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Vanderbilt University Law School

Series

2009

Articles 1 - 30 of 63

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Trojan Horse Of Electric Power Transmission Line Siting Authority, Jim Rossi Jan 2009

The Trojan Horse Of Electric Power Transmission Line Siting Authority, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Reform proposals pending in the U.S. Congress would increase federal and regional power to preempt states in siting transmission lines on order to allow the development of a high-votage transmission grid for renewable resources. This Article recognizes the inadequacy of existing state siting authority over transmission, but takes a skeptical approach to expanding federal siting jurisdiction as a solution to the problem and argues that the over-attention to transmission line siting authority is a bit of a Trojan horse in the climate change debate. Specifically, because it ignores the more difficult issues of how the costs and benefits of transmission …

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The Politics Of Merit Selection, Brian T. Fitzpatrick Jan 2009

The Politics Of Merit Selection, Brian T. Fitzpatrick

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this Article, I undertake an evaluation of a method of judicial selection known as "merit selection." The merit system is distinctive from the other systems of judicial selection in the powerful role it accords lawyers. Proponents of the merit system contend that it is superior to the other forms of judicial selection -- elections or appointment by elected officials -- because lawyers are more likely to select judges on the basis of "merit" and less likely to select judges on the basis of "politics" (i.e., the personal ideological preferences of judicial candidates) than are voters or elected officials. But …

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Using Criminal Punishment To Serve Both Victim And Social Needs, Erin O'Connor Jan 2009

Using Criminal Punishment To Serve Both Victim And Social Needs, Erin O'Connor

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this article we propose changing the manner in which control rights over criminal sanctions are distributed. This modest change has the potential to increase victim well-being without interfering with social needs. Specif ically, victims should have the right to determine whether an off ender will serve the last ten to twenty percent of his prison term. The control right can do more than help restore a sense of victim empowerment: it will likely encourage voluntary victim- offender mediation (VOM), which has been demonstrated to assist the emotional healing process f or victims while perhaps decreasing recidivism rates. Section II …

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Will Quants Rule The (Legal) World?, Edward K. Cheng Jan 2009

Will Quants Rule The (Legal) World?, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Professor Ian Ayres, in his new book, Super Crunchers, details the brave new world of statistical prediction and how it has already begun to affect our lives. For years, academic researchers have known about the considerable and at times surprising advantages of statistical models over the considered judgments of experienced clinicians and experts. Today, these models are emerging all over the landscape. Whether the field is wine, baseball, medicine, or consumer relations, they are vying against traditional experts for control over how we make decisions. For the legal system, the take-home of Ayres's book and the examples he describes is …

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Prediction Markets And Law: A Skeptical Account, Rebecca Haw Allensworth Jan 2009

Prediction Markets And Law: A Skeptical Account, Rebecca Haw Allensworth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Enthusiasm for "many minds" arguments has infected legal academia. Scholars now champion the virtues of groupthink, something once thought to have only vices. It turns out that groups often outperform individuals in aggregating information, weighing alternatives, and making decisions. And although some of our legal institutions, such as Congress and juries, already harness the power of the crowd, others could be improved by multiplying the number of minds at work. "Multiplying" implies a simple mathematical formula for improving decisionmaking; modern many minds arguments are more sophisticated than that. They use incentive analyses, game theory, and statistics to study how and …

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Common Challenges Facing Shareholder Suits In Europe And The United States, Randall Thomas, James D. Cox Jan 2009

Common Challenges Facing Shareholder Suits In Europe And The United States, Randall Thomas, James D. Cox

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Episodic and even sometimes systematic misbehavior by businessmen and corporate entities is ubiquitous. While Enron and WorldCom were the battle cries for corporate reform in the U.S. so it was with Ahold and Parmalat across Europe. No country is free of concern that company officers will misbehave thereby injuring investors, consumers and destroying shareholder value. Thus, this symposium issue collects the recent experiences across Europe in strengthening shareholder suits. Most recent legislative efforts in Europe, and hence the comments in the symposium, are focused on the derivative suit. Just as the American experience with class actions, reviewed separately in this …

