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Full-Text Articles in Law

Additionality: The Next Steps For Ecosystem Service Markets, Karen Bennett Jul 2010

Additionality: The Next Steps For Ecosystem Service Markets, Karen Bennett

Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum

No abstract provided.


Antitrust Censorship Of Economic Protest, Hillary Greene Mar 2010

Antitrust Censorship Of Economic Protest, Hillary Greene

Duke Law Journal

Antitrust law accepts the competitive marketplace, its operation, and its outcomes as an ideal. Society itself need not and does not. Although antitrust is not in the business of evaluating, for example, the "fairness" of prices, society can, and frequently does, properly concern itself with these issues. When dissatisfaction results, it may manifest itself in an expressive boycott: a form of social campaign wherein purchasers express their dissatisfaction by collectively refusing to buy. Antitrust should neither participate in nor censor such normative discourse. In this Article, I explain how antitrust law impedes this speech, argue why it should not, and …


Trafficking In Human Blood: Titmuss (1970) And Products Liability, Clark C. Havighurst Jul 2009

Trafficking In Human Blood: Titmuss (1970) And Products Liability, Clark C. Havighurst

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.


Altruism, Markets, And Organ Procurement, Julia D. Mahoney Jul 2009

Altruism, Markets, And Organ Procurement, Julia D. Mahoney

Law and Contemporary Problems

For decades, the dominant view among biomedical ethicists, transplantation professionals, and the public at large has been that altruism, not financial considerations, should motivate organ donors. Proposals to compensate sources of transplantable organs or their survivors, although endorsed by a number of economists and legal scholars, have been denounced as unethical and impracticable. Organ transplantation is said to belong to the world of gift, as distinct from the market realm. Paying for organs would inject commerce into a sphere where market values have no place and would transform a system based on generosity and civic spirit into one of antiseptic, …


Surrogacy And The Politics Of Commodification, Elizabeth S. Scott Jul 2009

Surrogacy And The Politics Of Commodification, Elizabeth S. Scott

Law and Contemporary Problems

Scott explores the history of surrogacy over the past twenty years. She also offers a historical account of the legal and social issues surrounding surrogacy over the past twenty years. She seeks to explain how and why the social and political meanings of surrogacy have changed over the past decade. Furthermore, she examines how surrogacy was framed as commodification in the Baby M context.


The Debt Financing Of Parenthood, Melissa B. Jacoby Jul 2009

The Debt Financing Of Parenthood, Melissa B. Jacoby

Law and Contemporary Problems

Jacoby discusses the significant role of lenders in the parenthood market and how they might facilitate access and shape this industry in more profound ways. Second, she introduces the issue of financing assisted reproduction and adoption. Third, she reviews specialty loans for assisted reproduction and adoption, reflecting traditional research in case law and legal and nonlegal scholarly literature, as well as results from a review of news media and Web sites of prominent intermediaries and service suppliers. Lastly, she presents a sampling of political-economy implications relevant to assisted reproduction, leaving other issues for future investigation.


Gender And The Value Of Bodily Goods: Commodification In Egg And Sperm Donation, Rene Almeling Jul 2009

Gender And The Value Of Bodily Goods: Commodification In Egg And Sperm Donation, Rene Almeling

Law and Contemporary Problems

Listing a child for sale in the local paper's classified section is unthinkable, and it is illegal for donors to sell organs in the US. Yet fertility programs routinely recruit young women and men to "donate" eggs and sperm in return for financial compensation. Payments to women vary substantially, both within particular agencies and in different regions of the US, but the national average is around $4,200. Here, Almeling constructs a theoretical framework analyzing the social process of assigning value to the human body. He further describes the historical emergence of the market in eggs and sperm before turning to …


Sunny Samaritans And Egomaniacs: Price-Fixing In The Gamete Market, Kimberly D. Krawiec Jul 2009

Sunny Samaritans And Egomaniacs: Price-Fixing In The Gamete Market, Kimberly D. Krawiec

Law and Contemporary Problems

Krawiec compares the egg market to sperm market to illustrate the extent to which public-interest rhetoric enables private wealth transfers in the egg market. She also illuminates why such rhetoric is so effective, playing on deeply held societal norms. In addition, she provides an overview of the oocyte business, highlighting issues relating to recruitment, compensation, controversy, retrieval, and risk. She does the same for the sperm business. Furthermore, she discusses the anticompetitive behavior in the egg market and argues that the horizontal price-fixing embodied in the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's pricing guidelines violates the Sherman Act. Lastly, she concludes …


