Law Commons^™

A History Of Representations Of Justice: Coincident Preoccupations Of Law And Film, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

The American trial and the art of cinema share certain epistemological tendencies. Both stake claims to an authoritative form of knowledge based on the indubitable quality of observable phenomena. Both are preoccupied (sometimes to the point of self-defeat) with sustaining the authority that underlies the knowledge produced by visual perception. The American trial and art of cinema also increasingly share cultural space. Although the trial film (otherwise known as the courtroom drama) is as old as the medium of film the recent spate of popular trial films, be they fictional such as Runaway Jury or documentary such as Capturing the …

Truth Tales And Trial Films, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Investigations into law and popular culture preoccupy themselves with understanding how law and popular cultural forms work together to challenge or sustain community structures, identity and power. It is inevitable at this point in our cultural history that law and popular culture are intertwined. There are too many television shows, films, popular novels and web-based entertainment to withdraw "the law" (whatever that is) from the domain of popular culture. This article takes as a given the intermixing of law and popular culture, embracing it as a new feature of our popular legal consciousness. I suggest that one result of this …

Information, Litigation, And Common Law Evolution, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

It is common in the legal academy to describe judicial decision trends leading to new common law rules as resulting from conscious judicial effort. Evolutionary models of litigation, in contrast, treat common law as resulting from pressure applied by litigants. One apparent difficulty in the theory of litigation is explaining how trends in judicial decisions favoring one litigant, and biasing the legal standard, could occur. This article presents a model in which an apparent bias in the legal standard can occur in the absence of any effort toward this end on the part of judges. Trends can develop favoring the …

Lessons For Patent Policy From Empirical Research On Patent Litigation, Michael J. Meurer, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

This Article reviews empirical patent litigation research to reveal patent policy lessons. First, the Article presents facts about patent litigation. Next, it analyzes the patent premium. Patent litigation research reveals little about the magnitude of the patent premium, but the research reveals the strategies firms use to capture the patent premium and the patent policy instruments that determine the patent premium. Next, the Article evaluates the patent prosecution process and notes that making efforts to refine a patent application can affect the value of the patent. The Article then identifies reforms for improving PTO performance. Finally, the Article discusses policy …

Common Law Disclosure Duties And The Sin Of Omission: Testing The Meta-Theories, Kimberly Krawiec, Kathryn Zeiler

Faculty Scholarship

Since ancient times, legal scholars have explored the vexing question of when and what a contracting party must disclose to her counterparty, even in the absence of explicit misleading statements. This fascination has culminated in a set of claims regarding which factors drive courts to impose disclosure duties on informed parties. Most of these claims are based on analysis of a small number of non-randomly selected cases and have not been tested systematically. This article represents the first attempt to systematically test a number of these claims using data coded from 466 case decisions spanning over a wide array of …

Why Do Plaintiffs Sue Private Parties Under Section 1983, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The subject of this article is why people make federal cases, under section 1983,' out of claims they have against private parties. Section 1983 provides a cause of action against "any person" who, while acting "under color of' state law, subjects or causes the plaintiff to be subjected to a violation of federal constitutional or statutory rights. The requirement that the defendant act under color of law means that the typical section 1983 claim is brought against state and local government officials or entities, not against private individuals or entities. However, there are situations in which a private party (i.e. …

The Economics Of Litigation And Arbitration: An Application To Franchise Contracts, Keith N. Hylton, Christopher R. Drahozal

Faculty Scholarship

If we define the deterrence benefits from contract enforcement as avoided harms net of avoidance costs, we should expect contracting parties to choose the dispute resolution forum that provides the greatest difference between deterrence benefits and dispute resolution costs for every type of dispute. We apply this general framework to franchise contracts and conduct an empirical analysis of the determinants of arbitration agreements among franchising parties. Although it is obvious that contracting parties have an incentive to choose arbitration in order to reduce dispute-resolution costs, there have been no studies of the importance of deterrence concerns. We examine the deterrence …

Controlling Opportunistic And Anti-Competitive Intellectual Property Litigation, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

It is useful to think of intellectual property (IP) law both as a system of property rights that promotes the production of valuable information and as a system of government regulation that unintentionally promotes socially harmful rent-seeking. This Article analyzes methods of controlling rent-seeking costs associated with opportunistic and anti-competitive IP lawsuits. My thinking is guided to some extent by the analysis of procedural measures for controlling frivolous litigation, and analysis of antitrust reforms designed to control strategic abuse of antitrust law. These analogies lead me to focus on pre-trial and post-trial control measures that reduce the credibility of weak …

