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University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

2008

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Articles 91 - 108 of 108

Full-Text Articles in Law

Risk Equity: A New Proposal, Matthew D. Adler Jan 2008

Risk Equity: A New Proposal, Matthew D. Adler

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What does distributive justice require of risk regulators? Various executive orders enjoin health and safety regulators to take account of “distributive impacts,” “equity,” or “environmental justice,” and many scholars endorse these requirements. But concrete methodologies for evaluating the equity effects of risk regulation policies remain undeveloped. The contrast with cost-benefit analysis--now a very well developed set of techniques --is stark. Equity analysis by governmental agencies that regulate health and safety risks, at least in the United States, lacks rigor and structure. This Article proposes a rigorous framework for risk-equity analysis, which I term “probabilistic population profile analysis” (PPPA). PPPA is …


The Economics Of International Labor Migration And The Case For Global Distributive Justice In Liberal Political Theory, Howard F. Chang Jan 2008

The Economics Of International Labor Migration And The Case For Global Distributive Justice In Liberal Political Theory, Howard F. Chang

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Estimates of the magnitude of the gains that the world could enjoy by liberalizing international migration indicate that even partial liberalization would not only produce substantial increases in the world’s real income but also improve its distribution. Although the economic effects of immigration on native workers and distributive justice among natives are often advanced as reasons to reduce immigration, these concerns do not provide a sound justification for our restrictive immigration laws. Instead, the appropriate response to concerns about the distribution of income among natives is to increase the progressivity of our tax system. Protectionist immigration policies are not only …


The Complexity Of Modern American Civil Litigation: Curse Or Cure?, Stephen B. Burbank Jan 2008

The Complexity Of Modern American Civil Litigation: Curse Or Cure?, Stephen B. Burbank

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Originally prepared for the 2007 meetings of the Italian Association of Comparative Law, this paper seeks to excavate the roots of procedural complexity in modern American litigation. Proceeding from the view that there is no accepted definition of complex litigation in the United States, the paper discusses five related phenomena that the author regards as consequential: (1) the architecture of modern American lawsuits and the procedural philosophy that architecture reflects, (2) the volume of litigation and the public and private policies, attitudes and arrangements that affect it, (3) the dynamic nature of, and dispersed institutional responsibility for, American law, (4) …


The Hanging Chads Of Corporate Voting, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock Jan 2008

The Hanging Chads Of Corporate Voting, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock

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Never has voting been more important in corporate law. With greater activism among shareholders and the shift from plurality to majority voting for directors, the number of close votes is rising. But is the basic technology of corporate voting adequate to the task? In this Article, we first examine the incredibly complicated system of US corporate voting, a complexity that is driven by the underlying custodial ownership structure, by dispersed ownership and large trading volumes, and by the rise in short-selling and derivatives. We identify three ways in which things predictably go wrong: pathologies of complexity; pathologies of ownership; and …


Reconfiguring Property In Three Dimensions, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky Jan 2008

Reconfiguring Property In Three Dimensions, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

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In this Article, we demonstrate that every property question invariably involves three distinct dimensions: (1) the number of owners, (2) the scope of owner’s dominion and (3) asset configuration. Furthermore, we claim that the interplay among the three dimensions shapes the field of property and holds the key to understanding the deep structure of property law. On this view, property law is a balancing act that requires policymakers and private actors to constantly juggle the often-conflicting demands lying along these three dimensions. The three-dimensional account of property we develop in this Article has important descriptive and normative implications. Descriptively, we …


The Rhetoric And Reality Of Regulatory Reform, Cary Coglianese Jan 2008

The Rhetoric And Reality Of Regulatory Reform, Cary Coglianese

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In January 2007, President George W. Bush stirred up widespread controversy by issuing amendments to an executive order on regulatory review adopted initially by President Clinton. The Bush amendments variously require agencies to issue written regulatory problem statements, assign gate-keeping responsibilities to Regulatory Policy Officers within each agency, and undertake analytic reviews before adopting certain kinds of guidance documents. Both legal scholars and policy advocates charge that the Bush amendments place significant new burdens on administrative agencies and will delay the issuance of important new regulatory policies. This paper challenges the rhetorical claims of obstructionism that have emerged in response …


The Law And Economics Of Environmental Federalism: Europe And The United States Compared, Michael G. Faure, Jason S. Johnston Jan 2008

The Law And Economics Of Environmental Federalism: Europe And The United States Compared, Michael G. Faure, Jason S. Johnston

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This article describes the evolution and key features of the centralized environmental regulatory systems that emerged in the United States and Europe during the latter half of the twentieth century. It applies insights from the positive economic analysis of regulatory centralization in an attempt to explain a striking paradox found in both the European and American centralized environmental regulatory regimes: the fact that in both systems, centralized environmental regulation has been adopted not as a solution for transboundary pollution (interjursidictional externalities), but rather for pollution that is primarily local. The paper develops a positive account that explains the tendency of …


Detention And Interrogation In The Post-9/11 World, Kermit Roosevelt Iii Jan 2008

Detention And Interrogation In The Post-9/11 World, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

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Our detention and interrogation policies in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have been a disaster. This paper, delivered as a Donahue Lecture at Suffolk University Law School in February 2008, explores the dimensions and source of that disaster. It first offers a clear and intelligible narrative of the construction and implementation of executive detention and interrogation policy and then analyzes the roles played by the different branches of government and the American people in order to understand how we have ended up in our current situation.


