Law Commons^™

Inter Vivos Transfers Of Ownership In Family Firms, James R. Hines Jr., Niklas Potrafke, Marina Riem, Christoph Schinke

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This paper examines the determinants of inter vivos (lifetime) transfers of ownership in German family firms between 2000 and 2013. Survey evidence indicates that owners of firms with strong current business conditions transfer ownership at higher rates than others. When a firm’s self-described business condition improves from “normal” to “good,” the relative likelihood of an inter vivos transfer increases by 46 percent. Inter vivos transfer rates also rose following a 2009 reform that reduced transfer taxes. These patterns suggest that transfer taxes significantly influence rates and timing of inter vivos ownership transfers.

Circumcision: Immigration, Religion, History, And Constitutional Identity In Germany And The U.S., David Abraham

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A four-year-old Muslim boy was brought to a local Cologne emergency room by his mother, who was concerned about minor bleeding around the site of a circumcision. A District Court there found that circumcision, notwithstanding parental consent or religious motivation, constituted a criminal bodily injury and child abuse. Ultimately, on July 19, 2012 the Bundestag resolved that "Jewish and Muslim religious life be viable in Germany," and in December a bill was passed that legislatively overrode the ruling of the District Court and recognized circumcision as a non-punishable undertaking when undertaken for religious reasons by someone professionally trained. Two years …

Multinational Firms And Tax Havens, Anna Gumpert, James R. Hines Jr., Monika Schnitzer

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Multinational firms with operations in high-tax countries can benefit the most from reallocating taxable income to tax havens, though this is sufficiently difficult and costly that only 20.4% of German multinational firms have any tax haven affiliates. Among German manufacturing firms, a 1 percentage point higher foreign tax rate is associated with a 2.3% greater likelihood of owning a tax haven affiliate. This is consistent with tax avoidance incentives and contrasts with earlier evidence for U.S. firms. The relationship is less strong for firms in service industries, possibly reflecting the difficulty of reallocating taxable service income.

A Tale Of Three Markets: Comparing The Renewable Energy Experiences Of California, Texas, And Germany, Felix Mormann, Dan Reicher, Victor Hanna

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The Obama administration has repeatedly identified the large-scale build-out of clean, renewable energy infrastructure as a key priority of the United States. The President's calls for a cleaner energy economy are often accompanied by references to other industrialized countries such as Germany, hailed by many as a leader in renewable energy deployment. Indeed, the share of renewables in Germany's electricity generation mix is twice that of the United States, and the ambitious "Energiewende" commits the country to meeting 80% of its electricity needs with renewables by 2050. While some praise the German renewables experience as successful proof of concept, others …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson

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In this section: • United States Condemns Russia’s Use of Force in Ukraine and Attempted Annexation of Crimea • In Wake of Espionage Revelations, United States Declines to Reach Comprehensive Intelligence Agreement with Germany • United States Defends United Nations’ Immunity in Haitian Cholera Case • French Bank Pleads Guilty to Criminal Violations of U.S. Sanctions Laws • D.C. Circuit Strikes down Administrative Order Requiring Divestment by Foreign-Owned Corporation • United States Adopts New Land Mine Policy • United States Claims That Russia Has Violated the INF Treaty

The Difference A Justice May Make: Remarks At The Symposium For Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Suzanne Baer

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First, I will briefly summarize the state of the art of equality law in Germany today. A distinct dimension of this story from a European Union member state is that we are not just theorizing postnational constitutionalism these days, but that we live it already, since law is not anymore isolated as national but needs to be seen in the context of transnational migration and multinational regimes. Second, I turn to a key feature and key challenge in and to equality law today. It is what I have called the triangle of fundamental rights, referring to the three most prominent …

The Moral Dimension Of Employment Dispute Resolution, Theodore J. St. Antoine

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Dispute resolution may be viewed from the perspective of economics or negotiation or contract law or game theory or even military strategy. In this Article, I should like to consider employment dispute resolution in particular from the perspective of morality. I do not necessarily mean "morality" in any religious sense. By "morality" here I mean a concern about the inherent dignity and worth of every human being and the way each one should be treated by society. Some persons who best exemplify that attitude would style themselves secular humanists. Nonetheless, over the centuries religions across the globe have played a …

