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Articles 1 - 30 of 57
Full-Text Articles in Law
Mining Contracts: How To Read And Understand Them, International Senior Lawyers Project, Openoil, Revenue Watch Institute-Natural Resource Governance Institue, Vale Columbia Center On Sustainable International Investment
Mining Contracts: How To Read And Understand Them, International Senior Lawyers Project, Openoil, Revenue Watch Institute-Natural Resource Governance Institue, Vale Columbia Center On Sustainable International Investment
Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Books
In December 2013, a diverse group of 14 experts from Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Europe worked together for five days to produce a user-friendly guide in English and in French on "Mining Contracts: How to Read and Understand Them," to help policy makers, civil society, citizens, and the media understand the often complex and opaque terms of mining contracts. With increasing calls for contract transparency – and the growing recognition of the importance of the terms of contracts for resource-rich countries – this book explains in layman’s terms the principal features of a contract, compares different approaches …
Contract As Pattern Language, Erik F. Gerding
Contract As Pattern Language, Erik F. Gerding
Erik F. Gerding
Christopher Alexander’s architectural theory of a "pattern language" influenced the development of object-oriented computer programming. This pattern language framework also explains the design of legal contracts. Moreover, the pattern language rubric explains how legal agreements interlock to create complex transactions and how transactions interconnect to create markets. This pattern language framework helps account for evidence, including from the global financial crisis, of failures in modern contract design.
A pattern represents an encapsulated conceptual solution to a recurring design problem. Patterns save architects and designers from having to reinvent the wheel; they can use solutions that evolved over time to address …
Visual Clarity In Contract Drafting, Karin Mika
Visual Clarity In Contract Drafting, Karin Mika
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
No abstract provided.
Forward: Advances In The Behavioral Analysis Of Law: Markets, Institutions, And Contracts, Avishalom Tor
Forward: Advances In The Behavioral Analysis Of Law: Markets, Institutions, And Contracts, Avishalom Tor
Avishalom Tor
No abstract provided.
Are All Contracts Alike?, Margaret F. Brinig
Penalty Defaults In Family Law: The Case Of Child Custody, Margaret F. Brinig
Penalty Defaults In Family Law: The Case Of Child Custody, Margaret F. Brinig
Margaret F Brinig
This paper considers whether an amendment to state divorce laws that strengthens its joint custody preference operates as a traditional default rule, specifying what most divorcing couples would choose or as a penalty default rule the parties will attempt to contract around.
While the Oregon statutes that frame our discussion here, like most state laws, do not state an explicit preference for joint custody, shared custody is certainly encouraged by Section 107.179, which refers cases in which the parties cannot agree on joint custody to mediation and by Section 107.105, which requires the court to consider awarding custody jointly. In …
Unhappy Contracts: The Case Of Divorce Settlements, Margaret F. Brinig
Unhappy Contracts: The Case Of Divorce Settlements, Margaret F. Brinig
Margaret F Brinig
This paper examines a particular type of contracts that is, sadly, increasingly frequent: the agreements produced by divorcing couples. They are unhappy contracts, agreements produced as a necessary part of exit from what is now suboptimal marriage. They are virtually required by many states and are, in theory at least, closely monitored by courts since, when children are involved, they will be incorporated into court orders.What parties to unhappy contracts do is attempt to minimize losses, rather than maximize gain. How are contracts structured that will do this, and how does a difference in the size or power of the …
Flawed Transparency: Shared Data Collection And Disclosure Challenges For Google Glass And Similar Technologies, Jonathan I. Ezor
Flawed Transparency: Shared Data Collection And Disclosure Challenges For Google Glass And Similar Technologies, Jonathan I. Ezor
Jonathan I. Ezor
Current privacy law and best practices assume that the party collecting the data is able to describe and disclose its practices to those from and about whom the data are collected. With emerging technologies such as Google Glass, the information being collected by the wearer may be automatically shared to one or more third parties whose use may be substantially different from that of the wearer. Often, the wearer may not even know what information is being uploaded, and how it may be used. This paper will analyze the current state of U.S. law and compliance regarding personal information collection …
