Law Commons^™

Dores Mccree, Theodore J. St. Antoine

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Dores McCree had an unusual combination of great qualities. She was totally dedicated to her role as a career advisor to students at the Law School and relentlessly persistent in pursuing opportunities for them among her large, nationwide group of lawyer friends. Yet she could be very hard-headed and realistic in appraising the qualifications of an individual candidate for a particular position. "John or Mary," she would say in that warm, disarming, and totally persuasive voice of hers, "I just don't think that job is the right fit for you. Let's find something better."

Why It's Called The Affordable Care Act, Nicholas Bagley, Jill R. Horwitz

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The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“ACA”) raises numerous policy and legal issues, but none have attracted as much attention from lawyers as Section 1501. This provision, titled “Maintenance of Mini-mum Essential Coverage,” but better known as the “individual mandate,” requires most Americans to obtain health insurance for themselves and their dependents by 2014. We are dismayed that the narrow issue of the mandate and the narrower issue of free riding have garnered so much attention when our nation’s health-care system suffers from countless problems. By improving quality, controlling costs, and extending coverage to the uninsured, the …

Introduction To Special Symposium Feature: Successes And Failures In International Human Trafficking Law, Bridgette A. Carr

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The Essays in this issue of the Michigan Journal of International Law showcase the results of an important and historic symposium held at the University of Michigan Law School in February 2011. Acknowledging the ten-year anniversary of both the international Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons (Trafficking Protocol), and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in the United States, the conference brought together an extraordinary group of legal scholars, government officials, and practitioners to examine the successes and failures in international human trafficking law. The need to evaluate both the successes and failures in antitrafficking law is …

The Unaffordable Health Care Act - A Reponse To Professors Bagley And Horwitz, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn

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The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 has stirred considerable controversy. In the public debate over the program, many of its proponents have defended it by focusing on what is sometimes called the “free-rider” problem. In a prior article, we contended that the free-rider problem has been greatly exaggerated and was not a significant factor in the congressional decision to adopt the Act. We maintained that the free-rider issue is a red herring advanced to trigger an emotional attraction to the Act and distract attention from the actual issues that favor and disfavor its adoption. In a recently …

Free Rider: A Justification For Mandatory Medical Insurance Under Health Care Reform?, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn

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Section 1501 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act added section 5000A to the Internal Revenue Code to require most individuals in the United States, beginning in the year 2014, to purchase an established minimum level of medical insurance. This requirement, which is enforced by a penalty imposed on those who fail to comply, is sometimes referred to as the “individual mandate.” The individual mandate is one element of a vast change to the provision of medical care that Congress implemented in 2010. The individual mandate has proved to be controversial and has been the subject of a number …

Do Sex Offender Registration And Notification Laws Affect Criminal Behavior?, J. J. Prescott, Jonah E. Rockoff

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Sex offenders have become the targets of some of the most far-reaching and novel crime legislation in the U.S. Two key innovations in recent decades have been registration and notification laws which, respectively, require that convicted sex offenders provide valid contact information to law enforcement authorities, and that information about sex offenders be made public. Using the evolution of state law during the 1990s and 2000s, we study how registration and notification affect the frequency of reported sex offenses and the incidence of such offenses across victims. We find evidence that registration reduces the frequency of sex offenses by providing …

Tribute: Dores Mccrary Mccree, David L. Chambers

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Dores McCree made your day a little better whenever she walked into a room. When you talked with her, you knew her goal was simply to enjoy your company, not to get something out of you, and not to show herself off. She was good at talking and good at listening. She'd cock her head slightly and ask questions to which she really cared about the answers. On more than one occasion, I had to jockey with others to be able to sit with her at a dinner.

E.U. Accountability To International Law: The Case Of Asylum, James C. Hathaway

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In one of his later published works, Eric Stein wrote that "[a]s modern administrative state, transparency in the Union is essential not only to inform member state parliaments and electorates, but also to help form an all-European debate and public opinion that are required to sustain advanced integration."' In his usual prescient way, Professor Stein captured the dilemma of the European Union as it has shifted from an amalgam of states seeking consensus in a largely behind-closed-doors way to what many would see as an emerging federal state. With its undoubted ability to project power, will the European Union effectively …

Exclusion From Income Of Compensation For Services And Pooling Of Labor Occurring In A Noncommercial Setting, Douglas A. Kahn

