Digital Commons Network^™

Should We Rush To Reform The Criminal Jury?: Consider Conviction Rate Data, Neil Vidmar, Sara Sun Beale, Mary R. Rose, Laura F. Donnelly

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Constitutional Law Scholarship Of Thomas Mcintyre Cooley, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Equal Treatment For Shareholders: An Essay, James D. Cox

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Cooperation Among Judges In Mass Tort Litigation, Francis Mcgovern

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Formalism And Functionalism In Federalism Analysis, Erwin Chemerinsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reviving Jacob And Youngs, Inc. V. Kent: Material Breach Doctrine Reconsidered, Amy B. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

Determining whether a material breach has occurred under current law involves a weighing of several factors, a determination that often seems either completely without logic or precision, or self-evident and conclusory. Thus, parties are left not knowing what to do and what risks they may be assuming. The problem with the current application of material breach doctrine is in large part a result of an absence of focus. The courts apply the test without articulating any foundation or context on which it is based. The law in this area could be much improved if courts would return to Judge Cardozo's …

Reading Holmes Through The Lens Of Schauer: The Abrams Dissent, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

Even the best scholars rarely persuade. Mostly, they illuminate. They make us more discerning readers and interlocutors.

Here I want to illustrate how Frederick Schauer's work on the law of free speech can help us to read what may be the single most influential judicial opinion ever written on that subject, Justice Holmes's famous dissent in Abrams v. United States. So far as I am aware, Schauer has not produced anything like a line-by-line parsing of the Holmes opinion. I claim nevertheless that a reader familiar with Schauer's ideas is far better prepared on that account to understand what Holmes …

In Honor Of Stefan A. Riesenfeld, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

In this issue dedicated to Professor Riesenfeld, his achievements as a scholar and teacher will appropriately receive central attention. As a contributor who also worked with him in his Washington days, I would like first to recall a few anecdotes from that time (which I hope he remembers as fondly as I do) and then turn to an assessment of his contributions to the literature on the interface between the constitutional and international law of treaties.

Rethinking Disclosure Liability In The Modern Era, Merritt B. Fox

Faculty Scholarship

The state of issuer disclosure in 1997 is like the proverbial half-filled glass. On one hand, as Dean Seligman has amply demonstrated in his contribution to this symposium, the glass is half empty in the sense that the legal incentives for established issuers to engage in high quality disclosure at the time that they sell new securities have decreased in recent decades. Due to the more liberal exemptions available under Regulation S, Rule 144A, Regulation D and Regulation A, a much smaller portion of such sales is even subject to the formal disclosure oriented registration process under Section 5 of …

The Future Of Corporate Governance In The United States, Ronald J. Gilson

Faculty Scholarship

This article is an interview of Professor Ronald J. Gilson, Charles J. Meyers Professor of Law and Business, Columbia University Law School. The interviewer is Cheryl L. Conner, a third year law student at the University of Richmond School of Law and the Managing Editor of the Richmond Journal of Law and Technology.

Controlling Strategic Voting: Property Rule Or Liability Rule, Zohar Goshen

Faculty Scholarship

Strategic voting – situations where voters place their votes according to their assessment of how other voters will behave rather than according to their actual preference – results in distorted decisionmaking. Strategic voting can cause the company to lose desired transactions and can also be used to coerce voters into accepting alternatives they would have otherwise rejected. An analysis of the various types of strategic voting situations which arise in corporate law demonstrates the author's argument that strategic voting is inherent in the voting mechanism, regardless of the type of group involved or of the decision being made. Maintaining a …

From The Bottom Up, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is about carrying out informal instructions given by people in authority. Although many scholars have written about how legal interpretation resembles interpretation in fields such as literature and religion, few have compared informal instructions and legal rules. My most basic assumption in this Article is that focus on informal situations can illumine the standards people use in performing instructions and the kinds of meaning they attribute to instructions. As my title implies, if we reflect on what amounts to faithful or desirable performance of informal directives and the more conceptual question of what these prescriptive standards "mean," we …

Nature Of Rules And The Meaning Of Meaning, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

This essay addresses two problems in legal theory. What is the nature of rules, especially legal rules? What is the meaning of a legal rule?

