Law Commons^™

Floating Liens Over Crypto-In-Commerce, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato

Indiana Law Journal

Commercial law and crypto are colliding. Against the backdrop of explosive growth (and discord) in the digital asset market, there has been a series of recent revisions to American commercial law aimed at addressing new and emerging technologies. These changes to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) are designed to facilitate the buying and selling of digital assets as well as their use as collateral. However, to date, the literature exploring these changes has mainly focused on understanding the basics of the new regime. This Essay moves beyond that baseline by showing how the UCC amendments can be used to structure …

Ethnically Segmented Markets: Korean-Owned Black Hair Stores, Felix B. Chang

Indiana Law Journal

Races often collide in segmented markets where buyers belong to one ethnic group while sellers belong to another. This Article examines one such market: the retail of wigs and hair extensions for African Americans, a multi-billion-dollar market controlled by Korean Americans. Although prior scholarship attributed the success of Korean American ventures to rotating communal credit, this Article argues that their dominance in ethnic beauty supplies stems from collusion and exclusion.

This Article is the first to synthesize the disparate treatment of ethnically segmented markets in law, sociology, and economics into a comprehensive framework. Its primary contribution is to forge the …

Administrative Investigations, Aram A. Gavoor, Steven A. Platt

Indiana Law Journal

This Article establishes the subject of federal administrative investigations as a new area of study in administrative law. While the literature has addressed investigations by specific agencies and congressional investigations, there is no general account for the trans-substantive constitutional value of administrative investigations. This Article provides such an account by exploring the positive law, agency behaviors, and constraints pertaining to this unresearched field. It concludes with some urgency that the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946—the statute that stands as a bill of rights for the Administrative State—does not serve to regulate administrative investigations and that Article III courts have held …

Mandating Board Diversity, Sung Eun (Summer) Kim

Indiana Law Journal

California’s Assembly Bill 979 (AB-979) requires companies that are based in California to have a specified minimum number of directors from underrepresented communities. A “director from an underrepresented community” is defined as an individual who self-identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who selfidentifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. AB-979 received much attention for being the first law to mandate greater diversity on corporate boards in terms of race and sexual orientation. Senate Bill 826 (SB-826), which was introduced two years prior, was the first U.S. legislative effort …

Bitcoin: Order Without Law In The Digital Age, John O. Mcginnis, Kyle Roche

Indiana Law Journal

Modern law makes currency a creature of the state and ultimately the value of its currency depends on the public’s trust in that state. While some nations are more capable than others at instilling public trust in the stability of their monetary institutions, it is nonetheless impossible for any legal system to make the pre-commitments necessary to completely isolate the governance of its money supply from political pressure. This proposition is true not only today, where nearly all government institutions manage their money supply in the form of central banking, but also true of past private banking regimes circulating their …

Taming Sherman's Wilderness, Derrian Smith

Indiana Law Journal

This Note proceeds in four Parts. Part I outlines the interpretive difficulties spawned by the vagueness of the Sherman Act—particularly, the judiciary’s necessary but undeniable departures from the text of the statute and the resulting doctrinal confusion. Part II considers ways in which the judiciary’s decision-making in Sherman Act cases approximates agency rulemaking and whether it makes sense to delegate interpretive authority to an antitrust agency. Yet, while the agency solution has upside, it would not easily escape criticisms that the Act does not provide sufficient notice of the conduct it proscribes and that the Act is an impermissible delegation …

Anticompetitive Mergers In Labor Markets, Ioana Marinescu, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

Indiana Law Journal

Mergers of competitors are conventionally challenged under the federal antitrust laws when they threaten to lessen competition in some product or service market in which the merging firms sell. In many of these cases the threat is that in concentrated markets—those with only a few sellers—the merger increases the likelihood of collusion or collusion-like behavior. The result will be that the post-merger firm will reduce the volume of sales in the affected market and prices will rise.