Ability To Pay, John A. E. Pottow

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The landmark Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 ("Dodd-Frank") transforms the regulation of consumer credit in the United States. Many of its changes have been high-profile, attracting considerable media and scholarly attention, most notably the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB"). Even specific consumer reforms, such as a so-called "plain vanilla" proposal, drew hot debate and lobbying firepower. But when the dust settled, one profoundly transformative innovation that did not garner the same outrage as plain vanilla or the CFPB did get into the law: imposing upon lenders a duty to assure a borrower's ability to repay. Ensuring a borrower's …

The Basic Law At 60 - Equality And Difference: A Proposal For The Guest List To The Birthday Party, Susanne Baer

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The German constitution, named "Basic Law", has proven to work although many did not believe in it when it was framed. Others emphasize desiderata. Sabine Berghahn commented at the 50th birthday that it has developed "far too slowly and [some] has even gone completely wrong." ' Jutta Limbach, former President of the Federal Constitutional Court, observed that constitutional history was "anything but regal, but very difficult and full of obstacles. '' 2 Former Chancellor Willy Brandt famously called the constitution "a snail on thin ice." So what is missing when we analyze the Basic Law, and what should be finally …

A Closer Look At Law: Human Rights As Multi-Level Sites Of Struggles Over Multi-Dimensional Equality, Susanne Baer

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In many societies, deep conflicts arise around religious matters, and around equality. Often, religious collectives demand the right to self-determination of issues considered - by them - to be their own, and these demands collide with individual rights to, again, religious freedom. These are thus conflicts of religion v. religion. Then, collective religious freedom tends to become an obligation for all those who are defined as belonging to the collective, which carries the problem that mostly elites define its meaning and they silence dissent. Usually, such obligations are also unequal relating to gender, with different regimes for women and for …

The Basic Law At 60 - Introduction To The Special Issue, Susanne Baer, Christian Boulanger, Alexander Klose, Rosemarie Will

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For Germany 2009 was a year of constitutional anniversaries: the first democratic constitution (Paulskirchenverfassung of 1849) was promulgated 160 years ago; the 1919 Weimar Constitution would have turned 90; and finally, the country celebrated 60 years of the Basic Law, which was proclaimed and signed in Bonn on 23 May 1949. Despite its birth in the midst of economic and political turmoil and widespread disillusion with politics, the Basic Law has come to be regarded as a "success story." As is well known, it was never meant to last - the very term "Grundgesetz" (basic law) indicated that it was …

Leitprinzip Gleichstellung?: 10 Jahre Gender Mainstreaming In Der Deutschen Bundesverwaltung, Susanne Baer, S. Lewalter, J. Gebbert

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Gender Equality as a Guiding Principle? – 10 Years of Gender Mainstreaming in the Federal Administration of Germany The implementation of gender mainstreaming in the German federal administration from 1999 to 2009 is described from the perspective of actors of scientific consultancy. From the beginning the process of implementation was focused on the change of administrative routines. Important and innovative results were achieved in this field. But this approach had obvious limitations, because the relevance of objectives of gender equality for the work of each ministry was rarely discussed. Making gender equality a principle that guides the work of the …

The German Constitutional Court Says 'Ja Zu Deutschland!', Daniel H. Halberstam, Christoph Möllers

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In announcing the decision of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG - Federal Constitutional Court) on the constitutionality of the Lisbon Treaty, the Presiding Justice of the Second Senate summed up the judgment by proclaiming: “Das Grundgesetz sagt ‘Ja' zum Vertrag von Lissabon.”

Constitutional Patriotism, Citizenship And Belonging In America And Germany, David Abraham

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No abstract provided.

Federalism And The Allocation Of Sovereignty Beyond The State In The European Union, Ronald A. Brand

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Any discussion of federalism necessarily runs headlong into concepts of sovereignty, with both terms being subject to Tocqueville's statement that, in discussing federalism, "the human understanding more easily invents new things than new words." Thus, just as systems previously considered to have been "federal" at the dawn of the United States of America were something much different from what was developed for our nation at that time, so is the "federal" system of today's United States different from anything to which we make comparisons.

