Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 13 of 13

Full-Text Articles in Law

Mitigating The Problem Of Vulture Holdout: International Certification Boards For Sovereign Debt Restructurings, John A. E. Pottow Aug 2013

Mitigating The Problem Of Vulture Holdout: International Certification Boards For Sovereign Debt Restructurings, John A. E. Pottow

Law & Economics Working Papers

The Great Recession has brought greater sovereign debt defaults, which in turn has brought a surfeit of academic explorations and policy discussions of sovereign debt restructuring. The purpose of this article is to offer yet one more idea for the hopper of what to do with the seemingly intractable problem of restructuring sovereign bond debt. The field does not lack for statutory and contractual proposals, from SDRM to CACs, but it is not yet sufficiently saturated that another proposal cannot join the mix. The proposal is for the establishment of international certification boards that can give a stamp of approval …


Shared Responsibility And The International Labour Organization, Yossi Dahan, Hanna Lerner, Faina Milman-Sivan Jun 2013

Shared Responsibility And The International Labour Organization, Yossi Dahan, Hanna Lerner, Faina Milman-Sivan

Michigan Journal of International Law

How should the international labor regime be reformed in order to guarantee all workers around the world minimum labor standards? This is the central question we address in this Article. It has been weighed and discussed by social scientists, legal scholars, and philosophers, who analyze it from various economic, political, and legal perspectives. Yet interestingly, the literature in this field has been, by and large, characterized by a sharp disciplinary divide: on the one hand, labor law scholars typically address the issue of international labor standards from a detailed practical perspective, defining the problems in terms of enforcement, efficacy, or …


Meaning In The Natural World, Joseph Vining May 2013

Meaning In The Natural World, Joseph Vining

Law & Economics Working Papers

James Boyd White devoted much of his work to the rescue of meaning in language, art, and the human world. A turn to the natural world may underscore his confidence that an individual's statement of law can be more than a disguised expression of individual will and desire. This essay may also suggest one more way toward hope that a realistic sense of the natural world need not threaten confidence in the reality of beauty and meaning in our human world.


Understanding Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz Mar 2013

Understanding Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz

Law & Economics Working Papers

Insurance companies are in the business of discrimination. Insurers attempt to segregate insureds into separate risk pools based on their differences in risk profiles, first, so that they can charge different premiums to the different groups based on their risk and, second, to incentivize risk reduction by insureds. This is why we let insurers discriminate. There are, however, limits to the types of discrimination we will allow insurers to engage in. But what exactly are those limits and how are they justified? To answer these questions, this Article articulates the leading fairness and efficiency arguments for and against limiting insurers’ …


Employment Law And Social Equality, Samuel R. Bagenstos Jan 2013

Employment Law And Social Equality, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Law & Economics Working Papers

What is the normative justification for individual employment law? For a number of legal scholars, the answer is economic efficiency. Other scholars argue, to the contrary, that employment law protects against (vaguely defined) imbalances of bargaining power and exploitation. Against both of these positions, this paper argues that individual employment law is best understood as advancing a particular conception of equality. That conception, which many legal and political theorists have called social equality, focuses on eliminating hierarchies of social status. Drawing on the author’s work elaborating the justification for employment discrimination law, this paper argues that individual employment law is …


The Rule Of Law And The Perils Of Precedent, Randy J. Kozel Jan 2013

The Rule Of Law And The Perils Of Precedent, Randy J. Kozel

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In a world where circumstances never changed and where every judicial decision was unassailably correct, applying the doctrine of stare decisis would be a breeze. Fidelity to precedent and commitment to sound legal interpretation would meld into a single, coherent enterprise. That world, alas, is not the one we live in. Like so much else in law, the concept of stare decisis encompasses a series of trade-offs-and difficult ones at that. Prominent among them is the tension between allowing past decisions to remain settled and establishing a body of legal rules that is flexible enough to adapt and improve over …


Essential Health Benefits And The Affordable Care Act: Law And Process, Nicholas Bagley, Helen Levy Jan 2013

Essential Health Benefits And The Affordable Care Act: Law And Process, Nicholas Bagley, Helen Levy