Polyphonic Stare Decisis: Listening To Non-Article Iii Actors, Kermit Roosevelt Iii Jan 2008

Polyphonic Stare Decisis: Listening To Non-Article Iii Actors, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

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This article explores the input that non-Article III actors can and should have in the Supreme Court’s decision to reconsider a prior constitutional decision. It employs a model of constitutional decision-making that distinguishes between the articulation of constitutional meaning and the construction of constitutional doctrine to identify several different stages at which a court can adhere to or depart from precedent and examines the persuasive power of non-Article III input at each stage.


Making The Corporation Safe For Shareholder Democracy, Lisa Fairfax Jan 2008

Making The Corporation Safe For Shareholder Democracy, Lisa Fairfax

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This article considers the effect that increased shareholder activism may have on non-shareholder corporate stakeholders such as employees and consumers. One of the most outspoken proponents of increased shareholder power has argued that such increased power could have negative repercussions for other corporate stakeholders because it would force directors to focus on profits without regard to other interests. This article critically examines that argument. The article acknowledges that increased shareholder power may benefit some stakeholders more than others, and may have some negative consequences. However, this article demonstrates that shareholders not only have interests that align with other stakeholders, but …


Embracing Risk, Sharing Responsibility, Tom Baker Jan 2008

Embracing Risk, Sharing Responsibility, Tom Baker

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No abstract provided.


From The States Up: Building A National Renewable Energy Policy, Shelley Welton Jan 2008

From The States Up: Building A National Renewable Energy Policy, Shelley Welton

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In 2006, a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report concluded that “[r]educing the nation’s dependence on oil and carbon dioxide emissions in the next 25 years is not unlike the 1960s challenge to put a man on the moon.” In fact, this analogy may be understated. While the scope of the two challenges is similarly daunting, the consequences of failure are potentially much more serious in the case of the energy challenge. One key component of addressing this challenge will be changing the ways in which the U.S. meets its seemingly insatiable electricity demand. The environmental, foreign policy, health, and …


Much Ado About Nothing?, Cary Coglianese Jan 2008

Much Ado About Nothing?, Cary Coglianese

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Policy scholars and decision makers should be careful before concluding that President Bush's recent Executive Order 13422 will result in "paralysis by analysis." That lament has been heard about other changes to rule making procedures over the last seven decades, yet steady increases in the cost and volume of federal regulations during that time period clearly indicate that paralysis has yet to set in. Administrative procedures are embedded within a complex web of politics, institutions, and organizational behavior. Within that web, procedures are but one factor influencing government agencies.


Punishment And Justification, Mitchell N. Berman Jan 2008

Punishment And Justification, Mitchell N. Berman

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Retributivist and consequentialist justifications for criminal punishment have contended for generations without either emerging the obvious victor. Indeed, although many commentators have recently announced a retributivist renaissance, it is perhaps more accurate to observe a growing scholarly attraction to "mixed" or "hybrid" theories. And yet most extant mixed theories strike many as unsatisfactory for either of two reasons. The best known mixed theories assign retributivist arguments a too-marginalized role relative to their consequentialist competitors. Others, that avoid this perceived failing, lack hard edges: They assert that desert and good consequences are jointly necessary to the justification of punishment but offer …


Living On The Edge: The Margins Of Legal Personhood, Symposium Foreword, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan Jan 2008

Living On The Edge: The Margins Of Legal Personhood, Symposium Foreword, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

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In January 2008, at the Association of American Law Schools' annual meeting, the Jurisprudence Section conducted a panel on "The Margins of Legal Personhood." The goal of this panel was to draw (or sever) connections between and among different "marginal" entities: the psychopath, the animal, and the embryo or fetus. As is perhaps immediately apparent, these entities are not marginalized in a political sense, but rather lie at the margins of our moral and legal communities. Prima facie, they may have some, but lack all, of the capacities necessary for full membership. Because they live on the edge, we must …


Climate Change Confusion And The Supreme Court: The Misguided Regulation Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under The Clean Air Act, Jason S. Johnston Jan 2008

Climate Change Confusion And The Supreme Court: The Misguided Regulation Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under The Clean Air Act, Jason S. Johnston

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In the spring of 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must promulgate automobile tailpipe greenhouse gas emission standards under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act (CAA). American environmentalists hailed the Supreme Court's decision as an important victory in the battle to curb global warming. This article argues to the contrary that: 1) a large body of economic work demonstrates that the likely geographic and temporal pattern of costs and benefits to the U.S. from climate change bears no resemblance to the pollution problems that Congress intended to deal …


Greater And Lesser Powers Of Tort Reform: The Primary Jurisdiction Doctrine And State-Law Claims Concerning Fda-Approved Products, Catherine T. Struve Jan 2008

Greater And Lesser Powers Of Tort Reform: The Primary Jurisdiction Doctrine And State-Law Claims Concerning Fda-Approved Products, Catherine T. Struve

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No abstract provided.


The Sixth Amendment And Criminal Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas, Susan R. Klein Jan 2008

The Sixth Amendment And Criminal Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas, Susan R. Klein

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This symposium essay explores the impact of Rita, Gall, and Kimbrough on state and federal sentencing and plea bargaining systems. The Court continues to try to explain how the Sixth Amendment jury trial right limits legislative and judicial control of criminal sentencing. Equally important, the opposing sides in this debate have begun to form a stable consensus. These decisions inject more uncertainty in the process and free trial judges to counterbalance prosecutors. Thus, we predict, these decisions will move the balance of plea bargaining power back toward criminal defendants.