Law Commons^™

Megafirms, Randall S. Thomas, Stewart J. Schwab, Robert G. Hansen

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article documents and explains the amazing growth of the largest firms in law, accounting, and investment banking. Scholars to date have used various supply-side theories to explain this growth, and have generally examined only one industry at a time. This Article emphasizes a demand-side explanation of firm growth and shows how the explanation is similar for firms in all "project" industries. Legal regulation also plays an important role in determining industry structure. Among the areas covered in this Article are the growth of Multidisciplinary Practice firms (MDPs). MDP growth can best be understood by looking more broadly at the …

Judges, Prosecutors, Jurors, And Organized Labor: Four Perspectives Of Corporate Citizenship, Noel Beasley, Janine P. Geske, Valerie P. Hans, E. Michael Mccann, Frank Daily

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Some people argue that the civil jury is in decline. They argue that it's not really so important to be focusing on jurors and jurors' views about corporate responsibility as it might have been in prior times. I want to raise some arguments in favor of the continuing importance of the civil jury. First of all, the cases that juries try may be very important cases in terms of the company and in terms of the role of the company vis-a-vis government regulation. Jurors are symbolic representatives of the public in the courtroom. Finding out what juries do when they …

Employment Law In A Changing Workplace, Katherine V.W. Stone

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Don't Train Your Employees And Cancel Your "1-800" Harassment Hotline: An Empirical Examination And Correction Of The Flaws In The Affirmative Defense To Sexual Harassment Charges, David Sherwyn, Michael Heise, Zev J. Eigen

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court's two-pronged affirmative defense limiting employer liability for sexual harassment, articulated in the Faragher and Ellerth decisions, generated substantial scholarly commentary. Many scholars were quick to predict how lower courts would apply the affirmative defense. However, many predictions about the affirmative defense were advanced prior to the emergence of a sufficient number of judicial opinions applying it.

In this article we report results of our empirical study of the first 72 post-Ellerth and Faragher opinions involving employers' summary judgment motions that include affirmative defenses in response to allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace. We find that employer-related …

The New Psychological Contract: Implications Of The Changing Workplace For Labor And Employment Law, Katherine V.W. Stone

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In this article, Professor Stone describes the profound changes that are occurring in the employment relationship in the United States. Firms are dismantling their internal labor markets and abandoning their implicit promises of orderly promotion and long-term job security. No longer is employment centered on a single, primary employer. Instead, employees operate in a boundaryless workplace in which they expect to move frequently between firms, and between divisions within firms, throughout their working lives. At the same time, employers and employees have a new understanding of their mutual obligations, a new psychological contract, in which expectations of job security and …

Dispute Resolution In The Boundaryless Workplace, Katherine V.W. Stone

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Since the Supreme Court's decision Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp. which compelled an employee to submit his age discrimination claim to arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), there has been a dramatic increase in the number of nonunion firms adopting arbitration systems. At the same time, there has been a flood of lawsuits challenging these employment systems, and a corresponding avalanche of judicial opinions addressing the legal issues left open in Gilmer – issues such as the problematic nature of consent in employment arbitration, the deficiencies in due process, and the applicability of the FAA to employment contracts. These …

Predicting The Future Of Employment Law: Reflecting Or Refracting Market Forces?, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In this Article I predict how employment law will change in the future. My task is positive rather than normative. I will not argue that the developments I foresee are good ones to be applauded. Rather, they arise "inevitably" from the way the law will react to changes in labor markets.

Of course, as Professor Ronald Dworkin emphasizes, in developing a theory of law one cannot sharply distinguish between the positive and normative. Dworkin points out that even in describing the current legal framework, one must choose what to highlight and what to ignore, a process based on values. When …