Law Commons^™

Procedural Retrenchment And The States, Zachary D. Clopton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Although not always headline grabbing, the Roberts Court has been highly interested in civil procedure. According to critics, the Court has undercut access to justice and private enforcement through its decisions on pleading, class actions, summary judgment, arbitration, standing, personal jurisdiction, and international law.

While I have much sympathy for the Court's critics, the current discourse too often ignores the states. Rather than bemoaning the Roberts Court's decisions to limit court access-and despairing further developments in the age of Trump-we instead might productively focus on the options open to state courts and public enforcement. Many of the aforementioned decisions are …

Living Apart Together As A “Family Form” Among Persons Of Retirement Age: The Appropriate Family Law Response, Cynthia Grant Bowman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

As the Baby Boom generation enters retirement age, patterns of living among older persons are beginning to change. Unlike their predecessors, the Baby Boomers lived through the sexual revolution, divorced more easily and more often, and institutionalized new patterns of coupling, such as cohabitation. As a result, the rate of marriage has declined and the percent of the population classified as “single” has gone up. This age cohort has now moved into the sixty-five-plus group and makes up those we think of as the retirement generation, or the “Third Age” group. As longevity has increased and the divorce rate for …

Private Wealth And Public Goods: A Case For A National Investment Authority, Robert C. Hockett, Saule T. Omarova

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Much American electoral and policy debate now centers on how best to reignite the nation’s economic dynamism and rebuild its competitive strength. Any such undertaking presents an extraordinary challenge, demanding a correspondingly extraordinary institutional response. This Article proposes precisely such a response. It designs and advocates a new public instrumentality--a National Investment Authority (“NIA”)--charged with the critical task of devising and implementing a comprehensive long-term development strategy for the United States.

Patterned in part after the New Deal-era Reconstruction Finance Corporation, in part after modern sovereign wealth funds, and in part after private equity and venture capital firms, the NIA …

Insuring Sustainable Homeownership, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Federal Housing Administration has been a versatile tool of government since its creation during the Great Depression. It was created in large part to inject liquidity into a moribund mortgage market. It has since been repositioned to achieve a variety of additional social goals, some of which have not been realized. The FHA’s failed programs, coupled with the recent financial woes of the FHA that resulted in a government bailout, have fueled criticism of the institution. The FHA has been more successful, however, in achieving its broader goals than is generally recognized. Nonetheless, its mission still needs clarification and …

The Limits Of Law In The Evaluation Of Mitigating Evidence, Emad H. Atiq, Erin L. Miller

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Capital sentencers are constitutionally required to "consider" any mitigating evidence presented by the defense. Under Lockett v. Ohio and its progeny, neither statutes nor common law can exclude mitigating factors from the sentencer's consideration or place conditions on when such factors may be considered. We argue that the principle underlying this line of doctrine is broader than courts have so far recognized. A natural starting point for our analysis is judicial treatment of evidence that the defendant suffered severe environmental deprivation ("SED"), such as egregious child abuse or poverty. SED has played a central role in the Court's elaboration of …

The Central Claiming Renaissance, Andres Sawicki

Cornell Law Review

The Supreme Court has recently reinvigorated the law of patentable subject matter. But beneath the headlines proclaiming the return of limits to patent eligibility, a more profound shift has taken place: central claiming is reborn.

The Court's eligibility cases are significant outliers compared to today's run-of-the-mill patent law because claim language plays little role in their analyses. In our modern peripheral claiming system, the claim language is the nearexclusive guide to the patent's boundaries. But in its earliest days, our patent system pursued a central claiming approach, in which the inventor's actual work determined the patent's scope. The Court's eligibility …

The Rights Of Marriage: Obergefell, Din, And The Future Of Constitutional Family Law, Kerry Abrams

Cornell Law Review

In the summer of 2015 the United States Supreme Court handed down two groundbreaking constitutional family law decisions. One decision became famous overnight Obergefell v. Hodges declared that same-sex couples have the constitutional right to marry. The other, Kerry v. Din, went largely overlooked. That later case concerned not the right to marry but the rights of marriage. In particular, it asked whether a person has a constitutional liberty interest in living with his or her spouse. This case is suddenly of paramount importance: executive orders targeting particular groups of immigrants implicate directly this right to family reunification.

