Law Commons^™

Cftc & Sec: The Wild West Of Cryptocurrency Regulation, Taylor Anne Moffett

Law Student Publications

Over the past few years, a turf war has been brewing between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) over which agency should regulate cryptocurrencies. Both agencies have pursued numerous enforcement actions over the cryptocurrencies they believe to be within their jurisdiction. This turf war has many moving components, but the focus always comes back to one question: which cryptocurrencies are commodities, and which cryptocurrencies are securities? The distinction is important because the CFTC has statutory authority to regulate commodities, whereas the SEC has statutory authority to regulate securities. This Comment rejects the pursuit …

Agency: Married Women Traders Of Nantucket, 1765-1865, Mary L. Heen

Law Faculty Publications

Before the enactment of separate property and contract rights for married women, generations of married women in seaport cities and towns conducted business as merchants, traders and shopkeepers. The first part of this article shows how private law facilitated their business activities through traditional agency law, the use of powers of attorney, trade accounts and family business networks. These arrangements, largely hidden from public view in family papers, letters, and diaries, permitted married women to enter into contracts, to buy and sell property, and to appear in court. Private law, like equity, thus provided a more flexible alternative to the …

Boilerplate’S False Dichotomy, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

The argument against enforcing boilerplate contracts (contracts that no one reads) seems clear. Indeed, if this were a court case we would say that the jury is in; the evidence against boilerplate is overwhelming. Yet the judge has yet to render judgment. Courts continue to enforce boilerplate terms, and even those scholars who have exposed boilerplate as an emperor with no clothes are reluctant to gaze upon its nakedness and condemn its use.

This reluctance originates in an assumption that pervades the boilerplate debate—namely, that courts and commentators alike view boilerplate as necessary to the modern transaction. When asked to …

Ignorance Over Innovation: Why Misunderstanding Standard Setting Organizations Will Hinder Technological Progress, Kristen Osenga

Law Faculty Publications

On January 17, 2017, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Qualcomm Inc. in federal district court, alleging antitrust violations in the company's licensing of semiconductor chips used in cell phones and more. The suit alleges, in part, that Qualcomm refuses to license its patents that cover innovations incorporated in technology standards (standard-essential patents, or SEPs), in contradiction of the company's promise to license this intellectual property on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms. According to the FTC, Qualcomm's behavior reduces competitors' ability to participate in the market, raises prices paid by consumers for products incorporating the standardized technology, and at …

An App For Third Party Beneficiaries, David G. Epstein

Law Faculty Publications

Every year, more than 100 reported court opinions consider the question of whether an outsider can sue for damages under a contract made by others-in part because the law is so ambiguous. While contract enforcement by a third party is controlled largely by the facts of the particular case, it also materially depends upon the relevant legal standards. At present, not just the standards, but also the reasons for these standards, are unclear. Eighty years ago, Lon Fuller, a professor teaching contracts at a then-Southern law school, and William Perdue, a student at that school, significantly clarified and improved decision …

An App For Third Party Beneficiaries, Alexandra W. Cook, J. Kyle Lowder, Michelle Sonntag

Law Student Publications

Every year, more than 100 reported court opinions consider the question of whether an outsider can sue for damages under a contract made by others-in part because the law is so ambiguous. While contract enforcement by a third party is controlled largely by the facts of the particular case, it also materially depends upon the relevant legal standards. At present, not just the standards, but also the reasons for these standards, are unclear. Eighty years ago, Lon Fuller, a professor teaching contracts at a then-Southern law school, and William Perdue, a student at that school, significantly clarified and improved decision …

Deconstructing Duty Free: Investor-State Arbitration As Private Anti-Bribery Enforcement, Andrew B. Spalding

Law Faculty Publications

Duty Free rests upon a kind of three-legged stool of legal argumentation. Those legs are: 1) the common law of contract; 2) principles of state liability for official misconduct; and 3) global anti-corruption policy. As this article will show, each leg of that stool is fundamentally flawed; the legal arguments are unpersuasive and occasionally incorrect. This article seeks to deconstruct that stool, exposing the fatal structural flaws in each leg. It thus clears the way for building an arbitral jurisprudence of corruption that actually does what Duty Free attempted: advance global anti-corruption policy in a way that will inure to …

The Compensation Myth And U.C.C. Section 2-713, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This article seeks to bring greater discipline to the analysis of market damages by probing two basic assumptions that are routinely made in discussions of section 2-713: (1) that overcompensation concerns justify judicial interference with the buyer's choice of remedy; and (2) that the relevant market price, in all cases, is the market price that the aggrieved buyer would be required to pay if she wished to make a substitute purchase of goods elsewhere.