An Asymmetric Information Model Of Litigation, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This paper presents a cradle-to-grave model of tort liability, incorporating the decision to comply with the due-care standard, the decision to file suit, and the decision to settle. I use the model primarily to examine settlement rates, plaintiff win rates, and compliance with the due-care standard. The key results of the model are as follows: (1) litigation to judgment occurs only when some but not all actors comply with the due-care standard, and (2) if defendants have the information advantage at trial, plaintiff win rates generally will be less than 50 percent. I apply the model and its simulation results …

Conceptualizing Constitutional Litigation As Anti-Government Expression: A Speech-Centered Theory Of Court Access, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This Article proposes a speech-based right of court access. First, it finds the traditional due process approach to be analytically incoherent and of limited practical value. Second, it contends that history, constitutional structure, and theory all support conceiving of the right of access as the modern analogue to the right to petition government for redress. Third, the Article explores the ways in which the civil rights plaintiff's lawsuit tracks the behavior of the traditional dissident. Fourth, by way of a case study, the essay argues that recent restrictions - notably, a congressional limitation on the amount of fees counsel for …

Symposium: Patent Rights And Licensing, Michael S. Baram, Ashley Stevens, Thomas Meyers, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

This panel will discuss intellectual property - the patent incentive, patentability issues, licensing, and litigation-related matters. It will be moderated by Dr. Ashley Stevens, the Director of the Office of Technology Transfer at Boston University. Ashley has multiple degrees, including a doctorate in physical chemistry from Oxford University. He has worked in the biotech industry for a number of years, mostly with startup companies and academic research organizations such as the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, where he was also Director of Technology Transfer. Ashley was instrumental in the startup and operations of firms such as Biotechnica International, and started his …

Symposium: Regulatory And Liability Considerations, Michael S. Baram, Ellen Flannery, Patricia Davis, Gary Marchant

Faculty Scholarship

You can tell from remarks by prior speakers that regulatory approvals and liability prevention are of critical importance to progress in biomaterials. Gene therapy trials and the tragic outcomes of some of those trials have raised the specter of government suspension of clinical studies, termination of funding, and potential liability for personal injury under malpractice or products liability doctrines. Regulatory requirements and the terms of research grants and contracts have to be very carefully addressed by organizations testing, developing, making, selling and using biomaterials, biotechnology, and medical devices. However, many regulatory requirements are incomplete, ambiguous and confusing because the agencies …

"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, …

The Gains From Faith In An Unfaithful Agent: Settlement Conflicts Between Defendants And Liability Insurers, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

A pervasive problem in the settlement of liability litigation arises because liability insurers bundle their promise to indemnify the insured with a promise to represent the insured in settlement and litigation [see, e.g., Beckwith Machinery Co. v. Travelers Indemnity Co., 638 F.Supp. 1179 (W.D. Pa. 1986)]. Standard policies not only require the insurer to pay for legal representation but, more importantly, give the insurer the privilege of controlling the litigation and settlement process. The problem is how to resolve the conflict of interest between the insurer and the insured that may arise during settlement negotiations. This conflict is manifest when …

Litigation Costs And The Economic Theory Of Tort Law, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

The economic theory of tort law has developed along two lines. The first and more traditional is positive theory, which justifies tort doctrine. The second is normative theory, which usually criticizes the operational efficiency of the tort system, and is the focus of this Article. This Article argues that once the dynamics of litigation are properly taken into account, all bets are off on the economic efficiency of tort law. The simple fact that litigation is a costly enterprise provides a rich source of inefficiencies with which the tort system must grapple.

Foreword: The Economics Of Contract Law, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

The articles in this issue are samples from the burgeoning economics of contract law. They demonstrate that lawyers a can bring economic models to bear on quite specific issues of co offer normative guidance regarding the structure of efficient The success of the symposium and the quality of the articles of this field will continue to flourish. The articles cover a fairly narrow range of contract law issues. The second through sixth articles all address topics involving remedies. Two of these loo at the optimal remedies to be provided by contract law, and the other three are concerned with remedies …

Use Of Comparative Risk Methods In Regulatory And Common Law, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

Several persistent problems afflict risk decisionmaking. In the regulatory context, agencies confront the problems of how to prioritize risks for best use of their limited resources and how to determine "how safe is safe enough," or a risk limit, when action is to be taken on a particular risk.

In the trial courts hearing toxic tort actions, the jury must often determine whether an activity is "unreasonably dangerous" or a product is "defective" because of its risk attributes.

To resolve these problems, many have proposed the use of risk comparisons. Now that we can quantify risks, why not compare them …