Law Commons^™

Teaching And Scholarship Enrichment Through Involvement In Law Reform, R. Wilson Freyermuth

Faculty Publications

One of the most important ways for faculty to enrich their teaching and scholarship is through meaningful connections with the practicing bar. One effective way of developing these connections is through involvement in law reform efforts. This Essay focuses on developing these connections along two dimensions-through the work of the Uniform Law Commission and through involvement with trade organizations or nonprofit groups.

The New Model Negotiated Alternative To The Foreclosure Act, R. Wilson Freyermuth, Dale A. Whitman

Faculty Publications

One of the many painful lessons learned from the mortgage crisis that began in 2007 is that foreclosure is often a costly, slow, inefficient, and uncertain process. The additional cost and uncertainty for lenders are magnified when the balance of the mortgage debt exceeds the value of the collateral (that is, when the borrower is “underwater”), and thus full recovery by the lender of its investment is unlikely. Ways to avoid this misery are for the lender (usually represented by the servicer for a secondary market purchaser or a securitized trust) and the borrower to enter into a deed in …

Can International Law Trump Trump's Immigration Agenda: Protecting Individual Rights Through Procedural Jus Cogens, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

Donald Trump's approach to immigration has been revolutionary, to say the least. In his short tenure in office, his policies banning travel of individuals from certain Muslim countries have been taken to the United States Supreme Court on two separate occasions, and his most recent technique of separating children from their parents at the border has already spawned litigation. His boldest proposal yet, however, involves the widespread denial of procedural rights to immigrants.In his words, "[w]hen somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came [sic]."

This Essay considers the …

Traumatic Brain Injury And A Divergence Between Moral And Criminal Responsibility, Paul J. Litton

Faculty Publications

Traumatic brain injury (TBI), particularly in severe cases, can have such extraordinary effects on one's psychological capacities that it may be relevant to many kinds of legal claims in criminal proceedings. The focus of this essay is on claims related to an agent's status as a responsible agent. In other words, this essay will discuss the relationship between traumatic brain injury and claims that an individual does not have the capacities required to be fairly held accountable for wrongful actions. The law may hold most adults fully responsible for their crimes, but it may not hold responsible young children and …

The 2015 University Of Missouri Protests And Their Lessons For Higher Education Policy And Administration, Ben L. Trachtenberg

Faculty Publications

In the tradition of legal narrative and storytelling, this Article explores how the University of Missouri managed to fare so badly after students began protesting during the fall of 2015. It draws upon both public sources and the author's own observations as a faculty leader. The Article reviews the details and context of the Missouri protests and then presents a case study of crisis management and conflict resolution gone awry. Applying observations about higher education policy and administration to the phenomenon of student protests - particularly those related to race - the Article identifies potential pitfalls for university administrators and …

Social License To Regulate: Consumer-Producer Collusion And Related Policy Risks For Consumer-Facing Regulation, Nathan D. Richardson

Faculty Publications

Used a gas can recently? If not, prepare for a surprise—they’ve become harder to use due to government-mandated design changes aimed at reducing air pollution. Faced with persistent environmental and other challenges, government regulators have increasingly turned to similar regulations on consumer products. But these consumer-facing regulations create new policy and political problems for regulators, different from those associated with traditional industry-facing regulation. This paper looks in depth at three case studies of consumer-facing regulation: emissions controls on gas cans, efficiency standards for light bulbs, and European vehicle fuel economy standards. In each case, there is strong evidence for widespread …

Police Body-Worn Cameras, Seth W. Stoughton

Faculty Publications

Since the summer of 2014, community members, politicians, and police executives across the country have called for greater police accountability and improvements in police-community relations. Body-worn cameras are widely seen as serving both ends. Today, thousands of police agencies are exploring, adopting, and implementing body-cam programs. A survey by the Major Cities Chiefs Association and the Major County Sheriffs’ Association found that 95% of surveyed agencies had either implemented or were committed to implementing a BWC program.

Body-worn cameras are here, and more are coming. Mary Fan, for example, has described a “camera cultural revolution” in which “the future will …

Centralized Review Of Tax Regulations, Clinton G. Wallace

Faculty Publications

Centralized oversight of agency policymaking and spending by the President’s Office of Management and Budget is a hallmark of the modern administrative state. But tax regulations have almost never been subject to centralized review. The Trump administration recently proposed to require centralized review of tax regulations, but it is unclear what regulations would be subject to such review or how it would be conducted.

