Law Commons^™

On The Design Of Efficient Priority Rules For Secured Creditors: Empirical Evidence From A Change In Law, Clas Bergström, Theodore Eisenberg, Stefan Sundgren

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article assesses the effect of a reduction in secured creditor priority on distributions and administrative costs in liquidating bankruptcy cases by reporting the first empirical study of the effect of a priority change. Priority reform had redistributive effects in liquidating bankruptcy. As expected, average payments to general unsecured creditors were significantly higher after the reform than before the reform and payments to secured creditors decreased. Reform did not increase the size of the pie to be distributed in bankruptcy. Nor did it increase the direct costs of bankruptcy.

Reparations And Unjust Enrichment, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Despite an initial appearance of superior doctrinal fit, restitution is not an appropriate vehicle for reparations claims based on slavery and similar large-scale historical injustices. The justifying principle behind restitution—prevention of unjust enrichment—lacks the moral force necessary to resolve a controversial public dispute about moral rights and obligations among segments of society. At its core, a claim to restitution is an attempt to right a wrong not by alleviating the adverse consequences to oneself, but by diminishing the position of others. In other words, the notion of unjust enrichment is a comparative idea that draws on resentment and the desire …

Preferences For Processes: The Process/Product Distinction And The Regulation Of Consumer Choice, Douglas A. Kysar

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines a conceptual distinction between product-related information (such as whether a consumer good threatens to harm its user) and process-related information (such as whether a good’s production harmed workers, animals, or the environment) that has appeared in various guises within international trade law; domestic environmental, health, and safety regulation; and constitutional commercial speech jurisprudence. This process/product distinction tends to dismiss information concerning processes as unworthy of attention from consumers or regulators, at least so long as the processes at issue do not manifest themselves in the physical or compositional characteristics of resulting end products. Proponents have offered the …

Why Do Empirical Legal Scholarship?, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

People conduct legal scholarship for many different reasons. This Article focuses on the demand for and reaction to scholarship that helps inform litigants, policymakers, and society as a whole about how the legal system works. Law schools do little to train generations of lawyers in how to systematically assess the state of the legal system and the legal system's performance. Schools leave such assessments largely to self-interested advocates and to other disciplines. Self-interested advocates have less interest in objective assessment of the system than in pushing preferred policy agendas. Academic disciplines other than law have a distinct advantage in that …

Regulatory Taxings, Eduardo M. Peñalver

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The tension between the Supreme Court's expansive reading of the Takings Clause and the state's virtually limitless power to tax has been repeatedly noted, but has received little systematic exploration. Although some scholars, most notably Richard Epstein, have used the tension between takings law and taxes to argue against the legitimacy of taxation as it is presently practiced, such an approach has failed to gain a significant following. Instead, the broad legal consensus is that legislatures effectively have unlimited authority to impose tax burdens. Nevertheless, this Article demonstrates that every attempt to formulate a "Reconciling Theory," a theory that would …

Why We Write: Reflections On Legal Scholarship, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Property As Legal Knowledge: Means And Ends, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article takes anthropologists’ renewed interest in property theory as an opportunity to consider legal theory-making as an ethnographic subject in its own right. My focus is on one particular construct – the instrument, or relation of means to ends, that animates both legal and anthropological theories about property. An analysis of the workings of this construct leads to the conclusion that rather than critique the ends of legal knowledge, the anthropology of property should devote itself to articulating its own means.

Identity Politics And The Second Amendment, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Appeal Rates And Outcomes In Tried And Nontried Cases: Further Exploration Of Anti-Plaintiff Appellate Outcomes, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Federal data sets covering district court and appellate court civil cases for cases terminating in fiscal years 1988 through 2000 are analyzed. Appeals are filed in 10.9 percent of filed cases, and 21.0 percent of cases if one limits the sample to cases with a definitive judgment for plaintiff or defendant. The appeal rate is 39.6 percent in tried cases compared to 10.0 percent of nontried cases. For cases with definitive judgments, the appeal filing rate is 19.0 percent in nontried cases and 40.9 percent in tried cases. Tried cases with definitive judgments are appealed to a conclusion on the …

The Pluralistic Foundations Of The Religion Clauses, Steven H. Shiffrin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Contemporary Supreme Court interpretations suggest that the religion clauses are primarily rooted in the value of equality. The United States Supreme Court has argued that in the absence of discrimination against religion (or the presence of other constitutional values), there is no violation of the Free Exercise Clause when a statute inadvertently burdens religion. Similarly, equality values have played a strong role in the Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence. Many distinguished commentators have pointed to the equality focus and have argued that it gives insufficient attention to the value of religious liberty. Professor Shiffrin argues that these commentators are right in …

