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Series

All Faculty Scholarship

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

2004

Articles 1 - 30 of 89

Full-Text Articles in Law

United States Antitrust Policy In An Age Of Ip Expansion, Herbert J. Hovenkamp Dec 2004

United States Antitrust Policy In An Age Of Ip Expansion, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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The idea that there is a tension between antitrust and the intellectual property laws is readily exaggerated. The tension that exists results mainly from our uncertainty about the optimal amount and scope of IP protection. In general, antitrust draws clearer lines than intellectual property law does, although one should not push the point too far. Antitrust policy as manifested in the courts has achieved a fair amount of consensus today. By contrast, deep uncertainty remains about fundamental questions concerning the socially optimal outcome of IP disputes. In addition, while the antitrust statutes are for the most part public regarding provisions …

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Icarus In The Boardroom, Introduction, David A. Skeel Jr. Dec 2004

Icarus In The Boardroom, Introduction, David A. Skeel Jr.

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Americans have always loved risk takers. Like the Icarus of ancient Greek lore, however, even the most talented entrepreneurs can overstep their bounds. All too often, the very qualities that make Icaran executives special - self-confidence, visionary insight, and extreme competitiveness - spur them to take misguided and even illegal chances. The Icaran failure of an ordinary entrepreneur isn't headline news. But put Icarus in the corporate boardroom and - as this book vividly demonstrates - the ripple effects can be profound. Ever since the first large-scale corporations emerged in the nineteenth century, their ability to tap huge amounts of …

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Evaluating Environmental Policies, Lori Snyder Bennear, Cary Coglianese Nov 2004

Evaluating Environmental Policies, Lori Snyder Bennear, Cary Coglianese

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For too long, environmental policymaking has relied on trial and error, without adequate or systematic learning from either the trials or the errors. Systematic program evaluation research has been remarkably scarce relative to the overall number of environmental policies adopted in the United States, as well as relative to the amount of evaluation research found in other fields, such as medicine, education, or transportation safety. This paper examines the role that program evaluation should play in environmental policy making, distinguishing such research from other types of analysis, including risk assessment, cost-effectiveness analysis, and cost-benefit analysis. It explains the kinds of …

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Constitutional Ethnography: An Introduction, Kim Lane Scheppele Oct 2004

Constitutional Ethnography: An Introduction, Kim Lane Scheppele

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Constitutional ethnography is the study of the central legal elements of polities using methods that are capable of recovering the lived detail of the politico-legal landscape. This article provides an introduction to this sort of study by contrasting constitutional ethnography with multivariate analysis and with nationalist constitutional analysis. The article advocates not a universal one-size-fits-all theory or an elegant model that abstracts away the distinctive, but instead outlines an approach that can identify a set of repertoires found in real cases. Learning the set of repertoires that constitutional ethnography reveals, one can see more deeply into particular cases. Constitutional ethnography …

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Law In A Time Of Emergency, Kim Lane Scheppele Oct 2004

Law In A Time Of Emergency, Kim Lane Scheppele

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This article examines the domestic and foreign policy responses of the Bush administration to the events of 9/11 and contrasts them with the primary responses of America’s democratic allies in Europe. Both sets of responses are understood through the lens of Carl Schmitt’s writing on the nature of the state of exception, which in many ways provides a blueprint for contemporary American conceptions of emergency powers while providing a notorious and unsuccessful attempt to justify emergency powers to contemporary Europeans. I argue that the divergence in the standard understandings of two formative historical events help explain European and American differences …

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Other People's Patriot Acts: Europe's Response To September 11, Kim Lane Scheppele Oct 2004

Other People's Patriot Acts: Europe's Response To September 11, Kim Lane Scheppele

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After September 11, many countries changed their laws to make it easier to fight terrorism. They did so in part because the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1373 under its Chapter VII powers. The resolution required all Members of the United Nations to criminalize terrorism, to prevent their territory from being used to plan or promote terrorism, to crack down on terrorism financing, to tighten up immigration and asylum procedures and to share information about terrorists and terrorist threats with other states. This article examines what happened to the Security Council mandate when it got to Europe by first …

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A Realpolitik Defense Of Social Rights, Kim Lane Scheppele Sep 2004

A Realpolitik Defense Of Social Rights, Kim Lane Scheppele

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Social rights are controversial in theory, but many constitutions feature long lists of social rights anyway. But how can poor states ever hope to realize these rights? This article examines the practical bargaining over social rights that occurs when countries go broke and international financial institutions step in to direct internal fiscal affairs. Constitutional Courts can give their own governments leverage in bargaining with the IMF by making strong decisions defending social rights just at those moments. Because of the IMF's commitment to the rule of law, it is hard for the IMF to insist as part of the conditionality …

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On Software Regulation, Polk Wagner Aug 2004