This Article examines the normative desirability of the longstanding approach of exempting tax regulations from centralized review, and the alternative of imposing such review. Scholars and policymakers have provided various incomplete justifications for excepting tax policy …

Serving Up Allergy Labeling: Mitigating Food Allergen Risks In Restaurants, Marie C. Boyd

Faculty Publications

Allergens in restaurant food cause many allergic reactions and deaths. Yet no federal, state, or local law adequately protects people from these harms. Although federal law requires the labeling of “major food allergens” in packaged food, there are no allergen labeling requirements for restaurant-type food. In addition, existing food safety requirements for restaurants are inadequate to prevent allergen cross contact.

The existing legal scholarship on food allergens in restaurants is limited. Much of the legal scholarship on labeling in restaurants focuses on menu labeling — the provision of calorie and other nutrition information to combat obesity. The requirements of Section …

The Privacy Of The Public School, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

This Article compares the liability of the public schools with that of families for harms to children in their care. Families serve as an apt vehicle for comparative analysis because families’ and schools’ responsibilities for children overlap substantially. Despite these overlapping responsibilities, however, the law allows schools to evade liability for harms to children and penalizes families for the same or similar harms.

Drawing on feminist theory on privacy and the public/private divide, this Article argues that the limits of public school liability mean they have privacy. Feminist theorists identify privacy as freedom from regulation and intrusion into decision-making. Public …

The Privacy Of The Public School, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

This Article compares the liability of the public schools with that of families for harms to children in their care. Families serve as an apt vehicle for comparative analysis because families’ and schools’ responsibilities for children overlap substantially. Despite these overlapping responsibilities, however, the law allows schools to evade liability for harms to children and penalizes families for the same or similar harms.

Drawing on feminist theory on privacy and the public/private divide, this Article argues that the limits of public school liability mean they have privacy. Feminist theorists identify privacy as freedom from regulation and intrusion into decision-making. Public …

Electricity Markets And The Social Project Of Decarbonization, Shelley Welton

Faculty Publications

Decarbonization is the process of converting our economy from one that runs predominantly on energy derived from fossil fuels to one that runs almost exclusively on clean, carbon-free energy. If pursued on the scale that experts believe necessary to prevent dangerous climate change, the infrastructure changes required to decarbonize the United States will have significant social and cultural implications. States aggressively pursuing decarbonization have adopted policies reflecting their under-standing that decarbonization is a social project implicating numerous value choices. Various state decarbonization policies combine the aim of decarbonization with job promotion, economic development, income redistribution, urban revitalization, open-space preservation, and …

The "Publicization" Of Private Space, Sarah B. Schindler

Faculty Publications

Recently, many urban areas have moved away from the creation of publicly owned open spaces and toward privately owned public open spaces, or POPOS. These POPOS take many forms: concrete plazas that separate a building from the sidewalk; glass-windowed atriums in downtown office buildings; rooftop terraces and gardens; and grass-covered spaces that appear to be traditional parks. This Article considers the nature of POPOS and examines whether they live up to expectations about the role that public space should play and the value it should provide to communities. This is especially important because in embracing POPOS, cities have made a …

Legal Deserts: A Multi-State Perspective On Rural Access To Justice (Forthcoming), Danielle M. Conway

Faculty Publications

Rural America faces an increasingly dire access to justice crisis, which serves to exacerbate the already disproportionate share of social problems afflicting rural areas. One critical aspect of that crisis is the dearth of information and research regarding the extent of the problem and its impacts. This article begins to address that gap by providing surveys of rural access to justice in six geographically, demographically, and economically varied states: California, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. In addition to providing insights about the distinct rural challenges confronting each of these states, the legal resources available, and existing policy responses, …

Environmens Rea, Anthony Moffa

Faculty Publications

Many policymakers remain blind to the moral implications of environmental harm caused by government action (or inaction) and have not adequately considered how criminal law deals with similar immoral behavior in other contexts. Building from Lisa Heinzerling’s thought-provoking essay Knowing Killing and Environmental Law, this article considers the possibility of criminal culpability for environmental policy decisions and the implications of that potential culpability for decision-making and communication. It builds from the premise that morality and law universally condemn the knowing killing of other human beings. It matters not that the identities of the dead are unknown. What matters from the …

