Law Commons^™

Retheorizing The Presumption Against Implied Repeals, Karen Petroski

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What should a court do when it is presented with two statutes that appear to be in conflict? If the conflict proves irreconcilable, and neither of the statutes is more specific than the other, a long-standing principle of statutory interpretation advises the court to conclude that the legislature's last word on the subject-the later-enacted statute-controls. The later enacted statute therefore "repeals" by necessary implication the earlier, contrary statute to the extent of the conflict.' This rule of thumb reflects an understanding that, occasionally, updating of the statutory scheme is desirable, either because this updating was intended (if not acknowledged) by …

Questions About The Efficiency Of Employment Arbitration Agreements, Matthew T. Bodie

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The growing popularity of arbitration agreements is well-documented. The academic literature on these agreements has been largely critical, arguing that they jeopardize important rights and enable employers to take unfair advantage of employees and consumers. However, standard economic analysis suggests that since these agreements are freely negotiated, they presumably increase the utility of both parties and are therefore efficient. This Article raises questions about the efficiency of such agreements in the employment context. It begins by modeling the decision-making process by which a rational employee would judge the desirability of an agreement, both after and before a dispute has arisen. …

Statutory Assistance For Attorneys Providing Pro Bono Services, Christine Rollins

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Missouri attorneys now have the statutory assistance they need to take a more active role in assisting the low-income and under-represented members of our communities.

Mission, Margin, And Trust In The Nonprofit Health Care Enterprise, Thomas L. Greaney, Kathleen Boozang

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The law governing charitable corporations remains neglected and thoroughly muddled. Still unsettled are central issues regarding the accountability of directors and management, legal standards governing organic changes by nonprofit institutions, and mechanisms to ensure fidelity to the organization's charitable mission. For nonprofit corporations in the health care sector, which represent a large proportion of all health services supplied nationwide, particularly charity care, these shortcomings have had serious repercussions. The central issue addressed in this Article is how fidelity to the mission of the charitable health care corporation should be monitored. It advances the normative perspective that the law should maximize …

A Tyrannosaurus-Rex Aptly Named 'Sue': Using A Disputed Dinosaur To Teach Contract Defenses, Miriam A. Cherry

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This piece focuses on the discovery of a T-Rex skeleton, and the contract formed between the private fossil collectors and the Native American rancher who ostensibly owned the land where the fossil was situated. Although the fossil was eventually sold at auction for over eight million dollars, the fossil collectors paid the rancher only $5,000 for its excavation. In addition to the rancher, the Sioux tribe and the Department of Justice also became involved in the case.

As described in my work, the law school Socratic method has come under attack in recent years. In response to such criticisms, the …

Faith, Confidence And Health Care: Fostering Trust In Medicine Through Law, Robert Gatter

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This Article responds to the work of Professor Mark A. Hall, who has written an accompanying essay in reply, published in the same issue of the Wake Forest Law Review.

This Article identifies an emerging medical trust movement and challenges its normative claim that, as a matter of policy, the law should be used to preserve, if not promote, trust in medicine. Key to this challenge is the fact that the emerging movement defines medical trust in emotional terms as a kind of faith that goes beyond rationally based confidence. First, because the movement defines medical trust as faith, it …

Seeking Consistency In Relating Capital To Current Expenditures, Henry Ordower

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Identifies relational duration as the key factor that distinguishes capital from current expenditures for tax purposes and argues that inventory cost is fundamentally identical to capitalization. Barriers to deductibility such as illegal payment prohibitions should also be barriers to capitalization or inventory absorption.

The Potential For State Labor Law: The New York Greengrocer Code Of Conduct, Matthew T. Bodie

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While labor law academics bemoan the ossification of federal labor law, the potential for state labor law has just begun to be explored. This Article takes a closer look at the New York Greengrocer Code of Conduct, a unique approach to the problem of industry-wide employment law violations. The Code, negotiated by the New York Attorney General's Office in conjunction with groups representing workers and greengrocers, provides a set of minimum terms and conditions for grocers which to some extent go beyond statutory requirements. In return for agreeing to the Code, grocers can avoid liability for past state employment law …

Beyond Bakke: Grutter-Gratz And The Promise Of Brown, Joel K. Goldstein

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The Supreme Court’s long-awaited decisions this past summer in the Michigan affirmative action cases provided yet another landmark in the continuing controversy regarding race and education. A quarter century, almost to the day, after the Court handed down its badly splintered decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke,[1] the Court again concluded that universities may sometimes, but not always, give some preference to racial and ethnic minorities in deciding whom to admit. The Court, in a 5-4 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, upheld the constitutionality of the University of Michigan Law School’s admission policy that considered race …