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Reclaiming The Legal Fiction Of Congressional Delegation, Lisa Schultz Bressman Jan 2009

Reclaiming The Legal Fiction Of Congressional Delegation, Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The framework for judicial review of agency statutory interpretations is based on a legal fiction – namely, that Congress intends to delegate interpretive authority to agencies. Critics argue that the fiction is false because Congress is unlikely to think about the delegation of interpretive authority at all, or in the way that the Court imagines. They also contend that the fiction is fraudulent because the Court does actually care about whether Congress intends to delegate interpretive authority in any particular instance, but applies a presumption triggered by statutory ambiguity or a particularized analysis involving factors unrelated to congressional delegation. In …

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Transnationalizing Public Law, Ingrid Wuerth Jan 2009

Transnationalizing Public Law, Ingrid Wuerth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

I am tasked today with talking about transnationalization, in particular the question of whether public law in the United States is undergoing some process of transnationalization today. My response, based on the work of the U.S. Supreme Court is yes, although probably only in a thin sense. The starting point for discussing this issue is generally the Supreme Court's citation to the laws of other countries in Printz v. United States, Roper v. Simmons, and Lawrence v. Texas. But these examples of comparative public law are controversial, substantively weak in the case of Printz, and relatively case (or issue) specific. …

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Remaking The United States Supreme Court In The Courts' Of Appeals Image, Tracey E. George, Chris Guthrie Jan 2009

Remaking The United States Supreme Court In The Courts' Of Appeals Image, Tracey E. George, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We argue that Congress should remake the United States Supreme Court in the U.S. courts' of appeals image by increasing the size of the Court's membership, authorizing panel decision making, and retaining an en banc procedure for select cases. In so doing, Congress would expand the Court's capacity to decide cases, facilitating enhanced clarity and consistency in the law as well as heightened monitoring of lower courts and the other branches. Remaking the Court in this way would not only expand the Court's decision making capacity but also improve the Court's composition, competence, and functioning.

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Of Silos And Constellations: Comparing Notions Of Originality In Copyright Law, Daniel J. Gervais, Elizabeth F. Judge Jan 2009

Of Silos And Constellations: Comparing Notions Of Originality In Copyright Law, Daniel J. Gervais, Elizabeth F. Judge

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Originality is a central theme in the efforts to understand human evolution, thinking, innovation, and creativity. Artists strive to be "original," however the term is understood by each of them. It is also one of the major concepts in copyright law. This paper considers the evolution of the notion of originality since 2002 (when one of the coauthors published an article entitled Feist Goes Global: A Comparative Analysis Of The Notion Of Originality In Copyright Law) and continues the analysis, in particular whether the notion of "creative choices," which seems to have substantial normative heft in several jurisdictions, is optimal …

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Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich Jan 2009

Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Race matters in the criminal justice system. Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants. Why? Implicit bias is one possibility. Researchers, using a well-known measure called the implicit association test, have found that most white Americans harbor implicit bias toward Black Americans. Do judges, who are professionally committed to egalitarian norms, hold these same implicit biases? And if so, do these biases account for racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system? We explored these two research questions in a multi-part study involving a large sample of trial judges drawn from around the country. Our results …

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In Family Law, Love's Got A Lot To Do With It: A Response To Philip Shaver, Terry A. Maroney Jan 2009

In Family Law, Love's Got A Lot To Do With It: A Response To Philip Shaver, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In a contribution to this Symposium on Law and Emotion: Re-Envisioning Family Law, Phillip Shaver and his co-authors succinctly encapsulate contemporary psychological theory on interpersonal attachment -- primarily parent-child attachment and its role in creating lifelong attachment patterns -- and seek to outline the relevance of such research for both social policy and law. This Comment demonstrates that many areas of family law already seek to cultivate and reward attachment. But attachment is not and cannot be the sole-or even, perhaps, the most important-factor driving most legal determinations. Recognizing the importance of secure attachment does not answer difficult questions about …