Sovereign Debt And The Three And A Half Minute Transaction: What Sticky Boilerplate Reveals About Contract Law And Practice, Andrea Boyack
Sovereign Debt And The Three And A Half Minute Transaction: What Sticky Boilerplate Reveals About Contract Law And Practice, Andrea Boyack
Faculty Publications
The Three and a Half Minute Transaction: Boilerplate and the Limits of Contractual Design, by Mitu Gulati and Robert E. Scott, is a cautionary tale about modern legal practice where the protagonist is the standard sovereign debt contract. The book discloses an undeniable flaw in sovereign bond boilerplate (the widely used pari passu clause) that, in spite of expensive, sophisticated lawyering, perpetuates a risky disconnect between party intent and contract terms. The fact that boilerplate terms persist even in elite sovereign-lending practices suggests that the problem of over-reliance on standard form language is ubiquitous.When contract terms diverge from client risk …
When Is Minority Not Minority: Ncaa Ignores Two Centuries Of Anglo-American Contract Law Respecting Legal Status, Matthew M. Heekin, Bruce W. Burton
When Is Minority Not Minority: Ncaa Ignores Two Centuries Of Anglo-American Contract Law Respecting Legal Status, Matthew M. Heekin, Bruce W. Burton
Matthew M. Heekin
No abstract provided.
Anti-Social Contracts: The Contractual Governance Of Virtual Worlds, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Anti-Social Contracts: The Contractual Governance Of Virtual Worlds, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Virtual worlds have seized the imaginations of millions of people who now live, work, and play together in these new environments. But all is not well. These online communities are ruled nearly exclusively by contract law, through end-user licence agreements, terms of service, and codes of conduct. Contracts are a critical means of helping two (or a few) people negotiate their preferences. But online communities are made up of enormous and shifting populations that have no time or ability to negotiate agreements with every other community member. Relying on contracts alone thus threatens the investments and creativity that go into …
Navigating Through The Fog Of Cloud Computing Contracts, T. Noble Foster
Navigating Through The Fog Of Cloud Computing Contracts, T. Noble Foster
T. Noble Foster
This paper explores legal issues associated with cloud computing, provides analysis and commentary on typical clauses found in contracts offered by well-known cloud service providers, and identifies strategies to mitigate the risk of exposure to cloud-based legal claims in the critical areas of data security, privacy, and confidentiality. While current research offers numerous case studies, viewpoints, and technical descriptions of cloud processes, our research provides a close examination of the language used in cloud contract terms. Analysis of these contract terms supports the finding that most standard cloud computing contracts are unevenly balanced in favor of the cloud service provider. …
The Cost Of Consent: Optimal Standardization In The Law Of Contract, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
The Cost Of Consent: Optimal Standardization In The Law Of Contract, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Joshua A.T. Fairfield
This article argues that informed consent to contract terms is not a good to be maximized, but is rather an information cost that courts should minimize. The goal of mass-market contract law ought to be to keep costs low by encouraging contract standardization. The article applies information cost theory to show that information-forcing rules are often inefficient at both the micro- and macroeconomic levels. Such rules also impose greater costs on third parties than the benefits they create for the contracting parties. When one consumer creates an idiosyncratic deal, the information-savings benefits of standardization are reduced for all other potential …
The Search Interest In Contract, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
The Search Interest In Contract, Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Joshua A.T. Fairfield
Parties often do not negotiate for contract terms. Instead, parties search for the products, terms, and contractual counterparties they desire. The traditional negotiation centered view of contract continues to lead courts to try to construe the meaning of the parties where no meaning was negotiated, and to waste time determining the benefits of bargains that were never struck. Further, while courts have ample tools to validate specifically negotiated contract terms, courts lack the tools to respond to searched-for terms. Although the law and literature have long recognized that there is a disconnect between the legal fictions of negotiation and the …
Contract Law And Modern Economic Theory, Daniel A. Farber
Contract Law And Modern Economic Theory, Daniel A. Farber
Daniel A Farber
No abstract provided.
