Law Commons^™

The 2022 New Jersey Insurance Fair Conduct Act And The Incomplete Evolution Of Policyholder Protection, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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No abstract provided.

Billing Judgment, Nancy B. Rapoport, Joseph R. Tiano Jr.

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In most situations, when a lawyer sends a bill to a client, the client pays the fees. When the client believes that a fee or expense is unreasonable, the client will ask for reductions. Conscientious lawyers review a bill before sending it to the client, exercising judgment in terms of what fees and expenses are reasonable. But in bankruptcy cases, the estate pays the court-appointed professionals' fees and expenses out of unsecured funds or from a cash collateral carve-out. Thus, the responsibility for scrutinizing the fees and expenses falls not to a particular client, but to the court, per 11 …

Supreme Risk, Benjamin P. Edwards

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While many have discussed the social issues that might arise because of a majority-conservative Supreme Court, one critical consequence of the current Court has been overlooked: the role of the Court in generating or avoiding systemic risk. For some time, systemic financial risk has been regulated by a mix of self-regulatory organizations (SROs), such as the Depository Trust Corporation, and federal regulators such as the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC). However, the Court's recent jurisprudence now creates real risk that federal courts will declare keystone SROs unconstitutional because they do not fit neatly into an eighteenth-century constitutional framework.

SROs are …

Apportioning Authorship, Mary Lafrance

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Part II of this Article introduces the restrictive joint authorship tests created by federal courts, and the courts' reliance on the equal ownership principle as a justification for those tests. Part III examines the relevant case law and other authorities addressing the rights of tenants in common under both copyright law and the general law of property, and concludes that, contrary to the views expressed by many courts and commentators, historical precedent and legislative history strongly favor an interpretation of the copyright statutes that apportions joint authorship shares according to the collaborators' respective contributions. Part IV examines the decision of …

In Defense Of Deportation Defense, Michael Kagan

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Recent years have seen growing momentum toward expanding public funding for legal defense of immigrants fighting deportation. Yet, some recent scholarship argues that government-funded deportation defense carries the risk of legitimizing and entrenching an unsalvageable immigration enforcement system that should simply be abolished. As a result, immigrant rights advocates might hesitate to support deportation defense. This Essay argues that such hesitation would be a mistake. Legal defense is the most feasible means available right now to stop many deportations, and expanding deportation defense resources will strengthen the immigrant rights movement locally and nationally. Expanding deportation defense should be a high …

Sprinting A Marathon: Next Steps For Gender Equity In Criminal Law Employment, Maryam Ahranjani

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No abstract provided.

The U.S. Supreme Court's Characterizations Of The Press: An Empirical Study, Sonja R. West, Ronnell Anderson Jones

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The erosion of constitutional norms in the United States is at the center of an urgent national debate. Among the most crucial of these issues is the fragile and deteriorating relationship between the press and the government. While scholars have responded with sophisticated examinations of the President’s and legislators’ characterizations of the news media, one branch of government has
received little scrutiny—the U.S. Supreme Court. This gap in the scholarship is remarkable in light of the Court’s role as the very institution entrusted with safeguarding the rights of the press. This Article presents the findings of the first comprehensive empirical …

Disclosure's Limits, Usha Rodrigues, Mike Stegemoller

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Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) have exploded in popularity, luring both adventurous retail investors and sophisticated institutional investors. In a SPAC, a publicly traded shell corporation acquires a private target, thereby taking it public in a manner that circumvents the rigors of a traditional initial public offering (IPO). Proponents vaunt SPACs’ ability to simplify the process of accessing the public markets and democratize capitalism, but in their current form they pose risks to retail investors and to the market as a whole. Using a hand-collected dataset, this Article fills a gap in the literature by providing new empirical data regarding …

Artificially Intelligent Boards And The Future Of Delaware Corporate Law, Christopher Bruner

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The prospects for Artificial Intelligence (AI) to impact the development of Delaware corporate law are at once over- and under-stated. As a general matter, claims to the effect that AI systems might ultimately displace human directors not only exaggerate the foreseeable technological potential of these systems, but also tend to ignore doctrinal and institutional impediments intrinsic to Delaware's competitive model – notably, heavy reliance on nuanced and context-specific applications of the fiduciary duty of loyalty by a true court of equity. At the same time, however, there are specific applications of AI systems that might not merely be accommodated by …

