Law Commons^™

Popular Culture's Portrayal Of Attorney Decision-Making And It's Consequences- An Analysis Of An Attorney's Internal Ethical Conflict In Film, Tara M. Parente

Tara M. Parente

This paper explores how popular culture portrays attorney decision-making and its consequences. This paper compares and contrasts two films in order to exemplify how attorneys are portrayed throughout film and how this carries over into real life. Attorneys are faced with ethical dilemmas at all times, especially throughout career advancement and the decisions made tend to affect every aspect of an attorney's life.

Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing. To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …

Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE). A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …

The Impossibility Of A Prescriptive Paretian, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

Most normatively oriented economists appear to be “welfarist” and Paretian to one degree or another: They deem responsiveness to individual preferences, and satisfaction of one or more of the Pareto criteria, to be a desirable attribute of any social welfare function. I show that no strictly “welfarist” or Paretian social welfare function can be normatively prescriptive. Economists who prescribe must embrace at least one value apart from or additional to “welfarism” and Paretianism, and in fact will do best to dispense with Pareto entirely.

Theories And Practices Of Islamic Finance And Exchange Laws: Poverty Of Interest, Ahmed E. Souaiaia

Ahmed E SOUAIAIA

Context Matters--What Lawyers Say About Choice Of Law Decisions In Merger Agreements, Juliet P. Kostritsky

Juliet P Kostritsky

ABSTRACT: The study of choice of law provisions in merger agreements yields various theories as to how much thought parties put into them, and what factors influence such decisions. Eisenberg and Miller found a shift to New York law and other scholars later hypothesized that parties specify New York law rather than Delaware law because New York law is more formalistic. However, a study of 343 merger agreements, consisting of 15 lawyer interviews and a survey sent to 812 lawyers, suggests differently. First, there is no shift from Delaware to New York. Second, a desire for formalistic law is not …

The Origins Of Affirmative Fiscal Action, Mirit Eyal-Cohen

Mirit Eyal-Cohen

This article highlights an anomaly. It shows that two tax rules aimed to achieve a similar goal were introduced at the same time. Both meant to be temporary and bring economic stimuli, but received a dramatically different treatment. The less efficient or economically inferior survived. Its superior counterpart did not. The article reviews the reasons for this paradox. It shows that the reason is both political and an agency problem. The article not only enriches an important and ongoing debate that has received much attention in recent years, but also provides important lessons to policymakers.

Regulatory Institutions Of The Global South: Why Are They Different And What Can Be Done About It?, Yugank Goyal

Yugank Goyal

Developing countries suffer from underperforming regulatory agencies compared to those in the developed world. The paper attempts to theorize general reasons behind such divergence. It argues that the differences lie in developing countries’ (a) higher priorities for redistribution, (b) structurally different institutional endowments, especially at informal level, and (c) limited informational channels. The paper proposes that a multi-stakeholder (with increased emphasis on judiciary and civil society) approach has potential to address the shortcomings. It tests these claims through studying cases of telecom and electricity regulation in India.

The Rise And Rise Of The One Percent: Getting To Thomas Piketty's Wealth Dystopia, Shi-Ling Hsu

Shi-Ling Hsu

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-first Century, which is surely one of the very few economics treatises ever to be a best-seller, has parachuted into an intensely emotional and deeply divisive American debate: the problem of inequality in the United States. Piketty's core argument is that throughout history, the rate of return on private capital has usually exceeded the rate of economic growth, expressed by Piketty as the relation r > g. If true, this relation means that the wealthy class – who are the predominant owners of capital – will grow their wealth faster than economies grow, which …

Present At The Creation: Reflections On The Early Years Of The National Association Of Corporate Directors, Lawrence J. Trautman

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

Effective corporate governance is critical to the productive operation of the global economy and preservation of our way of life. Excellent governance execution is also required to achieve economic growth and robust job creation in any country. In the United States, the premier director membership organization is the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). Since 1978, NACD plays a major role in fostering excellence in corporate governance in the United States and beyond. The NACD has grown from a mere realization of the importance of corporate governance to become the only national membership organization created by and for corporate directors. …

The Fashion Lottery: Cooperative Innovation In Stochastic Markets, Jonathan Barnett, Gilles Grolleau, Sana El Harbi