This Article …

Using Daubert To Evaluate Evidence-Based Sentencing, Charlotte Hopkinson

Cornell Law Review

Despite its purported positive impact on the criminal justice system, evidence-based sentencing risks fooling judges and juries and further contributing to the overrepresentation of men of color and poor people in prisons. The problems with the creation of these models, namely a lack of replication, potentially unconstitutional use of certain factors, high false positive rates, and issues with G2i abstraction, should all create serious concerns for actors in and around the criminal justice system.

International Cybertorts: Expanding State Accountability In Cyberspace, Rebecca Crootof

Cornell Law Review

States are not being held accountable for the vast majority of their harmful cyberoperations, largely because classifications created in physical space do not map well onto the cyber domain. Most injurious and invasive cyberoperations are not cybercrimes and do not constitute cyberwarfare, nor are states extending existing definitions of wrongful acts permitting countermeasures to cyberoperations (possibly to avoid creating precedent restricting their own activities). Absent an appropriate label, victim states have few effective and nonescalatory responsive options, and the harms associated with these incidents lie where they fall.

This Article draws on tort law and international law principles to construct …

The Partiality Norm: Systematic Deference In The Office Of Legal Counsel, Adoree Kim

Cornell Law Review

This study shows that the Office of Legal Counsel does not offer "detached, apolitical legal advice" in practice. Rather, the OLC is deeply and systematically deferential to the President. The implications are grave considering the OLC's de facto lawmaking power, a result of its position as legal adviser for the executive-- "the judgment of [the OLC] . . . becomes the law." Moreover, the OLC "is frequently asked to opine on issues of first impression that are unlikely to be resolved by the courts--a circumstance in which OLC's advice may effectively be the final word on the controlling law." Whether …

Delegating For Trust, Edward H. Stiglitz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Courts and legal observers have long been concerned by the scope of authority delegated to administrative agencies. The dominant explanation of delegated authority is that it is necessary to take advantage of administrative agencies' expertise and expansive rulemaking capacity. Though this explanation makes sense in many settings, it falters in many areas and has given rise to a number of longstanding puzzles, such as why Congress does not invest in its own institutional capacity.

Unrecognized in this debate over the puzzles of delegation is that Congress may delegate to take advantage of another distinctive attribute of administrative decisionmaking: the credible …

A Pragmatist's View Of Promissory Law With A Focus On Consent And Reliance, Robert A. Hillman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article discusses Professor Nate Oman's excellent new book, "The Dignity of Commerce," which makes an impressive case for how markets can produce "desirable" outcomes for society. In addition to a comprehensive account of what he calls "virtues" of markets, such as their tendency to produce cooperation, trust, and wealth, the book is full of useful and persuasive supporting information and discussions.

Oman is not only a fan of markets, but he asserts that markets are the "center" of contract theory, and provide its normative foundation. Elaborating, Oman concludes that "contract law exists primarily to support markets" and that "contracts …

The Regulation Of Residential Real Estate Finance Under Trump, David Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs was one of President Trump’s first Executive Orders. He signed it on January 30, 2017, just days after his inauguration. It states that it “is the policy of the executive branch to be prudent and financially responsible in the expenditure of funds, from both public and private sources. . . . [I]t is essential to manage the costs associated with the governmental imposition of private expenditures required to comply with Federal regulations.” The Reducing Regulation Executive Order outlined a broad deregulatory agenda, but was short on details other than the requirement that every new …

Contested Visions: The Value Of Systems Theory For Corporate Law, Tamara Belinfanti, Lynn A. Stout

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Despite the dominant role corporations play in our economy, culture, and politics, the nature and purpose of corporations remains hotly contested. This conflict was brought to the fore in the recent Supreme Court opinions in Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. Although the prevailing narrative for the past quarter-century has been that corporations “belong” to shareholders and should pursue “shareholder value,” support for this approach, which has been justified as essential for managerial accountability, is eroding. It persists today primarily in the form of the argument that corporations should seek “long-term” shareholder value. Yet, as this Article shows, when shareholder value …

The Trump Administration And Residential Real Estate Finance, David Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

An executive order titled “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs” was one of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders. He signed it Jan. 30, 2017, just days after his inauguration. It states: “It is the policy of the executive branch to be prudent and financially responsible in the expenditure of funds, from both public and private sources. … It is essential to manage the costs associated with the governmental imposition of private expenditures required to comply with federal regulations.” This executive order outlined a broad deregulatory agenda, but it was short on details other than setting a requirement that every …