Las Medidas De “Acomodación” De La Religión En El Derecho Estadounidense [Accommodation Of Religion In U.S. Law], Michael W. Mcconnell, Nathan Chapman

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En este trabajo se analizan las medidas de acomodación de la religión, que gozan de una gran tradición en el derecho constitucional de los Estados Unidos, así como los debates que han generado desde el punto de vista de su conformidad con las cláusulas de la Primera Enmienda de la Constitución de los Estados Unidos: la cláusula de no establecimiento de una religión oficial y la cláusula de libre ejercicio de la religión. A lo largo del trabajo se analiza la principal jurisprudencia recaída sobre las medidas de acomodación y los test que se han construido para enjuiciarlas.

[This paper …

Modern Sentencing Mitigation, John B. Meixner Jr.

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Sentencing has become the most important part of a criminal case. Over the past century, criminal trials have given way almost entirely to pleas. Once a case is charged, it almost always ends up at sentencing. And notably, judges learn little sentencing-relevant information about the case or the defendant prior to sentencing and have significant discretion in sentencing decisions. Thus, sentencing is the primary opportunity for the defense to affect the outcome of the case by presenting mitigation: reasons why the nature of the offense or characteristics of the defendant warrant a lower sentence. It is surprising, then, that relatively …

A Judge Never Writes More Freely: A Separate-Opinions Citation-Network Approach To Assessing Judicial Ideology, Joseph S. Miller

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What do judges really care about? Scholars have used various methods to identify a judge’s policy preferences. The standard method in political science, called the Martin-Quinn score, counts a judge’s votes for conservative or liberal outcomes. But judges don’t just vote, they give reasons in written opinions. Reason-giving is not only part of the tradition of common-law decision making but is also central to rule-of-law ideals, concerns that are not the focus most empirical methodologies. What’s more, the reasons a judge gives for reaching a conclusion provide powerful evidence for what the judge herself cares about. That is especially the …

Regulating Dynamic Risk In Changing Market Conditions, Susan Navarro Smelcer, Anne M. Tucker, Yusen Xia

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How successful are the SEC's attempts to regulate dynamic risk in financial markets? Using mutual fund disclosure data from two financial shocks-the Puerto Rican debt crisis and COVID- 19-this Article finds evidence that SEC open-ended regulations, like the obligation to disclose changing market conditions, are largely successful in capturing dynamic, future risk. Funds engage in wide- spread and, often, detailed disclosures for new risks-although these disclosures vary widely in specificity. But not all funds dis- close new risks. This creates perverse incentives for funds to opt out of disclosure or downplay threats with boilerplate language when new risks are emerging. …

Juridical Discourse For Platforms, Thomas E. Kadri

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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has created a private “Supreme Court,” or so he says. Since 2021, his company’s Oversight Board has issued verdicts on a smattering of Facebook’s decisions about online speech. Cynics frame the Board as a Potemkin village, but defenders invoke analogies to separation of powers to claim that this new body empowers the public and restrains the company. Some are even calling for a single “platform supreme court” to rule over the entire industry.

Juridical discourse for platforms is powerful, but it can also be deceptive. This Response explores how juridical discourse has legitimized and empowered Facebook’s …

Interconstituted Legal Agents, Christian Turner

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Legal theory and doctrine depend on underlying assumptions about human nature and sociality. Perhaps the most common and basic assumption is that we are separate persons who communicate imperfectly with one another. While this separation thesis has been questioned, it still dominates legal theory. However, I show that understanding separation and connection as alternative perspectives, rather than as ontologically true or false, reveals that legal conflict often arises when these perspectives give rise to clashing intuitions concerning the meaning of community and what constitutes goals and harms. This Article organizes perspectives on social relationships in increasing order of intersubjectivity: isolation, …

The Disappearing Freedom Of The Press, Sonja R. West, Ronnell Anderson Jones

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At this moment of unprecedented decline of local news and amplified attacks on the American press, attention is turning to the protection the Constitution might provide to journalism and the journalistic function. New signals that at least some Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court might be willing to rethink the core press-protecting precedent in New York Times v. Sullivan has intensified these conversations. But this scholarly dialogue appears to be taking place against a mistaken foundational assumption: that the U.S. Supreme Court continues to articulate and embrace at least some notion of freedom of the press. Despite the First Amendment …

