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Workers' Comp And Contagious Disease: History And Future, Kate E. Britt Jan 2021

Workers' Comp And Contagious Disease: History And Future, Kate E. Britt

Law Librarian Scholarship

Modern workers’ compensation schemes set out to provide financial relief to employees who contract an occupational disease during employment, like miners contracting black lung or contractors exposed to asbestos. Certain professions are understood to stand a particular risk of exposure to contagious diseases. Health-care workers interact with persons carrying contagious disease as a matter of course. What workers’ compensation does not cover are diseases which are so prevalent they are considered an “ordinary disease of life.” These diseases, like the common cold, influenza, or pneumonia, could be contracted by persons regardless of their profession, and workers’ compensation acts generally limit …


The Support-Or-Advocacy Clauses, Richard Primus, Cameron O. Kistler Oct 2020

The Support-Or-Advocacy Clauses, Richard Primus, Cameron O. Kistler

Articles

Two little known clauses of a Reconstruction-era civil rights statute are potentially powerful weapons for litigators seeking to protect the integrity of federal elections. For the clauses to achieve their potential, however, the courts will need to settle correctly a contested question of statutory interpretation: do the clauses create substantive rights, or do they merely create remedies for substantive rights specified elsewhere? The correct answer is that the clauses create substantive rights.


Discerning A Dignitary Offense: The Concept Of Equal 'Public Rights' During Reconstruction, Rebecca J. Scott Aug 2020

Discerning A Dignitary Offense: The Concept Of Equal 'Public Rights' During Reconstruction, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

The mountain of modern interpretation to which the language of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution has been subjected tends to overshadow the multiple concepts of antidiscrimination that were actually circulating at the time of its drafting. Moreover, as authors on race and law have pointed out, Congress itself lacked any African American representatives during the 1866–68 moment of transitional justice. The subsequent development of a “state action doctrine” limiting the reach of federal civil rights enforcement, in turn, eclipsed important contemporary understandings of the harms that Reconstruction-era initiatives sought to combat. In contrast to the oblique language …


Thin And Thick Conceptions Of The Nineteenth Amendment Right To Vote And Congress's Power To Enforce It, Richard L. Hasen, Leah M. Litman Jul 2020

Thin And Thick Conceptions Of The Nineteenth Amendment Right To Vote And Congress's Power To Enforce It, Richard L. Hasen, Leah M. Litman

Articles

This Article, prepared for a Georgetown Law Journal symposium on the Nineteenth Amendment’s one-hundred-year anniversary, explores and defends a “thick” conception of the Nineteenth Amendment right to vote and Congress’s power to enforce it. A “thin” conception of the Nineteenth Amendment maintains that the Amendment merely prohibits states from enacting laws that prohibit women from voting once the state decides to hold an election. And a “thin” conception of Congress’s power to enforce the Nineteenth Amendment maintains that Congress may only supply remedies for official acts that violate the Amendment’s substantive guarantees. This Article argues the Nineteenth Amendment does more. …


Why Study Tax History?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2020

Why Study Tax History?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Reviews

Since the beginning of this century, John Tiley organized an annual tax history conference at Cambridge, a tradition that was continued after his death under the leadership of Peter Harris. These are the papers from the ninthCambridge Tax Law History Conference, held in July 2018. In the usual manner, the papers have been selected from an oversupply of proposals for their interest and relevance, and scrutinized and edited to the highest standard for inclusion in this prestigious series. The result is an outstanding book, with many high quality contributions to historical tax research.


Reckless Juveniles, Kimberly Thomas Feb 2019

Reckless Juveniles, Kimberly Thomas

Articles

Modern doctrine and scholarship largely take it for granted that offenders should be criminally punished for reckless acts.1 Yet, developments in our understanding of human behavior can shed light on how we define and attribute criminal liability, or at least force us to grapple with the categories that have existed for so long. This Article examines recklessness and related doctrines in light of the shifts in understanding of adolescent behavior and its biological roots, to see what insights we might attain, or what challenges these understandings pose to this foundational mens rea doctrine. Over the past decade, the U.S. Supreme …


Second Redemption, Third Reconstruction, Richard A. Primus Jan 2019

Second Redemption, Third Reconstruction, Richard A. Primus

Articles

In The Accumulation of Advantages, the picture that Professor Owen Fiss paints about equality during and since the Second Reconstruction is largely a picture in black and white. That makes some sense. The black/white experience is probably the most important throughline in the story of equal protection. It was the central theme of both the First and Second Reconstructions. In keeping with that orientation, the picture of disadvantage described by Fiss’s theory of cumulative responsibility is largely drawn from the black/white experience. Important as it is, however, the black/white experience does not exhaust the subject of constitutional equality. So in …


