Law Commons^™

United States Antitrust Policy In An Age Of Ip Expansion, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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The idea that there is a tension between antitrust and the intellectual property laws is readily exaggerated. The tension that exists results mainly from our uncertainty about the optimal amount and scope of IP protection. In general, antitrust draws clearer lines than intellectual property law does, although one should not push the point too far. Antitrust policy as manifested in the courts has achieved a fair amount of consensus today. By contrast, deep uncertainty remains about fundamental questions concerning the socially optimal outcome of IP disputes. In addition, while the antitrust statutes are for the most part public regarding provisions …

Icarus In The Boardroom, Introduction, David A. Skeel Jr.

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Americans have always loved risk takers. Like the Icarus of ancient Greek lore, however, even the most talented entrepreneurs can overstep their bounds. All too often, the very qualities that make Icaran executives special - self-confidence, visionary insight, and extreme competitiveness - spur them to take misguided and even illegal chances. The Icaran failure of an ordinary entrepreneur isn't headline news. But put Icarus in the corporate boardroom and - as this book vividly demonstrates - the ripple effects can be profound. Ever since the first large-scale corporations emerged in the nineteenth century, their ability to tap huge amounts of …

Ub Viewpoint – Hooray For Sinclair, Eric Easton

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No abstract provided.

Just Measures: A Methodology For Assessing The Global Value Added Of Corporate Activities, Alexander A. Boni-Saenz, Chih-Hung Chang, Ajan Reginald, Ravi Kacker

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This article accepts the premise of stakeholder theory, which asserts that corporations, like other human-run entities, have obligations to all parties affected by their actions. As such, corporations should be given suitable credit for projects that add value for these stakeholders, as well as held accountable for any damage done. To provide this credit and accountability, measurement is necessary. The methodology of measurement for corporate social value creation is in its infancy. Models are incomplete, measures are not validated, and methods used to estimate net value accumulated from different domains need improvement. This article builds on one model of global …

Evaluating Environmental Policies, Lori Snyder Bennear, Cary Coglianese

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For too long, environmental policymaking has relied on trial and error, without adequate or systematic learning from either the trials or the errors. Systematic program evaluation research has been remarkably scarce relative to the overall number of environmental policies adopted in the United States, as well as relative to the amount of evaluation research found in other fields, such as medicine, education, or transportation safety. This paper examines the role that program evaluation should play in environmental policy making, distinguishing such research from other types of analysis, including risk assessment, cost-effectiveness analysis, and cost-benefit analysis. It explains the kinds of …

No Way To Deal With Slums, Bernadette Atuahene

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No abstract provided.

Defining "Addition" Of A Pollutant Into Navigable Waters From A Point Source Under The Clean Water Act: The Questions Answered — And Those Not Answered — By South Florida Water Management District V. Miccosukee Tribe Of Indians, Steven A.G. Davison

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No abstract provided.

Constitutional Ethnography: An Introduction, Kim Lane Scheppele

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Constitutional ethnography is the study of the central legal elements of polities using methods that are capable of recovering the lived detail of the politico-legal landscape. This article provides an introduction to this sort of study by contrasting constitutional ethnography with multivariate analysis and with nationalist constitutional analysis. The article advocates not a universal one-size-fits-all theory or an elegant model that abstracts away the distinctive, but instead outlines an approach that can identify a set of repertoires found in real cases. Learning the set of repertoires that constitutional ethnography reveals, one can see more deeply into particular cases. Constitutional ethnography …

Other People's Patriot Acts: Europe's Response To September 11, Kim Lane Scheppele

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After September 11, many countries changed their laws to make it easier to fight terrorism. They did so in part because the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1373 under its Chapter VII powers. The resolution required all Members of the United Nations to criminalize terrorism, to prevent their territory from being used to plan or promote terrorism, to crack down on terrorism financing, to tighten up immigration and asylum procedures and to share information about terrorists and terrorist threats with other states. This article examines what happened to the Security Council mandate when it got to Europe by first …

Law In A Time Of Emergency, Kim Lane Scheppele

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This article examines the domestic and foreign policy responses of the Bush administration to the events of 9/11 and contrasts them with the primary responses of America’s democratic allies in Europe. Both sets of responses are understood through the lens of Carl Schmitt’s writing on the nature of the state of exception, which in many ways provides a blueprint for contemporary American conceptions of emergency powers while providing a notorious and unsuccessful attempt to justify emergency powers to contemporary Europeans. I argue that the divergence in the standard understandings of two formative historical events help explain European and American differences …

