Law Commons^™

Off The Hook, Kevin Werbach

Kevin Werbach

Communications networks are the basic infrastructure of the digital age. The future of news, business, interaction, entertainment, health care, education, and many other areas will be built on top of these platforms. Network infrastructure is the dividing line between the old physical economy of scarcity and the new information economy of abundance. The legal framework for networks will therefore shape not only the telecommunications businesses that provide connectivity, but also the applications, services, content, and user activities that depend on it.

Unfortunately, communications networks are entering a vast legal grey area. As telecommunications and media converge into the Internet, they …

Giving Every Child A Chance: The Need For Reform And Infrastructure In Intercountry Adoption Policy, Rachel J. Wechsler

Rachel J. Wechsler

This essay is both descriptive and normative in nature. Its purpose is to describe the current intercountry adoption regime along with its problems, and to propose a much-needed solution. At the outset, the paper explains the great need for intercountry adoption, highlighting empirical research on child development. Secondly, it gives an overview of past and present international adoption policy. Thirdly, the essay describes the problems in the current policy regime. Finally, it proposes an international agency and Family Court as a new approach to intercountry adoption that will solve many of the failures of the current system.

Integrated Sovereignty, Philip M. Nichols

Philip M. Nichols

Sovereignty confounds legal scholarship. The doctrinal definition of sovereignty does not describe the real world, yet that definition dominates both the application of law and scholarly debate. Robert Dahl’s empirical methodology, never before applied to sovereignty, yields at least two insights. First, sovereignty does not consist of absolute control of everything, instead sovereignty is the final control of some things. Second, many different entities possess sovereignty; thus the sovereignty described in doctrinal international law is actually integrated. Accepting the notion of integrated sovereignty allows international law to better describe the empirical world, and positions international law to accommodate the needs …

Against Financial Literacy Education, Lauren E. Willis

Lauren E Willis

The dominant model of regulation in the United States for consumer credit, insurance, and investment products is disclosure and unfettered choice. As these products have become increasingly complex, consumers’ inability to understand them has become increasingly apparent, and the consequences of this inability more dire. In response, policymakers have embraced financial literacy education as a necessary corollary to the disclosure model of regulation. This education is widely believed to turn consumers into “responsible” and “empowered” market players, motivated and competent to make financial decisions that increase their own welfare. The vision is of educated consumers handling their own credit, insurance, …

Only Connect, Kevin Werbach

Kevin Werbach

There are two kinds of legal rules for communications networks, such as the Internet and the telephone system. Interconnection rules define how and when networks must exchange traffic with each other, and non-discrimination rules prevent networks from favoring some customers’ traffic over others. Each approach has unique strengths and weaknesses. The distinction has never been fully appreciated, even though regulators have imposed both requirements many times.

Non-discrimination questions predominate in communications and Internet policy today, thanks to the high-profile battle over “network neutrality” rules for broadband networks. Yet both sides in the network neutrality debate are mistaken. The central challenge …

Worldwide Corporate Governance Convergence Within A Pluralistic Business Legal Order---Company Law And Independent Director System In Contemporary China , Chi-Wei Huang

Chi-Wei Huang

Worldwide Corporate Governance Convergence within A Pluralistic Business Legal Order—Company Law and Independent Director System in Contemporary China

Chi-Wei Huang, S.J.D. University of Pennsylvania Law School March 29, 2007

Abstract:

A deeper tendency across developed market jurisdictions has been a convergence toward a single, standard corporate structure. The essential legal features of a shareholder-oriented ideology are well established among those developed market jurisdictions and noticeably dominate the development of worldwide corporate forms. Striving to increase long-term shareholder value has become the most competitive corporate governance theory among developed economies. A series of examinations of worldwide corporate governance and ownership have …

United States V. Lazarenko: Filling In Gaps In Support And Regulation Of Transnational Relationships, Philip M. Nichols

Philip M. Nichols

The prosecution in the United States of Pavlo Lazarenko for corruption merits study for two reasons. First, it provides case study of the use of local laws to deal with a transnational act. Law should support and regulates interaction within communities; local laws that stop at the borders do little to support transnational communities and international law, which does not recognize most transnational persons as legitimate subjects of international law, does even less. The court that tried Lazarenko could not therefore rely solely on its local law nor could it turn to nonexistent transnational law; instead it cobbled together local …

Responsibility For Historical Injustices: Reconceiving The Case For Reparations, Amy J. Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

Two opposing conceptions of responsibility animate the debate about reparations for slavery. Opponents of reparations espouse an individualist conception, and hold that one may be held responsible only for an action in which she participated directly, and only to the extent that her contribution caused harm. Since no contemporary citizen participated in slavery, opponents conclude that no contemporary citizen has a duty of repair. Supporters of reparations, or reparationists, adopt or develop theories of collective responsibility, according to which responsibility attaches to a group first and foremost, and then gets ascribed to the group's members derivatively. Reparationists thus argue that, …

Defense Of Others And Defenseless "Others", Amy J. Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

Recent efforts at fetal protection transgress the nation's most fundamental political commitments. These efforts notably include the enactment of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA) in 2004 and, in 2002, a doctrinal development that presaged the potentially illiberal effects of the UVVA when a Michigan court recognized a woman's right to use deadly force to protect her fetus even as it denied her right to self-defense. This Article adopts a theory of political liberalism that can be traced from the Founders to contemporary political theorists, and argues that the UVVA, as well as the extension of defense of others …

Regulation Of The Global Marketplace For The Sake Of Health, Marion Danis, Amy J. Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

Mounting evidence suggests that socioeconomic status is a determinant of health. As nations around the globe increasingly rely on market-based economies, the corporate sector has come to have a powerful influence on the socioeconomic gradient in most nations and hence upon the health status of their populations. At the same time, it has become more difficult for any one nation to influence corporate activities, given the increasing ease with which corporations relocate their operations from country to country. As result of all of these factors, nations wishing to assure the health of their populations will need to both involve the …