Law Commons^™

Debt, Deflation, And Debacle: Of Private Debt Write-Down And Public Recovery, Richard W. Vague, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Most public discussion of the world’s continuing financial and macroeconomic troubles focuses rightly on debt. It focuses wrongly, however, on public debt. The real source of our ills is global-trade-related private debt overhang among millions of households below the top of the wealth distribution in the “developed” world. That is the provenance of both (a) the asset price bubbles and busts in whose aftermath we still struggle, and (b) the fact that we’re still struggling. Public sector debt growth in the developed world since 2009 is merely a symptom – the product of thus far failed treatment – of this …

A Pilot Using Overdrive: E-Lending In Academic Law Libraries, Nina E. Scholtz

Cornell Law Librarians' Publications

E-books are not just for popular reading; legal publishers are entering the e-book market as well. Major publishers are launching e-book platforms and offering law libraries the opportunity to purchase both individual titles and collections of electronic books that they also offer in print. With increasing signs of a strong future for e-books, and possibly for e-lending as well, in spring 2012 Cornell Law Library decided to pilot OverDrive for the Cornell Law School community. By embarking on a pilot of the OverDrive service, we could test the waters of e-lending in a cost-efficient way that would not be prohibitive …

Regulation Room: How The Internet Improves Public Participation In Rulemaking, Jackeline Solivan, Cynthia R. Farina

Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative Publications

Cornell eRulemaking Initiative (CeRI) designed and operated Regulation Room, a pilot project that provides an online environment for people and groups to learn about, discuss, and react to selected proposed federal rules. The project is a unique collaboration between CeRI academic researchers and the government. The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) was CeRI's first agency partner and chose Regulation Room as its first open government "flagship initiative." USDOT received a White House Open Government Leading Practices Award for its collaboration in the project. CeRI owns, designs, operates, and controls Regulation Room, but works closely with partner agencies to identify suitable …

Are The Courts Dividing Puerto Ricans: How The Lack Of Voting Rights And Judicial Interpretation Of The Constitution Distorts Puerto Rican Identity And Creates Two Classes Of Puerto Rican American Citizens, Hiram Marcos Arnaud

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Poverty Alleviation Through Microcredit: The Impact Of The Oued Sbaihya Project On The Sustainable Management Of Natural Resources And Rural Women's Empowerment In Tunisia, Alia Gana

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Mitigating The Effects Of An Economic Downturn On Charitable Contributions: Facing The Problem And Contemplating Solutions, Grace Soyon Lee

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Path From Feminist Legal Theory To Environmental Law And Policy, Cynthia Grant Bowman

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Cooperation And Division: An Empirical Analysis Of Voting Similarities And Differences During The Stable Rehnquist Court Era - 1994 To 2005, Mark Klock

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Development, Sustainability, And Gender Relations, Shelley Feldman

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Measurement And Reporting: Important Elements Of Gender Mainstreaming In Environmental Policies, Itza Castaneda, Cintia Aguilar, Allison Rand

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

The Law Applicable To A Derivative Action On Behalf Of A Foreign Corporation - Corporate Law In Conflict, Yaad Rotem

Cornell International Law Journal

In corporate law, the derivative action mechanism allows minority shareholders and, in certain jurisdictions, single directors or even creditors to file and litigate on behalf of the corporation a lawsuit against an insider or a third party whose action has allegedly injured the corporation. The derivative action is a mechanism that corporate law furnishes to tackle agency problems because the corporate insiders who should initiate such claims occasionally become caught in a conflict of interests. Obviously, each jurisdiction decides whether to employ a derivative action mechanism and on what terms. However, in a globalized world that offers many attractive places …

The Dilemma Of Extending International Commercial Arbitration Clauses To Third Parties: Is Protecting Federal Policy While Accommodating Economic Globalization A Bridge To Nowhere, Pedro J. Martinez-Fraga

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Word Commons And Foreign Laws, Thomas O. Main

