Digital Commons Network^™

Debt, Accelerated Depreciation, And The Tale Of A Teakettle: Tax Shelter Abuse Reconsidered, Theodore S. Sims

Faculty Scholarship

For more than thirty years a consuming preoccupation of the income tax has been the control of "tax sheltered" investments. Of most widespread concern have been acquisitions, financed by debt, of assets that enjoy some sort of "tax-preferred" treatment, most commonly some advantageous form of depreciation. Tax-favored treatment has been conferred on many productive assets through deliberate congressional action. Nevertheless, debt-financed acquisitions of those very same assets have been regarded as exploiting the available tax benefits in ways that seemed "abusive" and have widely been regarded as "bad." This perplexing, fundamentally self-contradictory state of affairs has levied constant demands on …

The Rise And Rise Of The Administrative State, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The post-New Deal administrative state is unconstitutional, and its validation by the legal system amounts to nothing less than a bloodless constitutional revolution. The original New Dealers were aware, at least to some degree, that their vision of the national government's proper role and structure could not be squared with the written Constitution: The Administrative Process, James Landis's classic exposition of the New Deal model of administration, fairly drips with contempt for the idea of a limited national government subject to a formal, tripartite separation of powers. Faced with a choice between the administrative state and the Constitution, the architects …

Health Insurance Purchasing Alliances: Monopsony Threat Or Procompetitive Rx For Health Sector Ills?, Frances H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Unnatural Expansion Of Trademark Rights: Is A Federal Dilution Statute Necessary?, Kenneth L. Port

Faculty Scholarship

This article is a systematic review of proposed section 43(c ). Proposed section 43(c ) would create a federal cause of action for trademark dilution and would grossly expand trademark rights. The article reviews both the practical implications and theoretical underpinnings of the dilution concept. Part II describes the basic origins and history of the dilution debate. Part IV(A) presents the practical problems that proposed section 43(c ) raises. Part IV(B) critiques some of the more popular theoretical justifications that are typically used to support granting intellectual property rights and concludes that no satisfactory theoretical justification exists to warrant an …

Law And Language(S): Image, Integration And Innovation, Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

Examining the complex relationship between law and language enhances our understanding of the marginalization and subordination of linguistic Outsiders. This nexus between law and language has many manifestations. In this essay I discuss the biases about language that constrain traditional legal discourse while I explore strategies for its reframing by using the languages of Outsiders. Succinctly stated, this essay posits that traditional language norms create images or maintain stereotypes that stultify public discourse as well as impose cultural integration and linguistic assimilation with destructive consequences. The essay proposes that linguistic norms in law schools can be refashioned through pedagogical innovations …

Flooding The Courtrooms: Law And Water In The Far West By M. Catherine Miller., G. Emlen Hall

Faculty Scholarship

Flooding the Courtrooms: Law and Water in the Far West. By M. Catherine Miller. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. 255 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00.)

The American Constitutional Tradition Revisited: Preliminary Observations On State Constitution-Making In The Nineteenth Century West, Christian G. Fritz

Faculty Scholarship

The debates of nine western constitutional conventions between 1849 and 1889 provide considerable evidence that the focus on the Federal constitution as the exemplar of American constitutionalism and constitution-making is misplaced. These conventions took place in seven states: California (1849 and 1878), Oregon (1857), Nevada (1864), South Dakota (1885 and 1889), Wyoming (1889), Idaho (1889), and North Dakota (1889). The debates of those conventions offer insight into how and why state constitutions became much longer than the Federal constitution, the perceived benefits of recurring constitutional revision, and Americans creativity in constitutional borrowing in the formation of state constitutions. The growing …

Making A Wrong Thing Right: Ending The "Spread" Of Reclamation Project Water, Reed D. Benson, Kimberley J. Priestley

Faculty Scholarship

In the Pacific Northwest, especially east of the Cascade Range, water is a limited and precious resource. Diversions of water for out-of-stream uses regularly dry up certain reaches of many rivers and streams. Such diversions provide water for municipalities, industrial users, and farmers who irrigate millions of acres in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Diversions also harm fish and wildlife (including threatened and endangered salmon stocks), impair recreational uses of affected waterways, and degrade water quality.

