Law Commons^™

Sovereign Debt Restructuring And English Governing Law, Steven L. Schwarcz

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The problem of sovereign indebtedness is becoming a worldwide crisis because nations, unlike individuals and corporations, lack access to bankruptcy laws to restructure unsustainable debt. Decades of international efforts to solve this problem through contracting and attempted treaty-making have failed to provide an adequate debt-restructuring framework. A significant amount of outstanding sovereign debt is governed, however, by English law. This Article argues that the U.K. Parliament has the extraordinary power to help solve the problem of unsustainable country debt by changing English law to facilitate fair and consensual debt restructuring. This Article also proposes modifications to English law that Parliament …

United States V. Osage Wind, Llc, Summer Carmack

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Osage Nation, as owner of the beneficial interest in its mineral estate, issues federally-approved leases to persons and entities who wish to conduct mineral development on its lands. After an energy-development company, Osage Wind, leased privately-owned surface lands within Tribal reservation boundaries and began to excavate minerals for purposes of constructing a wind farm, the United States brought suit on the Tribe’s behalf. In the ensuing litigation, the Osage Nation insisted that Osage Wind should have obtained a mineral lease from the Tribe before beginning its work. In its decision, the Tenth Circuit applied one of the Indian law …

Venture Capital Contract Design: An Empirical Analysis Of The Connection Between Bargaining Power And Venture Financing Contract Terms, Spencer Williams

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

This Article presents an empirical analysis of the connection between bargaining power and contract design using an original dataset of over 5,500 equity and debt venture financings from 2004–2015. Using the total supply of venture capital in the U.S. as a measure of relative bargaining power between entrepreneurs and investors, this Article finds that venture capital supply has a statistically significant relationship with price and non-price terms in both equity and debt financings. These results contradict one of three theoretical accounts of bargaining power and support the other two.

Codify This: Exculpatory Contracts In Wisconsin Recreational Businesses, Blake A. Nold

Marquette Law Review

It is common practice for recreational businesses, such as ski resorts or fitness centers, to require their customers to sign a release of liability form. The purpose of this release form is to relieve the business from any potential liability in the event a customer suffers an injury. However, since 1982, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has yet to uphold an exculpatory contract. Rather than attempting to lay out principles and guidelines for how to draft an exculpatory agreement—in hopes that it will be ruled enforceable—this Comment proposes that Wisconsin recreational businesses, like ski resorts or gyms, should not require customers …

Poke Your Nose Into Your Clients' Businesses (If You Want To Understand Their Contracts), James W. Bowers

Maine Law Review

Thirty years ago Grant Gilmore argued that “Contract” was dead. This lecture, delivered as 2004 Godfrey Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Maine School of Law, considers the cause of death. Since the expired doctrines arose in a common law process, the lecture argues their demise resulted from the failings of lawyers, especially lawyers' commitment to wooden, formalist legal methods. I explore some of the reasons why lawyers became committed to these methods, and argue that even were nineteenth-century formalistic practices resurrected, modern lawyers must still be prepared to understand the potential effects business contexts might have in contract disputes and …

Maximizing Ponzi Loss Deductions For Estate And Income Tax Purposes: Are Taxpayers Better Off Dead?, Valrie Chambers, Brian Elzweig

William & Mary Business Law Review

There is a long history of cases interpreting whether a theft loss deduction for securities fraud is allowable for personal income taxes. The cases require that for a theft loss to be actionable as such, it would have to meet the requirements of the common law definition of theft in the U.S. state in which it occurred. This generally requires direct privity between the person claiming the loss and the person who committed the theft. Because most securities transactions are brokered, the direct privity is lost and a theft loss deduction is denied in favor a capital loss. Recently, in …

The Perverse Consequences Of Disclosing Standard Terms, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan

Cornell Law Review

Although assent is the doctrinal and theoretical hallmark of contract, its relevance for form contracts has been drastically undermined by the overwhelming evidence that no one reads standard terms. Until now, most political and academic discussions of this phenomenon have acknowledged the truth of universally unread contracts, but have assumed that even unread terms are at best potentially helpful, and at worst harmless. This Article makes the empirical case that unread terms are not a neutral part of American commerce; instead, the mere fact of fine print inhibits reasonable challenges to unfair deals. The experimental study reported here tests the …

Understanding The Consumer Review Fairness Act Of 2016, Eric Goldman

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Consumer reviews are vitally important to our modern economy. Markets become stronger and more efficient when consumers share their marketplace experiences and guide other consumers toward the best vendors and away from poor ones. Businesses recognize the importance of consumer reviews, and many businesses take numerous steps to manage how consumer reviews affect their public image. Unfortunately, in a misguided effort to control consumer reviews, some businesses have deployed contract provisions that ban or inhibit their consumers from reviewing them. I call those provisions “antireview clauses.”