Jonathan M Barnett

The fashion market is an anomaly: innovation is vigorous but original producers are substantially unprotected against imitation, which proliferates under an incomplete property regime consisting of strong trademark protections and weak design protections. We account for this anomaly through a “cooperative innovation” model where producers prefer an incomplete property regime that permits some imitation to alternative regimes that permit no imitation or all imitation, independent of budget constraints. A property regime that permits positive but limited levels of imitation operates as a form of group insurance that alleviates the risk of recoupment failure in a market characterized by demand uncertainty, …

Certification Drag: The Opinion Puzzle And Other Transactional Curiosities, Jonathan Barnett

Jonathan M Barnett

The law-and-economics literature typically depicts certification intermediaries, such as law firms, auditors, underwriters, investment banks and rating agencies, as socially valuable market participants who ameliorate informational asymmetries that would otherwise distort pricing or transaction structures. This standard view is incomplete. Using the example of the “closing opinion”, a third-party legal opinion commonly delivered at the consummation of a variety of business transactions, I argue that intermediaries, even when operating under substantially competitive conditions and in sophisticated market settings, may supply widely consumed certification products that fail to mitigate informational asymmetries while increasing transaction costs. Based on the highly qualified language …

Hollywood Deals: Soft Contracts For Hard Markets, Jonathan Barnett

Jonathan M Barnett

Hollywood film studios, talent and other deal participants regularly commit to, and undertake production of, high-stakes film projects on the basis of unsigned “deal memos”, informal communications or draft agreements whose legal enforceability is uncertain. These “soft contracts” constitute a hybrid instrument that addresses a challenging transactional environment where neither formal contract nor reputation effects adequately protect parties against the holdup risk and project risk inherent to a film project. Parties negotiate the degree of contractual formality, which correlates with legal enforceability, as a proxy for allocating these risks at a transaction-cost savings relative to a fully formalized and specified …

Demon At The Back Door: Rise Of The Mexican Drug Cartels, Oliver T. Beatty

Oliver T Beatty

This article addresses the rise of the violent Mexican drug cartels and searches within the legislative and law enforcement toolbox on how to dethrone the epidemic of violence on the border. The Mexican drug cartels rose from the ashes and structural framework of the Colombian cocaine cartels which gave these new criminal empires their routes, connections, and ease at taking over Pablo Escobar’s monopoly on the drug trafficking game. In addressing the origins of the cartels this article explores the trajectory of cocaine from imported medical remedy to criminalized substance. Additionally this article explores how the Italian mafia was dismantled …

Let Educators Educate, Let Builders Build: Making A Case For School Facility Privatization, John Pizzo

John Pizzo

No abstract provided.

Virtual Currencies: Bitcoin & What Now After Liberty Reserve, Silk Road, And Mt. Gox?, Lawrence J. Trautman

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

During 2013, the U.S. Treasury Department evoked the first use of the 2001 Patriot Act to exclude virtual currency provider Liberty Reserve from the U.S. financial system. This article will discuss: the regulation of virtual currencies; cybercrimes and payment systems; darknets, Tor and the “deep web;” Bitcoin; Liberty Reserve; Silk Road and Mt. Gox. Virtual currencies have quickly become a reality, gaining significant traction in a very short period of time, and are evolving rapidly. Virtual currencies present particularly difficult law enforcement challenges because of their: ability to transcend national borders in the fraction of a second; unique jurisdictional issues; …

Conflating Politics And Development? Examining Investment Treaty Arbitration Outcomes, Susan Franck

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

International dispute settlement is an area of ongoing evaluation and tension within the international political economy. As states continue their negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the efficacy of international arbitration as a method of dispute settlement remains controversial. Whereas some sing its praises as a method of protecting private property interests against improper government interference, others decry investment treaty arbitration (ITA) as biased against states. The literature has thus far not disentangled how politics and development contribute to investment dispute outcomes. In an effort to control for the effect of internal …

Bargaining In The Shadow Of Big Data, Dru Stevenson, Nicholas J. Wagoner

Dru Stevenson

Attorney bargaining has traditionally taken place in the shadow of trial, as litigants alter their pretrial behavior—including their willingness to negotiate a settlement—based on their forecast of the outcome at trial and associated costs. Lawyers bargaining in the shadow of trial have traditionally relied on their knowledge of precedent, intuition, and previous interactions with the presiding judge and opposing counsel to forecast trial outcomes and litigation costs. Today, however, technology for leveraging legal data is moving the practice of law into the shadow of the trends and patterns observable in aggregated litigation data. In this Article, we describe the tools …

Gambling On Our Financial Future: How The Federal Government Fiddles While State Common Law Is A Safer Bet To Prevent Another Financial Collapse, Brian M. Mccall

Brian M McCall