Law Commons^™

The Lost Promise Of Private Ordering, Cathy Hwang, Yaron Nili, Jeremy Mcclane

Faculty Scholarship

The agency problem is corporate law’s most enduring challenge: when corporate managers spend investors’ money, how does the law protect investors from reckless management? Scholars of law, finance, and accounting have suggested that in one corner of corporate law—corporate debt—a powerful tool exists to mitigate the agency problem. Specifically, through loan covenants, lenders can force borrowers to comply with lenders’ preferences, thereby mitigating the agency problem in lending.

But loan covenants are disappearing. Over the last decade, loan covenants have become fewer and skinnier, and so called “covenant-lite” or “cov-lite” loans have become dominant. If loan covenants do such a …

Side Letter Governance, Elisabeth De Fontenay, Yaron Nili

Faculty Scholarship

A standard feature of the private equity industry, “side letters” are confidential agreements between the sponsor and individual investors that give the latter special rights, beyond those that apply to other investors in the private equity fund. Yet side letters have become a flashpoint for prominent critics of the industry, who argue that they allow private equity sponsors to benefit their favored investors at the expense of smaller, less sophisticated ones. Others have argued that, to the contrary, side letters are merely an efficient means of price discrimination—charging different prices to different investors, according to their willingness to pay—a practice …

Common Good Gun Rights, Darrell A. H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Flexible Institution Building In The International Anti-Corruption Regime: Proposing A Transnational Asset Recovery Mechanism, Laurence R. Helfer, Cecily Rose, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

Asset recovery is a fundamental principle of anti-corruption law, without which the financial damage from corruption cannot be repaired. Yet recovering assets is notoriously difficult and time-consuming, and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption provides little technical or institutional support to facilitate such returns. To remedy this, we propose the creation of a transnational asset recovery mechanism that could provide myriad services to states upon request, including gathering and publishing information, providing technical assistance and capacity building, helping to conclude agreements on asset return, and monitoring returned funds. Theoretically, we introduce the concepts of customizability and selectability to explain why …

Judging Firearms Evidence And The Rule 702 Amendments, Brandon Garrett, Nicholas Scurich, Eric Tucker, Hannah Bloom

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Autonomy And Disciplinarity: Can Pseudoprofessional Speakers Select Their Own Constitutional Categorization?, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Law And Business Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents, James D. Cox, Sarah C. Haan, Faith Stevelman, J. Robert Brown Jr., Joan Macleod Heminway

Faculty Scholarship

Omissions of disclosure required by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or Commission) in Item 303 of Regulation S-K can be a basis for an action under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act). Disclosures mandated by the SEC in periodic reports are not optional. That these obligations can create a “duty” to disclose under Rule 10b-5(b) is consistent with congressional intent, state court opinions, the common law, and with the longstanding understanding of the federal securities laws (including those of legal scholars and the SEC). This case does not, therefore, seek to “impermissibly expand” the …

Brief Of Intellectual Property Law Professors And Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of The Respondents, Bernard Chao, Kevin Emerson Collins, Christopher A. Cotropia, Charles Duan, Oskar Liivak, Joseph Scott Miller, Arti K. Rai, Michael S. Sinha, S. Sean Tu, Liza Vertinsky

Faculty Scholarship

This amicus brief was written in support of Sanofi (generic pharmaceutical firm). The brief explains why patent claims cannot exceed the scope of what was disclosed in the patent specification. The brief argues that when a patentee invents narrowly, meaning they find and disclose only a limited set of solutions and where they cannot provide a generalizable principle that unites a broader set of solutions, then that inventor has not invented broadly. Accordingly, their claims should be limited to what was explicitly disclosed.