This article reviews a paper by Professor Peter Tettinger's, and extends his analysis. As Professor Tettinger …

Of Power And Responsibility: The Political Morality Of Federal Systems, Daniel Halberstam

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In comparative constitutional discourse, Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus; we eagerly tell our European counterparts about the U.S. constitutional experience, but rarely do we listen when they talk to us about their own. Whereas Europeans routinely examine U.S. constitutionalism as an illuminating point of comparison or contrast, as Americans, we seem convinced that we have nothing to learn from looking abroad. This Article challenges that assumption. In particular, it argues that American courts and scholars have overlooked an important alternative to the dominant interpretation of the division of powers in the United States by ignoring the theory …

A Footnote For Jack Dawson, James J. White, David A. Peters

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Jack Dawson, known to many at Michigan as Black Jack, taught at the Law School from 1927 to 1958. Much of his work was published in the Michigan Law Review, where he served as a student editor during the 1923-24 academic year. We revisit his work and provide a footnote to his elegant writing on mistake and supervening events. In Part I, we talk a little about Jack the man. In Part II, we recite the nature and significance of his scholarly work. Part III deals briefly with the cases decided in the last twenty years by American courts on …

Internationale Handelsgessellschaft Mbh V.Einfuhrund Vorratsstelle Für Getreide Und Futtermittel (Favorite Case Symposium), James E. Krier

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The idea of a "favorite judicial opinion" had never occurred to me until the Texas Law Review planted it in my head; the Journal of the American Dental Association could as well have asked me to express some sentiments about my favorite toothache. I was at a loss to think of even a single candidate for what, until the event, I had apparently regarded as a nonexistent office. Why then did I decide to accept the Review's invitation? The answer is, in a word, curiosity: Never mind that the editors of a law review in Texas wanted to know what …

The American Advantage: The Value Of Inefficient Litigation, Samuel R. Gross

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In a recent article, The German Advantage in Civil Procedure,1 Professor John Langbein claims that the German system of civil litigation is superior to the American; in an earlier article he makes a parallel claim about German criminal procedure.2 Roughly, Professor Langbein argues that by comparison to the German process, American litigation is overly complex, expensive, slow, and unpredictable - in short, inefficient.3 Professor Langbein is not the first and will not be the last to criticize American legal institutions in these terms, but he expresses this criticism particularly well: he is concise and concrete, he describes American practice by …

The Execution Of Peace With Germany: An Experiment In International Organization, Edwin D. Dickinson

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IN one respect, at least, the Peace of Versailles is unlike any of the great European settlements of earlier date. The provisions included to ensure the execution of its terms are vastly more ambitious in scope and more elaborate in detail than anything of the kind contained in earlier treaties. There is an extraordinary emphasis upon organization for the enforcement of peace.

Anglo-Saxon' And 'Teutonic' Standards Of Justice, Edson R. Sunderland

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In The Kaiser Wilhelm II, 230 Fed. Rep. 717, the British shipbuilding firm of Harland & Wolff filed a libel against the steamship Kaiser Wilhelm II, owned by the North German Lloyd, a German corporation, for repairs made on the ship in libelant's shipyard in England. This suit was commenced before the United States entered the war, and the court made an order dismissing the libel on the ground that Great Britain and Germany had each enacted laws forbidding its subjects from making any payments to the subjects of the other, and as these enactments were merely declaratory of the …

Who Is An Alien Enemy?, Edson R. Sunderland

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One Gustav Muller, a native German, resided in England on May 20th, 1915. He had never been naturalized. He owned a leasehold house in England, and on the date just mentioned he executed a power of attorney to one John White to sell this leasehold house and make proper conveyance of the same. Six days later he was permitted by the British Government to return to Germany, and he started the same day, May 26th. He was known to be in Germany on June 11th, but the date of his arrival was unknown. On June 2 the leasehold was sold …