My main concern is the relation between these two questions. I inquire whether a sensible view of how rules work commits one to any particular approach to meaning. For this inquiry, I focus on Frederick Schauer's illuminating treatment of rules in Playing by the Rules, which he says is linked to a particular view of meaning. I assert that the linkage is much less tight than he supposes, and that competing theories about meaning are …

Introduction, Susan P. Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

The theme of the first Symposium issue, Rethinking Law in the Twenty-First Century Workplace, addresses a fundamental challenge facing the field of labor and employment law. Existing regulatory regimes in this area are ill-equipped to address the demands of the increasingly dynamic, unstable, and technologically-driven workplace. This Symposium brought together a diverse and creative group of scholars, public policy thinkers, and activists to discuss new frameworks for participation, inclusion, evaluation, and legal regulation in the workplace. These participants represented a variety of disciplines, including law, psychology, organizational theory, sociology, and public policy. Each of the participants brought to the table …

What Law Is Like, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

It is not easy to do philosophy in the tradition of Wittgenstein and Malcolm. The human mind gravitates toward authority – the Bible, great teachers, poets, gurus, even judges. Lawyers, in particular, are captives of authoritive constitutions, statutes, cases, and ruling doctrines. We cannot make a move without citing a source as a backup.

Perhaps this is the way it should be, for as lawyers or legal theorists, we speak in a particular legal culture and tradition. We cultivate that tradition, even as we dissent and subject it to criticism. The tradition is defined by the authorities that have shaped …

Copyright, Common Law, And Sui Generis Protection Of Databases In The United States And Abroad, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

What protection remains for compilations of information, particularly digital databases, since the United States Supreme Court swept away "sweat copyright" in its 1991 Feist decision? "Thin" copyright protection is still available, but it covers only the original contributions (if any) that the compiler brings to the public domain information. Moreover, Feist makes clear that padding the compilation with original added value will not flesh out the skeletal figure beneath: the information, stripped of selection, arrangement, or other copyrightable frills, remains free for the taking.

If copyright is unavailing, contract is appearing more promising, as mass-market, "shrinkwrap" and "click-on" licenses gain …

Copyright Without Borders? Choice Of Forum And Choice Of Law For Copyright Infringement In Cyberspace, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The disjunction between territorial treatment of copyright claims and the ubiquity of cyberspace has led some commentators to urge abandonment of landlocked notions of judicial and legislative competence. Since digital communications resist grounding in particular fora, or governance by individual national laws, these writers contend it would be best to devise a cyberian legal system that would supply cyber-specific substantive copyright law, and/ or virtual dispute settlers whose competence – and whose determinations – would transcend national borders.

My analysis will be more earthbound. This is not to belittle the important ongoing efforts to achieve international harmony of substantive copyright …

The Fine Art Of Judging: William T. Allen, Ronald J. Gilson

Faculty Scholarship

I feel more than a little conflicted about writing to commemorate Bill Allen's completion of his term as Chancellor of Delaware. Economists understand the inefficiencies that result when private and public benefits diverge: people seek their advantage even though the public bears more than offsetting costs. That pretty well describes the dissonance I'm experiencing about this event. The benefit to me of gaining a good friend as a neighbor, and to the NYU Law School community from the addition of this remarkable man as a colleague and teacher, are dwarfed by the cost to the entire corporate law community from …

Municipal Powers Under Seqra, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) confers considerable powers on New York State municipalities. In fact, most municipalities are probably unaware of the full scope of authority they are given by this statute.