Minding Rights: Mapping Ethical And Legal Foundations Of ‘Neurorights’, Sjors Ligthart, Marcello Ienca, Gerben Meynen, Fruzsina Molnar-Gabor, Roberto Andorno, Christoph Bublitz, Paul Catley, Lisa Claydon, Thomas Douglas, Nita A. Farahany, Joseph J. Fins, Sara Goering, Pim Haselager, Fabrice Jotterand, Andrea Lavazza, Allan Mccay, Abel Wajnerman Paz, Stephen Rainey, Jesper Ryberg, Philipp Kellmeyer

Faculty Scholarship

The rise of neurotechnologies, especially in combination with artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods for brain data analytics, has given rise to concerns around the protection of mental privacy, mental integrity and cognitive liberty – often framed as “neurorights” in ethical, legal, and policy discussions. Several states are now looking at including neurorights into their constitutional legal frameworks, and international institutions and organizations, such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe, are taking an active interest in developing international policy and governance guidelines on this issue. However, in many discussions of neurorights the philosophical assumptions, ethical frames of reference and legal interpretation …

Open Prosecution, Brandon L. Garrett, William E. Crozier, Kevin Dahaghi, Elizabeth J. Gifford, Catherine Grodensky, Adele Quigley-Mcbride, Jennifer Teitcher

Faculty Scholarship

Where the vast majority of criminal cases are resolved without a trial, the criminal system in the United States is a system of pleas, not trials. While a plea, its terms, and the resulting sentence entered in court are all public, how the outcome was negotiated remains almost entirely nonpublic. Prosecutors may resolve cases for reasons that are benign, thoughtful, and well-calibrated—or discriminatory, self-interested, and arbitrary—with very little oversight or sunlight. For years, academics and policymakers have called for meaningful data to fill this crucial void.

In this Article, we open the “black box” of prosecutorial discretion by tasking prosecutors …

Masks, Mayhem & The Future Of Disability Rights In Schools, Claire Raj, Crystal Grant

Faculty Scholarship

Disability rights took center stage in the recent battles over universal mask mandates in public schools. Pro-mask advocates argued that universal mask policies were necessary to ensure equal access to education under two different federal disability statutes, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Opponents argued universal masking was an infringement on personal liberty and uncalled for by either law. Courts responded with a great deal of confusion that resulted in disparate legal outcomes for cases with essentially the same facts. This confusion, however, is not new—it is rooted in decades of doctrinally …

On The Basis Of Childbirth: How The Federal Clerkship's Lack Of Parental Leave Fosters Gender Inequality, Bailey K. Sanders

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay argues that the lack of paid parental leave for federal law clerks enables pregnancy discrimination, restricts women’s reproductive choice, and perpetuates gender inequality within the legal profession. Protections against pregnancy discrimination are hollow when clerks can be fired—or have clerkship offers rescinded—for requiring maternity leave, and the lack of leave disproportionately impacts female clerks by constraining their ability to pursue career and family simultaneously. The lack of leave also restricts (some) pregnant women’s reproductive choice by forcing them to choose between keeping their position or carrying their pregnancy to term. Such a state of affairs was intolerable in …

The Meta Oversight Board's Human Rights Future, Laurence R. Helfer, Molly K. Land

Faculty Scholarship

Responses to the new Oversight Board created by Facebook (now Meta) have run the gamut from enthusiastic to overtly suspicious. Many observers are highly skeptical of the Board’s ability to hold Meta accountable or to protect the company’s users. Much of this skepticism is based on a misplaced analogy between the Board and domestic courts. We argue, in contrast, that the core challenges and opportunities that the Oversight Board faces are similar to those confronted by international human rights tribunals. Analyzing the Oversight Board as a de facto human rights tribunal sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses of its …

Retribution Or Reconciliation? Post-Conflict Attitudes Toward Enemy Collaborators, Kristen Kao, Mara R. Revkin

Faculty Scholarship

Armed groups seeking to govern territory require the cooperation of many civilians, who are widely perceived as enemy collaborators after conflict ends. The empirical literature on attitudes toward transitional justice focuses heavily on fighters, overlooking more nuanced understandings of proportional justice for civilian collaborators. Through a survey experiment conducted in an Iraqi city that was controlled by the Islamic State, we find that variations in the type of collaboration an actor engages in strongly determine preferences for punishment and forgiveness. While exposure to violence is associated with a greater desire for revenge, perceived volition behind an act—a relatively unstudied factor—is …

Can Machines Commit Crimes Under Us Antitrust Laws?, Aslihan Asil, Thomas Wollmann

Faculty Scholarship

Generative artificial intelligence is being rapidly deployed for corporate tasks including pricing. Suppose one of these machines communicates with the pricing manager of a competing firm, proposes to collude, receives assent, and raises price. Is this a crime under U.S. antitrust laws, and, if so, who is liable? Based on the observed behavior of the most widely adopted large language model, we argue that this conduct is imminent, satisfies the requirements for agreement and intent under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, and could confer criminal liability to both firms as well as the pricing manager of the competing firm.