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When cash is received for services, it typically will constitute gross income to the recipient.' But what if the payments are made in a noncommercial setting such as the payment by a parent to a child for mowing the lawn or performing household chores? As discussed later in this Essay, there are reasons to conclude that such payments do not constitute income. The problem of how to treat receipts from a noncommercial activity frequently arises in the context of an exchange of services. A similar problem arises when services are provided by several persons pursuant to a pooling of labor …

Slavery And The Law In Atlantic Perspective: Jurisdiction, Jurisprudence, And Justice, Rebecca J. Scott

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The four articles in this special issue experiment with an innovative set of questions and a variety of methods in order to push the analysis of slavery and the law into new territory. Their scope is broadly Atlantic, encompassing Suriname and Saint-Domingue/Haiti, New York and New Orleans, port cities and coffee plantations. Each essay deals with named individuals in complex circumstances, conveying their predicaments as fine-grained microhistories rather than as shocking anecdotes. Each author, moreover, demonstrates that the moments when law engaged slavery not only reflected but also influenced larger dynamics of sovereignty and jurisprudence.

The Rise In Elder Bankruptcy Filings And The Failure Of U.S. Bankruptcy Law, John A. E. Pottow

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Recent empirical legal scholarship on the consumer bankruptcy system has uncovered a marked rise in the proportion of elder Americans filing for relief under the Bankruptcy Code. But these studies have not probed the reasons behind that rise, an omission this Article seeks to address. Professor John Pottow and colleagues recently assembled the new dataset of the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), the largest national sample of consumer debtors in this country, which he uses to explore the sources of elder bankruptcy. The findings are both striking and ominous. While multiple factors, such as health problems and medical debts, contribute to …

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 …

A New Role For Secondary Proceedings In International Bankruptcies, John A. E. Pottow

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Secondary proceedings-the ugly stepsisters to main proceedings-get short shrift in international bankruptcy scholarship. This article seeks to remedy that deficiency. First, it describes what it argues are the traditional conceptions-both stated and implicit-of secondary proceedings in international bankruptcies. Second, it offers a revised way of thinking about secondary proceedings, proposing to restrict their scope through the use of "synthetic" hearings. Third, it addresses some problems with the proposed new role of secondary proceedings and sketches a possible solution involving the creation of an international priorities registry.

Readers' Copyright, Jessica D. Litman

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My goal in this project is to reclaim copyright for readers (and listeners, viewers, and other members of the audience). I think, and will try to persuade you, that the gradual and relatively recent disappearance of readers’ interests from the core of copyright’s perceived goals has unbalanced the copyright system. It may have prompted, at least in part, the scholarly critique of copyright that has fueled copyright lawyers’ impression that “so many in academia side with the pirates.” It may also be responsible for much of the deterioration in public support for copyright. I argue here that copyright seems out …

Citizens United And The Corporate Form, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

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In Citizens United vs. FEC, the Supreme Court struck down a Federal statute banning direct corporate expenditures on political campaigns. The decision has been widely criticized and praised as a matter of First Amendment law. But it is also interesting as another step in the evolution of our legal views of the corporation. This article argues that by viewing Citizens United through the prism of theories about the corporate form, it is possible to see that the majority and the dissent departed from previous Supreme Court jurisprudence on the First Amendment rights of corporations. It is also possible to then …

The Asymmetry Of Duty In Criminal Trial Practice, Maureen A. Howard

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Although the American trial system has been likened to an arena in which mental combatants fight “to the death” (the verdict), each warrior similarly skilled and equally committed to vanquishing the other in a forum with formal rules of engagement enforced by a learned and impartial judge, the role of the criminal prosecutor is qualitatively different than that of other advocates. This is because, unlike any other lawyer, a criminal prosecutor has an affirmative duty to the opposing party.

A lawyer who represents an individual client is duty-bound to advance that client’s interests vigorously within the bounds of the law. …

Too Close To Home: Limiting The Organizations Subsidized By The Charitable Deduction To Those In Economic Need, Shannon Weeks Mccormack

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The charitable deduction allows taxpayers to deduct amounts donated to organizations pursuing statutorily designated purposes from their otherwise taxable income. By lowering the after-tax cost of giving and encouraging taxpayers to donate more than they otherwise would, the charitable deduction subsidizes a broad variety of organizations. Some of these organizations provide widespread societal benefits, while others provide narrower benefits that remain closer to the taxpayer-donor’s home. To evaluate these current laws, this Article focuses on efficiency criteria, which limit subsidized organizations to those with donor support that does not cover the costs needed to optimally provide goods and services. Existing …