Living With U.S. Regulations: Complying With The Rules And Avoiding Litigation, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

The Unsecured Creditor's Bargain: A Reply, Susan Block-Lieb

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Purposeful Approach To Products Liability Warnings And Non-English-Speaking Consumers Notes, Thomas H. Lee

Faculty Scholarship

This Note examines the problems associated with the duty-towarn doctrine and the non-English-speaking consumer or product user. Part II explains the current duty-to-warn doctrine, emphasizing when a warning is required, to whom the warning must be directed, and how the warning must be given. Next, Part III examines state and federal language-specific statutes, constitutional provisions, and case holdings, emphasizing the most recent cases addressing product warning requirements for non-English-speaking plaintiffs. Part IV then outlines the risks to both product sellers and consumers of continuing the current haphazard approach and suggests a statutory solution to the doctrinal confusion, drawing from the …

The Pedigrees Of Rights And Powers In Scalia's Cruzan Concurrence, Benjamin C. Zipursky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Character Evidence, James L. Kainen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

A Paradigm For Sexual Harassment: Toward The Optimal Level Of Loss, Marie T. Reilly

Faculty Scholarship

This article proposes a paradigm that draws from the common-law rule of negligence. It defines actionable sexual conduct in the workplace in terms of the cost of precautionary conduct and the increased safety such precaution would have yielded. Like the rule of negligence, the proposed paradigm creates incentives for men and women to take steps to prevent sexual conduct loss to the point at which the cost of an additional increment of precaution is equal to the value of the reduction in risk of loss. This point is the optimal level of precaution. After this point, additional precaution might further …

Must Carry And The Courts: Bleak House, The Sequel, Nick Allard

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments In Refugee Protection, Maryellen Fullerton

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Discovery In The Real World, Minna J. Kotkin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Living With U.S. Regulations: Complying With The Rules And Avoiding Litigation, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Virtual Reality, Appropriation, And Property Rights In Art: A Roundtable Discussion: April 12, 1994, Beryl Jones-Woodin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Sheep In Wolf's Clothing: Territorialism In The Guise Of Interest Analysis In Cooney V. Osgood Machinery, Inc, Aaron Twerski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Cartesian Logic And Frontier Politics: French And American Concepts Of Arbitrability, Thomas E. Carbonneau, Francois Janson

Faculty Scholarship

This comparative essay represents an attempt to introduce a measure of counterpoise in a growing and much-heralded development in the world law of arbitration. Recent decisional law in the United States, France, and other countries have challenged the strategic significance of the concept of arbitrability in the legal regulation of arbitration. The essay seeks, first, to clarify the function of arbitrability in the law of arbitration and, second, to argue against its judicial deconstruction in either the international or domestic context. The key objective of the analysis is to demonstrate the vital role of demarcation that arbitrability plays between state …

A New Journal Of Color In A “Colorblind” World: Race And Community, Jerome Mccristal Culp Jr., Frank Cooper, Lovita Tandy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Epcra's Collision With Federalism, Nicholas J. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Taking The Fifth: Reconsidering The Origins Of The Constitutional Privilege Against Self-Incrimination, Eben Moglen

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this essay is to cast doubt on two basic elements of the received historical wisdom concerning the privilege as it applies to British North America and the early United States. First, early American criminal procedure reflected less tenderness toward the silence of the criminal accused than the received wisdom has claimed. The system could more reasonably be said to have depended on self-incrimination than to have eschewed it, and this dependence increased rather than decreased during the provincial period for reasons intimately connected with the economic and social context of the criminal trial in colonial America.

Second, …

Federalism And Health Care Reform: Is Half A Loaf Really Worse Than None?, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Health care reform dominates the domestic agenda of the Clinton Administration. Policy analysts, media pundits, and ordinary citizens are abuzz with the once-arcane terminology of health reform – "managed competition," "single-payer," "regional alliances," "global budgets" – as they ponder the merits and demerits of the leading reform alternatives. At the center of the public debate are questions concerning the role of government in constraining health care costs, maintaining quality, and widening access. But in our federal system there are two governments that can address most domestic problems – the national government and the states – and, although considerable ink has …

Multinational Corporations, Private Codes, And Technology Transfer For Sustainable Development, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

Sustainable development requires the application of advanced technological expertise in the activities of multinational corporations. Private codes of environmental conduct are proliferating throughout the developed world, ensuring the application of the required technological expertise. However, multinational corporations generally do not follow these voluntary codes in developing nations. Several strategies are available to extend the effective application of private codes in the developing world. Reliance on private codes of environmental conduct enhanced by supportive strategies provides a pragmatic policy option for sustainable development.

On The Moral Irrelevance Of Bodily Movements, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

In the mess of confusions called Anglo-American criminal law, writers commonly refer to the "problem of punishing omissions." There is something untoward, they say, about imposing criminal liability on the bystander who could intervene to save a drowning child and fails to do so. Punishing acts in violation of the law is all right, but there is some special difficulty, never completely understood and clarified, about imposing liability for omissions.

The confusion about omissions has suffered unnecessary compounding by the organization of one of the leading casebooks on criminal law. Apparently not quite sure where to locate their cases on …

On Privilege, Antoinette M. Sedillo Lopez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.