Law Commons^™

Assertive Modesty: An Economics Of Intangibles, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

At the center of our Symposium stand two papers: "A Manifesto Concerning the Legal Protection of Computer Programs" (Manifesto) and "Legal Hybrids: Between the Patent and Copyright Paradigms" (Legal Hybrids). Both are stimulating. Both are lengthy. As a result, my primary role is that of a guide: this Comment will summarize the authors' proposals, analyze certain aspects in greater detail, and outline their explicit and implicit methodologies. Part I of the Comment describes the papers' positions and methodologies. Part II highlights some of the papers' many contributions to the literature, and offers some other evaluative observations.

An Economic Theory Of The Duty To Bargain, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Hylton's paper presents an economic theory of the duty to bargain in good faith under the National Labor Relations Act. The duty to bargain alters bargaining incentives in two ways. First, it imposes a duty to disclose relevant information on the informationally advantaged party. Second, by conditioning the right to act unilaterally on satisfaction of bargaining obligations, the duty to bargain brings about a partial reallocation of the parties' entitlements. This partial reallocation increases the potential gains from honest contracting relative to the benefits of exploiting an informational advantage and thus alters incentives in a way that makes honest …

Margaret Somerville: A Refreshing Challenge, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Health law is applied law, the entire body of law applied to the promotion of human health and the delivery of medical care. It is accurate, if not flattering, to observe that the vast majority of health law teachers and practitioners are content to take their "applied" discipline as they find it, and spend most of their time and energy describing the intersections of law, medicine, and health care as they occur in the world around us. Margaret Somerville is a refreshing challenge to health law's self-satisfied and confining activities, and it has been invigorating to be her friend and …

We The Exceptional American People, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

I. INTRODUCTION: "AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM" There is an academic movement afoot-one with a long historical pedigree-to attribute the vitality of the American constitutional order to "American exceptionalism." The most prominent representative of this school of thought is Bruce Ackerman, whose We the People opens with a jeremiad against the "Europeanization" of American constitutional theory and urges us as Americans to "look inward" to rediscover our distinctive patterns, practices, and ideals.2 He maps the terrain of theory as being divided into monists ("Anglophiles"), rights foundationalists ("Germanophiles"), and dualists (red-blooded Americans).3 Only dualists have the "strength" to declare our American independence from British …

Enforcing Coasian Bribes For Non-Price Benefits: A New Role For Restitution, Wendy J. Gordon, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

In Boomer v. Muir,¹ a subcontractor on a hydroelectric project continued to provide goods and services even though the value of the performance far exceeded the contract price. The general contractor, who was receiving these goods and services, breached the contract even though he was paying less than market price for them.²

In many states, a supplier in the subcontractor's position has among her options the choice of "rescission and restitution."³ That means the supplier may rescind the contract and seek, under the label of "restitution", payment set at market price (or at her cost)⁴ for …

"Presumptions And Burdens Of Proof As Tools For Legal Stability And Change, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

Presumptions and burdens of proof are used, among other purposes, to maintain legal stability and at the same time effect change. By imposing the burden of proof on the party asserting a certain outcome, courts can calibrate burdens of proof and substantive rules until experience points to rule retention or amendment. As agents of change, presumptions and burdens of proof are far more flexible and less brittle than rules.¹

This Article tells the story of presumptions and burdens of proof in litigation between corporate shareholders and managements. This litigation is replete with volatile presumptions and innovative burdens of proof, …

Radical Resisters, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

In the early 1840s Henry David Thoreau stopped paying the Massachusetts poll tax. When pressed for payment in 1846, he invited arrest and went to jail. He had wanted to protest his state's complicity in the federal government's support of chattel slavery and its policies towards Native Americans. By the time he delivered his lecture on civil disobedience, in 1848, events had produced another cause. Thoreau also condemned this country's expansionist war against Mexico.