"Just Say Never?" Poison Pills, Deadhand Pills, And Shareholder-Adopted Bylaws: An Essay For Warren Buffett, Jeffrey N. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

My topic is Buffett on mergers and acquisitions and how his sage advice on the importance of shareholder choice should be taken to heart by the Delaware Supreme Court, which will soon face far-reaching questions on the distribution of power between shareholders and the board of directors. Recent judicial decisions in other jurisdictions: (i) have declared that a board can maintain a poison pill in the face of a premium hostile bid, the power to "just say no;" (ii) have validated the board's adoption of a so-called "deadhand pill," a poison pill that can be redeemed only by continuing directors; …

Presidential Rulemaking, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

One of the prominent issues during the 1992 presidential campaign was abortion, in particular the federal government's role in financing counseling activities that might promote it. In the Bush Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services had adopted a controversial regulation to withhold federal funds from any family planning or other medical service that included counseling about abortion in its activities; the Clinton campaign promised to rescind that regulation if Clinton were elected President. Shortly after his election, in a prominent White House ceremony, President Clinton announced that he had directed the rescission of the prior rule and the …

The Managed Care Dilemma: Can Theories Of Tort Liability Adapt To The Realities Of Cost Containment?, Barbara A. Noah

Faculty Scholarship

Over the years, the United States health care system has undergone a transformation from a market comprised mainly of self employed physicians· in solo or small group practices to one in which far fewer physicians engage in this type of independent practice. More than three quarters of the physicians in this country now practice medicine within some form of managed care organization ("MCO") or see some managed care patients. The public increasingly perceives the care provided through MCOs as inferior to traditional feefor-service care. Responding to constituent pressures, legislatures in more than twenty states recently have considered bills regulating managed …

"Prescriptive Equality": Two Steps Forward, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In this Response to Professor Peters, Professor Greenawalt argues that prescriptive equality does have meaningful normative force. Prescriptive equality plays a reinforcing role when it agrees with nonegalitarian justice and is not incoherent when it pulls against nonegalitarian justice. Specifically, when one individual has been treated better than is required by nonegalitarian justice, a similarly situated and significantly related individual who is aware of that treatment may merit equivalent treatment because of widespread and deep-seated feelings about equality.

Preserving A Place For The Past In Our Future: A Survey Of Historic Preservation In West Virginia, Megan M. Carpenter

Faculty Scholarship

Historic designation is an important step toward protecting a historic district, in part because it allows property owners to obtain tax credits in the rehabilitation of their properties. Not only does it certify the importance of an historic area, but it also creates economic opportunities for property and business owners in that area through both tax credits and tourism opportunities. Because historic designation and the tax credits that go along with it can be lost if more than sixty-five percent of all downtown structures in an historic district lose their historic character, designation depends upon the cooperation of property owners. …

Provisional Relief In Transnational Litigation, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, Professor Bermann identifies and analyzes the principal problems raised by the rapidly growing phenomenon of transnational provisional relief National courts are facing serious challenges in organizing such interventions, but as yet lack a sufficiently comprehensive framework of analysis. The author begins with the clarifying distinction that provisional relief may be transnational either because of its significant effects abroad or because it lends support to protective measures ordered by foreign courts, and draws on the experiences of U.S. and foreign courts in determining the costs of both granting and withholding provisional relief He concludes that, despite the very …

Brave New World?: The Impact(S) Of The Internet On Modern Securities Regulation, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

It is now a trite commonplace that the advent of the Internet will in time revolutionize securities regulation. Merely the facts that the Internet has somewhere between thirty and sixty million users worldwide today (with an estimated ten to thirty million in the United States) and that some 800,000 U.S. investors already have online brokerage accounts establish that there is a potential global market that can be accessed at very low cost. But the magnitude of the market says little about what will be the character and effect of this approaching revolution.

Technological change is not a new phenomenon for …

The Summons Power And The Limits Of Theory: A Reply To Professor Hyman, Leo P. Martinez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Copernican Revolution In Jurisprudence: In Loving Memory Of Rudolf B. Schlesinger, Mentor And Friend, Ugo Mattei

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Common Core Approach To European Private Law, Ugo Mattei

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Three Patterns Of Law: Taxonomy And Change In The World's Legal Systems, Ugo Mattei

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.