Law Commons^™

Banking The Poor, Michael S. Barr

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

Low-income households often lack access to banking accounts and face high costs for transacting basic financial services through check cashers and other alternative financial service providers. These families find it more difficult to save and plan financially for the future. Living paycheck to paycheck leaves them vulnerable to medical or job emergencies that may endanger their financial stability, and lack of longer-term savings undermines their ability to improve skills, purchase a home, or send their children to college. Additionally, high cost financial services and inadequate access to bank accounts may undermine widely-shared societal goals of reducing poverty, moving families from …

Credible Coercion, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

The ideal of individual liberty and autonomy requires that society provide relief against coercion. In the law, this requirement is often translated into rules that operate “post-coercion” to undo the legal consequences of acts and promises extracted under duress. This Article argues that these ex-post anti-duress measures, rather than helping the coerced party, might in fact hurt her. When coercion is credible—when a credible threat to inflict an even worse outcome underlies the surrender of the coerced party—ex post relief will only induce the strong party to execute the threatened outcome, to the detriment of the coerced party. Anti-duress relief …

Discovering Mr. Cook, Margaret A. Leary

Articles

Before I begin to tell you some of what I've learned as I've tried to discover Mr. [William W.] Cook, please ponder two questions: What are your feelings about the Law Quad buildings? Think, for example of the first time you entered the Quad; studying in the Reading Room; seeing the snowy Quad for the first time; and socializing in the Dining Room. You probably have a flood of memories connected to these buildings. The Law School has outgrown them in many respects, but the buildings will always be inspirational. Second, let me ask what you know about William W. …

Building A Home For The Laws Of The World: Part Ii: Hoping, Hunting, And Honing, Margaret A. Leary

Articles

The following feature is the second, concluding portion of the edited version of "Building a Foreign Law Collection at the University of Michigan Law Library, 1910-1960,"© Margaret A. Leary, 2002, which originally appeared at 94 Law Library Journal 395-425 (2002), and appears here with permission of the author. The first part of the article (46.2 Law Quadrangle Notes 46-53 [Summer 2003] detailed how the vision of Dean Henry Bates, generosity of graduate William W. cook, and skills of librarian/traveler/negotiator Hobart Coffey combined to launch the building of the Law Library's international collection into one of the best in the world.

Enough: The Failure Of The Living Will, Angela Fagerlin, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Enough. The living will has failed, and it is time to say so. We should have known it would fail: A notable but neglected psychological literature always provided arresting reasons to expect the policy of living wills to misfire. Given their alluring potential, perhaps they were worth trying. But a crescendoing empirical literature and persistent clinical disappointments reveal that the rewards of the campaign to promote living wills do not justify its costs. Nor can any degree of tinkering ever make the living will an effective instrument of social policy. As the evidence of failure has mounted, living wills have …

Human Dignity And The Claim Of Meaning: Athenian Tragic Drama And Supreme Court Decisions, James Boyd White

Articles

I am going to bring together what may seem at first to be two extremely different institutions for the creation of public meaning, namely classical Athenian tragedy and the Supreme Court opinion.1 My object is not so much to draw lines of similarity and distinction between them, as a cultural analyst might do, as to try to capture something of what I believe is centrally at work in both institutions, in fact essential to what each at its best achieves. I can frame it as a question: How is it that the best instances of each genre (for I will …

Vol. 54, No. 9, February 17, 2004, University Of Michigan Law School

Res Gestae

•A Mosaic of Faces, Stories: Profiles of Visiting and Adjunct Faculty •Legal Academia 101 •Legal Champion of Illinois Death Row Inmates Brings Her Story to Michigan •Professor Herzog Looks at Patriot Act Through First Amendment Lens •Affirmative Action Panel Discusses Implications of Grutter v. Bollinger •Are Law School and "Normal" Relationships Incompatible? •I am Fricking Freezing Here (or) Oh My God, I am Freezing to Death Here •Talking with Trail-Blazing Professor Sallyanne Payton •LLSA's Annual Juan Tienda Ball Photos •An Open Letter to the Law School Administration •Why the Ford F-150 Should Not Be on Your List •Getting by Bar …

