Law Commons^™

Mainstreaming Employment Contract Law: The Common Law Case For Reasonable Notice Of Termination, Rachel Arnow-Richman

Florida Law Review

This Article simultaneously exposes a fundamental error in employment termination doctrine and a paradox in contract law jurisprudence. Contemporary employment law has developed under the assumption that at-will parties may terminate their relationship both without reason and without notice. This Article argues that the second half of this formulation—the idea that parties reserve the procedural right to terminate without notice—is neither historically supported nor legally correct. Employment at will, as originally expressed, was a mere duration presumption reflecting America’s rejection of the predominant British rule favoring one-year employment terms. While subsequent case law expanded the presumption in various ways, a …

Unbundling Procedure: Carve-Outs From Arbitration Clauses, Christopher R. Drahozal, Erin O'Hara O'Connor

Florida Law Review

A rich literature analyzes how parties choose between courts and arbitration. Within this literature, scholars traditionally assume that sophisticated parties make a single choice between courts and arbitration based on the bundle of dispute resolution services that seems most appealing ex ante. As with the literature on bundling generally, however, legal scholars are increasingly focusing their attention on the unbundling of court and arbitral procedures—that is, the ability of parties to contract for à la carte or customized dispute resolution procedures in court and arbitration. While such unbundling is common ex post, i.e., after a dispute arises, most …

"Sophisticated Robots": Balancing Liability, Regulation, And Innovation, F. Patrick Hubbard

Florida Law Review

Our lives are being transformed by large, mobile, "sophisticated robots" with increasingly higher levels of autonomy, intelligence, and interconnectivity among themselves. For example, driverless automobiles are likely to become commercially available within a decade. Many people who suffer physical injuries from these robots will seek legal redress for their injury, and regulatory schemes are likely to impose requirements on the field to reduce the number and severity of injuries.

This Article addresses the issue of whether the current liability and regulatory systems provide a fair, efficient method for balancing the concern for physical safety against the need to incentivize the …