Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Criminal Law (17)
- Property Law and Real Estate (9)
- Banking and Finance Law (8)
- Courts (8)
- Jurisprudence (7)
-
- Law and Economics (7)
- Business Organizations Law (6)
- Constitutional Law (6)
- International Law (6)
- Law and Society (6)
- Legal History (6)
- Litigation (6)
- Securities Law (6)
- Human Rights Law (5)
- Law and Gender (5)
- Contracts (4)
- First Amendment (4)
- Commercial Law (3)
- Comparative and Foreign Law (3)
- Evidence (3)
- Judges (3)
- Law and Politics (3)
- Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility (3)
- Religion Law (3)
- Torts (3)
- Civil Law (2)
- Civil Rights and Discrimination (2)
- Criminal Procedure (2)
- Education Law (2)
- Keyword
-
- Capital punishment (6)
- Death penalty (6)
- Criminal Law and Procedure (3)
- Empirical legal studies (3)
- Free exercise of religion (3)
-
- Hedging (3)
- OTC derivatives (3)
- Over-the-counter derivatives (3)
- Property-Personal and Real (3)
- Reproductive rights (3)
- Speculation (3)
- Atkins v. Virginia (2)
- Barack Obama (2)
- Conspiracy (2)
- Eighth Amendment (2)
- Empirical (2)
- Evidence (2)
- Genocide (2)
- Inc. (2)
- Judicial independence (2)
- Jurisprudence (2)
- Law and Economics (2)
- Legal profession (2)
- Religious freedom (2)
- Religious liberty (2)
- Solar rights (2)
- TARP (2)
- Torts (2)
- Troubled Asset Relief Plan (2)
- United States Supreme Court (2)
Articles 31 - 60 of 85
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Ethical Visions Of Copyright Law, James Grimmelmann
The Ethical Visions Of Copyright Law, James Grimmelmann
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This symposium essay explores the imagined ethics of copyright: the ethical stories that people tell to justify, make sense of, and challenge copyright law. Such ethical visions are everywhere in intellectual property discourse, and legal scholarship ought to pay more attention to them. The essay focuses on a deontic vision of reciprocity in the author-audience relationship, a set of linked claims that authors and audiences ought to respect each other and express this respect through voluntary transactions.
Versions of this default ethical vision animate groups as seemingly antagonistic as the music industry, file sharers, free software advocates, and Creative Commons. …
Why Paretians Can’T Prescribe: Preferences, Principles, And Imperatives In Law And Policy, Robert C. Hockett
Why Paretians Can’T Prescribe: Preferences, Principles, And Imperatives In Law And Policy, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Recent years have witnessed two linked revivals in the legal academy. The first is renewed interest in articulating a normative “master principle” by which legal rules might be evaluated. The second is renewed interest in the prospect that a variant of Benthamite “utility” might serve as the requisite touchstone. One influential such variant now in circulation is what the Article calls “Paretian welfarism.”
This Article rejects Paretian welfarism and advocates an alternative it calls “fair welfare.” It does so because Paretian welfarism is inconsistent with ethical, social, and legal prescription, while fair welfare is what we have been groping for …
Meta-Theory Of International Criminal Procedure: Vindicating The Rule Of Law, Jens David Ohlin
Meta-Theory Of International Criminal Procedure: Vindicating The Rule Of Law, Jens David Ohlin
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
International criminal procedure is in a second phase of development, moving beyond the common law/civil law dichotomy and searching for its sui generis theory. The standard line is that international criminal procedure has an instrumental value: it services the general goals of international criminal justice and allows punishment for violations of substantive international criminal law. However, international criminal procedure also has an important and often overlooked intrinsic value not reducible to its instrumental value: it vindicates the Rule of Law. This vindication is performed by adjudicating allegations of criminal violations that occurred during periods of anarchy characterized by the absence …
The "Hidden Judiciary": An Empirical Examination Of Executive Branch Justice, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich
The "Hidden Judiciary": An Empirical Examination Of Executive Branch Justice, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Administrative law judges attract little scholarly attention, yet they decide a large fraction of all civil disputes. In this Article, we demonstrate that these executive branch judges, like their counterparts in the judicial branch, tend to make predominantly intuitive rather than predominantly deliberative decisions. This finding sheds new light on executive branch justice by suggesting that judicial intuition, not judicial independence, is the most significant challenge facing these important judicial officers.