Misaligned Measures Of Control: Private Equity's Antitrust Loophole, Aslihan Asil, John M. Barrios, Thomas G. Wollmann

Faculty Scholarship

Agencies and legislators have raised concerns that acquisitions backed by private equity (PE) threaten competition, but few, if any, have offered explanations as to why they pose a unique threat. In this article, we argue that many PE-backed acquisitions may avoid antitrust enforcement because they escape detection. Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, parties intending to merge must notify federal authorities and wait for clearance. However, various exemptions exist based on the size of the transaction, parties involved, and proportion of control conferred by the merger. Recent work demonstrates that to police mergers effectively, agencies must be informed about transactions …

A New Era At The Court Of International Trade: Endemic, Executive Orders, And Enforcement, Timothy Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Finance Against Law: The Case Of China, Shitong Qiao

Faculty Scholarship

Can there be a highly developed financial market without legal protection for investors and creditors? The influential law and finance literature is built on the assumption that legal protection is essential to the development of an impersonal financial market. This Article investigates how two financial markets of trillions of dollars have developed extralegally in the past two decades despite the risk of regulatory enforcement and contract defaults. Specifically, I examine (1) how Chinese internet companies from Sina to Alibaba have designed contracts to circumvent the Chinese government’s ban on foreign capital in its internet industry and (2) how Chinese entities …

Forced Justice: The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, Sara L. Ochs, Kirbi Walters

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC), the court created to adjudicate war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo at the turn of the century, is the world’s newest hybrid tribunal. The KSC is classified as a hybrid tribunal because it ostensibly blends aspects of international and domestic law and resources. Upon examination, however, the KSC departs in critical ways from the traditional concept of a hybrid tribunal, representing an internationally dominated court with minimal local involvement. By detailing the history of judicial mechanisms employed to prosecute crimes committed during and in the aftermath of the Kosovo War from 1998-1999, …

Fighting Words: Catalonia At The Language Instruction Crossroads, Jane Tien

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

The schism between Spain and Catalonia obscures a struggle over the teaching language for non-linguistic subjects in Catalonia's public schools. The recent two decades decanted into Catalan society two Spanish Constitutional Court rulings mandating a Castilian-Catalan conjunctive instruction model—with Catalan as the "center of gravity"—and tasking the Catalan legislature with configuring that "center." Pleasing none and spurned by all, the Constitutional Court duology emboldened activist lower courts to bypass the Catalan legislature, while schools in Catalonia continued to teach almost exclusively in Catalan. With the Castilians alienated and the Catalans defiant, language instruction in Catalonia turned into a festering wound …

Tribal Sovereignty And The Right To Life, Clare Holtzman

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

On August 26, 2020, the only Native American on federal death row, Lezmond Mitchell was executed by the federal government for the murder of two Navajo citizens on Navajo Nation land. Federal law typically gives Tribal Nations the right to determine whether the death penalty is used against their citizens for crimes committed between Tribal citizens on Tribal land. Yet here, the federal government utilized a loophole to seek the death penalty against the Navajo Nation's wishes. Lezmond Mitchell was not a sympathetic man by any means; indeed, he brutally killed a grandmother and her young granddaughter to steal their …

Bankruptcy Basics: What The U.S. Can Learn From The U.K. Filing Processes, Courtney Kobren

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

Although filing for bankruptcy is the primary form of economic relief for U.S. consumers in financial distress, pro se debtors lack access to the consumer bankruptcy system. An individual debtor faces many challenges when filing for bankruptcy without an attorney, since the debtor must rely on free access to the information provided by the U.S. Courts website. However, that information is vague and presented in complex legalese and dissuasive diction. On the other hand, U.K. debtors who need financial relief can file for bankruptcy through a clear and accessible bankruptcy filing process. U.K. debtors also have access to free consumer …