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Unlearning Fear Of Out-Group Others, Terry A. Maroney Jan 2009

Unlearning Fear Of Out-Group Others, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this brief Comment, Maroney offers a perspective based in the scientific study of fear and social-group judgment. She discusses research showing that humans display heightened, persistent fear responses to "outgroup" faces, and suggests ways in which such research might inform our assessment of intergroup conflict resolution. Comment responsive to Douglas H. Yarn & Gregory Todd Jones, A Biological Approach to Understanding Resistance to Apology, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation in Group Conflict, 72 Law & Contemp. Probs. 63 (2009).

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The False Promise Of Adolescent Brain Science In Juvenile Justice, Terry A. Maroney Jan 2009

The False Promise Of Adolescent Brain Science In Juvenile Justice, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Recent scientific findings about the developing teen brain have both captured public attention and begun to percolate through legal theory and practice. Indeed, many believe that developmental neuroscience contributed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s elimination of the juvenile death penalty in Roper v. Simmons. Post-Roper, scholars assert that the developmentally normal attributes of the teen brain counsel differential treatment of young offenders, and advocates increasingly make such arguments before the courts. The success of any theory, though, depends in large part on implementation, and challenges that emerge through implementation illuminate problematic aspects of the theory. This Article tests the legal …

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Of Clusters And Assumptions: Innovation As Part Of A Full Trips Implementation, Daniel J. Gervais Jan 2009

Of Clusters And Assumptions: Innovation As Part Of A Full Trips Implementation, Daniel J. Gervais

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Because TRIPS introduced a high(er) level of intellectual property protection in a number of developing countries, it provides an opportunity to examine the impact of the introduction of (property) rights on a variety of intangibles in legal systems from which those rights were absent. One question is whether, and if so how, 18th century European rules, updated in concert with other Western nations until 1989, can be successfully integrated into the social, cultural, economic and legal fabric of dozens of developing nations, and how success is measured in that context. TRIPS also allows us to consider the impact of high(er) …

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A Practical Solution To The Reference Class Problem, Edward K. Cheng Jan 2009

A Practical Solution To The Reference Class Problem, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The "reference class problem" is a serious challenge to the use of statistical evidence that arguably arises every day in wide variety of cases, including toxic torts, property valuation, and even drug smuggling. At its core, it observes that statistical inferences depend critically on how people, events, or things are classified. As there is (purportedly) no principle for privileging certain categories over others, statistics become manipulable, undermining the very objectivity and certainty that make statistical evidence valuable and attractive to legal actors. In this paper, I propose a practical solution to the reference class problem by drawing on model selection …

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A Derivatives Market In Legal Academia, Paul H. Edelman Jan 2009

A Derivatives Market In Legal Academia, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Building on the success of derivatives markets in the financial arena, I show how similar markets can be used to hedge risk in legal academia. Prudent use of these markets will generate cash, mitigate errors in hiring, and increase the academic prestige of law schools. In short, they can do for legal academia what they have already done to the financial world.

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Separated By A Common Language?, Yesha Yadav Jan 2009

Separated By A Common Language?, Yesha Yadav

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This paper examines recent controversies in the legal and policy debate between the U.S. and the EU on the sharing of data in the implementation of transatlantic counter-terrorism measures. The nexus between law and policy in this area is particularly close, reflecting the preferences each jurisdiction has in protecting civil liberty and security interests. While the U.S. and the EU offer differing legal frameworks on data privacy, the strategic importance of data in counter-terrorism law and policy necessitates a joint approach. A failure to arrive at such an approach can result in a series of bilateral agreements between the U.S. …

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The Captures Clause, Ingrid Wuerth Jan 2009