Context, Integration And The Big Three Questions: An Approach To Teaching Transactional Law, Andrew M. Kaufman

Faculty Publications

I have been mentoring fledgling transactional lawyers in both law
school and law firm settings for a long time. Over the years, I have
recognized that the most significant challenge to their development and
success usually is not their mastery of the substantive laws and regulations
applicable to their transactions. Rather, most often their biggest hurdle is
their lack of transactional context. Without context for the material being
studied or applied, appropriately integrated into the transaction being
examined, the student or young lawyer is easily lost in a morass of
confusion and left to struggle with any number of issues, …

A Bargaining Dynamic Transaction Cost Approach To Understanding Framework Contracts, Juliet P. Kostritsky

Faculty Publications

This Article takes a different approach. It draws on the literature of these scholars but suggests that another way to understand the arrangements parties enter into in a variety of settings to purchase or sell goods or to innovate on a product or drug can best be understood in terms of a bargaining dynamic that looks at how the private interests of the parties are turned into joint interests in the agreement reached. It is a mistake to talk about the form of a contract without first understanding the bargaining needs and positions of the parties and how those needs …

If A Tuition Reduction Is Taxable, What’S The Measure Of Income?, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This article considers what the measure of income should be if a tuition reduction is taxable, and it challenges the idea that an educational institution’s stated tuition figure should control in that determination. It’s the value of the reduction, not the dollar difference between sticker price and the tuition actually paid by a particular student, that is potentially income, and the article suggests one reasonable method that might be used to determine that value. Although the focus of the article is on tuition reductions, the argument applies just as well to other situations in which a price reduction (or what …

Overcoming Roadblocks To Reaching Settlement In Family Law Cases, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

In “litigation as usual,” settlement often comes only after adversarial posturing, the original conflict escalates, the relationships deteriorate, the process takes too long and costs too much, and nobody is really happy with the resolution. This article describes roadblocks to negotiation and ways to overcome them to reach good settlements in family law cases.

A Solution In Search Of A Problem At The Biologics Frontier, Erika Lietzan

Faculty Publications

This short paper comments on Professor Carrier's new article, Biologics: The New Antitrust Frontier. His article makes a profound initial contribution to a new area of scholarship, based on a large body of prior work considering antitrust issues relating to small molecule drugs. But Professor Carrier’s article, like my own forthcoming piece on innovation and competition in the biologics marketplace, is inherently speculative. We are making our best judgments about the nature of a still emerging marketplace and likely conduct in that marketplace, based on our understandings of a new regulatory framework that is itself still emerging, the broader legal …

Truth In A Post-Truth Society: How Sticky Defaults, Status Quo Bias, And The Sovereign Prerogative Influence The Perceived Legitimacy Of International Arbitration, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

Through empirical and theoretical studies conducted by political scientists, philosophers, psychologists, and economists, this Article demonstrates how three phenomena - sticky defaults, status quo bias, and the sovereign prerogative-work in parallel to create enduring, but demonstrably incorrect, perceptions about the legitimacy of international arbitration. Interdisciplinary research also provides a potential solution in the form of a heuristic known as the Reversal Test, which acts as an objective diagnostic tool to identify the influence of unconscious cognitive distortions such as the status quo bias. Through this analysis, this Article not only addresses one of the core paradoxes in international dispute resolution, …

The History And Political Economy Of The Hatch-Waxman Amendments, Erika Lietzan

Faculty Publications

Reform of the Hatch–Waxman generic drug framework is in the air. Scholars, consumer advocacy groups, regulated industry, and policymakers are engaged in heated debate about perceived shortcomings in the scheme, flaws, and unexpected loopholes. Changes in how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) implements the law, as well as changes to the law itself, are under serious consideration. These policymaking discussions take place against a backdrop of shared assumptions about the origins and nature of the original Hatch–Waxman legislation — assumptions that this Article claims are wrong. Convention wisdom holds that the Hatch–Waxman legislation was a delicate compromise privately …

Equitable Mootness, Robert W. Miller

Faculty Publications

Even as other prudential limitations lose favor, equitable mootness continues to thrive. Its popularity derives from practical considerations: it protects third parties who have relied upon transactions approved by the bankruptcy court from the perceived unfairness wrought by reversal on appeal. In spite of its merit, equitable mootness lacks not only a statutory foundation but it also unconstitutionally extinguishes an appellant's right to an adjudication on the merits by an Article III judge. Recent Supreme Court opinions have tied the constitutionality of today's bankruptcy judge adjudications and appeals to the traditional boundaries of such matters at common law and under …