The Elephant Problem, Richard Primus Jan 2019

The Elephant Problem, Richard Primus

Reviews

In their new book, "A Great Power of Attorney": Understanding the Fiduciary Constitution, Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman argue that, as a matter of original meaning, the Constitution should be understood as analogous to a power of attorney, that interpretive devices applicable to powers of attorney should therefore be used in constitutional interpretation, and that interpreting the Constitution that way would produce results congenial to modern libertarian preferences, such as the unconstitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and the invalidity, on nondelegation grounds, of much of the federal administrative state. But the book fails to carry any of its central …


An American Approach To Social Democracy: The Forgotten Promise Of The Fair Labor Standards Act, Kate Andrias Jan 2019

An American Approach To Social Democracy: The Forgotten Promise Of The Fair Labor Standards Act, Kate Andrias

Articles

There is a growing consensus among scholars and public policy experts that fundamental labor law reform is necessary in order to reduce the nation’s growing wealth gap. According to conventional wisdom, however, a social democratic approach to labor relations is uniquely un-American—in deep conflict with our traditions and our governing legal regime. This Article calls into question that conventional account. It details a largely forgotten moment in American history: when the early Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) established industry committees of unions, business associations, and the public to set wages on an industry-by-industry basis. Alongside the National Labor Relations Act, …


High‐Frequency Trading And The New Stock Market: Sense And Nonsense, Merritt B. Fox, Lawrence R. Glosten, Gabriel V. Rauterberg Feb 2018

High‐Frequency Trading And The New Stock Market: Sense And Nonsense, Merritt B. Fox, Lawrence R. Glosten, Gabriel V. Rauterberg

Articles

The stock market has been transformed during the last 25 years. Human suppliers of liquidity like the NASDAQ dealers and NYSE specialists have been replaced by algorithmic market making; stocks that once traded on a single venue now trade across twelve exchanges and a multitude of alternative trading systems. New venues like dark pools, and new participants like high‐frequency traders, have emerged to take on prominent roles. This new market has had more than its share of controversy and regulatory scrutiny, particularly in the wake of Michael Lewis’s bestseller Flash Boys. In this article, the authors analyze five of the …


Review Of South Sudan: A Slow Liberation, Laura Nyantung Beny Jan 2018

Review Of South Sudan: A Slow Liberation, Laura Nyantung Beny

Reviews

This is a remarkable book. It offers a complex and nuanced analysis of South Sudan's prolonged and troubled march to political liberation—first from Anglo‐Egyptian colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, then from hegemonic Arab rule in post‐independence Sudan [1956‐2011], and now from South Sudan's internal political and economic contradictions.


Disability, Universalism, Social Rights, And Citizenship, Samuel R. Bagenstos Dec 2017

Disability, Universalism, Social Rights, And Citizenship, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

The 2016 election has had significant consequences for American social welfare policy. Some of these consequences are direct. By giving unified control of the federal government to the Republican Party for the first time in a decade, the election has potentially empowered conservatives to ram through a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act—the landmark “Obamacare” law that marked the most significant expansion of the social welfare state since the 1960s. Other consequences are more indirect. Both the election result itself, and Republicans’ actions since, have spurred a renewed debate within the left-liberal coalition regarding the politics of social welfare …


China's 'Corporatization Without Privatization' And The Late 19th Century Roots Of A Stubborn Path Dependency, Nicholas Howson Oct 2017

China's 'Corporatization Without Privatization' And The Late 19th Century Roots Of A Stubborn Path Dependency, Nicholas Howson

Articles

This Article analyzes the contemporary program of “corporatization without privatization” in the People's Republic of China (PRC) directed at China's traditional state-owned enterprises (SOEs) through a consideration of long ago precursor enterprise establishments--starting from the last Chinese imperial dynasty's creation of “government-promoted/-supervised, merchant-financed/-operated” (guandu shangban) firms in the latter part of the nineteenth century. While analysts are tempted to see the PRC corporations with listings on international exchanges that dominate the global economy and capital markets as expressions of “convergence,” this Article argues that such firms in fact show deeply embedded aspects of path dependency unique to the Chinese context …


From Grace To Grids: Rethinking Due Process Protections For Parole., Kimberly A. Thomas, Paul D. Reingold May 2017

From Grace To Grids: Rethinking Due Process Protections For Parole., Kimberly A. Thomas, Paul D. Reingold

Articles

Current due process law gives little protection to prisoners at the point of parole, even though the parole decision, like sentencing, determines whether or not a person will serve more time or will go free. The doctrine regarding parole, which developed mostly in the late 1970s, was based on a judicial understanding of parole as an experimental, subjective, and largely standardless art—rooted in assessing the individual “character” of the potential parolee. In this Article we examine the foundations of the doctrine, and conclude that the due process inquiry at the point of parole should take into account the stark changes …


Experience 100+, University Of Michigan Law School Jan 2017

Experience 100+, University Of Michigan Law School

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

100+ facts about the University of Michigan Law School and Ann Arbor, Michigan for the 2017-2019.