A Comparative Empirical Investigation Of Agency And Market Theories Of Insider Trading, Laura N. Beny

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

The paper summarizes various agency cost and market theories of insider trading propounded over the course of the perennial law and economics debate over insider trading. The paper then suggests three testable hypotheses regarding the relationship between insider trading laws and several measures of financial performance. Using international data and alternative regression specifications, the paper finds that more stringent insider trading laws and enforcement are generally associated with greater ownership dispersion, greater stock price accuracy and greater stock market liquidity. This set of findings provides empirical support to theoretical arguments in favor of more stringent insider trading legislation and enforcement.

"Agreeing To Disagree": Filling Gaps In Deliberately Incomplete Contracts, Omri Ben-Shahar

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

This Article develops a new standard for gap filling in incomplete contracts. It focuses on an important class of situations in which parties leave their agreement deliberately incomplete, with the intent to further negotiate and resolve the remaining issues. In these situations, neither the traditional no-enforcement result nor the usual gap filling approaches accord with the parties’ partial consent. Instead, the Article develops the concept of pro-defendant gap-fillers, under which each party is granted an option to enforce the transaction supplemented with terms most favorable (within reason) to the other party. A deliberately incomplete contract with pro-defendant gap fillers transforms …

Why We Need The Independent Sector: The Behavior, Law, & Ethics Of Not-For-Profit Hospitals, Jill R. Horwitz

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

Among the major forms of corporate ownership, the not-for-profit ownership form is distinct in its behavior, legal constraints, and moral obligations. A new empirical analysis of the American hospital industry, using eleven years of data for all urban general hospitals in the country, shows that corporate form accounts for large differences in the provision of specific medical services. Not-for-profit hospitals systematically provide both private and public goods that are in the public interest, and that other forms fail to provide. Two hypotheses are proposed to account for the findings, one legal and one moral. While no causal claims are made, …

Vol. 54, No. 8, January 27, 2004, University Of Michigan Law School

Res Gestae

•A Winter Matinee to Remember: December 2003 Graduation Ceremony •MLK Panel Highlights Work Yet to be Done •Two Federal Judges Share Thoughts on Judicial Selection, Clerking •CrimLaw Society Hoses Career Talk Given by Front-Line Practitioners •Dr. Steinberg Dean's Choices Reflect Pressure on Many Women Professionals •New Ford F-150 Re-establishes Itself as Industry Standard •Give Me Your Money and I Will Not Get Hurt •Graduation Photos •Graduation Should Occur at Hill Auditorium •Federalists Do it Too: The False Debate Over "Activist" Judges •Music in 2003: The Year That Didn't Do Too Much at All •"Show Your Own" Hides Story-Within-Story •U-M Law …

University Of Michigan Law School Faculty, 2004-2005, University Of Michigan Law School

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

Biographies of University of Michigan Law School faculty.

Honors Convocation, University Of Michigan Law School

Commencement and Honors Materials

Program for the May 7, 2004 University of Michigan Law School Honors Convocation.

Review Of Restoration Of The Great Lakes: Promises, Practices, Performances, By M. Sproule-Jones, Edward A. Parson

Reviews

In this book, Mark Sproule-Jones reports on research into the organization and effectiveness of efforts to improve environmental quality in the Great Lakes under a new approach begun in 1985. That year, the International Joint Commission (IJC) asked the governments of Canada and the United States to develop remedial action plans to reduce pollution and restore degraded uses in 43 areas of concern-regions whose persistent degradation had resisted earlier attempts at improvement. The two governments, in collaboration with the states and provinces, were given wide latitude in how to proceed: the IJC's only specific requests were that all plans involve …

Chuck And Steve's Peccadillo (Symposium: Threats To Secured Lending And Asset Securitization), James J. White

Articles

Are investors in securitized receivables to be treated as the owners of an asset whose sale has taken it beyond the reach of the trustee in bankruptcy of their sellers? O are they to be treated as holders of a security interest in the transferred asset who have left behind an interest in the sellers' hands that would cause the asset to be subject to claims and interference by the sellers' grasping trustee? By adopting contrasting-arguably conflicting-statements in two subsections of a single section, the drafters of 1999 Article 9 have thrust this issue in the faces of courts and …

Review Of Rethinking Refugee Law, By N. Nathwani. , James C. Hathaway

Reviews

It is a wonderful thing when a work of scholarship is published just as policymakers are struggling with the issues that it seeks to address.