The Captures Clause, Ingrid Wuerth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Captures Clause of the United States Constitution gives Congress the power to "make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water." A variety of courts, scholars, politicians and others have recently cited the Clause to support conflicting arguments about the scope of Congress’s power to initiate and prosecute war. Some claim or assume that the Captures Clause gives Congress power over the taking and detention of people, while others conclude that the power is limited to property only. Similarly, those who view Congress’s power broadly understand the Captures Clause as giving Congress the power to determine what (or whom) may …

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Ten Fingers, Ten Toes: Newborn Screening For Untreatable Disorders, Ellen Wright Clayton Jan 2009

Ten Fingers, Ten Toes: Newborn Screening For Untreatable Disorders, Ellen Wright Clayton

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This movie makes two important points despite its admitted unreality. The first, which the screen writer probably did not fully appreciate at the time, is that genetic testing cannot now and probably will never be able to predict with complete certainty the occurrence and course of complex diseases. It is not true that "Genes-R-Us." Rather, we are the products of complex interactions of our genes, the genomes of other organisms (many of which we live in relation with), and the environment, broadly understood to include the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the drugs we …

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Rethinking The Federal Role In State Criminal Justice, Nancy J. King, Joseph L. Hoffmann Jan 2009

Rethinking The Federal Role In State Criminal Justice, Nancy J. King, Joseph L. Hoffmann

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Essay argues that federal habeas review of state criminal cases squanders resources the federal government should be using to help states reform their systems of defense representation. A 2007 empirical study reveals that federal habeas review is inaccessible to most state prisoners convicted of non-capital crimes, and offers no realistic hope of relief for those who reach federal court. As a means of correcting or deterring constitutional error in non-capital cases, habeas is failing and cannot be fixed. Drawing upon these findings as well as the Supreme Court's most recent decision applying the Suspension Clause, the authors propose that …

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The Tangled Web Of Ugc: Making Copyright Sense Of User-Generated Content, Daniel J. Gervais Jan 2009

The Tangled Web Of Ugc: Making Copyright Sense Of User-Generated Content, Daniel J. Gervais

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Even as a mere conceptual cloud, the term "user-generated content" is useful to discuss the societal shifts in content creation brought about by the participative web and perhaps best epitomized by the remix phenomenon. This Article considers the copyright aspects of UGC. On the one hand, the production of UGC may involve both the right of reproduction and the right of adaptation-the right to prepare derivative works. On the other hand, defenses against claims of infringement of these rights typically rely on (transformative) fair use or the fact that an insubstantial amount (such as a quote) of the preexisting work …

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Remaking The United States Supreme Court In The Courts' Of Appeals Image, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George Jan 2009

Remaking The United States Supreme Court In The Courts' Of Appeals Image, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We argue that Congress should remake the United States Supreme Court in the U.S. courts' of appeals image by increasing the size of the Court's membership, authorizing panel decision making, and retaining an en banc procedure for select cases. In so doing, Congress would expand the Court's capacity to decide cases, facilitating enhanced clarity and consistency in the law as well as heightened monitoring of lower courts and the other branches. Remaking the Court in this way would not only expand the Court's decision making capacity but also improve the Court's composition, competence, and functioning.

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Do Differences In Pleading Standards Cause Forum Shopping In Securities Class Actions?: Doctrinal And Empirical Analyses, Randall Thomas, James D. Cox, Lynn Bai Jan 2009

Do Differences In Pleading Standards Cause Forum Shopping In Securities Class Actions?: Doctrinal And Empirical Analyses, Randall Thomas, James D. Cox, Lynn Bai

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Federal appellate courts have promulgated divergent legal standards for pleading fraud in securities fraud class actions after the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA). Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Tellabs v. Makor Issues & Rights that could have resolved these differences, but did not do so. This article provides two significant contributions. We first show that Tellabs avoids deciding the hard issues that confront courts and litigants daily in the wake of the PSLRA's heightened pleading standard. As a consequence, the opinion keeps very much alive the circuits' disparate interpretations of the PSLRA's fraud pleading standard. …