The Merciful Capital Juror, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

We examine the role of mercy in capital sentencing along three dimensions. We first explain why mercy is a philosophically problematic virtue, and second, why it presently holds an ambiguous status within constitutional doctrine. Finally, we draw on interviews with jurors who served on capital cases in order better to understand how the behavior of merciful jurors compares to the behavior of their less merciful counterparts. Among other things, we find that merciful jurors tend to be better educated and to attend religious services regularly. We also find that merciful jurors are, as one might reasonably expect, more apt to …

Common-Law Compulsory Counterclaim Rule: Creating Effective And Elegant Res Judicata Doctrine, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Even in the absence of an applicable statute or court rule, failure to assert an available counterclaim precludes bringing a subsequent action thereon if granting relief would nullify the judgment in the initial action. This so-called common-law compulsory counterclaim rule emerges from the intuitive principle of claim preclusion that a valid and final judgment generally precludes the defendant from later asserting mere defenses to the claim. The implicit extension of this idea is that once a plaintiff obtains a judgment, the defendant generally cannot bring a new action to undo the judgment by reopening the plaintiff’s claim and pushing those …

The Role Of Opt-Outs And Objectors In Class Action Litigation: Theoretical And Empirical Issues, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Litigated Learning And The Limits Of Law, Michael R. Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Brown’s legacy and what it says about the efficacy of litigation as a vehicle to achieve social change mean different things to different people. Although popular mythology emphasizes Brown’s critical role in securing equal educational opportunity, careful reflection reveals that the decision’s legacy is anything but clear. A narrow focus on school desegregation suggests Brown’s legacy is aptly characterized as one of unfulfilled promise. A broader focus that extends to include subsequent equal educational opportunity activity such as the school finance litigation movement, however, casts positive light on Brown’s legacy. More important than completing interpretations of Brown’s legacy is what …

Killing The Willing: "Volunteers," Suicide And Competency, John H. Blume

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Of the 822 executions, in the modern era of capital punishment, 106 involved volunteers, or inmates who chose to waive their appeals and permit the death sentence to be carried out. The debate about volunteers, although intense, has primarily been polemic. Those who wish to curtail a death row inmate’s ability to waive his appeals refer to volunteer cases as nothing more than “state assisted suicide;” advocates of permitting inmates to choose execution reject the suicide label, instead focusing on respect for a death row inmate’s right to choose whether to accept his punishment.

This article takes a different approach. …

A Global Law Of Jurisdiction And Judgments: Views From The United States And Japan, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Japanese and U.S. legal systems, despite surprisingly similar doctrine and outlook on matters of jurisdiction and judgments, often clash: jurisdictions overlap and judgments may go unrespected, while parallel proceedings persist. The current outlook for harmonization through a multilateral Hague convention of general scope is bleak. These two countries are, however, ideally situated to reach a highly feasible bilateral agreement that would provide a better tomorrow in which jurisdiction was allocated appropriately and judgments were respected accordingly.

The Role Of Private International Law In The United States: Beating The Not-Quite-Dead Horse Of Jurisdiction, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Territorial authority to adjudicate is the preeminent component of private international law. Empirical research proves that forum really affects outcome, probably by multiple influences. This practical effect makes international harmonization of jurisdictional law highly desirable. Although harmonization of nonjurisdictional law remains quite unlikely, jurisdictional harmonization is increasingly feasible because, among other reasons, U.S. jurisdictional law in fact exhibits no essential differences from European law. None of the usual assertions holds up as an unbridgeable difference, including that (1) the peculiar U.S. jurisdictional law flows inevitably from a different theory of governmental authority, one that rests on power notions; (2) U.S. …

Standards Of Proof In Japan And The United States, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article treats the striking divergence between Japanese and U.S. civil cases as to standards of proof. The civil-law Japan requires proof to a high probability similar to the criminal standard, while the common-law United States requires only that the burdened party prove the fact to be more likely than not. This divergence not only entails great practical consequences, but also suggests a basic difference in attitudes toward the process of trial.

As to the historical causation of the difference in standards of proof, civil-law and common-law standards diverged in the late eighteenth century, probably because of one system’s French …

French Article 14 Jurisdiction, Viewed From The United States, Kevin M. Clermont, John R.B. Palmer

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

French courts have broadly read their Civil Code’s oddly written Article 14 as authorizing territorial jurisdiction over virtually any action brought by a plaintiff of French nationality. This study traces the history of this provision from its genesis two hundred years ago to its extension under the current Brussels Regulation.