A Guide To U.S. Intellectual Property Searching Online, Jennifer L. Selby

Law Librarian Scholarship

The disadvantage to searching intellectual property online, patents in particular, is that the available online databases do not encompass the array and extent of tools needed to conduct a comprehensive search.7 Essentially, you can search patents on the web, but you cannot do a true patent search. A complete patentability search must include not only U.S. patents, but foreign patents and all relevant non-patent literature also (all resources together are referred to as ‘‘prior art’’ for an invention).8 These additional resources can be researched at the Patent Office Library in Washington D.C., and, on a more limited basis, at a …

The State Of External Law's Effect On The Arbitration Process. Iii. A Commentary On The External Law Papers And Iv. Panel Discussion, Theodore J. St. Antoine, Marilyn S. Teitelbaum, Robert Vercruysse

Book Chapters

Marilyn Teitelbaum: I think I have the best of all worlds because I can read these great papers, without having to prepare one of my own, and like all lawyers I like to talk. So, I can share my views, that sometimes diverge from both of the views just presented, particularly the view from the management perspective.

In one part of Ted St. Antoine’s paper that was not discussed with you today, he says that the external law question may be a “tempest in a tea pot.” My words would be similar—“much ado about nothing.” I think there is a …

Child Protection Law And Procedure, Frank E. Vandervort

Book Chapters

Child protective proceedings are governed by the Child Protection Law (CPL), MCL 722.621 et seq.; the Juvenile Code, MCL 712A.l et seq.; and Subchapter 3 .900 of the Michigan Court Rules. Taken together these sources of authority establish a comprehensive scheme for reporting cases of suspected abuse and neglect, investigating those reports, and responding with appropriate action.

Corporate Income Tax Act Of 1909, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Book Chapters

The Corporate Tax Act of 1909 (36 Stat. 11, 112) imposed an excise tax on corporations for the privilege of doing business in corporate form. However, the excise tax was measured by corporate income. Thus the act was the origin of the current corporate income tax, which has been part of our federal tax system ever since and is currently the source of about 10 percent of federal revenues.

In 1895 the Supreme Court decided that Congress could not impose an income tax directly on individuals, because that would violate the constitutional requirement that all “direct” taxes be apportioned (that …

Resurrecting The White Primary, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

An unprecedented number of noncompetitive or "safe" electoral districts operate in the United States today. Noncompetitive districts elect officials with more extreme political views and foster more polarized legislatures than do competitive districts. More fundamentally, they inhibit meaningful political participation. That is because participating in an election that is decided before it begins is an empty exercise. Voting in a competitive election is not, even though a single vote will virtually never decide the outcome. What a competitive election offers to each voter is the opportunity to be the coveted swing voter, the one whose support candidates most seek, the …

Determinants Of Civil Rights Filings In Federal District Court By Jail And Prison Inmates, Anne Morrison Piehl, Margo Schlanger

Articles

This article uses panel data estimation techniques to examine the relation between the number of federal court civil filings by inmates and jail and state prison populations (and, hence, the relation between jail and prison inmate filing rates) both before and after the effective date, in 1996, of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). The research issue matters for several reasons. First, the amount of litigation by inmates is a crucial component of the regulatory regime governing jails and prisons and thus what factors drive filings, and by how much, deserves close attention and assessment. In addition, the PLRA was …

International Tax Law As International Law, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