Economic Trends And Judicial Outcomes: A Macrotheory Of The Court, Thomas Brennan, Lee Epstein, Nancy Staudt Apr 2009

Economic Trends And Judicial Outcomes: A Macrotheory Of The Court, Thomas Brennan, Lee Epstein, Nancy Staudt

Duke Law Journal

We investigate the effect of economic conditions on the voting behavior of U.S. Supreme Court Justices. We theorize that Justices are akin to voters in political elections; specifically, we posit that the Justices will view short-term and relatively nit. nor economic downturns-recessions-as attributable to the failures of elected officials, but will consider long-term and extreme economic con tractions-depressions-as the result of exogenous shocks largely beyond the control of the government. Accordingly, we predict two patterns of behavior in economic-related cases that come before the Court: (1) in typical times, when the economy cycles through both recessionary and prosperous periods, the …


Does The Supreme Court Follow The Economic Returns? A Response To A Macrotheory Of The Court, Ernest A. Young, Erin C. Blondel Apr 2009

Does The Supreme Court Follow The Economic Returns? A Response To A Macrotheory Of The Court, Ernest A. Young, Erin C. Blondel

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Justices As Economic Fixers: A Response To A Macrotheory Of The Court, Scott Baker, Adam Feibelman, William P. Marshall Apr 2009

Justices As Economic Fixers: A Response To A Macrotheory Of The Court, Scott Baker, Adam Feibelman, William P. Marshall

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Litigation Discovery Cannot Be Optimal But Could Be Better: The Economics Of Improving Discovery Timing In A Digital Age, Scott A. Moss Mar 2009

Litigation Discovery Cannot Be Optimal But Could Be Better: The Economics Of Improving Discovery Timing In A Digital Age, Scott A. Moss

Duke Law Journal

Cases are won and lost in discovery, yet discovery draws little academic attention. Most scholarship focuses on how much discovery to allow, not on how courts decide discovery disputes-which, unlike trials, occur in most cases. The growth of computer data-e-mails, lingering deleted files, and so forth-increased discovery cost, but the new e-discovery rules just reiterate existing cost-benefit proportionality limits that draw broad consensus among litigation scholars anti economists. But proportionality rules are impossible to apply effectively; they fail to curb discovery excess yet disallow discovery that meritorious cases need. This Article notes proportionality's flaws but rejects the consensus blaming bad …


Economic Foundations Of Intellectual Property Rights, Joseph E. Stiglitz Apr 2008

Economic Foundations Of Intellectual Property Rights, Joseph E. Stiglitz

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.


The Odious Debt Doctrine After Iraq, Jai Damle Oct 2007

The Odious Debt Doctrine After Iraq, Jai Damle

Law and Contemporary Problems

The odious debt doctrine has experienced renewed popularity in the past few years; it has been heralded by academics, political commentators, economists, and politicians as a mechanism to alleviate burdens imposed by illegitimate rulers. In its classic formulation, the doctrine provides that a regime's debt is odious, and thus unenforceable, if the state's people did not consent to the debt, the proceeds from the debt were not used for the benefit of the people, and the regime's creditors had knowledge of the first two conditions. In 2003, the newly instated Iraqi regime began negotiations to restructure that country's debt, much …


Odious Debt Wears Two Faces: Systemic Illegitimacy, Problems, And Opportunities In Traditional Odious Debt Conceptions In Globalized Economic Regimes, Larry Catá Backer Oct 2007

Odious Debt Wears Two Faces: Systemic Illegitimacy, Problems, And Opportunities In Traditional Odious Debt Conceptions In Globalized Economic Regimes, Larry Catá Backer

Law and Contemporary Problems

Backer examines how the traditional notion of odious debt as a method of repudiating sovereign debt may undergo a conceptual revolution as it changes focus from the illegitimacy of governments obtaining loans to the illegitimacy of the systems through which such loans are made and enforced generally. He focus his analysis on the conceptual framework Fidel Castro sought to introduce into the debate about the legitimacy of sovereign debt and the extent to which this reframing might influence international institutional approaches.