Working And Poor: The Increasingly Popular Practice Of Excluding Disabled Employees From Health Care Coverage, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

One might think, since passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA),' that the employment story for disabled employees or would-be disabled employees was cheerful, or at least improving. This may be true in so far as obtaining and retaining employment is concerned;' however, the ADA, because it permits employers and third-party insurers to continue to utilize traditional risk management techniques, has resulted in reduced or (in some cases) non-existent employee benefits for the disabled. At the same time, more and more employers are opting to self-insure under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA),3 in …

Counter-Manifesto: Student-Edited Reviews And The Intellectual Properties Of Scholarship, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

In the great scheme of things, how important are the problems with law reviews? Jim Lindgren's essay is a bit overheated, even for someone enamored f polemic as a literary form. But he does have a point: if law reviews are going to be published, the task should be done better than it is. That does not mean getting rid of student law reviews. Not even for Jim - but it does require patience and further inquiry into the nature of legal scholarship.

Rights And Irresponsibility, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

There can be little doubt that a marked discontent with rights and "rights talk" is in the air, as are calls for a turn to responsibility and "responsibility talk."' In a broad range of contemporary discourses, rights are juxtaposed against responsibility as if the two were inversely or even perversely related to one another. Indeed, rights are said to license irresponsibility. Academics, politicians, and the popular media claim that Americans increasingly invoke rights talk and shrink from responsibility talk and that as a result America suffers from an explosion of frivolous assertions of rights' and a breakdown of responsible conduct. …

Virtual Reality, Appropriation, And Property Rights In Art: A Roundtable Discussion, Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Virtual reality is user-interfacing technology that tracks the kinetic movement, changes, and reactions in the body of an operator using devices that provide comprehensive and exclusive sensory excitation (in the sense that perceptual input from outside the system is excluded as much as possible). The technology simultaneously allows information and commands to be input back into the system as effortlessly as possible. Virtual reality can be thought of as total sensory immersion in the input and output of a computer system: everything one sees, feels, and hears comes from the computer, and everything the user does goes back in. It's …

Debt, Accelerated Depreciation, And The Tale Of A Teakettle: Tax Shelter Abuse Reconsidered, Theodore S. Sims

Faculty Scholarship

For more than thirty years a consuming preoccupation of the income tax has been the control of "tax sheltered" investments. Of most widespread concern have been acquisitions, financed by debt, of assets that enjoy some sort of "tax-preferred" treatment, most commonly some advantageous form of depreciation. Tax-favored treatment has been conferred on many productive assets through deliberate congressional action. Nevertheless, debt-financed acquisitions of those very same assets have been regarded as exploiting the available tax benefits in ways that seemed "abusive" and have widely been regarded as "bad." This perplexing, fundamentally self-contradictory state of affairs has levied constant demands on …

The Rise And Rise Of The Administrative State, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The post-New Deal administrative state is unconstitutional, and its validation by the legal system amounts to nothing less than a bloodless constitutional revolution. The original New Dealers were aware, at least to some degree, that their vision of the national government's proper role and structure could not be squared with the written Constitution: The Administrative Process, James Landis's classic exposition of the New Deal model of administration, fairly drips with contempt for the idea of a limited national government subject to a formal, tripartite separation of powers. Faced with a choice between the administrative state and the Constitution, the architects …

Multinational Corporations, Private Codes, And Technology Transfer For Sustainable Development, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

Sustainable development requires the application of advanced technological expertise in the activities of multinational corporations. Private codes of environmental conduct are proliferating throughout the developed world, ensuring the application of the required technological expertise. However, multinational corporations generally do not follow these voluntary codes in developing nations. Several strategies are available to extend the effective application of private codes in the developing world. Reliance on private codes of environmental conduct enhanced by supportive strategies provides a pragmatic policy option for sustainable development.

Proprietary Rights In Digital Data, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

The Clinton Administration in 1993 announced its intention to develop a National ; Information Infrastructure (NII), an "information superhighway" designed to make electronic digital information more widely available and accessible to the public. This announcement has . ~ stimulated a national debate over how best to define and enforce an appropriate set of proprietary rights in digital information. That debate should begin with an analysis and assessment of the current state of the law of digital data. While that law resembles a moving target, general trends may be identified. The current framework provides the background against which NIL may be …

The Pros And Cons Of A Self-Regulatory Organization For Advisers And Mutual Funds, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

Congress is seriously considering bills to establish self-regulatory organizations (SROs) for investment advisers (advisers) and investment companies (Funds). These bills would require members of the investment management industry to regulate themselves under the watchful eye of the Securities and Exchange Commission, similar in approach to the regulation of broker-dealers by the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. (NASD) and the securities exchanges. Proposals to establish SRO for investment advisers have arisen before. However, those proposals did not cover Funds and their advisers,