Is international tax law part of international law? To an international lawyer, the question posed probably seems ridiculous. Of course international tax law is part of international law, just like tax treaties are treaties. But to an international tax lawyer, the question probably seems less obvious, because most international tax lawyers do not think of themselves primarily as international lawyers (public or private), but rather as tax lawyers who happen to deal with crossborder transactions. And indeed, once one delves into the details, it becomes clear that in some ways international tax law is different from "regular" international law. For …

Bridging The North/South Divide: International Redistribution And Tax Competition, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The most important social problem facing humanity at the beginning of the 21st century is the yawning divide in standards of living between the rich nations of the global North and the poor nations of the global South. The following table gives some indicia of the current gap in living standards. It shows that the majority of the population in most developing countries lives on less than two dollars a day; that in some developing countries, over a quarter of children aged 10-14 are employed in the work force; that mortality for children under five in developing countries can be …

Microfinance And Financial Development, Michael S. Barr

Articles

Close to three billion people-half of the world's population-live on less than two dollars a day.' Within these poor communities, one child in five will not live to see his or her fifth birthday. To boost international development, the United Nations (UN) announced the Millennium Development Goals, aimed at eradicating poverty by 2015.? A number of countries responded at the International Conference for Financing International Development in Monterrey, Mexico, by creating action plans to begin to implement the Millennium Development Goals.4 Yet the Millennium Development Goals will prove difficult to achieve.1

Banking The Poor, Michael S. Barr

Articles

Low-income households often lack access to banking accounts and face high costs for transacting basic financial services through check cashers and other alternative financial service providers. These families find it more difficult to save and plan financially for the future. Living paycheck to paycheck leaves them vulnerable to medical or job emergencies that may endanger their financial stability, and lack of longer-term savings undermines their ability to improve skills, purchase a home, or send their children to college. Additionally, high cost financial services and inadequate access to bank accounts may undermine widely shared societal goals of reducing poverty, moving families …

A Tribute To Ruth G. Blumrosen, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

In January 2004, workers everywhere lost a forceful advocate with the death of Ruth Gerber Blumrosen. From the earliest days of her career, Ruth focused her prodigious intellect and indomitable energy on the enduring problem of employment discrimination. Through both her various high-level professional positions and her academic scholarship, she quickly became known for her expertise in this field and her passion for finding solutions. Ruth's research and writing addressed quite a range of employment issues, including wage discrimination, job segregation, downsizing, and employee rights. Ruth previously published three articles with the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, including …

External Law In Arbitration Hard-Boiled, Soft-Boiled, And Sunny-Side Up, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Book Chapters

Thirty-seven years ago Bernie Meltzer and the late Bob Howlett squared off at our annual meeting in a classic confrontation on an issue that refuses to die. What should an arbitrator do when there is a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between a provision of a collective bargaining agreement and the dictates of external law? Professor Meltzer was the hard-boiled logician. Arbitrators' proper domain is the parties' contract, said he, and we "should respect the agreement and ignore the law" when the two diverge. Howlett took the softer, more accomodating approach. He reasoned that "every agreement incorporates all applicable law" and so …

A Mirage In The Sand? Distinguishing Binding And Non-Binding Relations Between States, Christine M. Chinkin

Book Chapters

The article discusses the two decisions (thus far) of the International Court of Justice in the case concerning Maritime Delimitation and Territorial Questions between Qatar and Bahrain, especially its consideration of when an internationally binding agreement has come into existence. The Court's willingness to infer a legally binding agreement, regardless of the intentions of at least one of the parties, appears to displace the primacy of consent it has emphasized in its earlier jurisprudence. The decision seems to hold states bound by informal commitments, an approach that might inhibit open negotiations between states and undermine genuine attempts to pre-empt disputes …

Copyright Non–Compliance (Or Why We Can’T “Just Say Yes” To Licensing)., Jessica D. Litman

Book Chapters

I have complained more than once over the past few years that the copyright law is complicated, arcane, and counterintuitive; and that the upshot of that is that people don't believe that the copyright law says what it does say. People do seem to buy into copyright norms, but they don't translate those norms into the rules that the copyright statute does; they find it very hard to believe that there's really a law out there that says the stuff the copyright law says.