Law & Economics Working Papers

Beginning in 2014, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will require private insurance plans sold in the individual and small-group markets to cover a roster of “essential health benefits.” Precisely which benefits should count as essential, however, was left to the discretion of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The matter was both important and controversial. HHS nonetheless announced its policy on essential health benefits by posting on its website a 13-page bulletin stating that it would allow each state to define essential benefits for itself by choosing a “benchmark” plan modeled on existing plans in the state. On …


Shared Responsibility In International Law: A Conceptual Framework, Andre Nollkaemper, Dov Jacobs Jan 2013

Shared Responsibility In International Law: A Conceptual Framework, Andre Nollkaemper, Dov Jacobs

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this Article we explore the phenomenon of shared international responsibility among multiple actors that contribute to harmful outcomes that international law seeks to prevent. We examine the foundations and manifestations of shared responsibility, explain why international law has had difficulty in grasping its complexity, and set forth a conceptual framework that allows us to better understand and study the phenomenon. Such a framework provides a basis for further development of principles of international law that correspond to the needs of an era characterized by joint and coordinated, rather than independent, action.


Conceptions Of Civil Society In International Lawmaking And Implementation: A Theoretical Framework, Laura Pedraza-Farina Jan 2013

Conceptions Of Civil Society In International Lawmaking And Implementation: A Theoretical Framework, Laura Pedraza-Farina

Michigan Journal of International Law

The last two decades have seen an unprecedented explosion in the number of civil society organizations seeking to influence national and international policy making and implementation. Global leaders, activists, scholars, and policy experts have increasingly called for the inclusion of civil society in international governance and in the national implementation of international commitments. Most recently, the wave of civil uprisings that swept the Middle East and North Africa has put fostering civil society participation high on the agenda of national governments and international organizations. Indeed, most international organizations have devised mechanisms to engage with civil society and regard civil society …


Internal Legitimacy And Europe's Piecemeal Constitution: Reflections On Van Gend At 50, Daniel H. Halberstam Jan 2013

Internal Legitimacy And Europe's Piecemeal Constitution: Reflections On Van Gend At 50, Daniel H. Halberstam

Book Chapters

Europe is often said to lack a proper constitution of the radical American kind. That may be so, but there is a different, more promising sense in which Europe might be following the very best of the constitutional tradition.


Human Rights Obligations To The Poor, Monica Hakimi Jan 2013

Human Rights Obligations To The Poor, Monica Hakimi

Book Chapters

Poverty unquestionably detracts from the human rights mission. Modern human rights law recognizes a broad range of rights - for example, "to life, liberty, and security of person" and to adequate "food, clothing, and medical care."1 Any number of those rights might go unrealized in conditions of extreme poverty. However, human rights law has always been partly aspirational. For those seeking to improve the lives of the poor, the key question is not what rights exist but how to make those rights operational. What does human rights law actually require of states? And how might its obligations benefit the poor?


Interpersonal Power In The Criminal System, Kimberly A. Thomas Jan 2013

Interpersonal Power In The Criminal System, Kimberly A. Thomas

Articles

This Article identifies the workings of interpersonal power in the criminal system and considers the effect of these cases on criminal theory and practice. By uncovering this phenomenon, this Article hopes to spark a legal academic dialogue and inquiry that has, until now, been unspoken. This Article has roots in my former work as a Philadelphia public defender and in my current work as a clinical professor with students who appear in criminal and juvenile court. As an advocate for the poor in a busy courthouse, one of a lawyer's tasks is to discover the multiple "real" stories behind the …


Unbundling Constitutionality, Richard A. Primus Jan 2013

Unbundling Constitutionality, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Constitutional theory features a persistent controversy over the source or sources of constitutional status, that is, over the criteria that qualify some rules as constitutional rules. This Article contends that no single criterion characterizes all of the rules that American law treats as constitutional, such that it is a mistake to think of constitutionality as a status with necessary conditions. It is better to think of constitutionality on a bundle-of-sticks model: different attributes associated with constitutionality might or might not be present in any constitutional rule. Analysts should often direct their attention more to the separate substantive properties that are …