Law Commons^™

Redefining "Medical Care", Lauren R. Roth

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

President Donald J. Trump has said he will repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with health savings accounts (HSAs). Conservatives have long preferred individual accounts to meet social welfare needs instead of more traditional entitlement programs. The types of "medical care" that can be reimbursed through an HSA are listed in § 213(d) of the Internal Revenue Code (Code) and include expenses "for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or for the purpose of affecting any structure or function of the body."

In spite of the broad language, regulations and court interpretations have narrowed …

Trial By Numbers, Rebecca K. Helm, Valerie P. Hans, Valerie F. Reyna

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

Legal cases often require jurors to use numerical information. They may need to evaluate the meaning of specific numbers, such as the probability of match between a suspect and a DNA sample, or they may need to arrive at a sound numerical judgment, such as a money damage award. Thus, it is important to know how jurors understand numerical information, and what steps can be taken to increase juror comprehension and appropriate application of numerical evidence. In this Article, we examine two types of juror decisions involving numbers--decisions in which jurors must convert numbers into meaning (such as by understanding …

Cross-Examination, College Sexual-Assault Adjudications, And The Opportunity For Tuning Up The "Greatest Legal Engine Ever Invented", H. Hunter Bruton

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

With its reputation as the "greatest legal engine ever invented" cross-examination rarely receives critical evaluation. This Article seeks to narrow that academic gap and offer pragmatic advice to policymakers and judges considering the in-the-trenches issues of cross-examination. Despite a great body of empirical and interdisciplinary work on cross-examination, legal scholarship often relegates discussion of cross-examination's benefits and costs to an errant footnote or a short paragraph. But cross-examination's efficacy should not be an afterthought or aside to doctrinal exegesis. Answers to the hardest questions about the presence, scope, and format of cross-examination rely on assumptions about the benefits and costs …

Frozen Conflicts And International Law, Thomas D. Grant

Cornell International Law Journal

Scholars (mostly in international relations and politics) and policymakers (in various countries) have referred to a series of conflicts in the space of the former USSR as “frozen conflicts.” Because some now speak of new “frozen conflicts” emerging, it is timely to ask what— if any— legal meaning this expression contains. Moreover, how we characterize these conflicts affects legal and other procedures the parties and others might apply to resolve them. Beyond the open questions of semantics and taxonomy, the so-called “frozen conflicts” merit attention because of their salience to the dispute settlement machinery that they so largely have frustrated.

Governance Challenges Of Listed State- Owned Enterprises Around The World: National Experiences And A Framework For Reform, Curtis J. Milhaupt, Mariana Pargendler

Cornell International Law Journal

Despite predictions of their demise in the aftermath of the collapse of socialist economies in Eastern Europe, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are very much alive in the global economy. The relevance of listed SOEs— firms subject to government ownership, but with a portion of their shares traded on public stock markets— has persisted and even increased around the world, as policymakers have encouraged the partial floating of SOE shares either as a first step toward, or as an alternative to, privatization. In this Article, we evaluate the governance challenges associated with mixed ownership of enterprise, and examine a variety of national …

Lgbt Rights Are Human Rights: Conditioning Foreign Direct Investments On Domestic Policy Reform, Dara P. Brown

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Global Body And A Global Problem: The Curious Case Of The G-20 And Securities Regulation, Tamilla Nurizada

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Monsanto Lecture: The Complicated Business Of State Supreme Court Elections: An Empirical Perspective, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Proponents of judicial elections and related campaign activities emphasize existing First Amendment jurisprudence as well as similarities linking publicly elected state judges and other publicly-elected state officials. Opponents focus on judicial campaign contributions’ corrosive effects, including their potential to unduly influence judicial outcomes. Using a comprehensive data set of 2,345 business-related cases decided by state supreme courts across all fifty states between 2010–12, judicial election critics, including Professor Joanna Shepherd, emphasize the potential for bias and find that campaign contributions from business sources to state supreme court judicial candidates corresponded with candidates’ pro-business votes as justices. While Shepherd’s main findings …

Signing Statements And Presidentializing Legislative History, John M. De Figueiredo, Edward H. Stiglitz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Presidents often attach statements to the bills they sign into law, purporting to celebrate, construe, or object to provisions in the statute. Though long a feature of U.S. lawmaking, the President has avowedly attempted to use these signing statements as tool of strategic influence over judicial decisionmaking since the 1980s—as a way of creating “presidential legislative history” to supplement and, at times, supplant the traditional congressional legislative history conventionally used by the courts to interpret statutes. In this Article, we examine a novel dataset of judicial opinion citations to presidential signing statements to conduct the most comprehensive empirical examination of …

Comity And International Courts And Tribunals, Thomas Schultz, Niccolo Ridi

Cornell International Law Journal

This study seeks to clarify the importance, current and potential, of the use of comity by international courts and tribunals. Our findings support the idea that comity might be an emerging principle of procedural law, though agreement on its exact meaning— or unequivocal choices among its many connotations— still tends to be uncommon. We submit that, as long as other solutions are not in place, the principle can be successfully employed to assist international courts and tribunals in mediating jurisdictional conflicts between themselves by balancing coordination efforts and the demands of justice in the individual cases.