Law Library: 1859-2017, Barbara H. Garavaglia Jan 2017

Law Library: 1859-2017, Barbara H. Garavaglia

Book Chapters

The Law Library was established in 1859 as part of the Law Department and continues to be "maintained and administered as a part of the instruction and research operation of the Law School." The library has been considered the "apparatus" of the Law Department and "the lawyer's laboratory." Indeed, this underlying view led the library to build a comprehensive collection that would provide "the means necessary for original investigation" and "permit scholars to do research work in any field of law, regardless of country or period." The collection development policy--to collect primary sources of law: statutes, civil law codes, court …


Mandatory Arbitration In Consumer Finance And Investor Contracts, Michael S. Barr Jan 2017

Mandatory Arbitration In Consumer Finance And Investor Contracts, Michael S. Barr

Book Chapters

This chapter focuses on the use of mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses in a subset of consumer contracts – those involving consumer finance and investor products and services. Arbitration clauses are pervasive in financial contracts – for credit cards, bank accounts, auto loans, broker-dealer services, and many others. In the wake of the recent financial crisis, Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank). Dodd-Frank authorises the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to prohibit or condition the use of arbitration clauses in consumer finance and investment contracts, …


The New Labor Law, Kate Andrias Oct 2016

The New Labor Law, Kate Andrias

Articles

Labor law is failing. Disfigured by courts, attacked by employers, and rendered inapt by a global and fissured economy, many of labor law’s most ardent proponents have abandoned it altogether. And for good reason: the law that governs collective organization and bargaining among workers has little to offer those it purports to protect. Several scholars have suggested ways to breathe new life into the old regime, yet their proposals do not solve the basic problem. Labor law developed for the New Deal does not provide solutions to today’s inequities. But all hope is not lost. From the remnants of the …


Creating (And Teaching) The "Bail-To-Jail" Course, Jerold H. Israel Apr 2016

Creating (And Teaching) The "Bail-To-Jail" Course, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

Yale Kamisar has explained how events that occurred about fifty years ago led to the creation of a stand-alone criminal procedure course and, a few years later, led to the division of that stand-alone course into two courses. The second of those courses came to be called, almost from the outset, the "Jail-to-Bail" course. My focus today is on why that course was created and how it was shaped. Modern Criminal Procedure, as Yale has noted, was the first coursebook designed for a stand-alone course in criminal procedure. Modern was published in 1966. A year earlier, the first version …


Lights Hidden Under Bushel's Case, Thomas A. Green Jan 2016

Lights Hidden Under Bushel's Case, Thomas A. Green

Book Chapters

Some forty years ago, Charlie Donahue created a course which he titled "Law, Morals and Society." Designed for undergraduates, and situated among the offerings of the University of Michigan's interdisciplinary Medieval and Renaissance Collegium, the course reflected the approach to doing history that, as this volume recognizes, Charlie has followed throughout his long and enormously influential career as scholar, teacher, lecturer, and inepressible master of well-timed interventions during conference-panel discussion periods. "LMS" was composed of four units. Charlie, who taught two of them, led off with the legal basis for the deposition of Richard II; I followed with the law …


Mandatory Arbitration In Consumer Finance And Investor Contracts, Michael S. Barr Oct 2015

Mandatory Arbitration In Consumer Finance And Investor Contracts, Michael S. Barr

Articles

Mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses are pervasive in consumer financial and investor contracts—for credit cards, bank accounts, auto loans, broker-dealer services, and many others. These clauses often ill serve households. Consumers are typically presented with contracts on a “take it or leave it” basis, with no ability to negotiate over terms. Arbitration provisions are often not clearly disclosed, and in any event are not salient for consumers, who do not focus on the importance of the provision in the event that a dispute over the contract later arises, and who may misforecast the likelihood of being in such a dispute. The …


The Nlrb, The Courts, The Administrative Procedures Act, And Chevron: Now And Then, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jul 2015

The Nlrb, The Courts, The Administrative Procedures Act, And Chevron: Now And Then, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Decisions of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), like those of other administrative agencies, are subject to review by the federal judiciary. Standards of review have evolved over time. The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 provides that administrative decisions must be in accord with law and required procedure, not arbitrary or capricious, not contrary to constitutional rights, within an agency's statutory jurisdiction, and supported by substantial evidence. In practice, more attention is paid to two Supreme Court decisions, Skidmore (1944) and Chevron (1984). For many years Chevron seemed the definitive test. A court must follow a clear intent of Congress, …


All I Really Need To Know About Antitrust I Learned In 1912, Daniel A. Crane May 2015

