Law Commons^™

The Wisdom Of Crowds? Groupthink And Nonprofit Governance, Melanie B. Leslie

Articles

Scandals involving nonprofit boards and conflicts of interest continue to receive considerable public attention. Earlier this year, for example, musician Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti charity became the target of intense criticism after the charity disclosed that it had regularly transacted business with Jean and entities controlled by Jean and other directors. Although scandals caused by self-dealing undermine public confidence in the charitable sector, they continue to erupt. Why do charitable boards sanction transactions with insiders?

This Article argues that much of the blame lies with the law itself. Because fiduciary duty law is currently structured as a set of fuzzy …

Class Dismissed: Contemporary Judicial Hostility To Small-Claims Consumer Class Actions, Myriam E. Gilles

Articles

I start from the view that small-value consumer claims are a primary reason that class actions exist, and that without class actions many - if not most - of the wrongs perpetrated upon small-claims consumers would not be capable of redress. It would then seem to follow that the class action device should be readily available in small-claims consumer cases. And yet, over the past decade, federal district courts have repeatedly declined to certify class actions on grounds that are specific to small-claims consumer cases. Foremost among those grounds is the notion that the federal class action rule carries within …

Rethinking Guardianship (Again): Substituted Decision Making As A Violation Of The Integration Mandated Of Title Ii Of The Americans With Disabilities Act, Leslie Salzman

Articles

In every state, when an adult has a diminished capacity to make decisions about personal affairs or property management, a court may transfer the individual’s right to make decisions to a guardian. This Article argues that, in most cases, it would be preferable to support decision making rather than supplant it through guardianship, and then seeks to locate a right to receive such support as a less restrictive alternative to the substituted decision making that characterizes guardianship.

Building on the reasoning in Olmstead v. L.C. and subsequent decisions interpreting the Americans with Disabilities Act’s integration mandate, this Article argues that …

Introduction: In Flagrante Depicto, Peter Goodrich

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No abstract provided.

Looking Beyond Full Relationship Recognition For Couples Regardless Of Sex: Abolition, Alternatives, And/Or Functionalism, Edward Stein

Articles

In the context of recent accomplishments in the quest for full marriage equality for same-sex couples, this article considers three proposals for reform to the law of adult domestic relations: (i) the abolition of the legal institution of marriage; (ii) the development of a broad “menu” of alternative forms of relationship recognition in addition to marriage; and (iii) the embracing of a functionalist approach to relationship recognition whereby relationships that share significant functional attributes with marriages are, in certain ways, given the same legal treatment as marriages. The article contends that advocates and theoreticians should strive for more than just …

The Role Of Valuation In Federal Bankruptcy Exemption Process: The Supreme Court Reads Schedule C, David G. Carlson

Articles

In Taylor v. Freeland & Kronz, a debtor claimed a law suit was exempt. The bankruptcy trustee failed to object within the required period. Later, the law suit realized an amount that far exceeded the monetary limit to which the debtor was entitled. The Supreme Court permitted the debtor to keep all of the proceeds, even beyond the statutory limit, claiming that a deadline was a deadline. Recently, in Schwab v. Reilly, the Supreme Court overruled Taylor, holding that a claim to a monetarily limited item can only exempt the monetary limit. The Court tries and fails to "reconcile" these …

Theatres Of The Book: Covering, Flaunting, Marketing, Author And Text, Peter Goodrich

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No abstract provided.

Family Values In The Jewish Tradition, J. David Bleich

Articles

In Family Values in the Jewish Tradition, Professor J. David Bleich presents Judaism as a religion of law. He describes the family unit, "both as a social unit and as a legal institution," and how it helps to provide comfort, companionship, and stability. He discusses the role of reproduction within the family unit, artificial insemination, and the homosexual act (not the homosexual as a person). Professor Bleich concludes with a discussion of the phrase, "be fruitful and multiply." He notes that this phrase is understood as both a commandment and a blessing.

Disciplines And Jurisdictions: An Historical Note, Peter Goodrich

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No abstract provided.

Retribution And The Experience Of Punishment, John Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur

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In a prior article, we argued that punishment theorists need to take into account the counterintuitive findings from hedonic psychology about how offenders typically experience punishment. Punishment generally involves the imposition of negative experience. The reason that greater fines and prison sentences constitute more severe punishments than lesser ones is, in large part, that they are assumed to impose greater negative experience. Hedonic adaptation reduces that difference in negative experience, thereby undermining efforts to achieve proportionality in punishment. Anyone who values punishing more serious crimes more severely than less serious crimes by an appropriate amount - as virtually everyone does …

Helping Nonprofits Police Themselves: What Trust Law Can Teach Us About Conflicts Of Interest, Melanie B. Leslie

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No abstract provided.

Welfare As Happiness, John Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, Jonathan Masur

Articles

Perhaps the most important goal of law and policy is improving people’s lives. But what constitutes improvement? What is quality of life, and how can it be measured? In previous articles, we have used insights from the new field of hedonic psychology to analyze central questions in civil and criminal justice, and we now apply those insights to a broader inquiry: how can the law make life better? The leading accounts of human welfare in law, economics, and philosophy are preference-satisfaction - getting what one wants - and objective list approaches - possessing an enumerated set of capabilities. This Article …

Trick Or Treat: The Ethics Of Mediator Manipulation, Jim Coben, Lela P. Love

Articles

Much of what good mediators do can be characterized as “helpful interventions” that assist the parties towards legitimate goals such as a better understanding, a platform for developing options, and (where the parties choose) an agreement or settlement. However, all such “helpful interventions” are inevitably "manipulative," in the sense that the mediator is, often unilaterally, making “moves” with profound impact on the parties’ bargaining. To evaluate the ethics of any individual move, the authors propose asking two questions: 1) does the move further or help a legitimate party or process goal that advances party self-determination in decision-making; and 2) is …

Judicial Review, A Comparative Perspective: Israel, Canada, And The United States, Malvina Halberstam

Articles

No abstract provided.