International Child Law And The Settlement Of Ukraine-Russia And Other Conflicts, Diane Marie Amann

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The Ukraine-Russia conflict has wreaked disproportionate harms upon children. Hundreds reportedly were killed or wounded within the opening months of the conflict, thousands lost loved ones, and millions left their homes, their schools, and their communities. Yet public discussions of how to settle the conflict contain very little at all about children. This article seeks to change that dynamic. It builds on a relatively recent trend, one that situates human rights within the structure of peace negotiations, to push for particularized treatment of children’s experiences, needs, rights, and capacities in eventual negotiations. The article draws upon twenty-first century projects that …

Judicial Review Of Emergency Administration, Desiree Leclercq

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This Article seeks to describe and defend the judicial review of federal agencies’ responses to national emergencies – what I refer to as “emergency administration.” That may prove difficult. Agencies are experts in their respective fields. During emergencies, scholars and policymakers assume that judges will defer to that expertise under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). On January 13, 2022, the Supreme Court defied that assumption when it blocked the Biden Administration’s workplace vaccine and masking rules. Critics now assume that judges are reviewing emergency administration to constrain regulation. Both assumptions conclude that judicial review is neither sincere nor helpful during …

European Union Law In The Member State Courts: A Comparative View, Michael Wells

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Both the European Union and the United States are federal systems. Both divide law-making authority between the central government and the member states. Each has a dual judicial system, consisting of member state courts and central government courts. But the EU and the U.S. approaches to federalism diverge in two important ways. First, unlike the U.S., the EU has no system of lower federal courts. Second, in the U.S., the Supreme Court may review state court rulings that turn on issues of federal law. The European Court of Justice has no power of appellate review over the Member State courts. …

Portraits Of Bankruptcy Filers, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Deborah Thorne

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One in ten adult Americans have turned to the consumer bankruptcy system for help. For the past almost forty years, the only systematic data collection about the people who file bankruptcy comes from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), for which we serve as co-principal investigators. In this Article, we use CBP data from 2013 to 2019 to describe who is using the bankruptcy system, providing the first comprehensive overview of bankruptcy filers in thirty years. We use principal component analysis to leverage these data to identify distinct groups of people who file bankruptcy. This technique allows us to situate the …

Steering Loan Modifications Post-Pandemic, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Christopher K. Odinet

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As part of federal and state relief programs created during the COVID-19 pandemic, many American households received pauses on their largest debts, particularly on mortgages and student loans. Others may have come to agreements with their lenders, likewise pausing or altering payment on other debts, such as auto loans and credit cards. This relief allowed households to allocate their savings and income to necessary expenses, like groceries, utilities, and medicine. But forbearance does not equal forgiveness. At the end of the various relief periods and moratoria, people will have to resume paying all their debts, the amounts of which may …

Credit Scoring Duality, Pamela Foohey, Sara Sternberg Greene

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Credit scoring is central to people’s financial growth and prosperity or financial decline and stagnation. People with a good credit score and accompanying credit report can buy opportunities to advance economically. The benefits they reap from their attractiveness to lenders and employers helps feed their future success. In contrast, people with a fair or poor credit score become stuck in cycle of high interest rates and costly loan terms, large required down payments, and denied applications for rentals, cell phone plans, and employment. Employers, service providers, lenders, and alternative financial service providers have begun to use alternative credit scoring models, …

Bankruptcy Grifters, Lindsey Simon

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Grifters take advantage of situations, latching on to others for benefits they do not deserve. Bankruptcy has many desirable benefits, especially for mass-tort defendants. Bankruptcy provides a centralized proceeding for resolving claims and a forum of last resort for many companies to aggregate and resolve mass-tort liability. For the debtor-defendant, this makes sense. A bankruptcy court’s tremendous power represents a well-considered balance between debtors who have a limited amount of money and many claimants seeking payment.