Odious Debts Or Odious Regimes, Patrick Bolton, David Skeel Oct 2007

Odious Debts Or Odious Regimes, Patrick Bolton, David Skeel

Law and Contemporary Problems

Odious regimes have always been there. That there is no silver-bullet solution that will prevent odious regimes from arising, or stymie them once they do, is evident from the plethora of responses employed by the international community once a regime's odiousness becomes clear. Current odious debt doctrine dates back to a 1927 treatise by a wandering Russian academic named Alexander Sack. The Sack definition contemplates a debt-by-debt approach to questionable borrowing. If a loan is used to benefit the population--to build a highway or water-treatment plant, for instance--the obligation would be fully enforceable, no matter how pernicious the borrower regime. …


Partially Odious Debts?, Omri Ben-Shahar, Mitu Gulati Oct 2007

Partially Odious Debts?, Omri Ben-Shahar, Mitu Gulati

Law and Contemporary Problems

Ben-Shahar borrows from a rich private-law tradition to explore the treatment of odious debt as a problem analogous to allocation of liability in private law. Drawing on the economic analysis of private law, it develops insights as to the structure of an optimal liability scheme. Under this approach, liability is imposed not on the basis of some intrinsic judgment as to the parties' relative blameworthiness, but rather in a forward-looking fashion, on parties who are best suited to take actions to prevent the loss. In addition, liability is imposed on a magnitude tailored to induce an optimal level of precautionary …


Odious Debt, Old And New: The Legal Intellectual History Of An Idea, James V. Feinerman Oct 2007

Odious Debt, Old And New: The Legal Intellectual History Of An Idea, James V. Feinerman

Law and Contemporary Problems

In a sense, all debts are odious; that is, to use dictionary definitions, "hateful; disgusting; offensive." Yet insofar as international economic law today is concerned, only a certain few debts can be considered "odious debts" in order to contest and perhaps eventually to repudiate them. Here, Feinerman examines the concepts of odious debt and related international legal phenomena, in both historical and contemporary context, with a view of determining the role that denomination of certain debts as odious may play in the overall process of sovereign debt rescheduling.


Odious, Not Debt, Anna Gelpern Jul 2007

Odious, Not Debt, Anna Gelpern

Law and Contemporary Problems

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 revived public and academic debate about a wobbly old doctrine of international law: the Doctrine of Odious Debt. This doctrine allows governments to disavow debts incurred by their predecessors without the consent of or benefit for the people, provided creditors knew of the taint. It has roots in nineteenth century jostles over colonial possessions. However, for the past eighty years, Odious Debt's rhetorical appeal has vastly outstripped its "legal vitality." Here, Gelpern argues that the Doctrine of Odious Debt frames the problem of odious debt in a way that excludes a large number, …


Odious Debt, Odious Credit, Economic Development, And Democratization, Tom Ginsburg, Thomas S. Ulen Jul 2007

Odious Debt, Odious Credit, Economic Development, And Democratization, Tom Ginsburg, Thomas S. Ulen

Law and Contemporary Problems

When a country signs an international treaty, it is not the government but the state that is bound, and the obligation will stand until a subsequent government formally exits the treaty. Exit is presumed to be costly: a government that "repudiates" earlier treaty obligations will suffer reputational harm in its international relations. Moreover, this general background norm of international law applies as well to debt: a government can announce that it is renouncing debt, but it will suffer severe reputational harm in the debt marketplace, much as a government that repudiates public international law obligations suffers a reputational harm. Here, …


Devilry, Complicity, And Greed: Transitional Justice And Odious Debt, David C. Gray Jul 2007

Devilry, Complicity, And Greed: Transitional Justice And Odious Debt, David C. Gray

Law and Contemporary Problems

Several issues relating to odious debt and contemporary efforts to expand the odious debt doctrine to cover all debts of odious regimes are maddeningly complex, implicating difficult issues in areas ranging from the international law of state succession to the law of commercial paper--itself a source of biannual trauma for thousands of bar aspirants. However, the scope of the debate as it has been developed in the literature is too narrow and, therefore, the questions posed too simple. In particular, any analysis of odious debt must account for issues that inhere to transitions and transitional justice. Here, Gray make some …


Renegotiating The Odious Debt Doctrine, Tai-Heng Cheng Jul 2007

Renegotiating The Odious Debt Doctrine, Tai-Heng Cheng

Law and Contemporary Problems

Following the United States' invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq,' the US government argued that the successor government in Iraq was not responsible for Iraq's Saddam-era debt under the purported doctrine of odious-regime debt. This purported doctrine apparently excused--by operation of law--all successor regimes from repaying debts that were incurred by oppressive predecessor regimes. Here, Cheng presents three-part response regarding the purported rule that oppressive debts of a predecessor government do not bind its successor.