Barack Obama, Implicit Bias, And The 2008 Election, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Gregory S. Parks
Barack Obama, Implicit Bias, And The 2008 Election, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Gregory S. Parks
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
The election of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States suggests that the United States has made great strides with regard to race. The blogs and the pundits may laud Obama’s win as evidence that we now live in a “post-racial America.” But is it accurate to suggest that race no longer significantly influences how Americans evaluate each other? Does Obama’s victory suggest that affirmative action and antidiscrimination protections are no longer necessary? We think not. Ironically, rather than marking the dawn of a post-racial America, Obama’s candidacy reveals how deeply race affects judgment.
Bailouts, Buy-Ins, And Ballyhoo, Robert C. Hockett
Bailouts, Buy-Ins, And Ballyhoo, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
The bailout strategy now being pursued by Treasury under the recently authorized Troubled Asset Relief Plan, if “strategy” it can be called, remains obscure and erratic at best. All the while markets remain jittery and credit remains tight, as the underlying source of our present financial jitters—continued decline in the housing market and still mounting foreclosures—goes unaddressed. This piece proposes an interesting and novel approach to solving the financial problem. If it works out, it would eventually minimize the cost to the government.
The Evolution Of Debt: Covenants, The Credit Market, And Corporate Governance, Charles K. Whitehead
The Evolution Of Debt: Covenants, The Credit Market, And Corporate Governance, Charles K. Whitehead
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Social Movements And The Ethical Construction Of Law, Gerald Torres
Social Movements And The Ethical Construction Of Law, Gerald Torres
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Changing The Paradigm Of Stock Ownership From Concentrated Towards Dispersed Ownership? Evidence From Brazil And Consequences For Emerging Countries, Érica Gorga
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This paper analyzes micro-level dynamics of changes in ownership structures. It investigates a unique event: changes in ownership patterns currently taking place in Brazil. It builds upon empirical evidence to advance the theoretical understanding of how and why concentrated ownership structures can change towards dispersed ownership.
Commentators argue that the Brazilian capital markets are finally taking off.
The number of listed companies and Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in the São Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) has greatly increased. Firms are migrating to Bovespa's special listing segments, which require higher standards of corporate governance. Companies have sold control in the market, and …
Standards Of Proof Revisited, Kevin M. Clermont
Standards Of Proof Revisited, Kevin M. Clermont
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This Essay focuses not on how fact-finders process evidence but on how they apply the specified standard of proof to their finding. The oddity that prompts speculation is that, in noncriminal cases, the common law asks only that the fact appear more likely than not, while the Civil Law seems to apply the same high standard in these cases as it does in criminal cases. As a psychological explanation of the cognitive processes involved, some theorists posit that the bulk of fact-finding is an unconscious process, powerful but dangerous, which generates a level of confidence against which the fact-finder could …
Reforming Knowledge? A Socio-Legal Critique Of The Legal Education Reforms In Japan, Annelise Riles, Takashi Uchida
Reforming Knowledge? A Socio-Legal Critique Of The Legal Education Reforms In Japan, Annelise Riles, Takashi Uchida
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This article critiques the current Japanese legal education reforms, modeled largely on the United States, by proposing a socio-technical framework for analyzing the distribution of legal expertise in a given society. On one side of the spectrum is the "monocentric" model of legal expertise, in which expertise is monopolized by the profession and legal literacy is low. On the other side of the spectrum is the "polycentric" model of legal expertise, in which a range of social and institutional actors share responsibility for legal expertise and legal literacy is high. If the U.S. is a more monocentric system, the Japanese …
An Empirical Look At Atkins V. Virginia And Its Application In Capital Cases, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Christopher Seeds
An Empirical Look At Atkins V. Virginia And Its Application In Capital Cases, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Christopher Seeds
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
In Atkins vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court declared that evolving standards of decency and the Eighth Amendment prohibit the death penalty for individuals with intellectual disability (formerly, "mental retardation"). Both supporters and opponents of the categorical exemption, however, have criticized the Atkins opinion. The Atkins dissent, for example, urged that the decision would open the gates of litigation to a flood of frivolous claims. Another prominent criticism, heard from those more supportive of the Court's ruling, has been that the language the Court used communicating that states must "generally conform" to the clinical definitions of mental retardation is ambiguous enough …
The New Crisis For The New Century: Some Observations On The "Big-Picture" Lessons Of The Global Financial Crisis Of 2008, Saule T. Omarova
The New Crisis For The New Century: Some Observations On The "Big-Picture" Lessons Of The Global Financial Crisis Of 2008, Saule T. Omarova
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