On Software Regulation, Polk Wagner

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This Article develops a novel analytic framework for the evaluation of regulatory policy in cyberspace, flowing from a reconceptualization of cyberlaw’s central premise: software code as complementary to law rather than its substitute. This approach emphasizes the linkage between law and software; for every quantum of legal-regulatory impact, there is a corresponding equilibria of regulation-bysoftware. The absence of a legal right will stimulate a technological response—and such incentives will moderate with increased rights. Rather than “code is law,” this is “code meets law.” The implications of this methodological shift are explored in the context of the emerging (and intensely controversial) …

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General And Specific Legal Rules, Paul G. Mahoney, Chris William Sanchirico Jul 2004

General And Specific Legal Rules, Paul G. Mahoney, Chris William Sanchirico

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Legal rules may be general (that is, applicable to a broad range of situations) or specific. Adopting a custom-tailored rule for a specific activity permits the regulator to make efficient use of information about the social costs and benefits of that activity. However, the rule maker typically relies on the regulated parties for such information. The regulated parties may attempt to influence the rule maker, producing rules that reflect their private interests. We show that in some cases limiting the rule maker to a single rule for multiple activities will moderate this influence and maximize welfare. Available for download at …

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Our Corporate Federalism And The Shape Of Corporate Law, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock Jun 2004

Our Corporate Federalism And The Shape Of Corporate Law, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock

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In the public debate sparked by the corporate scandals of the last years, Delaware has been strikingly absent. In contrast to the high profile activity of Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the stock exchanges, federal prosecutors, and even state law enforcement officials, Delaware has been largely mute: no legislation; no rule-making; no criminal investigations; few headlines. In this Article, we use Delaware's relative passivity during this latest episode of corporate law-making as a starting point in the analysis of the shape of American corporate federalism and Delaware's place within it. We argue that Delaware long ago opted for what …

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Intellectual Property Law And The Boundaries Of The Firm, Oren Bar-Gill, Gideon Parchomovsky Jun 2004

Intellectual Property Law And The Boundaries Of The Firm, Oren Bar-Gill, Gideon Parchomovsky

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Arrow's disclosure paradox implies that information that is not afforded legal protection cannot be bought or sold on the market. This paper emphasizes the important relationship between the paradox of disclosure and the boundaries of the firm question. Only legally protected inventions, i.e., patented inventions, may be traded; pre-patent stages of the innovation process may not. Consequently, by force of law, rather than by the guidance of economic principle, pre-patent innovation must be carried out within the boundaries of a single firm.

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Perceptions Of Corruption And Campaign Finance: When Public Opinion Determines Constitutional Law, Nathaniel Persily, Kelli Lammie Jun 2004

Perceptions Of Corruption And Campaign Finance: When Public Opinion Determines Constitutional Law, Nathaniel Persily, Kelli Lammie

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This study tests the empirical assumptions about American public opinion found in the Supreme Court’s opinions concerning campaign finance reform. The area of campaign finance is a unique one in First Amendment law because the Court has allowed the mere appearance of a problem (in this case, “corruption”) to justify the curtailment of recognized First Amendment rights of speech and association. Since Buckley v. Valeo, defendants in campaign finance cases have proffered various types of evidence to support the notion that the public perceives a great deal of corruption produced by the campaign finance system. Most recently, in McConnell v. …

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Plea Bargaining Outside The Shadow Of Trial, Stephanos Bibas Jun 2004

Plea Bargaining Outside The Shadow Of Trial, Stephanos Bibas

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Plea-bargaining literature predicts that parties strike plea bargains in the shadow of expected trial outcomes. In other words, parties forecast the expected sentence after trial, discount it by the probability of acquittal, and offer some proportional discount. This oversimplified model ignores how structural distortions skew bargaining outcomes. Agency costs; attorney competence, compensation, and workloads; resources; sentencing and bail rules; and information deficits all skew bargaining. In addition, psychological biases and heuristics warp judgments: overconfidence, denial, discounting, risk preferences, loss aversion, framing, and anchoring all affect bargaining decisions. Skilled lawyers can partly counteract some of these problems but sometimes overcompensate. The …

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Does Criminal Law Deter? A Behavioral Science Investigation, Paul H. Robinson Jun 2004

Does Criminal Law Deter? A Behavioral Science Investigation, Paul H. Robinson

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Having a criminal justice system that imposes sanctions no doubt does deter criminal conduct. But available social science research suggests that manipulating criminal law rules within that system to achieve heightened deterrence effects generally will be ineffective. Potential offenders often do not know of the legal rules. Even if they do, they frequently are unable to bring this knowledge to bear in guiding their conduct, due to a variety of situational, social, or chemical factors. Even if they can, a rational analysis commonly puts the perceived benefits of crime greater than its perceived costs, due to a variety of criminal …

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Pleas' Progress, Stephanos Bibas May 2004

Pleas' Progress, Stephanos Bibas

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No abstract provided.