E-Hailing And Employment Rights: The Case For An Employment Relationship Between Uber And Its Drivers In South Africa, Isaiah J. Marcano

Cornell International Law Journal

South Africa’s Uber dilemma has forced jurists to answer important questions about the country’s largest black-owned sector: the taxi industry. Since the days of apartheid, taxi drivers have struggled to secure their livelihoods. Lamentably, they have found themselves restricted by a legacy of oppression that, despite significant progress, lingers on. As of late, Uber has exploded onto the transportation market, and labor courts must decide whether Uber drivers fit within a system that never contemplated the emergence of gig economy companies. If future jurists continue to draw inspiration from South Africa’s highly progressive constitution, international agreements, and pro-union culture, it …

Stricken: The Need For Positive Statutory Law To Prevent Discriminatory Peremptory Strikes Of Disabled Jurors, Jordan Benson

Cornell Law Review

A representative jury ensures a truly impartial trial and that all groups are able to share in this valuable opportunity for civic engagement.Though the disabled constitute a minority of the population, their viewpoint is no less necessary to securing the benefits of a representative jury than that of groups already afforded protection from discriminatory strikes. As the disabled become more represented in many areas of society, their continued underrepresentation on juries will become even more difficult to justify. Discriminatory peremptory strikes are a significant, discretionary means by which the disabled can continue to be excluded from juries even when other …

Volume 28, Number 2 Table Of Contents

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

How Big Is Too Big: Should Certain Higher Educational Endowments' Net Investment Income Be Subject To Tax?, James J. Fishman

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

Section 13701 of the 2017 Tax Reform statute created new Internal Revenue Code § 4968 that imposes a 1.4% excise tax on the net investment income of certain billion-dollar private college and university endowments.

This Article will review and critique the existing endowment excise tax legislation. It also will raise the controversial issue of whether all, or merely the largest, endowments should be subject to any tax whatsoever and will recommend that the revenue from the tax be applied to educational programs. Further, this Article will offer an overview of Congressional and academic criticism of the largest endowments, discuss the …

True Colors: Crime, Race And Colorblindness Revisited, Itay Ravid

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

The violent, racially motivated events of the Charlottesville rally unleashed demons that many Americans believed were long buried. Old Jim Crow-inspired racism came straight through the front door. Yet critics of colorblind policies were not surprised. For them, such an eruption of racial hatred manifested what they had repeatedly argued: colorblind policies neither alter racial predispositions nor affect the unequal treatment of minorities in the United States. In fact, colorblindness has given rise to a modern, latent type of racism. This Article empirically investigates this claim in an unexplored context-the media's colorblind, crime-related coverage policies. Utilizing a novel dataset spanning …

Trouble Counting To Three: Circuit Splits And Confusion In Interpreting The Prison Litigation Reform Act's 'Three Strikes Rule,' 28 U.S.C. § 1915(G), Molly Guptill Manning

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

In 1892, Congress enacted an in forma pauperis statute that waived filing fees for indigent litigants so that anyone, regardless of their financial ability to pay court fees and costs, could bring a federal action. Seventy years later, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that, so long as a case was "not clearly frivolous," in forma pauperis status should be granted, as "it is our duty to assure to the greatest degree possible . . . equal treatment for every litigant before the bar." Yet, by the 1990s, federal courts faced a staggering increase in filings. Civil rights litigation, alone, experienced a …

Clowning Around With Final Agency Action, Beau J. Baumann, Greg Mina

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

While Chevron and Auer deference dominate the administrative law literature, another doctrine—the final agency action requirement—has been perverted by the lower federal courts. Several circuits have developed an undergrowth of formalistic rules that tighten the Supreme Court’s standard, as it was laid out in Bennett v. Spear. This development ignores the Court’s decades-old refrain that the final agency action requirement should be flexible. Unfortunately, this development comes at the worst possible time. The interconnectedness of federal and state agencies has led to a sort of division of labor. Data collection, designations, and enforcement are increasingly divided across different agencies. Because …

Custody, Visitation, And Parental Rights Under Scrutiny, Mark Strasser

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

The Supreme Court recognized long ago that the United States Constitution protects parental rights, even though those rights are not expressly mentioned anywhere in that document. However, in many of the relevant cases, the Court recognizes the importance of parental rights on the one hand and undercuts the breadth or robustness of those very rights on the other. The Court’s parental rights jurisprudence has consistently sent mixed messages, which has exacerbated the degree to which states differ with respect to how readily those rights may be overridden.