Anti-review clauses distort the marketplace benefits society gets from consumer reviews by suppressing peer …

Doing Deals With Aristotle—Today, Chapin F. Cimino

Seattle University Law Review

This analysis proceeds in six steps. In Part I, this Article sets the stage by describing the problem: while contracting behavior is increasingly complex, contract law and theory remain stubbornly uni-faceted. That is, while contracting and contractors are ever more modern, contract law and theory are ever more traditional. The greater the divide, the less useful contract theory is to contract law, and the less useful contract law is to contractors. This trend does not bode well for the future of contract law or theory. The question is how much of a crisis contract law will have to endure before …

Uniform Commercial Acts, Samuel Williston

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

The Uniform Commercial Acts, J.P. Mckeehan

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The Commissioners on Uniform State Laws have had twenty- five annual conferences. The principal fruit of their labors is represented by the Negotiable Instruments Act, enacted in forty-seven jurisdictions; the Warehouse Receipts Act, enacted in thirty-one jurisdictions; the Sales Act, enacted in fourteen jurisdictions, the Bills of Lading Act enacted in thirteen jurisdictions, and the Stock Transfer Act, enacted in nine jurisdictions. They have also drafted acts relating to divorce, family desertion, probate of wills, marriage evasion, workmen’s compensation and partnership but these have not yet been enacted in more than a few states. All of the commercial acts are …

Do We Need A Global Commercial Code?, Michael Joachim Bonell

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) first launched the idea of preparing a code of inter- national trade law. In 1970, the Secretariat of UNIDROIT submitted a note to the newly established United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) in justification of such an initiative and indicated some of the salient features of the project. What was proposed was a veritable code in the continental sense. The proposed code included two parts: part one dealing with the law of obligations generally, and part two relating to specific kinds of commercial transactions. However, the “Progressive codification …

Property And Contracts In Church Law, Reverend Jordan Hite

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Lewis V. Clarke, Summer L. Carmack

Public Land & Resources Law Review

One manner in which Indian tribes exercise their inherent sovereignty is by asserting sovereign immunity. In Lewis v. Clarke, the Court decided that the sovereign immunity extended to instrumentalities of tribes did not further extend to tribal employees acting within the scope of their employment. The Court acknowledged the concerns of the lower court, namely, the possibility of setting a precedent allowing future plaintiffs to sidestep a tribe’s sovereign immunity by suing a tribal employee in his individual capacity. However, the Supreme Court ultimately felt that the immunity of tribal employees should not exceed the immunity extended to state …

Recognizing An Overcorrection: A Proposal For Nevada's Policy On Non-Compete Agreements, Kristopher Kalkowski

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Pluralism Applied: A Concordant Approach To Selecting Contract Rules, Samuel F. Ernst

Marquette Law Review

Contract rules can be justified by utilitarian theories (such as efficiency theory), which are concerned with promoting rules that enhance societal wealth and utility. Contract rules can also be justified by rights-based theories (such as promissory and reliance theories), which are concerned with protecting the contractual freedom and interests ofthe individual parties to the contract. Or, contract rules can be analyzed through the lenses of a host of other theories, including critical legal theory, bargain theory, and so on. Because no single, unitary theory can ever explain the complex body of laws and societal conventions surrounding contracts, the best rule …

Tales From A Form Book: Stock Stories And Transactional Documents, Susan M. Chesler, Karen J. Sneddon

Montana Law Review

Tales from a Form Book: Stock Stories and Transactional Documents

Relative Consent And Contract Law, Nancy S. Kim

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Master's Tools: Tribal Sovereignty And Tribal Self-Governance Contracting/Compacting, Danielle Delaney

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of The Long Privacy Statement, Mike Hintze

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Need For Strict Morality Clauses In Endorsement Contracts, Caysee Kamenetsky

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

The increasing significance of morality clauses seems to directly correlate with the increase of social media platforms and avenues to live-stream events, including but not limited to Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. News of an athlete’s behavior can go viral in a matter of seconds. This leads company brands to seek broader terms in their morality clauses to allow them to disassociate themselves from the athlete. However, this is not always fair to the athlete, who might not have any idea that their personal-life choices could lead to the end of an endorsement contract.