Auer Evasions, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

Auer v. Robbins requires federal courts to defer to federal agency interpretations of ambiguous regulations. Auer built upon, and arguably expanded, the Court’s long-standing practice of deferring to agency interpretations of their own regulations born in Bowles v. Seminole Rock. Although initially uncontroversial, the doctrine has come under fire from legal commentators and prominent jurists, including Auer’s author, the late Justice Antonin Scalia. As Justice Scalia came to recognize, Auer deference enables agencies to evade a wide range of legal constraints that are otherwise imposed upon agency behavior, the ability of agencies to take action with the force …

Rethinking The Law Of Legal Negotiation: Confidentiality Under Federal Rule Of Evidence 408 And Related State Laws, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

Federal Rule of Evidence 408 and related state laws are among the most important rules to implement the national policy favoring the settlement of legal disputes. These rules bar the introduction of statements made during negotiations leading to the resolution of legal disputes. However, comprehensive analysis of the rule's text, doctrinal history, and modem context demonstrates that the rule no longer meets its noble goals. Rather, the rule has evolved textually from a remarkably narrow and complex categorical presumption of inadmissibility with limited exceptions to a simpler rule that gives courts considerable deference to admit such evidence when they deem …

Introduction To "Dispute Resolution And Political Polarization", Rafael Gely

Faculty Publications

Dispute resolution practitioners and scholars know conflict. In fact, some would say that we love conflict. And yet, despite our affinity with conflict, the polarization that is evident in today's public space has been disconcerting. While we generally operate in a space where we are constantly exploring options, seeking compromise, helping participants explore their interests and finding ways to move towards agreement, what seems like an inability to even engage in any kind of dialogue is troubling. These and other related concerns led the editors of the Journal of Dispute Resolution to solicit contributions from seven well-known conflict resolution scholars …

General Principles Of Procedural Law And Procedural Jus Cogens, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

General principles of law have long been central to the practice and scholarship of both public and private international law. However, the vast majority of commentary focuses on substantive rather than procedural concerns. This Article reverses that trend through a unique and innovative analysis that provides judges, practitioners, and academics from around the world with a new perspective on international procedural law. The Article begins by considering how general principles of procedural law (international due process) are developed under both contemporary and classic models and evaluates the propriety of relying on materials generated from international arbitration when seeking to identify …

The Drug Repurposing Ecosystem: Intellectual Property Incentives, Market Exclusivity, And The Future Of "New" Medicines, Sam F. Halabi

Faculty Publications

The pharmaceutical industry is in a state of fundamental transition. New drug approvals have slowed, patents on blockbuster drugs are expiring, and costs associated with developing new drugs are escalating and yielding fewer viable drug candidates. As a result, pharmaceutical firms have turned to a number of alternative strategies for growth. One of these strategies is "drug repurposing"-finding new ways to deploy approved drugs or abandoned clinical candidates in new disease areas. Despite the efficiency advantages of repurposing drugs, there is broad agreement that there is insufficient repurposing activity because of numerous intellectual property protection and market failures. This Article …

Yes, There Is Such A Thing As Too Much Transparency, Sam F. Halabi

Faculty Publications

In a world where secret meetings and resulting agreements seem particularly suspect, it might be tempting to think that the growing norm of transparency might keep the world a more harmonious place. Woodrow Wilson famously extolled the virtues of "open covenants of peace, openly arrived at...." Ashley Deeks, in her recent article, A (Qualified) Defense of Secret Agreements, asks us to think again of this norm and dictum. Her article is one I like a lot, and I hope others active in the study and shaping of international law and international relations do as well.

Optimal Deterrence And The Preference Gap, Brook E. Gotberg

Faculty Publications

This Article is the first of its kind to argue that preference law is ineffective as a deterrent of collection behavior based on empirical evidence, drawn from interviews of actors within the field-debtors, creditors, and the attorneys who represented them in bankruptcy proceedings. This Article reports on interviews of sampled individuals who participated in successful 7 Chapter 11 reorganization cases involving preference actions. The overwhelming and indisputable conclusion from these interviews is that creditors may adjust their behavior in response to preference law, but not in ways that further the purported goal of preference deterrence. Accordingly, if preference law is …