Cornell International Law Journal

Dual trends are colliding in U.S. courts. The first trend is a tidal wave of cases requiring courts to engage the domestic laws of foreign legal systems; globalization is the principal driver of this escalation. The second trend is a profound and ever-increasing skepticism of our ability to understand foreign law; the literature of pluralism and postmodernism has illuminated the uniquely local, language-dependent, and culturally embedded nature of law. Courts cope with this dissonance by finding some way to avoid the application of foreign law. However, these outcomes are problematic because parties are denied access to court or have their …

Enforceability Of Ad Hoc Arbitration Agreements In China: China’S Incomplete Ad Hoc Arbitration System, Tietie Zhang

Cornell International Law Journal

Today arbitration is the dominant method for resolving international commercial disputes. The international commercial arbitration system based on the New York Convention effectively facilitates resolution of cross-border disputes and contributes to the world's continuing economic development. Ad hoc arbitration has many advantages over institutional arbitration that make it a preferred way to resolve commercial disputes in many contexts. China, an emerging economic superpower, is also an active player in the field of arbitration. The People's Republic of China Arbitration Law (Law), however, requires that parties appoint an arbitration institution in their arbitration agreement. Otherwise, their ad hoc arbitration agreement is …

Bringing Comfort To The Enemy: The Past, Present, And Future Of Habeas Corpus Petitions In Light Of The Formalistic Application Of Boumediene, E. Carlisle Overbey

Cornell International Law Journal

Such trials would hamper the war effort and bring aid and comfort to the enemy. effective fettering of a field commander than to allow the very enemies he is ordered to reduce to submission to call him to account in his own civil courts and divert his efforts and attention from the military offensive abroad to the legal defensive at home. Nor is it unlikely that the result of such enemy litigiousness would be a conflict between judicial and military opinion highly comforting to enemies of the United States.(1)

Crowdfunding In The U.S. And Abroad: What To Expect When You’Re Expecting, Ross S. Weinstein

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Emperor’S New Loans: A Cautionary Tale From The Subprime Era, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Accidental Suicide Pacts And Creditor Collective Action Problems: The Mortgage Mess, The Deadweight Loss, And How To Get The Value Back, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Sustained economic recovery will remain elusive in America, post-crash, until principal is reduced on some 10-13 million underwater home mortgage loans across the nation. Yet in the case of privately securitized loans, these write-downs are all but impossible to carry out on the requisite scale because bubble-era securitization contracts, which now effectively function as suicide pacts among bondholders, would require collective action by millions of geographically dispersed passive investors in order to authorize write-downs or sales out of securitization trusts. The solution, this article suggests, is for state and municipal governments to use their eminent domain powers to buy up …

The Meaning Of The Seventeenth Amendment And A Century Of State Defiance, Zachary D. Clopton, Steven E. Art

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Nearly a century ago, the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution worked a substantial change in American government, dictating that the people should elect their senators by popular vote. Despite its significance, there has been little written about what the Amendment means or how it works. This Article provides a comprehensive interpretation of the Seventeenth Amendment based on the text of the Amendment and a variety of other sources: historical and textual antecedents; relevant Supreme Court decisions; the complete debates in Congress; and the social and political factors that led to this new constitutional provision. Among other things, this analysis …

The Duty To Capture, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The duty to capture stands at the fault line between competing legal regimes that might govern targeted killings. If human rights law and domestic law enforcement procedures govern these killings, the duty to attempt capture prior to lethal force represents a cardinal rule that is systematically violated by these operations. On the other hand, if the Law of War applies then the duty to capture is fundamentally inconsistent with the summary killing already sanctioned by jus in bello. The following Article examines the duty to capture and the divergent approaches that each legal regime takes to this normative requirement, and …

Managing Regulatory Arbitrage: An Alternative To Harmonization, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This policy-oriented article argues for deploying conflict of laws doctrines as a tool of coordination in international financial governance.

