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Full-Text Articles in Law

Law, Growth, And The Identity Hurdle: A Theory Of Legal Reform, Martin W. Sybblis Jan 2021

Law, Growth, And The Identity Hurdle: A Theory Of Legal Reform, Martin W. Sybblis

Faculty Articles

This Article offers a new theoretical approach to understanding resistance to legal change in the corporate and commercial context by introducing the sociological concept of "community economic identity" (CEI) into legal scholarship. I argue that community leaders (typically, but not exclusively, from the political, legal, and business spheres) generate public and recognizable identities-e.g., "Coal Country" or "Motor City"-with respect to some commercial activities. These identities influence how law reform is conceived and deployed within jurisdictional boundaries (i.e., country, state, town, region, etc.). CEI complicates the prevailing public choice narrative regarding the influence of special interests in the law reform process. …


Regulatory Competition And State Capacity, Martin W. Sybblis Jan 2021

Regulatory Competition And State Capacity, Martin W. Sybblis

Faculty Articles

This Article explores an underlying tension in the regulatory competition literature regarding why some jurisdictions are more attractive to firms than others. It pays special attention to offshore financial centers (OFCs). OFCs court the business of nonresidents, offer business friendly regulatory environments, and provide for minimal, if any, taxation on their customers. On the one extreme, OFCs are theorized as merely products of legislative capture— thereby lacking any meaningful agency of their own. On the other hand, OFCs are conceptualized as well-governed jurisdictions that attract investment because of the high quality of their laws and legal institutions—indicating some ability to …


Subordination And Separation Of Powers, Matthew B. Lawrence Jan 2021

Subordination And Separation Of Powers, Matthew B. Lawrence

Faculty Articles

This Article calls for the incorporation of antisubordination into separation-ofpowers analysis. Scholars analyzing separation-of-powers tools—laws and norms that divide power among government actors—consider a long list of values ranging from protecting liberty to promoting efficiency. Absent from this list are questions of equity: questions of racism, sexism, and classism. This Article problematizes this omission and begins to rectify it. For the first time, this Article applies critical-race and feminist theorists’ subordination question—are marginalized groups disproportionately burdened?—to three important separation-of-powers tools: legislative appropriations, executive conditions, and constitutional entrenchment. In doing so, it reveals that each tool entails subordination by creating generalized …