All I Really Need To Know About Antitrust I Learned In 1912, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Herbert Hovenkamp has indisputably earned the deanship of contemporary antitrust scholarship. One could point to many different attributes by which he has earned his laurels: fantastic scholarly productivity; clarity and precision in the craft of writing; analytical depth in both law and economics; moderation in a field apt to polarization; and custodianship of the influential Areeda treatise. In this Essay, I hope to honor another quality that has contributed significantly to Herb’s tremendous success as an antitrust scholar—his engagement with history. Much contemporary antitrust scholarship bursts with excitement at the discovery of new phenomena or theories that in all actuality …


Silent Similarity, Jessica D. Litman Apr 2015

Silent Similarity, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

From 1909 to 1930, U.S. courts grappled with claims by authors of prose works claiming that works in a new art form—silent movies—had infringed their copyrights. These cases laid the groundwork for much of modern copyright law, from their broad expansion of the reproduction right, to their puzzled grappling with the question how to compare works in dissimilar media, to their confusion over what sort of evidence should be relevant to show copyrightability, copying and infringement. Some of those cases—in particular, Nichols v. Universal Pictures—are canonical today. They are not, however, well-understood. In particular, the problem at the heart of …


The End Of Jurisprudence, Scott Hershovitz Feb 2015

The End Of Jurisprudence, Scott Hershovitz

Articles

For more than forty years, jurisprudence has been dominated by the HartDworkin debate. The debate starts from the premise that our legal practices generate rights and obligations that are distinctively legal, and the question at issue is how the content of these rights and obligations is determined. Positivists say that their content is determined ultimately or exclusively by social facts. Anti-positivists say that moral facts must play a part in determining their content. In this Essay, I argue that the debate rests on a mistake. Our legal practices do not generate rights and obligations that are distinctively legal. At best, …


100+, University Of Michigan Law School Jan 2015

100+, University Of Michigan Law School

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

100+ facts about the University of Michigan Law School and Ann Arbor, Michigan for the 2015-2016 academic year.


Intelligence Legalism And The National Security Agency’S Civil Liberties Gap, Margo Schlanger Jan 2015

Intelligence Legalism And The National Security Agency’S Civil Liberties Gap, Margo Schlanger

Articles

Since June 2013, we have seen unprecedented security breaches and disclosures relating to American electronic surveillance. The nearly daily drip, and occasional gush, of once-secret policy and operational information makes it possible to analyze and understand National Security Agency activities, including the organizations and processes inside and outside the NSA that are supposed to safeguard American’s civil liberties as the agency goes about its intelligence gathering business. Some have suggested that what we have learned is that the NSA is running wild, lawlessly flouting legal constraints on its behavior. This assessment is unfair. In fact, the picture that emerges from …


Reflections On Freedom And Criminal Responsibility In Late Twentieth Century American Legal Thought, Thomas A. Green, Merrill Catharine Hodnefield Jan 2015

Reflections On Freedom And Criminal Responsibility In Late Twentieth Century American Legal Thought, Thomas A. Green, Merrill Catharine Hodnefield

Articles

It is now a commonplace among historians that American criminal jurisprudence underwent a dramatic change something like two-thirds to three-quarters into the last century. Roughly, this development is understood as a shift (or drift) from a more-or-less pure consequentialism to a "mixed theory" wherein retributivism played a major-at times, dominant-role. As the new paradigm remains intact, now approaching a half-century, the development qualifies as a significant historical fact. The fact applies not only to the history of justification for punishment but also to conceptions of the underlying principle of (basis for) responsibility. The two are rightly distinguished: for many scholars …


The Jury And Criminal Responsibility In Anglo-American History, Thomas A. Green Jan 2015

The Jury And Criminal Responsibility In Anglo-American History, Thomas A. Green

Articles

Anglo-American theories of criminal responsibility require scholars to grapple with, inter alia, the relationship between the formal rule of law and the powers of the lay jury as well as two inherent ideas of freedom: freedom of the will and political liberty. Here, by way of canvassing my past work and prefiguring future work, I sketch some elements of the history of the Anglo-American jury and offer some glimpses of commentary on the interplay between the jury—particularly its application of conventional morality to criminal judgments—and the formal rule of law of the state. My central intent is to pose questions …


Who Invented The Single Tax Principle?: An Essay On The History Of Us Treaty Policy, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2015

Who Invented The Single Tax Principle?: An Essay On The History Of Us Treaty Policy, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In 1997, I wrote an article on the international tax challenges posed by the then-nascent electronic commerce, in which I suggested that the international tax regime is based on two principles: the benefits principle and the single tax principle. The benefits principle states that active (business) income should be taxed primarily by the country of source, and passive (investment) income should be taxed primarily by the country of residence. This is the famous compromise reached by the four economists at the foundation of the regime in 1923 and is not particularly controversial. It is embodied in every one of the …