Sovereign Debt As A Commodity: A Contract Law Perspective, Dania Thomas

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The ad hoc institutional configurations that facilitated the resolution of sovereign insolvency for over thirty years are fragmenting. Recent court decisions interpreting the pari passu clause in sovereign debt contracts reveal the dangers of pressuring common law courts to enforce contracts and mediate structural flaws in the market. The courts have dismantled sovereign protections in international law and common law checks and balances. They have gone beyond precedent to innovate remedies justified by interpreting a clause whose meaning and function were not clearly understood by the contracting parties themselves. They have also opened up a possible inter-creditor obligation that circumvents …

Forty-Eight States Are Probably Not Wrong: An Argument For Modernizing Georgia’S Legal Malpractice Statute Of Limitations, Ben Rosichan

Georgia State University Law Review

The legal profession is largely self-regulated, and each state has a bar association charged with creating and enforcing basic standards of professionalism and competence for attorneys. Unfortunately, attorneys do not always adhere to these standards. In Georgia, the State Bar can address attorney misconduct through remedial measures up to and including disbarment. The State Bar cannot, however, compensate wronged clients through monetary damages.Thus, some wronged clients must resort to a lawsuit for legal malpractice where a financial recovery is necessary to make the client whole again.

The statute of limitations for legal malpractice claims should not be so restrictive that …

The Legality Of Class Action Waivers In Employment Contracts, Benjamin M. Redgrave

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note attempts to bring clarity to the questionable legality of class action waivers in employment contracts by examining the two competing statutes at issue—the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA)—the Supreme Court’s cases on the issue, and the arguments for and against such waivers advanced by the Second, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits, which have all directly addressed the question. After providing an overview of these two statutes, the agency that administers the NLRA, and the evolution of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on the topic, this Note discusses the Supreme Court’s most recent …

“Breaking Bad” Contracts: Bargaining For Masculinity In Popular Culture, Lenora Ledwon

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Article examines the award-winning television show, Breaking Bad, to illustrate how the idea of a contract in popular culture can become inflected with a style of retrograde masculinity. Deals in Breaking Bad take place in the classic contract imaginary, which resembles the classic Western shootout: two antagonists face each other down in a duel. The show interrogates the frontier thesis, with its links to the American Dream and dangerous masculinities, through the ruthless contracts of Walter White.

Contract Law As A Viable Alternative To Problems Of Informed Consent, Martin L. Norton

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Misconstruing Whistleblower Immunity Under The Defend Trade Secrets Act, Peter S. Menell

Nevada Law Journal Forum

In crafting the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA), Congress went beyond the federalization of state trade secret protection to tackle a broader social justice problem: the misuse of nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) to discourage reporting of illegal activity in a variety of areas. The past few decades have witnessed devastating government contracting abuses, regulatory violations, and deceptive financial schemes that have hurt the public and cost taxpayers and investors billions of dollars. Congress recognized that immunizing whistleblowers from the cost and risk of trade secret liability for providing information to the Government could spur law enforcement. But could this …

The Dawn Of Fully Automated Contract Drafting: Machine Learning Breathes New Life Into A Decades-Old Promise, Kathryn D. Betts, Kyle R. Jaep

Duke Law & Technology Review

Technological advances within contract drafting software have seemingly plateaued. Despite the decades-long hopes and promises of many commentators, critics doubt this technology will ever fully automate the drafting process. But, while there has been a lack of innovation in contract drafting software, technological advances have continued to improve contract review and analysis programs. “Machine learning,” the leading innovative force in these areas, has proven incredibly efficient, performing in mere minutes tasks that would otherwise take a team of lawyers tens of hours. Some contract drafting programs have already experimented with machine learning capabilities, and this technology may pave the way …

Foreclosure Diversion And Mediation In The States, Alan M. White

Georgia State University Law Review

The recent mortgage foreclosure crisis, whose economic effects are well known, transformed state legal structures governing the mortgage foreclosure process. What had been a relatively routine system of default judgments and auction sales has evolved into a negotiation and workout practice in which homeowners contest foreclosures, demand loan modifications and short sales, and propose other alternatives to foreclosures.

A profusion of state laws and court orders were adopted between 2008 and 2014 with the aim of promoting negotiated foreclosure alternatives. These laws have produced a variety of experiments in the “laboratories of democracy.” The defaults—whether home loans are renegotiated, defaults …

Enforcing Corporate Social Responsibility Codes Under Private Law: On The Disciplining Power Of Legal Doctrine, Jan M. Smits

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

A central question in the debate on corporate social responsibility is to what extent CSR codes can be enforced among private parties. This contribution argues that this question is best answered by reference to the applicable doctrinal legal system. Such a doctrinal approach has recently regained importance in American scholarship, while it is still the prevailing method of legal analysis in Europe. Applying a doctrinal analysis of CSR codes allows for the possibility of private law enforcement, that is, enforcement by means of contract or tort, dependent on three different elements: the exact type of claim that is brought, the …