Unborn Communities, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Do property owners owe obligations to members of future generations? Although the question can be reframed in rights-terms so that it faces rights-oriented theories of property, it seems to pose a greater challenge to those theories of property that directly focus on the obligations that property owners owe to others rather than (or, better, along with) the rights of owner. The challenge is compounded where such theories emphasize the relationships between individual property owners and the various communities to which they belong. Do those communities include members of future generations? This paper addresses these questions as they apply to a …

Why 'Nonexistent People' Do Not Have Zero Well-Being But No Well-Being At All, Ori J. Herstein

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Some believe that the harm or benefit of existence is assessed by comparing a person’s actual state of well-being with the level of well-being they would have had had they never existed. This approach relies on ascribing a state or level of well-being to “nonexistent people,” which seems a peculiar practice: how can we attribute well-being to a “nonexistent person”? To explain away this oddity, some have argued that because no properties of well-being can be attributed to “nonexistent people” such people may be ascribed a neutral or zero level of well-being, setting the baseline for comparatively assessing the harm …

Bargaining In The Shadow Of The Debt Ceiling: When Negotiating Over Spending And Tax Laws, Congress And The President Should Consider The Debt Ceiling A Dead Letter, Neil H. Buchanan, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

If the debt ceiling is inconsistent with existing spending and taxing laws, what must the President do? In earlier work, we argued that when Congress creates a "trilemma"-making it impossible for the President to spend as much as Congress has ordered, to tax only as much as Congress has ordered, and to borrow no more than Congress has permitted-- the Constitution requires the President to choose the least unconstitutional path. In particular, he must honor Congress's decisions and priorities regarding spending and taxing, and he must issue enough debt to do so. Here, we extend the analysis in two ways. …

Is Jus In Bello In Crisis?, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

It is a truism that new technologies are remaking the tactical and legal landscape of armed conflict. While such statements are undoubtedly true, it is important to separate genuine trends from scholarly exaggeration. The following essay, an introduction to the Drone Wars symposium of the Journal, catalogues today’s most pressing disputes regarding international humanitarian law (IHL) and their consequences for criminal responsibility. These include: (i) the triggering and classification of armed conflicts with non-state actors; (ii) the relative scope of IHL and international human rights law in asymmetrical conflicts; (iii) the targeting of suspected terrorists under concept- or status-based classifications …

Domestic Bank Regulation In A Global Environment - A Comparative Dialogue, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

How Lawyers' Intuitions Prolong Litigation, Andrew J. Wistrich, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Most lawsuits settle, but some settle later than they should. Too many compromises occur only after protracted discovery and expensive motion practice. Sometimes the delay precludes settlement altogether. Why does this happen? Several possibilities—such as the alleged greed of lawyers paid on an hourly basis—have been suggested, but they are insufficient to explain why so many cases do not settle until the eve of trial. We offer a novel account of the phenomenon of settling on the courthouse steps that is based upon empirical research concerning judgment and choice. Several cognitive illusions—the framing effect, the confirmation bias, nonconsequentialist reasoning, and …

Property's Ends: The Publicness Of Private Law Values, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Property theorists commonly suppose that property has as its ends certain private values, such as individual autonomy and personal security. This Article contends that property’s real end is human flourishing, that is, living a life that is as fulfilling as possible. Human flourishing, although property’s ultimate end, is neither monistic or simple. Rather, it is inclusive and comprises multiple values. Those values, the content of human flourishing, derives, at least in part, from an understanding of the sorts of beings we are ― social and political. A consequence of this conception of the human condition is that the values of …

The Impact Of Medical Liability Standards On Regional Variations In Physician Behavior: Evidence From The Adoption Of National-Standard Rules, Michael Frakes

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

I explore the association between regional variations in physician behavior and the geographical scope of malpractice standards of care. I estimate a 30-50 percent reduction in the gap between state and national utilization rates of various treatments and diagnostic procedures following the adoption of a rule requiring physicians to follow national, as opposed to local, standards. These findings suggest that standardization in malpractice law may lead to greater standardization in practices and, more generally, that physicians may indeed adhere to specific liability standards. In connection with the estimated convergence in practices, I observe no associated changes in patient health. (JEL …

Death Of Paradox: The Killer Logic Beneath The Standards Of Proof, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The prevailing but contested view of proof standards is that factfinders should determine facts by probabilistic reasoning. Given imperfect evidence, they should ask themselves what they think the chances are that the burdened party would be right if the truth were to become known; they then compare those chances to the applicable standard of proof.

I contend that for understanding the standards of proof, the modern versions of logic — in particular, fuzzy logic and belief functions — work better than classical probability. This modern logic suggests that factfinders view evidence of an imprecisely perceived and described reality to form …