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Shifting Sands: The Limits Of Science In Setting Risk Standards, Cary Coglianese, Gary E. Marchant Apr 2004

Shifting Sands: The Limits Of Science In Setting Risk Standards, Cary Coglianese, Gary E. Marchant

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Regulators need to rely on science to understand problems and predict the consequences of regulatory actions, but over reliance on science can actually contribute to, or at least deflect attention from, incoherent policymaking. In this article, we explore the problems with using science to justify policy decisions by analyzing the Environmental Protection Agency's recently revised air quality standards for ground-level ozone and particulate matter, some of the most significant regulations ever issued. In revising these standards, EPA mistakenly invoked science as the exclusive basis for its decisions and deflected attention from a remarkable series of inconsistencies. For example, even though …

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The Tax Efficiency Of Stock-Based Compensation, Michael S. Knoll Mar 2004

The Tax Efficiency Of Stock-Based Compensation, Michael S. Knoll

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Over the last two decades, the use of company stock and options thereon to compensate and motivate employees has become widespread. Defenders of stock-based compensation argue that it creates value for shareholders because it encourages employees to work harder and with a common purpose. Critics, however, are less sure and stock-based compensation has come under heavy attack from investors, commentators and academics. Critics argue that it imposes excessive risk on employees and overstates net income. To date, there has been very little detailed legal or economic analysis of the tax efficiency of stock-based compensation. What serious work there has been …

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Criminal Justice In The Information Age: A Punishment Theory Paradox, Paul H. Robinson Mar 2004

Criminal Justice In The Information Age: A Punishment Theory Paradox, Paul H. Robinson

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This paper suggests how the information age might produce high capture and conviction rates and speculates on the effect of such developments on the criminal justice system's punishment theory. The low rate at which offenders presently are punished makes a deterrent threat of official sanction of limited effect. With a high punishment rate, however, a distribution of liability and punishment based upon a deterrence principle might, for the first time, make sense. On the other hand, the greater deterrent effect might eliminate crime as a serious social concern. And, without the pressure of a serious crime problem, the theory for …

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A New Player In The Boardroom: The Emergence Of The Independent Directors' Counsel, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., Edward B. Rock Mar 2004

A New Player In The Boardroom: The Emergence Of The Independent Directors' Counsel, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., Edward B. Rock

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Over the last thirty years, the independent directors have occasionally been represented by independent counsel. Instances include: special litigation committees reviewing derivative suits; independent committees in parent subsidiary mergers and MBOs; and internal investigations of misconduct. We predict that, with the additional legal requirements imposed on independent directors by the Sarbanes Oxley Act and related changes to SEC rules and Stock Exchange listing requirements, the independent directors, especially those on the Audit Committee, increasingly will be represented on a continuing basis by independent legal counsel. Out of this will emerge a new figure in the board room: the Independent Directors' …

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Is The Federal Circuit Succeeding? An Empirical Assessment Of Judicial Performance, Polk Wagner, Lee Petherbridge Mar 2004

Is The Federal Circuit Succeeding? An Empirical Assessment Of Judicial Performance, Polk Wagner, Lee Petherbridge

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As an appellate body jurisdictionally demarcated by subject matter rather than geography, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit occupies a unique role in the federal judiciary. This controversial institutional design has had profound effects on the jurisprudential development of the legal regimes within its purview - especially the patent law, which the Federal Circuit has come to thoroughly dominate in its two decades of existence. In this Article, we assess the court's performance against its basic premise: that, as compared to prior regional circuit involvement, centralization of legal authority will yield a clearer, more coherent, and …

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Risk Regulation, Endogenous Public Concerns, And The Hormones Dispute: Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself?, Howard F. Chang Jan 2004

Risk Regulation, Endogenous Public Concerns, And The Hormones Dispute: Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself?, Howard F. Chang

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The dispute between the United States and the European Union (EU) regarding the EU ban on meat imports treated with hormones raises the question: How should regulators respond to public fears that are disproportionate to the risks as evaluated by experts in risk assessment? If regulators cannot eliminate public fears through education, then there is some social benefit from regulations that reduce the feared risks and thereby reduce public anxiety and distortions in behavior flowing from that anxiety. These considerations imply that we cannot simply ignore public fears that technocrats would deem "irrational." On the other hand, there is the …

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Pari Passu And A Distressed Sovereign's Rational Choices, William W. Bratton Jan 2004

Pari Passu And A Distressed Sovereign's Rational Choices, William W. Bratton

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No abstract provided.