The unprecedented scale and complex contagion effects of the current financial crisis, which rapidly spread across geographic borders and market segmentation lines, forcefully underscored the urgent need for policy-makers, financial regulators, and market participants around the world to develop a deeper substantive understanding of the fundamental changes in the dynamics of modern financial markets. Although, in a historical perspective, all financial crises tend to display certain basic commonalities, two key factors make the crisis of 2008 qualitatively different from the panics and crashes of the past centuries. First, this is the world's first truly global financial crisis. Second, this is …
Why Is Torture Different And How Different Is It?, Sherry F. Colb
Why Is Torture Different And How Different Is It?, Sherry F. Colb
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Almost every serious commentator to address the moral and legal question of torture has taken for granted the proposition that the infliction of torture is a sufficiently grave evil to require a distinctly demanding moral scrutiny, one that categorically sets torture apart from other terrible things (including killing) that human beings do to one another. To borrow from the Supreme Court's death penalty jurisprudence, most people agree that torture is "different. "
Under the Eighth Amendment, the fact that death is different does not rule out its application; it simply alters the relevant procedural and substantive standards. By contrast, many …
Judicial Independence In Excess: Reviving The Judicial Duty Of The Supreme Court, Paul D. Carrington, Roger C. Cramton
Judicial Independence In Excess: Reviving The Judicial Duty Of The Supreme Court, Paul D. Carrington, Roger C. Cramton
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Independence from extrinsic influence is, we know, indispensable to public trust in the integrity of professional judges who share the duty to decide cases according to preexisting law. But such independence is less appropriate for those expected to make new law to govern future events. Indeed, in a democratic government those who make new law are expected to be accountable to their constituents, not independent of their interests and unresponsive to their desires. The Supreme Court of the United States has in the last century largely forsaken responsibility for the homely task of deciding cases in accord with preexisting law …
The Flight To New York: An Empirical Study Of Choice Of Law And Choice Of Forum Clauses In Publicly-Held Companies' Contracts, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller
The Flight To New York: An Empirical Study Of Choice Of Law And Choice Of Forum Clauses In Publicly-Held Companies' Contracts, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
We study choice of law and choice of forum in a data set of 2,882 contracts contained as exhibits in Form 8-K filings by reporting corporations over a six month period in 2002 for twelve types of contracts and a seven month period in 2002 for merger contracts. These material contracts likely are carefully negotiated by sophisticated parties who are well-informed about the contract terms. They therefore provide evidence of efficient ex ante solutions to contracting problems. In prior work examining merger contracts, acquiring firms incorporated in Delaware tended to select Delaware law or a Delaware forum to govern disputes …
Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie
Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie
Cornell Law 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 …
Original Sin And Judicial Independence: Providing Accountability For Justices, Paul D. Carrington, Roger C. Cramton
Original Sin And Judicial Independence: Providing Accountability For Justices, Paul D. Carrington, Roger C. Cramton
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Statesman Or Scribe? Legal Independence And The Problem Of Democratic Citizenship, Aziz Rana
Statesman Or Scribe? Legal Independence And The Problem Of Democratic Citizenship, Aziz Rana
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
What Is The Settlement Rate And Why Should We Care?, Theodore Eisenberg, Charlotte Lanvers
What Is The Settlement Rate And Why Should We Care?, Theodore Eisenberg, Charlotte Lanvers
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
After establishing the importance of knowledge of settlement rates, this article first shows that different research questions can yield different settlement rates. Using data gathered from about 3,300 federal cases in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (EDPA) and the Northern District of Georgia (NDGA), differing measures of settlement emerge depending on whether one is interested in (1) settlement as a proxy for plaintiffs’ litigation success, or (2) settlement as a measure of litigated disputes resolved without final adjudication. Using settlement as a proxy for plaintiff success, we estimate the aggregate settlement rate across case categories in the two districts to …
Not Just Key Numbers And Keywords Anymore: How User Interface Design Affects Legal Research, Julie M. Jones
Not Just Key Numbers And Keywords Anymore: How User Interface Design Affects Legal Research, Julie M. Jones
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Legal research is one of the foundational skills for the practice of law. Yet law school graduates are frequently admitted to the bar without adequate competence in this area. Applying both information-foraging theory and current standards for optimal web design, Ms. Jones considers, through a heuristic analysis, whether the user interfaces of Westlaw and LexisNexis help or hinder the process of legal research and the development of effective research skills.
How Deregulating Derivatives Led To Disaster, And Why Re-Regulating Them Can Prevent Another, Lynn A. Stout
How Deregulating Derivatives Led To Disaster, And Why Re-Regulating Them Can Prevent Another, Lynn A. Stout
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
When credit markets froze up in the fall of 2008, many economists pronounced the crisis both inexplicable and unforeseeable. That’s because they were economists, not lawyers.