Close The Loophole: The Marketplace Fairness Act And Its Likely Passage, Bryan J. Soukup

Law Student Publications

In this stagnant economy, brick and mortar retailers (brick and mortars) are voicing increasingly strong objections to the current state of online tax collection considering they must always collect state sales tax. Due in part to this uneven playing field, brick and mortars lose thousands of dollars a day in sales to online retailers. States, too, are losing revenue in the form of unpaid use taxes and, like the brick and mortars, are proponents of legislation allowing states to require online retailers to collect sales tax from their customers. Proponents of federal legislation on this issue point to the fact …

Fifty: Shades Of Grey--Uncertainty About Extrinsic Evidence And Parol Evidence After All These Ucc Years, David G. Epstein

Law Faculty Publications

Lawyers and judges have been working with the Uniform Commercial Code for about fifty years. Most states adopted the Uniform Commercial Code between 1960 and 1965.

Notwithstanding these years of experience and the importance of certainty to parties entering into commercial transactions, there is still considerable confusion over the use of extrinsic evidence, parol evidence and the parol evidence rule in answering the questions (1) what are the terms of a contract for the sale of goods and (2) what do those contract terms mean. No "black and white rules"-just various "shades of grey."

This essay explores the reasons for …

A Critical Look At The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, David M. Quinn

Law Student Publications

This Article examines two of the more credible criticisms leveled against the ACTA and evaluates the credibility of each. First, some allege that the agreement is a treaty masquerading as an executive agreement. The distinction is significant because treaties may modify U.S. law and require congressional approval, while executive agreements must accord with existing law and require only presidential approval. The second criticism is the systemic lack of transparency throughout the negotiation process. Though these are not the only criticisms – far from it – they are the two most significant and stand on the most solid ground.

Commercial Law's Complexity, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This Article proceeds as follows. Part I briefly surveys prevailing ideas about the social costs of complexity and identifies additional costs that have escaped the attention of earlier commentators. The aim is to demonstrate why reducing the complexity of the commercial law system matters. Part II describes three legislative responses-two already enacted ·and one proposed- representing efforts to mediate the tension between the need for precise regulation and the generation of overly complex rules that often results. Part III provides a closer examination of these legislative responses and demonstrates that, taken together, they create an opportunity for the implementation of …

The Recent Amendments To Ucc Article 9: Problems And Solutions, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This article examines three of the forthcoming amendments to Article 9 in some detail: (1) the required name of an individual on a financing statement; (2) the perfection of collateral following the debtor's relocation to a new jurisdiction; and (3) collateral acquired by a new debtor. In the interest of brevity, the discussion of other, less noteworthy, amendments of the statutory text and Official Comments is not as complete. The primary purpose of this article is to off er guidance to legal professionals confronting particular issues under current and future Article 9.

Amended U.C.C. Article 2 As Code Commentary, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

In this short article, I suggest what is a valuable, if partial, corrective to the actual difficulties arising in the application of a statute that has not been subjected to significant changes for more than five decades. I begin in Part I by summarizing one of the sources from which information as to the proper application of Article 2 may be derived, and suggest that another appropriate source should be Amended Article 2. Part II will illustrate the soundness of the suggestion by applying Amended Article 2 to four issues, in order to conclude that specific outcomes can be predicated …

Proposed Legislation: A (Second) Modest Proposal To Protect Virginia Consumers Against Defective Products, Peter N. Swisher

Law Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to suggest a viable, necessary, and eminently reasonable legislative alternative that the Virginia General Assembly should enact for legitimate and pressing public policy reasons in order to properly protect Virginia consumers from defective and unreasonably dangerous consumer products. Adopting this alternative would bring the Commonwealth of Virginia into the mainstream of twenty-first century American, and transnational, products liability law.

Rational Retroactivity In A Commercial Context, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This Article focuses on the commercial law context. While transition issues have previously received scant attention, this area of the law is proceeding at an accelerating rate, making transition policy crucially important at this time. In particular, this Article will consider the plausibility and implications of a retroactivity norm in the commercial law context by examining the recent revisions and amendments to Articles 1 and 2 of the Code. Two claims will be advanced: The incentive-based analysis of retroactivity issues in other contexts does not necessarily comport with the realities of commercial law, and consideration of both expectations and incentives …

Contractual Choice Of Law And The Prudential Foundations Of Appellate Review, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

What are the advantages and disadvantages of appellate review of trial court rulings on issues of foreign law? What exactly does judicial review of unsettled questions of foreign law accomplish? What is its price? These questions are of considerable theoretical interest and immense practical importance. Their resolution calls for inquiries into the allocation of judicial authority and in its production of outcomes in the real world. The discussion proceeds first by briefly describing in Part II some of the causes and effects of the steadily increasing caseloads in appellate courts. After demonstrating that these caseloads may soon become unmanageable, Part …

Commercial Common Law, The United Nations Convention On The International Sale Of Goods, And The Inertia Of Habit, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This Article develops a model of judicial behavior that rests on the idea that a judge's decision is a function of her attitudes and role orientations and these, in turn, are heavily influenced by her law school education. The result is an intellectual stubbornness that may lead judges to reject not only optional innovations that may present themselves, but may also cause them to construe mandatory provisions as if no change had occurred. This model and the Convention on the International Sale of Goods illustrate situations in which the emerging international commercial code may play an important role in the …

