Law Commons^™

In Defense Of The Substance-Procedure Dichotomy, Jennifer S. Hendricks

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

John Hart Ely famously observed, “We were all brought up on sophisticated talk about the fluidity of the line between substance and procedure,” but for most of Erie’s history, the Supreme Court has answered the question “Does this state law govern in federal court?” with a “yes” or a “no.” Beginning, however, with Gasperini v. Center for Humanities, and continuing with Semtek v. Lockheed and Shady Grove v. Allstate, a shifting coalition of justices has pursued a third path. Instead of declaring state law applicable or inapplicable, they have claimed for themselves the prerogative to fashion law that purportedly accommodates …

Ending Erie's Third Phase: Why The Supreme Court Should Stop Freelancing And Go Back To Drawing Lines Between Substance And Procedure, Jennifer S. Hendricks

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

John Hart Ely famously observed, “We were all brought up on sophisticated talk about the fluidity of the line between substance and procedure,” but for most of Erie’s history, the Supreme Court has answered the question “Does this state law govern in federal court?” with a “yes” or a “no.” Beginning, however, with Gasperini v. Center for Humanities, and continuing with Semtek v. Lockheed and Shady Grove v. Allstate, a shifting coalition of justices has pursued a third path. Instead of declaring state law applicable or inapplicable, they have claimed for themselves the prerogative to fashion law that purportedly accommodates …

The Repressible Myth Of Shady Grove, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article untangles the effects of the Supreme Court's latest word on the Erie doctrine, by taking the vantage point of a lower court trying to uncover the logical implications of the Court's new pronouncement. First, Shady Grove lightly confirms the limited role of constitutional constraints. Second, it sheds only a little light on judicial choice-of-law methodology. Third, by contrast, it does considerably clarify the conflict between Federal Rules and state law: if a Rule regulates procedure, then it is valid and applicable without exception in all federal cases, to the extent of its coverage; in determining the Rule's coverage, …

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

Articles

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.

The Dispute On The Horizon: Contracting For Effective Dispute Resolution In International Business Transactions A U.S. Perspective, William P. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers a view, from a U.S. perspective but for a non-U.S. readership, on the significant aspects of planning for dispute resolution in the context of cross-border business transactions involving U.S. and non-U.S. parties. Specifically, this Article identifies the issues that parties who are located in Brazil or in other jurisdictions throughout the Americas should consider at the time of drafting, negotiating, and finalizing business contracts with U.S. counterparties, as well as business contracts that are entered into in connection with other cross-border arrangements that could involve U.S. law even when there is no U.S. counterparty, to prepare for …

The Rome I Regulation Rules On Party Autonomy For Choice Of Law: A U.S. Perspective, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This chapter was presented at a conference in Dublin on the (then) new Rome I Regulation of the European Union in the fall of 2009. It contrasts the Rome I rules on party autonomy with those in the United States. In particular, it considers the rules in the Rome I Regulation that ostensibly protect consumers by discouraging party agreement on a pre-dispute basis to the law governing a consumer contract. These rules are compared with the absence of private international law restrictions on choice of forum and choice of law in the United States, even in consumer contracts. The result …

In Defense Of The Substance-Procedure Dichotomy, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

John Hart Ely famously observed, "We were all brought up on sophisticated talk about the fluidity of the line between substance and procedure," but for most of Erie's history, the Supreme Court has answered the question "Does this state law govern in federal court? " with a "yes" or a "no." Beginning, however, with Gasperini v. Center for Humanities, and continuing with Semtek v. Lockheed Martin and the dissenting opinion in Shady Grove v. Allstate, a shifting coalition of justices has pursued a third path. Instead of declaring state law applicable or inapplicable, they have claimed for …

Resolving Interstate Conflicts Over Same-Sex Non-Marriage, Hillel Y. Levin

Scholarly Works

States have adopted several different regimes of recognition for same-sex couples. A few states allow same-sex couples to marry; several others offer marriage-like partnerships (usually called civil unions), which provide all or nearly all of the substantive rights and responsibilities associated with marriage; still others offer marriage-lite partnerships (sometimes called reciprocal benefits arrangements), which provide a small subset of the rights and responsibilities associated with marriage; and, of course, others offer no recognition at all.

What happens when these regimes of recognition collide? For example, what happens when a couple marries in Massachusetts and then moves to a marriage-like state, …