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Seeking Truth For Power: Informational Strategy And Regulatory Policy Making, Cary Coglianese, Richard Zeckhauser, Edward A. Parson Jan 2004

Seeking Truth For Power: Informational Strategy And Regulatory Policy Making, Cary Coglianese, Richard Zeckhauser, Edward A. Parson

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Whether regulating mutual funds or chemical manufacturers, government's policy decisions depend on information possessed by industry. Yet it is not in any industry's interests to share information that will lead to costly regulations. So how do government regulators secure needed information from industry? Since information disclosed by any firm cannot be retrieved and can be used to regulate the entire sector, industry faces a collective action problem in maintaining silence. While collective silence is easy to maintain if all firms' interests are aligned, individual firms' payoffs for disclosure can vary due to heterogeneous effects of regulation and differing expectations about …

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Bankruptcy's Home Economics, David A. Skeel Jr. Jan 2004

Bankruptcy's Home Economics, David A. Skeel Jr.

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This essay began its life as a commentary on Elizabeth Warren’s article “The New Economics of the American Family” at the American Bankruptcy Institute's 25th Anniversary Symposium of the Bankruptcy Code in 2003. (Both the Warren article and my commentary were published in the symposium in the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review.) “The New Economics of the American Family” was drawn in many respects from then-Professor Warren’s co-authored book, The Two Income Trap. The essay refers to both, though it puts particular emphasis on the article. The essay begins by briefly describing the basic thesis of the article-- …

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Sovereign Debt Reform And The Interest Of Creditors, William W. Bratton, G. Mitu Gulati Jan 2004

Sovereign Debt Reform And The Interest Of Creditors, William W. Bratton, G. Mitu Gulati

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No abstract provided.

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E-Rulemaking: Information Technology And The Regulatory Process, Cary Coglianese Jan 2004

E-Rulemaking: Information Technology And The Regulatory Process, Cary Coglianese

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In order to channel interest in e-rulemaking toward effective and meaningful innovations in regulatory practice, the Kennedy School of Government's Regulatory Policy Program convened two major workshops, bringing together academic experts from computer sciences, law, and public management along with key public officials involved in managing federal regulation. This paper summarizes the discussions that took place at these workshops and develops an agenda for future research on information technology and the rulemaking process. It highlights the institutional challenges associated with using information technology in the federal regulatory process and suggests that in some cases existing rulemaking practices may need to …

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The Unfulfilled Promise Of Korean Telecommunications Reform, Christopher S. Yoo Jan 2004

The Unfulfilled Promise Of Korean Telecommunications Reform, Christopher S. Yoo

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The deployment of telecommunications services in Korea represents one of the great technological success stories of the developing world. In a remarkably brief period, the penetration of local telephone service, wireless telephony, and broadband technologies has soared to among the highest levels in the world. The history of Korean telecommunications thus provides a useful case study for other developing countries seeking to expand and modernize their telecommunications infrastructures. At first blush, the explosive growth of telecommunications services has appeared to go hand in hand with the liberalization of Korea's telecommunications markets. A review of the history of Korean telecommunications reform …

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Political Representation And Accountability Under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Tobias Barrington Wolff Jan 2004

Political Representation And Accountability Under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Tobias Barrington Wolff

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The U.S. military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy constitutes a singular type of speech regulation: an explicit prohibition on identity speech by a defined population of individuals that mandates a state of complete social invisibility in both military and civilian life. The impact of such a regulation upon the public speech values protected by the First Amendment should not be difficult to apprehend. And yet, as the tenth anniversary of the policy approaches, First Amendment scholars have largely ignored this seemingly irresistible subject of study, and the federal courts have refused to engage with the policy's implications for public speech …

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The Unitary Executive During The Third Half-Century, 1889-1945, Christopher S. Yoo, Steven G. Calabresi, Laurence D. Nee Jan 2004

The Unitary Executive During The Third Half-Century, 1889-1945, Christopher S. Yoo, Steven G. Calabresi, Laurence D. Nee

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Recent Supreme Court decisions and the impeachment of President Clinton has reinvigorated the debate over Congress's authority to employ devices such as special counsels and independent agencies to restrict the President's control over the administration of the law. The initial debate focused on whether the Constitution rejected the executive by committee employed by the Articles of the Confederation in favor of a unitary executive, in which all administrative authority is centralized in the President. More recently, the debate has begun to turn towards historical practices. Some scholars have suggested that independent agencies and special counsels have become such established features …

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Copyright And Product Differentiation, Christopher S. Yoo Jan 2004

Copyright And Product Differentiation, Christopher S. Yoo

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Existing economic analyses generally frame copyright as presenting a conflict between promoting efficient levels of access to creative works on the one hand and providing sufficient incentives to support their creation on the other. The supposed irreconcilability of the access-incentives tradeoff has led most scholars to regard copyright as a necessary evil and to advocate limiting copyright protection to the lowest level still sufficient to support creation of the work. In this Article, Professor Christopher Yoo breaks with the conventional wisdom and proposes a new approach to copyright law based on the economics of product differentiation. This differentiated products approach …

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