When Should Preventive Treatment Be Paid For By Health Insurance?, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

In the national debate about who should have health insurance, surprisingly little attention has been focused on what medical services health insurance itself should cover. Historically, discussions of this topic have centered on concepts such as basic health care or medically necessary care. When the power of medical diagnosis and treatment was limited, these terms had boundaries as well. As physicians' diagnostic prowess has increased, however, especially in the area of genetics, such terms have become open-ended. To avoid predictable conflicts over benefit coverage, much more precise definitions will be required, so that patients and health care providers can understand …

The Empire Of Death: How Culture And Economics Affect Informed Consent In The U.S., The U.K., And Japan, George J. Annas, Frances H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

Historically, most Americans have treated health care as a private commodity whose price, and therefore availability, is primarily determined by market forces. In such a context, the law not unsurprisingly places a high premium on information disclosure by physicians. Personal autonomy-an individual's power to choose among medical options-enjoys its most zealous protection under U.S. jurisprudence.⁷ The dominant U.S. version of informed consent is grounded on principles of patient/consumer autonomy, and seems to enhance market choice. But a strong theme of collectivism now runs through some discussions of U.S. health policy.⁸ President Clinton was elected at least in part …

Mandated Access: Commensurability And The Right To Say 'No', Wendy J. Gordon, Anne E. Gowen

Faculty Scholarship

Here is the problem as Congress saw it: A distributor of television programming (a cable television operator or a distributor of television programming via other media) cannot thrive unless it can supply viewers with top-rated programming. Few customers want to subscribe to a service that lacks NBC's Seinfeld, the latest episodes of General Hospital, or even PBS educational documentaries. Special provisions in the 1976 Copyright Act gave cable operators some liberty to retransmit broadcast programming. However, that Act created no such liberties for programming originating from within cable companies. Because the national market for programming is dominated by …

Systemische Und Fallbezogene Losungsansatze Fur Marktversagen Bei Immaterialgutern (Systemic And Case-By-Case Responses To Failures In Markets For Tangible Goods), Wendy J. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Diese Abhandlung versucht, verschiedene Probleme des Immaterialgüterrechts zu vereinheitlichen, indem von einer einzigen Perspektive ausgegangen wird, nämlich der des Marktversagens. Aus ökonomischer Sicht sollte die Frage, ob Immaterialgüterschutz für eine bestimmte Branche oder ein bestimmtes lmmaterialgut gewährt werden sollte, zum Großteil von einem komparativen Institutionen- Ansatz abhängen. Mit anderen Worten, eine Analyse, ob die Einführung von Immaterialgüterrechten allokationseffizient ist, befaßt sich mit der Frage, ob die Unvollkommenheiten einer Rechtsordnung mit Immaterialgüterschutz mehr oder weniger kostspielig wären als jene Unvollkommenheiten, die ansonsten bestünden. Obwohl es sich hierbei letztlich um eine empirische Frage handelt, ist es doch möglich, einige plausible Hypothesen aufzustellen. …

The Concept Of Property In The Early Common Law, David J. Seipp

Faculty Scholarship

“There is nothing,” wrote William Blackstone, “which so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property.” Property continues to occupy a place of enormous importance in American legal thought. More than just a staple of the first-year law school curriculum, the concept of property guides the application of constitutional doctrines of due process and eminent domain. A grand division between “property rules” and “liability rules” classifies our common law entitlements. Property is a concept of such longstanding importance in our law, of such great inertial momentum, that it has expanded to include nonphysical …

Scientific Evidence In The Courtroom: The Death Of The Frye Rule, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

In one of the most anticlimactic cases in recent years, the Supreme Court ruled on the last day of its 1992-1993 term that federal judges should admit all relevant scientific testimony and evidence that is “reliable”. The result was so uncontroversial that both sides in the case said they were satisfied; because the result was also so vague, it will probably be years before its effect can be accurately ascertained. The facts of the case, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., are somewhat more interesting than its prosaic legal conclusion.