Sovereigns, Trustees, Guardians: Private-Law Concepts And The Limits Of Legitimate State Power, Jedediah Purdy, Kimberly Fielding Jul 2007

Sovereigns, Trustees, Guardians: Private-Law Concepts And The Limits Of Legitimate State Power, Jedediah Purdy, Kimberly Fielding

Law and Contemporary Problems

One major tradition of understanding the powers and duties of sovereigns has particular relevance to arguments for revival and refurbishment of the odious debt doctrine. Here, Purdy and Fielding survey the critical role of private-law concepts in the development of this tradition. In this account, the state is a constructed and purposive legal actor, composed of a set of powers assigned by its subjects for the pursuit of certain human interests and bound by the obligation to secure and respect those interests. Moreover, they narrate that if there are inherent powers in a sovereign, they are only those that are …


A Critique Of The Odious Debt Doctrine, Albert H. Choi, Eric A. Posner Jul 2007

A Critique Of The Odious Debt Doctrine, Albert H. Choi, Eric A. Posner

Law and Contemporary Problems

Choi and Posner indicate that it is unclear whether the doctrine will improve the welfare of the population that might be subject to a dictatorship in terms of the odious debt doctrine. The traditional backward-looking defense of the odious debt doctrine, which suggests that the doctrine is costless because it releases a suffering population from an unjust debt, is seriously incomplete. Although in specific cases the benefits of loan sanctions may exceed the costs, the defenders of the doctrine have not made the empirical case that the net benefits are sufficiently high in the aggregate as to warrant routine application …


People As Resources: Recruitment And Reciprocity In The Freedom-Promoting Approach To Property, Jedediah Purdy Feb 2007

People As Resources: Recruitment And Reciprocity In The Freedom-Promoting Approach To Property, Jedediah Purdy

Duke Law Journal

Theorists usually explain and evaluate property regimes either through the lens of economics or by conceptions of personhood. This Article argues that the two approaches are intertwined in a way that is usually overlooked. Property law both facilitates the efficient use and allocation of scarce resources and recognizes and protects aspects of personhood. It must do both, because human beings are both resources for one another and the persons whose moral importance the legal system seeks to protect. This Article explores how property law has addressed this paradox in the past and how it might in the future. Two bodies …


The Law And Economics Of Identity, Rafael Gely Jan 2007

The Law And Economics Of Identity, Rafael Gely

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

"24 Social norms, for example, have long had an important impact on gender roles in employment specifically with respect to work/family concerns.25 Moreover, one of the central conclusions of the famous Hawthorne experiments of the 1930s26 was that employee work effort is significantly influenced by the norms of the employee's workgroup with respect to what constitutes an appropriate work level or output.27 Applying this analysis, employees are deemed not "irrational" when they don't increase output in response to increased employer incentive pay; they are simply responding to workplace social norms-i.e., they don't want to be ostracized by fellow employees as …


Farm-Animal Welfare, Legislation, And Trade, Gaverick Matheny, Cheryl Leahy Jan 2007

Farm-Animal Welfare, Legislation, And Trade, Gaverick Matheny, Cheryl Leahy

Law and Contemporary Problems

The US has among the weakest farm-animal-welfare standards in the developed world. Although improvements in farm-animal welfare are economically feasible, nations and states enacting protective regulation are threatened by competition with cheaper, non-compliant imports. Although recognition in trade agreements and restrictions on sale could help to protect animal welfare, they may rarely be politically feasible. Campaigns directed at consumers and retailers are likely to be more cost-effective than production-related regulations in improving animal welfare and are also compatible with abolitionist objectives.


Overregulation Of Health Care: Musings On Disruptive Innovation Theory, Lesley H. Curtis Ph.D., Kevin A. Schulman M.D. Oct 2006

Overregulation Of Health Care: Musings On Disruptive Innovation Theory, Lesley H. Curtis Ph.D., Kevin A. Schulman M.D.

Law and Contemporary Problems

Disruptive innovation theory provides one lens through which to describe how regulations may stifle innovation and increase costs. Basing their discussion on this theory, Curtis and Schulman consider some of the effects that regulatory controls may have on innovation in the health sector.


Implementing Effective Regional Ocean Governance: Perspectives From Economics, Susan Steele Hanna Apr 2006

Implementing Effective Regional Ocean Governance: Perspectives From Economics, Susan Steele Hanna

Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum

No abstract provided.


Transmission Siting In Deregulated Wholesale Power Markets: Re-Imagining The Role Of Courts In Resolving Federal-State Siting Impasses, Jim Rossi Apr 2005

Transmission Siting In Deregulated Wholesale Power Markets: Re-Imagining The Role Of Courts In Resolving Federal-State Siting Impasses, Jim Rossi

Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum

No abstract provided.