Another View Of The Quagmire: Unconstitutional Conditions And Contract Theory, Daniel A. Farber
Another View Of The Quagmire: Unconstitutional Conditions And Contract Theory, Daniel A. Farber
Daniel A Farber
No abstract provided.
Hypothetical Efficiency Is Not Grounds For Breach, Daniel M. Isaacs
Hypothetical Efficiency Is Not Grounds For Breach, Daniel M. Isaacs
West Virginia Law Review
The law does not approve of the efficient breach of contract; it merely provides or fails to provide remedies. Although there are situations where the law implies contract terms, there is no basis for an implied covenant of efficiency. Hypothetical contracts, purporting to incorporate a release where the cost of performance to the promisor exceeds its value to the promisee, cannot be used to bind people to results, even efficient ones, to which they did not agree. Where it is inefficient to demand performance, flexibility should come from the promisee who, having received in trust the power to limit the …
Too Complex To Perceive?: Drafting Cash Distribution Waterfalls Directly As Code To Reduce Complexity And Legal Risk In Structured Finance, Master Limited Partnership, And Private Equity Transactions, Ralph Carter Mayrell
Ralph Carter Mayrell
The intricate procedural and data-driven decision trees that play a critical role in complex financial contracts like cash distribution waterfalls in structured finance agreement indentures (e.g., collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)), master limited partnership agreements, and private equity fund agreements are inefficiently depicted as written contracts. As Professor Henry Hu explains in Too Complex to Depict?, the difficulty of translation—or depiction—between original mathematical models, plain English prospectuses, legal contracts, and programmed execution means that often the written depictions that form the basis of disclosures do not accurately define the act of execution. To overcome this, the SEC proposed an amendment to …
Qu'ils Mangent Des Contrats: Rethinking Justice In Eu Contract Law, Daniela Caruso
Qu'ils Mangent Des Contrats: Rethinking Justice In Eu Contract Law, Daniela Caruso
Faculty Scholarship
The concern for justice in the context of EU contract law was central to a scholarly initiative that led, in 2004, to the publication of a Social Justice Manifesto. The Manifesto had the explicit goal of steering the Commission’s harmonization agenda away from purely neoliberal goals and towards a socially conscious law of private exchange. Contract law would be designed at the EU level so as to become (or remain, depending on the baseline of each member state) palatable to weaker parties. Today, in the many parts of Europe devastated by rising poverty, dire unemployment rates, and collapsing social safety …
Book Review: Legal Tenderness, Martha M. Ertman
Book Review: Legal Tenderness, Martha M. Ertman
Martha M. Ertman
No abstract provided.
An All Of The Above Theory Of Legal Development, Larry A. Dimatteo
An All Of The Above Theory Of Legal Development, Larry A. Dimatteo
Larry A DiMatteo
This paper reviews different theories of legal development in order to highlight their similarities and differences. In the end, as in contract theories, no monist view of legal development possesses the explanatory power needed to understand how law has come to be and where it may take us in the future. What we do have is a foundation built on at least two millennia of legal history. The intellectual starting point for this project is Nathan Isaacs’ unfinished work on a cycle theory of legal development. His view of legal development takes issue with Henry Sumner Maine’s thesis that development …
Putting The Cisg Where It Belongs: In The Uniform Commercial Code, Kina Grbic
Putting The Cisg Where It Belongs: In The Uniform Commercial Code, Kina Grbic
Touro Law Review
No abstract provided.