Mergers can also injure competition in markets in which the firms purchase, however. Although that principle is widely recognized, very few litigated cases …

Immigration As Commerce: A New Look At The Federal Immigration Power And The Constitution, Jennifer Gordon

Indiana Law Journal

When the United States government sets immigration law and policy, how much attention must it pay to constitutional rights? This question has been much debated since President Donald Trump issued a series of immigration-related executive orders in his first week in office, including a bar on entry by citizens of a set of majority-Muslim countries, but it was controversial long before then. In important part, the answer depends on what the Constitution says about the scope and limits of the power of the federal government over immigration. Therein lies the tale. On this subject, the country’s founding documents say very …

Too-Big-To-Fail 2.0? Digital Service Providers, Nizan Geslevich Packin

Indiana Law Journal

The Article explains why addressing Too-Big-To-Fail 2.0 has not yet become a political and societal priority. First, digital service providers are technology companies, which, many believe, are shaped by market forces such that they fail and succeed in equal measure without producing negative ripple effects on the economy or society. Second, technology giants are not as carefully regulated as banks becauseunlike banks, they do not take insured deposits backed by the government. Third, even heavily regulated financial institutions have not been required until recently to focus on cybersecurity. Finally, some believe that there is no point in worrying about Too-Big-To-Fail …

Verizon’S “Certification Process” And Why The Fcc Needs To Take A Stand, P. J. Gretter

Indiana Law Journal

This Note will give an in-depth review of the legality and policy implications of Verizon’s lengthy certification process. Part I will give a short background of the time leading up to Verizon’s purchase of the C-Block. It will then review the actual rules of the agreement between Verizon and the FCC at the time of the purchase, as well as the pertinent history following the purchase. Part II will analyze whether Verizon’s lengthy certification process violates the C-Block rules or the general spirit of Verizon’s agreement to abide by the rules. Part III will then argue that, even if Verizon’s …

A Call For Truth In The Fashion Pages: What Global Trend In Advertising Regulation Means For U.S. Beauty And Fashion Advertisers, Ashley O'Neil

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The advertising industry serves an important purpose in our society by acting as the main source of information for consumers about products. Global advertisement spending reaches into the hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Because advertising plays such a large role in the economy, regulators across the globe have increasingly sought to promote truth in advertising. As a result, advertising regulation has exploded in the recent decades. Recently, the beauty and fashion industries have come under fire from advertising regulatory bodies, most notably in Europe, for misleading and offensive advertising practices. Regulators and interest groups are concerned by the unrealistic …

Mothering For Money: Regulating Commercial Intimacy, Surrogacy, Adoption,, Pamela Laufer-Ukeles

Indiana Law Journal

Roundtable on Regulating Assisted Reproductive Technology 2012

New Thinking On Commercial Surrogacy, Richard F. Storrow

Indiana Law Journal

Roundtable on Regulating Assisted Reproductive Technology 2012

Shareholder Voting As Veto, Michael S. Kang

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Expansion Of Trademark Rights In Europe, Irina Pak

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

The Granting Clause And Intellectual Property Rights Management In Open-Source Software Licensing, Vikrant N. Vasudeva

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Not (Necessarily) Narrower: Rethinking The Relative Scope Of Copyright Protection For Designs, Sarah Burstein

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Why Copyright Falls Behind The Requirement For Protecting Graphic User Interfaces: Case Studies On Limitations Of Copyright Protection For Guis In China, Ling Jin, Yihong Ying

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

“Advancing With The Times: Industrial Design Protection In The Era Of Virtual Migration”, Horacio E. Gutiérrez

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Selectica Resets The Trigger On The Poison Pill: Where Should The Delaware Courts Go Next?, Paul H. Edelman, Randall S. Thomas

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Forward Contracts - Prohibitions On Risk And Speculation Under Islamic Law, Nicholas C. Dau-Schmidt

