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Full-Text Articles in Law
Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, Lina M. Khan
Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, Lina M. Khan
Faculty Scholarship
Amazon is the titan of twenty-first century commerce. In addition to being a retailer, it is now a marketing platform, a delivery and logistics network, a payment service, a credit lender, an auction house, a major book publisher, a producer of television and films, a fashion designer, a hardware manufacturer, and a leading host of cloud server space. Although Amazon has clocked staggering growth, it generates meager profits, choosing to price below-cost and expand widely instead. Through this strategy, the company has positioned itself at the center of e-commerce and now serves as essential infrastructure for a host of other …
Debunking Blackstonian Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Debunking Blackstonian Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Faculty Scholarship
More than two decades ago, in attempting to make sense of the structural dissonance between copyright and free expression, the U.S. Supreme Court famously declared that copyright was intended to be “the engine of free expression.” Ironically, this characterization was at the time intended as little more than a rhetorical device. In that very case, the Court proceeded immediately thereafter to analyze copyright as a “marketable” property right and conclude that absent a showing of market failure, neither fair use nor the First Amendment would preclude a finding of infringement. Instead of injecting a new set of values into copyright …
Optimal Standardization In The Law Of Property: The Numerus Clausus Principle, Thomas W. Merrill, Henry E. Smith
Optimal Standardization In The Law Of Property: The Numerus Clausus Principle, Thomas W. Merrill, Henry E. Smith
Faculty Scholarship
A central difference between contract and property concerns the freedom to "customize" legally enforceable interests. The law of contract recognizes no inherent limitations on the nature or the duration of the interests that can be the subject of a legally binding contract. Certain types of promises – such as promises to commit a crime – are declared unenforceable as a matter of public policy. But outside these relatively narrow areas of proscription and requirements such as definiteness and (maybe) consideration, there is a potentially infinite range of promises that the law will honor. The parties to a contract are free …
Distinguishing Between Consensual And Nonconsensual Advantages Of Liability Rules, Ian Ayres, Eric Talley
Distinguishing Between Consensual And Nonconsensual Advantages Of Liability Rules, Ian Ayres, Eric Talley
Faculty Scholarship
Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell's thoughtful reply to our recent article contains powerful insights about the relative efficiency of liability and property rules. While we are in agreement that liability rules can be more efficient than property rules when transaction costs are low, we disagree about the cause of this liability-rule advantage. Kaplow and Shaveli believe that liability rules hold only a nonconsensual advantage over property rules (i.e., liability rules tend to induce efficient nonconsensual takings). While granting this oftrecognized nonconsensual advantage, we contend that liability rules may also have a consensual advantage in low-transaction-cost settings (i.e., liability rules facilitate …