Vertical Boilerplate, James Gibson
Vertical Boilerplate, James Gibson
Law Faculty Publications
Despite what we learn in law school about the “meeting of the minds,” most contracts are merely boilerplate—take-it-or-leave-it propositions. Negotiation is nonexistent; we rely on our collective market power as consumers to regulate contracts’ content. But boilerplate imposes certain information costs because it often arrives late in the transaction and is hard to understand. If those costs get too high, then the market mechanism fails. So how high are boilerplate’s information costs? A few studies have attempted to measure them, but they all use a “horizontal” approach—i.e., they sample a single stratum of boilerplate and assume that it represents the …
Beaten To "Submissions": Talent Agents Score A Victory Over Managers On Submissions Of Motion Picture Screenplays, Matthew H. Schwartz
Beaten To "Submissions": Talent Agents Score A Victory Over Managers On Submissions Of Motion Picture Screenplays, Matthew H. Schwartz
Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary
No abstract provided.
Viability Of Arbitration Clauses In West Virginia Oil And Gas Leases: It Is All About The Lease!!!, Phillip T. Glyptis
Viability Of Arbitration Clauses In West Virginia Oil And Gas Leases: It Is All About The Lease!!!, Phillip T. Glyptis
West Virginia Law Review
No abstract provided.
Sex Matters: Considering Gender In Consumer Contracts, Amy J. Schmitz
Sex Matters: Considering Gender In Consumer Contracts, Amy J. Schmitz
Faculty Publications
We hear about the so-called “War on Women” and persisting salary gaps between men and women in the popular media, but contracts scholars and policymakers rarely discuss gender. Instead, dominant voices in the contracts field often reflect classical and economics-driven theories built on assumptions of gender neutral and economically rational actors. Furthermore, many mistakenly assume that market competition and antidiscrimination legislation address any improper biases in contracting. This Article therefore aims to shed light on gender’s importance by distilling data from my own e-survey of Colorado consumers along with others’ research regarding gender differences in contract outcomes, interests and behaviors. …
Remedies: A Guide For The Perplexed, Doug Rendleman
Remedies: A Guide For The Perplexed, Doug Rendleman
Scholarly Articles
Remedies is one of a law student’s most practical courses. Remedies students and their professors learn to work with their eyes on the question at the end of litigation: what can the court do for the successful plaintiff? Remedies develops students’ professional identities and broadens their professional horizons by reorganizing their analysis of procedure, torts, contracts, and property around choosing and measuring relief - compensatory damages, punitive damages, an injunction, specific performance, disgorgement, and restitution. This article discusses the law-school course in Remedies - the content of the Remedies course, the Remedies classroom experience, and Remedies outside the classroom through …
Much Ado About Nothing?: What The Numbers Tell Us About How State Courts Apply The Unconscionability Doctrine, Susan D. Landrum
Much Ado About Nothing?: What The Numbers Tell Us About How State Courts Apply The Unconscionability Doctrine, Susan D. Landrum
Susan Landrum
No abstract provided.
Nonmarket Values In Family Businesses, Benjamin Means
Nonmarket Values In Family Businesses, Benjamin Means
William & Mary Law Review
Despite the economic importance of family businesses, legal scholarship has often overlooked their distinctive character. Instead, scholars focus on the chosen form of business organization— partnership, corporation, LLC—and assume that the participants are economically rational actors who seek to maximize their individual preferences. This Article contends that family businesses are extensions of family relationships and that nonmarket values affect their goals and governance choices.
Just as family law scholars have shown that contract principles can be applied to regulate intimate relationships, corporate law scholars should recognize that the intimacy of family life often substitutes for arm’s length bargaining in family …
The Arbitration Clause As Super Contract, Richard Frankel
The Arbitration Clause As Super Contract, Richard Frankel
Richard Frankel
It is widely acknowledged that the purpose of the Federal Arbitration Act was to place arbitration clauses on equal footing with other contracts. Nonetheless, federal and state courts have turned arbitration clauses into “super contracts” by creating special interpretive rules for arbitration clauses that do not apply to other contracts. In doing so, they have relied extensively, and incorrectly, on the Supreme Court’s determination that the FAA embodies a federal policy favoring arbitration.
While many scholars have focused attention on the public policy rationales for and against arbitration, few have explored how arbitration clauses should be interpreted. This article fills …