Nevertheless, for a number of reasons, French plaintiffs do not use Article 14 all that much, other than in status suits such as matrimonial matters or in situations where the defendant has assets in France (or now, under the Brussels regime, in Europe). The actual use of Article 14 ends …

The Jurisprudence Of Enron: Professionalism As Interpretation, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Jurisprudence can seem like a formidably esoteric field, with conceptual arguments carried on at a high level of abstraction, seemingly remote from the concerns of practicing lawyers. In fact, it is impossible to ignore jurisprudence when thinking about the role of lawyers in the wave of financial accounting scandals exemplified by the collapse of Enron. The Enron case is not about ethics so much as it is about the interpretation and application of a complex scheme of legal norms to innovative business transactions. The lawyers believed they were taking a legitimate, albeit aggressive interpretive attitude toward the law, by structuring …

Real Time: Unwinding Technocratic And Anthropological Knowledge, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

“The Bank of Japan is our mother,” bankers in Tokyo sometimes said of Japan's central bank. Drawing on this metaphor as an ethnographic resource, and on the example of central bankers who sought to unwind their own technocratic knowledge by replacing it with a real-time machine, I retrace the ethnographic task of unwinding technocratic knowledge from those anthropological knowledge practices that critique technocracy. In so doing, I draw attention to special methodological problems—involving the relationship between ethnography, analysis, and reception—in the representation and critique of contemporary knowledge practices.

Yale Kamisar The Teacher, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

After Bureaucracy, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Implicit Racial Attitudes Of Death Penalty Lawyers, Theodore Eisenberg, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Defense attorneys commonly suspect that the defendant's race plays a role in prosecutors' decisions to seek the death penalty, especially when the victim of the crime was white. When the defendant is convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, it is equally common for such attorneys to question the racial attitudes of the jury. These suspicions are not merely partisan conjectures; ample historical, statistical, and anecdotal evidence supports the inference that race matters in capital cases. Even the General Accounting Office of the United States concludes as much. Despite McCleskey v. Kemp, in which the United States Supreme Court …

Enriching The Contracts Course, Robert A. Hillman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

How Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs Fare In Federal Court, Kevin M. Clermont, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article presents the full range of information that the Administrative Office’s data convey on federal employment discrimination litigation. From that information, the authors tell three stories about (1) bringing these claims, (2) their outcome in the district court, and (3) the effect of appeal. Each of these stories is a sad one for employment discrimination plaintiffs: relatively often, the numerous plaintiffs must pursue their claims all the way through trial, which is usually a jury trial; at both pretrial and trial these plaintiffs lose disproportionately often, in all the various types of employment discrimination cases; and employment discrimination litigants …

Was Arthur Andersen Different? An Empirical Examination Of Major Accounting Firm Audits Of Large Clients, Theodore Eisenberg, Jonathan R. Macey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Enron and other corporate financial scandals focused attention on the accounting industry in general and on Arthur Andersen in particular. Part of the policy response to Enron, the criminal prosecution of Andersen eliminated one of the few major audit firms capable of auditing many large public corporations. This article explores whether Andersen’s performance, as measured by frequency of financial restatements, measurably differed from that of other large auditors. Financial restatements trigger significant negative market reactions and their frequency can be viewed as a measure of accounting performance. We analyze the financial restatement activity of approximately 1,000 large public firms from …

A Moderate Defense Of Hate Speech Regulations On University Campuses, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The regulation of hate speech on public and private university campuses is a fiercely contested and divisive issue. Professor Bradley Wendel defends the middle ground in this debate. This Essay argues that concerns about abuses of power by those in positions of authority are unfounded when an institution possesses greater expertise in a domain than the citizens who are affected by the institution’s decision, provided that the institution is acting on the basis of reasons that are shared by the affected individual.

Juror First Votes In Criminal Trials, Stephen P. Garvey, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Valerie P. Hans, Nicole L. Mott, G. Thomas Munsterman, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Our analysis of the voting behavior of over 3,000 jurors in felony cases tried in Los Angeles, Maricopa County, the District of Columbia, and the Bronx reveals that only in D.C. does a juror's race appear to relate to how he or she votes. African-American jurors in D.C. appear more apt to vote not guilty on the jury's first ballot in cases involving minority defendants charged with drug offenses. We find no evidence, however, that this effect survives into the jury's final verdict.

Criminal Case Complexity: An Empirical Perspective, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Criminal case complexity persists as a central tenet in many academic and public critiques of our legal system even though little is known about two critical questions. One question is whether key actors (juries, attorneys, and judges) view case complexity similarly. In other words, do juries, attorneys, and judges agree on whether a case is complex? A second question involves the determinants of case complexity for each group. That is, what factors make a case more (or less) complex for juries, attorneys, and judges. This article explores both questions from an empirical perspective with the benefit of recent data from …