Law Commons^™

Aggregation As Disempowerment: Red Flags In Class Action Settlements, Howard M. Erichson

Faculty Scholarship

Class action critics and proponents cling to the conventional wisdom that class actions empower claimants. Critics complain that class actions over-empower claimants and put defendants at a disadvantage, while proponents defend class actions as essential to consumer protection and rights enforcement. This Article explores how class action settlements sometimes do the opposite. Aggregation empowers claimants’ lawyers by consolidating power in the lawyers’ hands. Consolidation of power allows defendants to strike deals that benefit themselves and claimants’ lawyers while disadvantaging claimants. This Article considers the phenomenon of aggregation as disempowerment by looking at specific settlement features that benefit plaintiffs’ counsel and …

The Futility Of Law And Development: China And The Dangers Of Exporting American Law, Martin S. Flaherty

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Two, Three Many Rosas! Rebellious Lawyers And Progressive Activist Organizations, Brian Glick

Faculty Scholarship

The cast of prototypic rebellious lawyers promoted by Gerald Lopez is incomplete. It leaves out a very important mode of lawyering: that of working for a progressive activist organization. To fill that gap, this essay introduces “Rosa,” a lawyer on the staff of an organization of low-wage workers fighting for workplace justice and systemic change. The essay argues that working for such organizations in a way that is accountable to the organizations is an especially effective way for lawyers to contribute to economic, racial, gender, social and environmental justice. It examines three current models of such practice: in-house, in an …

Rethinking Prosecutors' Conflicts Of Interest, Bruce A. Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Urban Policing And Public Policy— The Prosecutor’S Role, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dead Hand Proxy Puts And Shareholder, Sean J. Griffith, Natalia Reisel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Objections To Disclosure Settlements: A How-To Guide, Sean J. Griffith, Anthony A. Rickey

Faculty Scholarship

Stockholder litigation remains in crisis, with over seventy percent of major mergers and acquisitions subject to litigation. A contributing factor is the breakdown of the adversary process at settlement, when former opponents join hands in favor of a compromise that too often expends corporate resources for no real recovery to the plaintiff class. One obvious corrective is the shareholder’s objection to settlement, which restores adversarial character to the settlement process. Shareholders, however, face substantial difficulties in making such objections. In this article, the authors detail the problem and share their experiences in addressing these obstacles, providing a how-to manual for …

Early Childhood Development And The Law, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lawful Gun Carriers (Police And Armed Citizens): License, Escalation And Race, Nicholas J. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Right To Regulate In Investor-State Arbitration: Slicing And Dicing Regulatory Carve-Outs, Vera Korzun

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the "right to regulate" as the power of a sovereign state to adopt and maintain government measures for public welfare objectives. It explores how claims by foreign investors in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) may interfere with the state's ability to regulate, and how the state can protect its right in international investment agreements. The article first explains the structure of modern international investment law and dispute resolution. It next turns to the right to regulate and explores why regulatory disputes represent a major challenge for ISDS. It continues by analyzing how exceptions, exclusions, and other safeguard provisions …

The Price Of Judicial Economy In The Us, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In the US, courts widely perceive that judicial scarcity is a common problem threatening the fair and timely resolution of disputes. Courts cite the attendant interest in judicial economy to justify interpreting the procedural and substantive law to reduce the judicial workload or accelerate the resolution of cases. But courts’ assumption that there are too few judges to handle the current caseload is hard to substantiate. First, it may not be possible to infer from excessive judicial backlogs or other perceived judicial deficiencies that a shortfall of judges is to blame. Second, even when one confidently perceives that a judicial …

Designing Systems For Achieving Justice After A Peace Agreement: Northern Ireland's Struggle With The Past, Jacqueline Nolan-Haley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt As Lord Of The Admiralty 1913-1920, Joseph Sweeney

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Andrea Yates: A Continuing Story About Insanity, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Natural Born Citizen, Thomas H. Lee

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Seow Hon Tan: Justice As Friendship: A Theory Of Law, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Accountable Algorithms, Joel R. Reidenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Principal Costs: A New Theory For Corporate Law And Governance, Richard Squire

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Coordinating Access To Justice For Low And Moderate Income People, Ian Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Protean Statutory Interpretation In The Courts Of Appeals, James J. Brudney, Lawrence Baum

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is the first in-depth empirical and doctrinal analysis of differences in statutory interpretation between the courts of appeals and the Supreme Court. It is also among the first to anticipate how the Supreme Court’s interpretive approach may shift with the passing of Justice Scalia.