But courts have also allowed the Bankruptcy Code’s mechanisms to be used by solvent, nondebtor companies and individuals facing mass-litigation exposure. These “bankruptcy grifters” …

Optimizing Whistleblowing, Usha Rodrigues

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Whistleblowers have exposed misconduct in settings ranging from public health to national security. Whistleblowing thus consistently plays a vital role in safeguarding society. But how much whistleblowing is optimal? And how many meritless claims should we tolerate to reach that optimum? Surprisingly, legislators and scholars have overlooked these essential questions, a neglect that has resulted in undertheorized, stab-in-the-dark whistleblower regimes, risking both overdeterrence and underdeterrence.

This Article confronts the question of optimal whistleblowing in the context of financial fraud. Design choices, which play out along two axes, have profound effects on the successful implementation of whistleblowing policy. One axis varies …

Platforms As Blackacres, Thomas E. Kadri

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While writing this Article, I interviewed a journalist who writes stories about harmful technologies. To do this work, he gathers information from websites to reveal trends that online platforms would prefer to hide. His team has exposed how Facebook threatens people’s privacy and safety, how Amazon hides cheaper deals from consumers, and how Google diverts political speech from our inboxes. You’d think the journalist might want credit for telling these important stories, but he instead insisted on anonymity when we talked because his lawyer was worried he’d be confessing to breaking the law—to committing the crime and tort of cyber-trespass. …

Bargaining For Abolition, Zohra Ahmed

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What if instead of seeing criminal court as an institution driven by the operation of rules, we saw it as a workplace where people labor to criminalize those with the misfortune to be prosecuted? I offer three different ways to think about labor in criminal court: (1) labor as a source of sociological value, (2) labor as an input that generates certain measurable outcomes, and (3) labor as a vehicle to advance abolitionist reforms. First, through their quotidian activities, criminal courts’ workers enact a practical philosophy that communicates lessons about who and how we value each other. Drawing on ethnographic …

Lessons From A Pandemic: Recommendations From The Georgia Tpo Forum For Strengthening Protections Against Domestic Violence, Christine M. Scartz, Sarah White, Jaime Boorman

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A civil protective order in Georgia is commonly called a temporary protective order, or TPO. The Georgia TPO Forum (the Forum) is a collaborative effort among practitioners who are deeply passionate about ending domestic violence and minimizing its effects on victims.1 The Forum is made up of advocates and attorneys who work every day with people who need protection from violence. Members provide each other not only with suggestions and solutions to problems, but also a listening ear in a profession where another tragic case is always on its way. The Forum is also uniquely positioned to offer recommendations about …

Protecting The Public Domain And The Right To Use Copyrighted Works: Four Decades Of The Eleventh Circuit’S Copyright Law Jurisprudence, David E. Shipley

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This article is about the importance of the copyright law jurisprudence from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. This appellate court turns 40 in 2021, and it has rendered many influential copyright law decisions in the last four decades. Its body of work is impressive. This article discusses the court’s important decisions in the following areas: the originality standard; the application of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Feist decision to compilations, directories, computer software, architectural works, and other creative works like movies, photographs, and characters; copyright protection for unfixed works; the scope of the government edicts doctrine; and, …

Popular Enforcement Of Controversial Legislation, Randy Beck

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Texas opted for popular enforcement of Senate Bill 8 (S.B. 8), prohibiting abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. In an effort to prevent pre-enforcement judicial review, the legislature precluded enforcement of the statute by government officials. Instead, any member of the public may sue for statutory damages of at least $10,000 from any person who (1) performs an abortion violating the statute, (2) knowingly aids or abets such an abortion, or (3) “intends” to perform or aid and abet such an abortion.

The cause of action authorized by S.B. 8 is a “popular action,” a once common method …

Rate Base The Charge Space: The Law Of Utility Ev Infrastructure Investment, Adam D. Orford

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To fight climate change and support the transition to a zero-emissions transportation sector, the U.S. is setting out to build a huge fleet of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. But EV charging equipment is expensive, and how to pay for it is not straightforward. This Article explores the emerging law and policy of using the bill payments of millions of electric utility customers to solve the problem. State utility regulators, in obscure technical proceedings, have begun directing billions of ratepayer dollars toward EV chargers. Is this an unfair and risky social spending experiment, as its opponents argue? Or is it …