Lawyers who specialize in financial regulation, and especially the small cadre who specialize in derivatives regulation, understood what went wrong. (Some even predicted it.) That’s because the roots of the catastrophe lay not in changes in the markets, but changes in the law. Perhaps the most important of those changes was the U.S. Congress’s decision to deregulate financial derivatives with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) of 2000.
Prior to 2000, off-exchange derivatives contracts …
The Status Of Trespassers On Land, James A. Henderson Jr.
The Status Of Trespassers On Land, James A. Henderson Jr.
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Dealing With Wayward Desire, Stephen P. Garvey
Dealing With Wayward Desire, Stephen P. Garvey
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
The exercise of synchronic self-control is the way in which an actor can attempt to bring a desire into alignment with his better judgement at the moment and during the interval of time over which, but for the exercise of such self-control, the desire would become the actor’s preponderant desire, which the actor would then translate into an act contrary to his better judgment. The moral psychology of an actor who fails to achieve such self-control can be analyzed in two ways. One way is meant to be consistent with compatibilist metaphysics; the other with libertarian metaphysics. The implications of …
The Google Dilemma, James Grimmelmann
The Google Dilemma, James Grimmelmann
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Web search is critical to our ability to use the Internet. Whoever controls search engines has enormous influence on all of us; whoever controls the search engines, perhaps, controls the Internet itself. This short essay (based on talks given in January and April 2008) uses the stories of five famous search queries to illustrate the conflicts over search and the enormous power Google wields in choosing whose voices are heard on the Internet.
Macro-Prudential Financial Regulation: Panacea Or Placebo?, Dan Awrey
Macro-Prudential Financial Regulation: Panacea Or Placebo?, Dan Awrey
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Modern Lights, Sara C. Bronin
Modern Lights, Sara C. Bronin
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This Article functions as a companion to a piece, Solar Rights, recently published in the Boston University Law Review. In that piece, the author analyzed the absence of a coherent legal framework for the treatment of solar rights - the rights to access and harness the rays of the sun. The growing popularity of, and need for, solar collector technology and other solar uses calls for reform. Answering the call for reform in Solar Rights, this Article proposes a framework within which a solar rights regime might be developed. First, as a baseline, any regime must recognize the natural characteristics …
Legal Taxonomy, Emily Sherwin
Legal Taxonomy, Emily Sherwin
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This essay examines the ambition to taxonomize law and the different methods a legal taxonomer might employ. Three possibilities emerge. The first is a formal taxonomy that classifies legal materials according to rules of order and clarity. Formal taxonomy is primarily conventional and has no normative implications for judicial decision-making. The second possibility is a function-based taxonomy that classifies laws according to their social functions. Function-based taxonomy can influence legal decision-making indirectly, as a gatekeeping mechanism, but it does not provide decisional standards for courts. Its objective is to assist in analysis and criticism of law by providing an overview …
Plaintiphobia In State Courts? An Empirical Study Of State Court Trials On Appeal, Theodore Eisenberg, Michael Heise
Plaintiphobia In State Courts? An Empirical Study Of State Court Trials On Appeal, Theodore Eisenberg, Michael Heise
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Prior federal civil appellate studies show that appeals courts overturn jury verdicts more than bench decisions and that defendants fare better than plaintiffs on appeal. Attitudinal and selection effect hypotheses may explain the appellate court tilt favoring defendants. This study presents the first statistical models of the appeals process for a comprehensive set of state court civil trials to test theories on appellate outcomes. Using data from 46 large counties on 8,038 trials and 549 concluded appeals, we find that appellate reversal rates for jury trials and defendant appeals exceed reversal rates for bench trials and plaintiff appeals. The reversal …
Taking A Stand On Taking The Stand: The Effect Of A Prior Criminal Record On The Decision To Testify And On Trial Outcomes, Theodore Eisenberg, Valerie P. Hans
Taking A Stand On Taking The Stand: The Effect Of A Prior Criminal Record On The Decision To Testify And On Trial Outcomes, Theodore Eisenberg, Valerie P. Hans
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This article uses unique data from over 300 criminal trials in four large counties to study the relations between the existence of a prior criminal record and defendants testifying at trial, between testifying at trial and juries' learning about a criminal record, and between juries' learning about a criminal record and their decisions to convict or acquit. Sixty percent of defendants without criminal records testified compared to 45 percent with criminal records. For testifying defendants with criminal records, juries learned of those records in about half the cases. Juries rarely learned about criminal records unless defendants testified. After controlling for …