The Constitutional Case Against Precedent, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

A recent, and characteristically illuminating, article by Professor Henry Monaghan confidently announces that "[p] recedent is, of course, part of our understanding of what law is."1 As a descriptive matter, Professor Monaghan is entirely correct. Legal analysis-by lawyers, courts, and academics-typically begins and ends with precedent. Law students are meticulously trained in the art of reading, applying, and distinguishing cases. Court pinions, including Supreme Court opinions, on constitutional matters frequently consist entirely of discussions of past decisions, without so much as a reference to the Constitution itself.' Even in this era of law-and-metatheory, case analysis is still the mainstay of …

Informed Consent, Cancer, And Truth In Prognosis, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Barbara Tuchman records that during the Black Death epidemic in the early 14th century, “doctors were admired, lawyers universally hated and mistrusted”. The great plagues and wars of the Middle Ages produced a “cult of death,” including a vast popular literature that had death as its theme. As the 20th century closes, our emphasis is on the denial of death, and the honest discussion of death remains rare both in popular literature and in conversations between physicians and patients. This is one reason why Shana Alexander shocked a national conference of bioethicists last year by saying, “I trust my lawyer …

Death By Prescription, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Society and physicians in the United States remain unable to accept death and thus unable to deal with the physical, psychological, and spiritual approach of death. The hour of death itself “is commonly tranquil,” but “the serenity is usually bought at a fearful price -- and the price is the process by which we reach that point” -- a process that has been described as “a purgatory that may last for weeks.” Suicide has been seen as a rational way to avoid that purgatory, especially as a response to end-stage cancer and AIDS, and proposals to “legalize” physician-assisted suicide in …

Asking The Courts To Set The Standard Of Emergency Care - The Case Of Baby K, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Almost two decades ago, Dr. Franz J. Ingelfinger predicted that if physicians kept turning to the courts “to resolve essentially medical matters,” the medical profession's unfortunate “dependence on the lawyer in reaching essentially medical decisions will continue”1. One can argue about what decisions are “essentially medical,” but the trend that worried Dr. Ingelfinger has continued, and now physicians and a hospital have sought legal and judicial guidance about how -- and whether -- to treat an anencephalic infant known as Baby K.

Multiple Litigants With A Public Good Remedy, Robert Marshall, Michael J. Meurer, Jean-Francois Richard

Faculty Scholarship

Potential bidders are frequently excluded from participation in a federal procurement by the mandatory specifications or evaluation criteria in the bid solicitation. For certain procurements aggrieved bidders can protest inappropriate exclusions to a quasi-judicial board. We present a model where there are multiple potential litigants and the remedy is a public good. Equilibrium litigation can arise without decision errors by the court or information asymmetries. We show that protests can deter inappropriate exclusions but can also lead to undesirable settlement agreements. The free-rider problem created by the public good remedy can also cause voluntary revisions of an excessively restrictive bid …

Environmental "Remediation" Expenses And A Natural Interpretation Of The Capitalization Requirement, Theodore S. Sims

Faculty Scholarship

The income taxation of outlays for envi- ronmental restoration (or "remediation'') has become a hot topic once again. It elicited extensive consideration a decade ago, when the focus was on the treat- ment of expenses of surface mining re- clamation and nuclear power plant de- commissioning, now explicitly covered by Sections 468 and 468A of the Internal Revenue Code. As a formal matter, those specific matters are just examples, conspicuous by their size, of the more general question of how an income tax should account for "future costs." Al- though not currently controversial, sur- face mining affords a simple illustration. …

Outcomes Assessment In Health Care Reform: Promise And Limitations, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

If the fundamental goals of the health care reform effort are to ensure universal access to an acceptable quality of health care at an affordable cost, then the threshold question for reform is: What health care services should be provided in an efficient, equitable system?

Answering this question requires weighing a complex mix of medical and social policy factors, a process not attempted in this article. But the starting point for that process should be determining what health care services “work” and what they cost. Outcomes assessment holds considerable promise in finding answers to these subsidiary questions, because it is …

Discontinuities, Causation, And Grady's Uncertainty Theorem, Stephen G. Marks

Faculty Scholarship

In a series of articles, Mark Grady considers the problem of discontinuity under a tort negligence regime. The discontinuity can be described as follows. A potential injurer who adopts the optimal level of precaution is completely shielded from liability under the negligence system even though accidents occur. A very small decrease in the level of precaution below the optimal level suddenly exposes the potential injurer to liability for those accidents. This discontinuity makes the expected cost of under-investment in precaution greater than the expected cost of overinvestment. In a world where there is uncertainty about the optimal level of precaution …