Sovereignty In The Era Of Fragmentation – Eu Trade Agreements And The Notion Of Statehood In International Law, Harri Kalimo, Shorena Nikoleishvili

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

In this article, we explore the theme of sovereignty in the context of fragmented international law. We observe that the sovereignty of States may become relativized, not only by the political power of other States, but by its exposure to multiple, functionally separate fields of law. We analyze this theme by asking whether trade agreements as instruments of economic law offer a venue for discussing the sovereignty of sub-statal entities that lack standing on the more traditional international forums. Our analysis focuses first on a recent decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which concerned the status …

Journal Staff

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

No abstract provided.

An Ad Hoc Dispute Settlement Mechanism Or A Harmonization Mission? A Reappraisal Of Jurisprudential Fragmentation In International Investment Arbitration, Mohammad Hamdy

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

Contrary to the numerous accounts of fragmentation in investment arbitration case law, this Article shows that the case law depicts a high degree of cohesion. The Article argues that jurisprudence in investment arbitration is stabilized by distinct mainstream interpretations of the key provisions of bilateral investment treaties, the main legal instrument in international investment law. The Article considers the frequently cited disagreements among arbitral tribunals in light of competing commitments to either regulatory pluralism or harmonization. It demonstrates that the vast majority of tribunals interpret bilateral investment treaties in a way that circumscribes pluralism and furthers the harmonization of the …

Digital Habit Evidence, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Duke Law Journal

This Article explores how “habit evidence” will become a catalyst for a new form of digital proof based on the explosive growth of smart homes, smart cars, smart devices, and the Internet of Things. Habit evidence is the rule that certain sorts of semiautomatic, regularized responses to particular stimuli are trustworthy and thus admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence (“FRE”) 406 “Habit; Routine Practice” and state equivalents.

While well established since the common law, “habit” has made only an inconsistent appearance in reported cases and has been underutilized in trial practice. But intriguingly, once applied to the world of …

Employed Algorithms: A Labor Model Of Corporate Liability For Ai, Mihailis E. Diamantis

Duke Law Journal

The workforce is digitizing. Leading consultancies estimate that algorithmic systems will replace 45 percent of human-held jobs by 2030. One feature that algorithms share with the human employees they are replacing is their capacity to cause harm. Even today, corporate algorithms discriminate against loan applicants, manipulate stock markets, collude over prices, and cause traffic deaths. Ordinarily, corporate employers would be responsible for these injuries, but the rules for assessing corporate liability arose at a time when only humans could act on behalf of corporations. Those rules apply awkwardly, if at all, to silicon. Some corporations have already discovered this legal …

Prescribing A Change To The Fda's Drug Labeling Rules After The 21st Century Cures Act, P. Sydney Engle

Duke Law Journal

Signed into law in 2016, the 21st Century Cures Act offers new hope to patients by empowering the FDA to expedite review of innovative, potentially lifesaving drugs. But these expedited approvals raise the risk that pivotal drug safety and efficacy data will not arise until after the drug is already on the market. The Cures Act failed to respond to two key aspects of shifting the discovery of safety and efficacy data to the postmarket phase. First, the Cures Act did not correspondingly enhance the FDA’s authority to require manufacturers to generate and disclose postmarket information. Second, it did not …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Not So Civil Commitment: A Proposal For Statutory Reform Grounded In Procedural Justice, Margaret J. Lederer

Duke Law Journal

Every year, millions of Americans struggle with serious mental illness. Of them, thousands experience civil, or involuntary, commitment—that is, hospitals invoke the coercive power of the state to force these individuals into psychiatric hospitals against their will. Whether someone requires hospitalization is a complex question of psychology, medicine, and substantive law.

But the process of civil commitment itself is troubling. Across the board, states fail to afford those facing civil commitment meaningful procedural protections. Current state laws subject individuals facing commitment to extended periods of confinement with little to no judicial intervention. Indeed, individuals facing commitment may wait weeks or …