A Realpolitik Defense Of Social Rights, Kim Lane Scheppele

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Social rights are controversial in theory, but many constitutions feature long lists of social rights anyway. But how can poor states ever hope to realize these rights? This article examines the practical bargaining over social rights that occurs when countries go broke and international financial institutions step in to direct internal fiscal affairs. Constitutional Courts can give their own governments leverage in bargaining with the IMF by making strong decisions defending social rights just at those moments. Because of the IMF's commitment to the rule of law, it is hard for the IMF to insist as part of the conditionality …

On Software Regulation, Polk Wagner

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This Article develops a novel analytic framework for the evaluation of regulatory policy in cyberspace, flowing from a reconceptualization of cyberlaw’s central premise: software code as complementary to law rather than its substitute. This approach emphasizes the linkage between law and software; for every quantum of legal-regulatory impact, there is a corresponding equilibria of regulation-bysoftware. The absence of a legal right will stimulate a technological response—and such incentives will moderate with increased rights. Rather than “code is law,” this is “code meets law.” The implications of this methodological shift are explored in the context of the emerging (and intensely controversial) …

General And Specific Legal Rules, Paul G. Mahoney, Chris William Sanchirico

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Legal rules may be general (that is, applicable to a broad range of situations) or specific. Adopting a custom-tailored rule for a specific activity permits the regulator to make efficient use of information about the social costs and benefits of that activity. However, the rule maker typically relies on the regulated parties for such information. The regulated parties may attempt to influence the rule maker, producing rules that reflect their private interests. We show that in some cases limiting the rule maker to a single rule for multiple activities will moderate this influence and maximize welfare. Available for download at …

Beware Buyer Power, Robert H. Lande

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The conventional antitrust wisdom is that buyer side market power or monopsony is so unusual and so rarely anticompetitive that it should not merit more than a scholarly afterthought. Moreover, these brief mentions typically say it is essentially the mirror image of seller power or that, while seller-side power is suspect since it leads to higher consumer prices, buyer-side power is usually benign, because the public should not care which layer of a distribution channel gets any potential savings that can arise. This short article discusses how buyer power can be anticompetitive. It also discusses how buyer power or monopsony …

Handling The Truth, Kenneth Lasson

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No abstract provided.

A Government Of Laws And Not Men: Prohibiting Non-Precedential Opinions By Statute Or Procedural Rule, Amy E. Sloan

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Non-precedential judicial opinions issued by the federal appellate courts have generated significant controversy. Given that the federal appellate courts are unlikely to abandon the practice of issuing non-precedential opinions on their own, what other options exist for prohibiting the practice? This article discusses the constitutionality of a procedural rule or statute prohibiting the federal appellate courts from prospectively designating selected opinions as non-precedential. It explains how the rules governing non-precedential opinions allow federal appellate courts to "opt out" of their own rules of precedent. It then examines the rulemaking process, showing how the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure are promulgated …

The Common Core Of European Private Law: The Project And Its Books, David J. Gerber

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No abstract provided.

Our Corporate Federalism And The Shape Of Corporate Law, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock

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In the public debate sparked by the corporate scandals of the last years, Delaware has been strikingly absent. In contrast to the high profile activity of Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the stock exchanges, federal prosecutors, and even state law enforcement officials, Delaware has been largely mute: no legislation; no rule-making; no criminal investigations; few headlines. In this Article, we use Delaware's relative passivity during this latest episode of corporate law-making as a starting point in the analysis of the shape of American corporate federalism and Delaware's place within it. We argue that Delaware long ago opted for what …

Intellectual Property Law And The Boundaries Of The Firm, Oren Bar-Gill, Gideon Parchomovsky

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Arrow's disclosure paradox implies that information that is not afforded legal protection cannot be bought or sold on the market. This paper emphasizes the important relationship between the paradox of disclosure and the boundaries of the firm question. Only legally protected inventions, i.e., patented inventions, may be traded; pre-patent stages of the innovation process may not. Consequently, by force of law, rather than by the guidance of economic principle, pre-patent innovation must be carried out within the boundaries of a single firm.

Perceptions Of Corruption And Campaign Finance: When Public Opinion Determines Constitutional Law, Nathaniel Persily, Kelli Lammie

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This study tests the empirical assumptions about American public opinion found in the Supreme Court’s opinions concerning campaign finance reform. The area of campaign finance is a unique one in First Amendment law because the Court has allowed the mere appearance of a problem (in this case, “corruption”) to justify the curtailment of recognized First Amendment rights of speech and association. Since Buckley v. Valeo, defendants in campaign finance cases have proffered various types of evidence to support the notion that the public perceives a great deal of corruption produced by the campaign finance system. Most recently, in McConnell v. …