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Forward contracts allow buyers and sellers of goods to reduce risk by contracting for sale at a predetermined price and quantity prior to the actual exchange of goods and payment. While forward contracts are extensively used in the Western world without restriction, those who adhere to Islamic law are often constrained by principles intended to reduce risk, gambling, and usury. These principles can prove overly restrictive; however, Islamic law restrictions also illuminate the problems associated with the overly permissive Western system in which speculators contract in a manner tantamount to gambling-a problem associated with the recent financial crisis. This Note …

Enforcing Integrity, Katrice B. Copeland

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Irony Of At&T V. Concepcion, Colin P. Marks

Indiana Law Journal

This Essay explores the possible dual readings of Concepcion in light of the FAA and its interpretation, including Supreme Court precedents. This Essay concludes that though there is support for interpreting the Concepcion decision narrowly, it is more likely that a broader interpretation was intended, but the metes and bounds of this opinion have yet to be explored. Nonetheless, under this broad interpretation, the effect on consumers will be to discourage individuals from seeking redress for their claims. Indeed, the decision may actually encourage businesses to breach contractual obligations with impunity when the individual sums owed are too small to …

Private Actors And Public Governance Beyond The State: The Multinational Corporation, The Financial Stability Board, And The Global Governance Order, Larry Cata Backer

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Transnational corporations are at the center of extraordinary and complex governance systems that are developing outside the state and international public organizations and beyond the conventionally legitimating framework of the forms of domestic or international hard law. Though these systems are sometimes recognized as autonomous and authoritative among its members, they are neither isolated from each other nor from the states with which they come into contact. Together these systems may begin to suggest a new template for networked governance beyond the state, but one in which public and private actors are integrated stakeholders. This provides the source of the …

The Changing Face Of Transnational Business Governance: Private Corporate Law Liability And Accountability Of Transnational Groups In A Post-Financial Crisis World, Peter Muchlinski

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article seeks to critically assess the recently dominant financialized model of corporate law and governance and its contribution to the creation of the "asocial corporation" geared only to the enhancement of shareholder value. This article places corporate law in a wider context of national and international legal developments that, together, create a framework for the financialization of transnational corporate activity. This article shows that a new approach to transnational corporate governance is emerging from a number of sources. These predate the crisis but have been given impetus by it. In particular, three important phenomena are examined: the rise of …

Success, Dominance, And Interoperability, Alan Devlin, Michael Jacobs, Bruno Peixoto

Indiana Law Journal

In September 2007, the European Court of First Instance (CFI) ruled that Microsoft violated the European Union's competition law by failing to provide certain of its rivals with proprietary computer protocols that would have enabled them to make their products fully "interoperable" with Microsoft's dominant operating system. In the process, the court suggested that an owner of certain kinds of dominant intellectual property is obliged to share its property with rivals to the extent necessary to allow those rivals to compete "viably" with the dominant firm. Thus, in theory, should protocol sharing fail to achieve the requisite degree of "viability, …

The First Amendment And Commercial Speech, C. Edwin Baker

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: An Ocean Apart? Freedom of Expression in Europe and the United States. This Article was originally written in French and delivered as a conference paper at a symposium held by the Center for American Law of the University of Paris II (Panthèon-Assas) on January 18-19, 2008.

International Commerce And Undocumented Workers: Using Trade To Secure Labor Rights, Laura Jakubowski

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article explores the rights of illegal immigrants and undocumented workers throughout the world. International treaties have attempted to deal with the rights of undocumented workers, but few countries have been willing to sign on to the treaties. This article argues that undocumented workers should have more expansive rights, and that international trade agreements and institutions should be used where human rights and domestic solutions have failed to guarantee the rights of the most vulnerable workers.

Delaware Strikes Back: Newcastle Partners And The Fight For State Corporate Autonomy, Michael W. Ott

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Let History Be Our Guide: Using Historical Analogies To Analyze State Response To A Post-Granholm Era, Matthew B. Mills

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.