Lilly v. Novopharm and the "utility" doctrine in Canada, and international standards of patent protection including TRIPS and NAFTA. The ‘‘promise of the patent’’ doctrine in Canada seeks to ensure that firms do not obtain a legal monopoly on the basis of speculative claims about increased utility — especially claims about therapeutic efficacy — that were unsubstantiated at the time of filing. Under this test, some of Eli Lilly’s patented pharmaceutical products have been invalidated retroactively.

Brief Of Common Law Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents, Samuel W. Buell, Deborah A. Demott, James D. Cox, Ernest A. Young, Ann Lipton

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Consumption, Risk And Prioritarianism, Matthew D. Adler, Nicolas Treich

Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, we study consumption decisions under risk assuming a prioritarian social welfare function, namely a concave transformation of individual utility functions. Under standard assumptions, there is always more current consumption under ex ante prioritarianism than under utilitarianism. Thus, a concern for equity (in the ex ante prioritarian sense) means less concern for the risky future. In contrast, there is usually less current consumption under ex post prioritarianism than under utilitarianism. We discuss the robustness of these results to learning, and to other forms of prioritarian social welfare functions.

The Hyper-Personalization Of War: Cyber, Big Data, And The Changing Face Of Conflict, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brief For Amici Curiae Professors Of Law In Support Of Petitioner, Neil Vidmar, Lisa Kern Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Designing Co2 Performance Standards For A Transitioning Electricity Sector: A Multi-Benefits Framework, Jonas J. Monast, David Hoppock

Faculty Scholarship

A significant transition is underway within the electricity sector due to several market forces, retirement of certain plants, and regulatory pressures. There is notable overlap between available strategies for mitigating electricity sector risks and potential compliance strategies for states under the Clean Power Plan. This overlap presents regulators with an opportunity to pursue strategies that help manage the transition occurring in the electricity sector and achieve greenhouse gas reductions required under the Clean Power Plan, particularly in the areas of end-use energy efficiency and additional renewable power generation.

Comments On The September 29, 2014 Fsb Consultative Document, ‘Cross-Border Recognition Of Resolution Action’, Steven L. Schwarcz, Mark Jewett, Bruce Leonard, Catherine Walsh, David Kempthorne

Faculty Scholarship

This CIGI Paper No. 51 was released on December 3, 2014 by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) as a response to the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) Consultative Document, “Cross-Border Recognition of Resolution Action.” Principally authored by CIGI Senior Fellow Steven L. Schwarcz (who works with the think tank’s International Law Research Program), the Paper comments on the policy measures proposed by the FSB, an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system, to address the cross-border legal uncertainties of troubled systemically important financial firms. In that context, the Paper explains why a statutory approach …

Saving Originalism’S Soul, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Can The Law Meet The Demands Made On It?, George C. Christie

Faculty Scholarship

This is my contribution to a festscrift in honor of Professor Don Wallace on his retirement from the Georgetown University School of Law. My essay points out the problems and dangers of the increasing delegation to international and domestic courts, in broad and vague value-laden language, the responsibility of making basic moral and policy decisions for society. It saddles courts with a task that they are not particularly suited to perform and it is certainly not the way a democratic society should function.

Ending The Sweetheart Deal Between Big-Time College Sports And The Tax System, Richard L. Schmalbeck

Faculty Scholarship

This paper was prepared for the annual conference of the National Center for Philanthropy and Law, held at the NYU Law School, held October 24-25, 2013. The overall topic was “Tax Issues Affecting Colleges and Universities,” and I was asked to address specifically those issues relating to athletics. This paper considers two specific issues that have in common only that they involve college sports, and are plagued by egregiously bad, (in this case, egregiously generous), tax treatment: the failure of the IRS to regard any part of the revenue from college sports as unrelated business income, and the choice by …

After Recess: Historical Practice, Textual Ambiguity, And Constitutional Adverse Possession, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Recess Appointments Clause in NLRB v. Noel Canning stands as one of the Supreme Court’s most significant endorsements of the relevance of “historical gloss” to the interpretation of the separation of powers. This Article uses the decision as a vehicle for examining the relationship between interpretive methodology and historical practice, and between historical practice and textual ambiguity. As the Article explains, Noel Canning exemplifies how the constitutional text, perceptions about clarity or ambiguity, and “extra-textual” considerations such as historical practice operate interactively rather than as separate elements of interpretation. The decision also provides a …