Part I of this Article discusses the Court’s parental rights jurisprudence, noting how …

Should We Use A Class Action's Impact On Stock Price To Gauge The Reasonableness Of Class Counsel's Fee?, John Fitzgerald Ready

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

If a deterrence rationale fuels the engine that is class action litigation, then its principles should inform our efforts to cure the imperfections in class counsel compensation schemes. Class action defendants are deterred from wrongdoing when it becomes economically unwise to act as such. For publicly-traded companies, the economic prudence of their conduct depends on shareholder perception. Class actions are bad news for shareholders of the named defendant public company. In response, the market reacts, a company’s share price decreases, and a message is sent to the company about the imprudence of its conduct. A question then arises: should we …

Women’S Rights In The Dprk: Discrepancies Between International And Domestic Legal Instruments In Promoting Women’S Rights And The Reality Reflected By North Korean Defectors, Jina Yang

Cornell International Law Journal

It is commendable that the DPRK has ratified the CEDAW and has established legislative measures to protect women from violence and guarantee equal protection. However short of internationally accepted human rights standard the DPRK may fall, such actions show that the DPRK is nonetheless trying to be a responsible member of the international community. However, many findings show that women’s rights are far from reaching the international standards, because of patriarchal traditions that are entrenched to the North Korean society and the national institutions related to women’s rights, which are used to mobilize women to work for the state, rather …

Taking Ihi, R2p And Legitimate Defense Seriously: North Korea As The Primary Consideration, Morse Tan

Cornell International Law Journal

North Korea has the worst human rights crisis in terms of the breadth and extent of its violations, and also presents the most serious security crisis in the world. A trio of doctrines— International Humanitarian Intervention, the Responsibility to Protect, and legitimate defense— provide the foundation for a range of solutions and approaches to resolve this crisis. At the same time, North Korea poses real dangers, the situation is delicate, and the resolutions may prove difficult. Strong determination is necessary to stay the course until the Koreas reunite, ideally in a peaceful manner. The situation has moved rapidly over the …

The "Peace Treaty" As A U.S. Doctrinal Option And Its Application To The Dprk: A Historical And Analytic Review, Eric Yong-Joong Lee

Cornell International Law Journal

Wars have made great contributions to the development of the U.S. Because the U.S. has often been victorious, achieving the purpose of their war, most wars ended with a surrender of the enemy or declaration of termination. The Americans concluded peace treaties only when they wanted to fundamentally restructure the regional order after the war or to realize their strategic interest from a broader, longer perspective in some parts of the world. This research is to analyze the peace treaties that the U.S. has signed so far or has mediated upon, searching for the possibility of making a U.S.-DPRK peace …

North Korean Detention Of U.S. Citizens: International Law Violations And Means For Recourse, Patricia Goedde, Andrew Wolman

Cornell International Law Journal

North Korean detention of U.S. citizens has prompted considerable attention in the U.S. media over the years, especially with the most recent case of Otto Warmbier’s death. Releases have usually been negotiated through diplomatic channels on a humanitarian basis. While detainee treatment is influenced primarily by political considerations, this Article asks what international legal implications arise from these detentions in terms of international law violations and recourse. Specifically, this Article analyzes (1) violations of consular law and international human rights law as applied to the detainees, such as standards for arrest, investigation, trial, and detention, and (2) whether viable legal …

Labor And Human Rights Conditions Of North Korean Workers Dispatched Overseas: A Look At The Dprk’S Exploitative Practices In Russia, Poland, And Mongolia, Teodora Gyupchanova

Cornell International Law Journal

The Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB) has so far dedicated over three years to a focused research on the human rights conditions of North Korean laborers overseas. In this amount of time NKDB researchers have only managed to uncover a small fraction of the abuses endured by the North Korean citizens dispatched overseas to earn revenue for the North Korean regime. There is a lot of work that still needs to be done, which should involve investigation of the working and living conditions of North Korean laborers residing in different countries, seeking accountability from the entities, government …

Foreign Initial Coin Offering Issuers Beware: The Securities And Exchange Commission Is Watching, Julianna Debler

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.