Commercial Codification As Negotiation, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article endeavors to put the sales law in perspective by emphasizing its role in the broader system of commercial law. Then, in Part II we focus on a particular example (the buyer's right to recover goods upon the seller's insolvency) to support our general observation that the revision reflects a fatal insensitivity to the need for article 2 to fit with other bodies of commercial codification. Part III demonstrates the revi~ion's failure to come to terms with the role of context and makes the argument that the drafters' shortsightedness is evidenced by the manner in which …

Commenting On "Purpose" In The Uniform Commercial Code, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This Article describes the congruities and incongruities of applying a purposive interpretation to Code provisions. We intend nothing provocative; indeed, it would be provocative to suggest that a living organism such as the UCC should be applied in a manner inconsiderate of its "purpose." Our object is to come to terms with the sources of purpose. What is it that counsel, courts, and transactors, for that matter, need in order to discern the law's reason that will determine their bargain, their rights when the bargain fails? In Part II of this Article, we focus on section 1-102 of the Code, …

On The U.C.C. Revision Process: A Reply To Dean Scott, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This Article takes account of the forces that shape revisions of the commercial law and notes the relationship between those forces and the tenor of the resulting codification; Part II peruses Scott's thesis. It responds to his criticism of the UCC drafting and revision processes and describes how uniform commercial law Jurisprudence reveals the incongruities in his analysis. Part III tests Scott's conclusions about private legislatures by considering the realist Jurisprudence of the UCC and compares the UCC's "private legislature" (PL) commercial law to the commercial- law product of a "public legislature," the Bankruptcy Code promulgated by the United States …

Much Ado About Nothing: Achieving "Essential" Negotiability In An Electronic Environment, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

The approach adopted here is both historical and analytical. Part II of this Article describes the historical development of assignment law, and demonstrates that it parallels a more general shift of the law away from physical conceptions of property. It concludes that although a paper-based document may still be a practical requirement, there is no longer a valid theoretical justification for not making the law of negotiable instruments media neutral. In Part III we survey the features of negotiable instrument law and compare it generally with the law of assignments. This comparison suggests that the most striking substantive difference between …

The Implicit "Takings" Jurisprudence Of Article 9 Of The Uniform Commercial Code, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article begins by reasserting that central to the idea of property rights is the legal entitlement to remedies that permits a person to exercise dominion over the specific asset or to exclude the exercise of dominion by others. Next, part I examines the essence of a security interest and demonstrates that it is a protected property interest. Part II sets forth a model of priorities that suggests that although property interests should ordinarily be protected by a property rule, there is something special about a security interest, implying the need for greater contingency and justifying a …

U.C.C. Survey: General Provisions, Bulk Transfers, And Documents Of Title, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This article reviews recent case law and related developments under Articles 1, 2, 6 and 7 of the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C. or Code).

An Appraisal Of The March 1, 1990 Preliminary Report Of The Uniform Commercial Code Article 2 Study Group, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

In the spring of 1988, the Permanent Editorial Board for the Uniform Commercial Code, with the approval of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and the American Law Institute, began a formal study of Article 2 with the goal of reaching a decision as to whether the text should be revised. To this end, a Study Group was appointed, and Professor Richard E. Speidel of Northwestern University was selected to serve as Project Director.• On March 1, 1990, after two years of study, the Study Group issued a 245-page preliminary report for general public discussion and consideration. …

U.C.C. Survey: General Provisions, Bulk Transfers, And Documents Of Title, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This survey reviews recent case law and related developments under articles 1, 2, 6, and 7 of the Uniform Commercial Code ("U.C.C." or "Code").

Buyer's Remedies And Warranty Disclaimers: The Case For Mistake And The Indeterminacy Of U.C.C. Section 1-103, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

The primary purpose of this article is not to end the longstanding malaise surrounding section 1-103, but to illuminate its existence and encourage a serious reconsideration of the extent to which common law and equitable principles serve as sources of law in resolving cases under the Code. A greater appreciation of the importance of this issue to commercial law development will result in an approach which makes the law more predictable and which better facilitates the essential need to keep the Code responsive to commercial practice. Part II of this article introduces the context within which section 1-103 will be …

U.C.C. Survey: General Provisions, Bulk Transfers, And Documents Of Title, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This year several cases discussed the preemptive effect of the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act upon state law tort and contract claims arising from the sale of cigarettes to smokers who contracted cancer. This is aptly illustrated by Forster v. R. Reynolds Tobacco Co., which was decided by the Minnesota Supreme Court. In that case, the smoker (Forster) sued a cigarette manufacturer (R.J. Reynolds) in strict products liability, misrepresentation, breach of warranty, and negligence. The cigarette manufacturer moved for summary judgment on the ground that the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act preempted all state tort claims. The trial …

U.C.C. Survey: General Provisions, Bulk Transfers, And Documents Of Title, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This survey reviews recent case law and related developments under articles 1, 2, 6, and 7 of the Uniform Commercial Code ("U.C.C." or "Code").

U.C.C. Survey: General Provisions, Bulk Transfers, And Documents Of Title, David Frisch

Law Faculty Publications

This article reviews case law and related developments during 1987, under articles 1, 2, 6, and 7 of the Uniform Commercial Code.