Plea Bargaining Outside The Shadow Of Trial, Stephanos Bibas

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Plea-bargaining literature predicts that parties strike plea bargains in the shadow of expected trial outcomes. In other words, parties forecast the expected sentence after trial, discount it by the probability of acquittal, and offer some proportional discount. This oversimplified model ignores how structural distortions skew bargaining outcomes. Agency costs; attorney competence, compensation, and workloads; resources; sentencing and bail rules; and information deficits all skew bargaining. In addition, psychological biases and heuristics warp judgments: overconfidence, denial, discounting, risk preferences, loss aversion, framing, and anchoring all affect bargaining decisions. Skilled lawyers can partly counteract some of these problems but sometimes overcompensate. The …

Does Criminal Law Deter? A Behavioral Science Investigation, Paul H. Robinson

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Having a criminal justice system that imposes sanctions no doubt does deter criminal conduct. But available social science research suggests that manipulating criminal law rules within that system to achieve heightened deterrence effects generally will be ineffective. Potential offenders often do not know of the legal rules. Even if they do, they frequently are unable to bring this knowledge to bear in guiding their conduct, due to a variety of situational, social, or chemical factors. Even if they can, a rational analysis commonly puts the perceived benefits of crime greater than its perceived costs, due to a variety of criminal …

Pleas' Progress, Stephanos Bibas

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No abstract provided.

The Undiscovered Country: Northern Views Of The Defeated South And The Political Background Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Garrett Epps

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In 1866, Harper's Weekly announced a new series of woodcuts of Southern life with the remark, "[t]o us the late Slave States seem almost like a newly discovered country." It is difficult for Americans in the Twenty-First Century, in a culture of cable news coverage and national newspapers, to appreciate just how mysterious the former Confederacy seemed to Northerners in the months after Appomattox. It was not simply that four years of war had made communication between the two halves of the nation difficult - though that was true, and both Northern and Southern society had changed during the searing …

A War Of Words (In The Hype Of The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, The Line Between Reality And Propaganda Can Easily Confuse Even The Most Objective Foreign Correspondent), Kenneth Lasson

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Most journalists look at their work and see professional pride, not personal prejudice. Even many of those who do the biased bidding of their employers could be characterized as decent, fair-minded, hard-working. In the Middle East today, however, where the conflict is still largely a war of words, reporters may often miss the forest for the trees. While such a result could be caused by the inherent limitations of their craft - constant deadlines, sometimes severe space restrictions, the pressure to produce dramatic stories - when their inherent political bias are combined with ignorance of broad historical perspectives, the result …

Shifting Sands: The Limits Of Science In Setting Risk Standards, Cary Coglianese, Gary E. Marchant

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Regulators need to rely on science to understand problems and predict the consequences of regulatory actions, but over reliance on science can actually contribute to, or at least deflect attention from, incoherent policymaking. In this article, we explore the problems with using science to justify policy decisions by analyzing the Environmental Protection Agency's recently revised air quality standards for ground-level ozone and particulate matter, some of the most significant regulations ever issued. In revising these standards, EPA mistakenly invoked science as the exclusive basis for its decisions and deflected attention from a remarkable series of inconsistencies. For example, even though …

Communicating Entitlements: Property And The Internet, William Hubbard

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No abstract provided.

The New Japanese Law Schools: Putting The Professional Into Legal Education, James Maxeiner, Keiichi Yamanaka

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In April 2004, more than sixty law schools began operation in Japan. Legal education, previously treated as a combination of undergraduate education in law and extra-university training in professional skills, will now be concentrated in new professional law schools. The reforms of Japanese legal education are intended both to produce more attorneys in a nation that has a shortage of legally trained professionals, and to help increase the role of law in Japanese society generally.

In order for Japan's new Jaw schools to achieve their educational objectives, they must successfully address a host of conceptual, pedagogical and organizational challenges. Foremost …

Client Counseling, Mediation, And Alternative Narratives Of Dispute Resolution, Robert Rubinson

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This article examines how litigation and mediation have distinct narrative structures and what these narratives say about counseling clients about mediation. In the narrative of litigation, parties struggle against one another in order to convince a decision maker of the truth of "what happened." This struggle is about more than designating liability; it is about enabling the decision-maker to restore social order and vindicate morality. In contrast, the narrative of mediation does not call upon the mediator to designate "truth" or "right" and "wrong." Rather, the mediator acts to enable parties to overcome and transform conflict through collaboration. In the …

No Wonder They Dislike Us: Us Admonishes Europe For Protecting Itself From Microsoft's Predation, Albert A. Foer, Robert H. Lande

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This short article applauds the European Commission for holding that Microsoft violated European competition laws, and admonishes the U.S. for criticizing the Europeans for protecting themselves from Microsoft's anticompetitive activity.