Introduction, Joel K. Goldstein

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Brown v. Board of Education [1] is the seminal case of the Twentieth Century. Mere mention of the case can start discussion on any number of topics, all important and all that relate to, or were importantly affected by, Brown. Some of those discussions relate to the immediate subject of Brown: Was state-imposed racially segregated public education a violation of the Equal Protection Clause? What is the nature of race relations in America? How close are we to achieving a racially just society? How fair is our system of public education? Others might focus on Brown for its impact on …

Disentitlement? The Threats Facing Our Public Health-Care Programs And A Rights Based Response, Sidney D. Watson

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In the battle over the future of American health policy, the lines are drawn. On one side are those who seek to turn health care financing and delivery over to private markets that are individualized—where patients strike their own bargains rather than relying on employers or government insurers—and free from governmental mandates. On the other side are those who support a continuing role for government in assuring access to health insurance and health services and in controlling costs and monitoring the quality of care. The lines are hard, fast, and ideological.

The most recent skirmish ended November 24, 2003, when …

Chicago's Procrustean Bed: Applying Antitrust Law In Health Care, Thomas L. Greaney

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Antitrust enforcement in health care has undergone considerable buffeting in recent years with government agencies losing a string of important cases in federal court and support for vigorous enforcement waning among some policymakers. Critics of doctrinal development in antitrust law have begun to question whether the underlying economic relationships are accurately reflected in the law of antitrust as applied in health care. This article advances the positive claim that antitrust doctrine often suppresses pertinent features of the health care marketplace and urges courts and enforcers to pause before applying precedent and evidentiary rules of thumb that do not fit the …

Good Enough To Use For Research, But Not Good Enough To Benefit From The Results Of That Research: Are The Clinical Hiv Vaccine Trials In Africa Unjust?, Ruqaiijah A. Yearby

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The epidemic of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region most affected by the HIV pandemic and where HIV is the leading cause of death, is reaching insurmountable proportions. In fact, out of the 36.1 million HIV infections worldwide, 25.3 million, seventy percent, are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, of the more than 15,000 people who are infected with HIV every day, ninety-five percent of the cases are in populations that live in developing countries such as those located in Sub-Saharan Africa. Due to the significant number of Africans infected with HIV, many researchers and ethicists have …

Federalism Re-Constructed: The Eleventh Amendment's Illogical Impact On Congress' Power, Marcia L. Mccormick

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The Constitution is designed to protect individual liberty and equality by diffusing power among the three branches of the federal government and between the federal and state governments, and by providing a minimum level of protection for individual rights. Yet, the Supreme Court seems to think that federalism is about protecting states as states rather than balancing governmental power to protect individuals. In the name of federalism, the Supreme Court has been paring away at Congress' power to enact civil rights legislation. In doing so, it has transformed the Fourteenth Amendment into a vehicle for protecting states rights rather than …

Whistling In The Dark? Corporate Fraud, Whistleblowers, And The Implications Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act For Employment Law, Miriam A. Cherry

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Passed in 2002 in the wake of the accounting scandals that resulted in billions of dollars of lost value to shareholders, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has as its major goal the prevention of corporate corruption. This Article analyzes the impact of Section 806, the portion of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that provides protections for employees who report securities fraud, and describes the effect that Sarbanes-Oxley has on existing employment law. In addition, this Article contributes to the debate over the general effectiveness of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a topic of contention among both academics and press commentators. This Article argues that the Act …

Five Easy Pieces: Motifs Of Health Law, Sandra H. Johnson

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The film Five Easy Pieces is named for a selection of five piano compositions that the Jack Nicholson character played in a childhood recital. Here, its namesake refers to five motifs of teaching and practicing health law. Like playing the piano pieces, some of these motifs sound difficult to teach but are quite easy, and others sound easy but are quite difficult.

First, whether it is the lawyers shaking their heads about the doctors or the doctors stunned by the ignorance of the lawyers, these two professions have difficulty reaching common understandings. Health law’s defining characteristic is that it attempts …

Images Of Health Insurance In Popular Film: The Dissolving Critique, Elizabeth Pendo

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Several recent films have villainized the health insurance industry as central elements of their plots. This Article examines three of those films: Critical Care, The Rainmaker, and John Q. It analyzes these films through the context of the consumer backlash against managed care that began in the 1990s and shows how these films reflect the consumer sentiment regarding health insurance companies and the cost controlling strategies they employ. In addition, the Article identifies three key premises about health insurance in the films that, although exaggerated and incomplete, have significant factual support. Ultimately, the author argues that, despite their passionately critical …

How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (Cases): Gender Stereotypes And Sexual Harassment Since The Passage Of Title Vii, Miriam A. Cherry

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This Article, which is part of a symposium on the 40th Anniversary of Title VII appearing in the Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal, evaluates the progress of women in the workforce by critically analyzing the musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." Written in the early 1960s and made into a 1967 movie, How to Succeed follows the adventures of J. Pierrepont Finch, a window washer who, with the aid of a sarcastic self-help book, schemes his way up the corporate ladder. It also includes the sexual exploits of the exclusively male executive corps among the female …