We begin by identifying factors that may contribute to interpretive divergence between the two judicial levels, based on their different institutional structures and operational realities. In doing so, we discuss normative implications that may follow from the prospect of such interpretive divergence. We then examine how three circuit courts have used dictionaries and legislative …

The Troubling Turn In State Preemption: The Assault On Progressive Cities And How Cities Can Respond, Richard Briffault, Nestor M. Davidson, Paul A. Diller, Olatunde Johnson, Richard C. Schragger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Color Of Kinship, Robin A. Lenhardt

Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses the need for family law scholarship that better theorizes and grapples with how race informs American life in the 21st Century. Family law scholars have been instrumental in documenting and advocating for recognition of the “new kinship”—familial relationships and affective ties forged outside of marriage and amidst dramatic demographic shifts. In doing so, though, they have largely ignored race, focusing instead on matters such as gender or class. The assumption is that kinship is raceneutral. But, in fact, kinship has a color. Part II explores this reality by analyzing Cramblett v. Midwest Sperm Banks, LLC, a case …

The Great Etf Tax Swindle: The Taxation Of In-Kind Redemptions, Jeffrey M. Colon

Faculty Scholarship

Since the repeal of the General Utilities doctrine over 30 years ago, corporations must recognize gain when distributing appreciated property to their shareholders. Regulated investment companies (RICs), which generally must be organized as domestic corporations, are exempt from this rule when distributing property in kind to a redeeming shareholder.

In-kind redemptions, while rare for mutual funds, are a fundamental feature of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Because fund managers decide which securities to distribute, they distribute assets with unrealized gains and thereby significantly reduce the future tax burdens of their current and future shareholders. Many ETFs have morphed into investment vehicles that …

Deadly Dust: Occupational Health And Safety As A Driving Force In Workers’ Compensation Law And The Development Of Tort Doctrine And Practice, George Conk

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Hidden Though Flourishing Justification Of Intellectual Property Laws: Distributive Justice, National Versus International Approaches, Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Regulating The Human Supply Chain, Jennifer Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past decade, the United States has experienced a stunning 65% decline in undocumented immigration. While politicians seem unaware of this change, firms that once relied on local undocumented workers as a low-wage labor force feel it acutely. Such companies have increasingly applied to sponsor temporary migrants from abroad (sometimes called “guest workers”) to fill empty jobs. In 2015, the number of migrant workers entering the United States on visas was nearly double that of undocumented arrivals—almost the inverse of just 10 years earlier. Yet notice of this dramatic shift, and examination of its implications for U.S. law and …

Prosecutorial Ethics In Retrospect, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the ethical regulation of prosecutors over the past three decades. The topic is important from the perspective of criminal justice, no less than legal ethics, because prosecutors are centrally responsible for administering the criminal law. Courts assume that the principal role in regulating prosecutors should be played by the states' formal attorney disciplinary processes rather than by civil liability or judicial oversight in criminal cases. However, there has been a well-justified academic and professional consensus that the disciplinary processes fail to fulfill their expected role because, when it comes to prosecutors, ethics rules are neither sufficiently restrictive …

Symposium: Confronting New Market Realities: Implications For Stockholders Rights To Vote, Sell And Sue: Objections To Disclosure Settlements: A “How To” Guide”, Sean J. Griffith, Anthony A. Rickey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Digitocracy, Joel R. Reidenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.