Comity may serve as …

General Theory Of Law And Development, Yong-Shik Lee

Cornell International Law Journal

Although scholarship in law and development that explores the relationship between law and social and economic progress has evolved over the last four decades, this area of inquiry remains unfamiliar to many legal scholars, lawyers, and policy makers. Scholars have not yet been able to develop a theory that systematically explains the interrelationship between law and development, which would establish law and development as a robust and coherent academic field. This Article attempts to fill this gap by presenting a general theory that defines the disciplinary parameters of law and development, and explains the mechanisms by which law impacts development. …

The Federal Home Loan Bank System: A Bibliography, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

This is an unannotated bibliography of writings through 2016 primarily about the Federal Home Loan Bank System (FHLBS), but it also includes materials regarding the savings and loan (S&L) industry. While it is comprehensive, it is not exhaustive, with a focus on work published by government agencies, economists, legal and policy scholars, private sector analysts and think tanks. The bibliography also includes other materials about the housing finance market in the 19th and early 20th Century. These materials provide some context for the operations of the FHLBS and the S&L industry.

Congressional And Presidential War Powers As A Dialogue: Analysis Of The Syrian And Isis Conflicts, Charles Tiefer, Kathleen Clark

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

How People Update Beliefs About Climate Change: Good News And Bad News, Cass R. Sunstein, Sebastian Bobadilla-Suarez, Stephanie C. Lazzaro, Tali Sharot

Cornell Law Review

People are frequently exposed to competing evidence about climate change. We examined how new information alters people’s beliefs. We find that people who are not sure that man-made climate change is occurring, and who do not favor an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, show a form of asymmetrical updating: They change their beliefs in response to unexpected good news (suggesting that average temperature rise is likely to be less than previously thought) and fail to change their beliefs in response to unexpected bad news (suggesting that average temperature rise is likely to be greater than previously thought). By …

Debate, Richard Primus, Kevin M. Stack, Christopher Serkin, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Order Without Intellectual Property Law : Open Science In Influenza, Amy Kapczynski

Cornell Law Review

Today, intellectual property (IP) scholars accept that IP as an approach to information production has serious limits. But what lies beyond IP? A new literature on “intellectual production without IP” (or “IP without IP”) has emerged to explore this question, but its examples and explanations have yet to convince skeptics. This Article reorients this new literature via a study of a hard case: a global influenza virus-sharing network that has for decades produced critically important information goods, at significant expense, and in a loose-knit group—all without recourse to IP. I analyze the Network as an example of “open science,” a …

Repeat Players In Multidistrict Litigation: The Social Network, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Margaret S. Williams

Cornell Law Review

As class certification wanes, plaintiffs’ lawyers resolve hundreds of thousands of individual lawsuits through aggregate settlements in multidistrict litigation. But without class actions, formal rules are scarce and judges rarely scrutinize the private agreements that result. Meanwhile, the same principal- agent concerns that plagued class-action attorneys linger. These circumstances are ripe for exploitation: few rules, little oversight, multi-million dollar common-benefit fees, and a push for settlement can tempt a cadre of repeat players to fill in the gaps in ways that further their own self-interest. Although multidistrict litigation now comprises 36% of the pending federal civil caseload, legal scholars have …

What Would Grandma Say? How To Respond When Cyber Hackers Reveal Private Information To The Public, Jason P. Ottomano

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

The House Always Wins: Systemic Disadvantage For Criminal Defendants And The Case Against The Prosecutorial Veto, Evan G. Hall

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Should Compensated Surrogacy Be Permitted Or Prohibited?, Cornell Law School. International Human Rights Policy Advocacy Clinic, National Law University, Delhi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Surrogacy provides a way for infertile people, as well as same-sex couples and single individuals, to become parents. Surrogacy is permitted in most states in the United States. In New York, however, surrogacy contracts are void and unenforceable according to a 1992 law. The Child-Parent Security Act of 2017 (the CPSA) would repeal this prohibition, make surrogacy agreements enforceable, and permit surrogates to be compensated for the gestational care they provide. In this report, we review the landscape of state laws in the United States, laws around the world, moral concerns that led to the adoption of the current New …

Mind The Gap: A Systematic Approach To The International Criminal Court's Arrest Warrants Enforcement Problem, Nadia Banteka

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Cfpb Comment Letter Re Atr/Qm Assessment, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Cfpb Comment Letter Re Respa Assessment, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.

The Finance Franchise, Robert C. Hockett, Saule T. Omarova

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Political Economy Of The Constitutional Right To Asylum, Lucas Kowalczyk, Mila Versteeg

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Empowering Individual Plaintiffs, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why Congress Cannot Unilaterally Repeal Puerto Rico's Constitution, Adam W. Mccall

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Disobedient Jury: Why Lawmakers Should Codify Jury Nullification, Caisa E. Royer

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Philosophical Legal Ethics: An Affectionate History, David Luban, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The modern subject of theoretical legal ethics began in the 1970s. This brief history distinguishes two waves of theoretical writing on legal ethics. The "First Wave" connects the subject to moral philosophy and focuses on conflicts between ordinary morality and lawyers' role morality, while the "Second Wave" focuses instead on the role legal representation plays in maintaining and fostering a pluralist democracy. We trace the emergence of the First Wave to the larger social movements of the 1960s and 1970s; in the Conclusion, we speculate about possible directions for a Third Wave of theoretical legal ethics, based in behavioral ethics, …

Dfs Comment Letter Regarding Title Insurance Proposed Regulations, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.