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Does Private Equity Create Wealth? The Effects Of Private Equity And Derivatives On Corporate Governance, Randall Thomas, Ronald W. Masulis Jan 2009

Does Private Equity Create Wealth? The Effects Of Private Equity And Derivatives On Corporate Governance, Randall Thomas, Ronald W. Masulis

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Private equity has reaped large rewards in recent years. We claim that one major reason for this success is due to the corporate governance advantages of private equity over the public corporation. We argue that the development of substantial derivative contracts and trading has significantly weakened the governance of public corporations and has created a need for financially sophisticated directors and much closer supervision of management. The private equity model delivers these benefits and allows corporations to be better governed, creating wealth gains for investors.

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The Political Economy Of Energy And Its Implications For Climate Change Legislation, Jim Rossi Jan 2009

The Political Economy Of Energy And Its Implications For Climate Change Legislation, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Public choice themes have arisen throughout the history of U.S. energy regulation and continue to be relevant today, particularly with widespread discussion of deregulation and increased attention to climate change. This Article surveys how public choice themes are relevant to understanding a host of issues of importance to the electric power industry today, including the structure of the industry, the significance of wholesale markets, and the division of regulatory power between state and federal authorities. The Article highlights how an understanding of how public choice has contributed to these features of the electric power industry will prove important to the …

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Chevron's Mistake, Lisa Schultz Bressman Jan 2009

Chevron's Mistake, Lisa Schultz Bressman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

"Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc." asks courts to determine whether Congress has delegated to administrative agencies the authority to resolve questions about the meaning of statutes that those agencies implement, but the decision does not give courts the tools for providing a proper answer. Chevron directs courts to construe statutory text by applying the traditional theories of statutory interpretation-whether intentionalism, purposivism, or textualism-and to infer a delegation of agency interpretive authority only if they fail to find a relatively specific meaning. But the traditional theories, despite their differences, all invite courts to construe statutory text as …

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Mapping The American Shareholder Litigation Experience, Randall Thomas, James D. Cox Jan 2009

Mapping The American Shareholder Litigation Experience, Randall Thomas, James D. Cox

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this paper, we provide an overview of the most significant empirical research that has been conducted in recent years on the public and private enforcement of the federal securities laws. The existing studies of the U.S. enforcement system provide a rich tapestry for assessing the value of enforcement, both private and public, as well as market penalties for fraudulent financial reporting practices. The relevance of the U.S. experience is made broader by the introduction through the PSLRA in late 1995 of new procedures for the conduct of private suits and the numerous efforts to evaluate the effects of those …

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Putting The Law Back In Constitutional Law, Suzanna Sherry Jan 2009

Putting The Law Back In Constitutional Law, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Taking a cue from Professor Laurence Tribe's decision to abandon the third edition of his constitutional law treatise, the organizers of this symposium have asked us to address whether constitutional law is in crisis. I am agnostic on that question, although I think that there has been a turn in the wrong direction. But if there is a crisis, I know who to blame. If constitutional law is in crisis, it is our fault. The legal academy has erased the distinction between law and politics, used its expertise for political advantage rather than for elucidation, and mis-educated a generation of …

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Mr. Sunstein's Neighborhood: Won't You Be Our Co-Author?, Tracey E. George, Paul H. Edelman Jan 2009

Mr. Sunstein's Neighborhood: Won't You Be Our Co-Author?, Tracey E. George, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In Six Degrees of Cass Sunstein: Collaboration Networks in Legal Scholarship (11 Green Bag 2d 19 (2007)) we began the study of the collaboration network in legal academia. We concluded that the central figure in the network was Professor Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School and proceeded to catalogue all of his myriad co-authors (so-called Sunstein 1's) and their co-authors (Sunstein 2's). In this small note we update that catalogue as of August 2008 and take the opportunity to reflect on this project and its methodology.

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