Law Commons^™

Christianity And Bankruptcy, David A. Skeel Jr.

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Although the term “bankruptcy” is nowhere to be found in the Bible, debt and the consequences of default are a major theme both in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament. In Israel, as in the ancient Near East generally, a debtor who defaulted on his obligations was often sold into slavery or servitude. Biblical law moderated the harshness of this system by prohibiting Israelites from charging interest on loans to one another, thus diminishing the risk of default, and by requiring the release of slaves after seven years of service. Jesus alluded to the lending laws at least …

Spillover Effects In Police Use Of Force, Justin E. Holz, Roman G. Rivera, Bocar A. Ba

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We study the link between officer injuries-on-duty and the force-use of their peers using a network of officers who, through a random lottery, began the police academy together. We find that peer injuries-on-duty increase the probability of using force by 7%. The effect is concentrated in a narrow time window near the event and is not associated with significantly lower injury risk to the officer. Complaints of improper searches and failure to provide service also increase after peer injuries, suggesting that the increase in force might be driven by heightened risk aversion.

The Special Norms Thesis: Why Congress's Constitutional Decision-Making Should Be Disciplined By More Than The Usual Norms Of Politics, Mark Rosen

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No abstract provided.

After Janus, Martin Malin, Catherine Fisk

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The Supreme Court in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 upended public sector labor law by finding a novel First Amendment right of public employees to refuse to pay union fees and declaring unconstitutional scores of laws and thousands of labor contracts. This Article assesses the constraints on public sector labor law post-Janus, examines the variety of legislative responses, and proposes a path forward.Janus makes it difficult to address the collective action problem facing all large groups. Although it is in the interest of every member of a group to engage in collective action …

Personal Property Security Law: International Ambitions And Local Realities, Giuliano G. Castellano, Andrea Tosato

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Personal property security law is a key element of “access to credit” and “financial inclusion”. The prevailing view is that a legal framework enabling the effective use of personal property as collateral markedly benefits both lenders and borrowers. Lenders can offer financing at a lower cost thanks to reduced credit risk; borrowers can access funding by leveraging the otherwise unavailable value of the assets integral to their operations.

Over the past century, the priorities of personal property security law have evolved fundamentally. As small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and individual entrepreneurs have become the growth engine of both developed and …

Complexity Cubed: Partnerships, Interest, And The Proposed Regs, Walter D. Schwidetzky

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New section 163(j) strictly limits business interest expense (BIE) deductions to large (and possibly not-so-large) taxpayers. Generally, BIEs may only be deducted to the extent that they do not exceed 30 percent of adjusted taxable income plus business interest income. Section 163(j)(4) requires partnerships to calculate this limitation at the partnership level. In this report, I focus on how section 163(j) applies to partnerships. Given my focus, I leave to others a more comprehensive review of section 163(j) as a totality,1 as well as the coverage of S corporations. I will tend to give fairly short shrift to the portions …

Dimensions Of Delegation, Cary Coglianese

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How can the nondelegation doctrine still exist when the Supreme Court over decades has approved so many pieces of legislation that contain unintelligible principles? The answer to this puzzle emerges from recognition that the intelligibility of any principle dictating the basis for lawmaking is but one characteristic defining that authority. The Court has acknowledged five other characteristics that, taken together with the principle articulating the basis for executive decision-making, constitute the full dimensionality of any grant of lawmaking authority and hold the key to a more coherent rendering of the Court’s application of the nondelegation doctrine. When understood in dimensional …

The Effect Of Police Oversight On Crime And Allegations Of Misconduct: Evidence From Chicago, Bocar A. Ba, Roman G. Rivera

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Does policing the police increase crime? We avoid simultaneity effects of increased public oversight during a major scandal by identifying events in Chicago that only impacted officers’ self-imposed monitoring. We estimate crime’s response to self- and public-monitoring using regression discontinuity and generalized synthetic control methods. Self-monitoring, triggered by police union memos, significantly reduced serious complaints without impacting crime or effort. However, after a scandal, both civilian complaints and crime rates rise, suggesting that higher crime rates following heightened oversight results from de-policing and civilian behavior simultaneously changing. Our research suggests that proactive internal accountability improves police-community relations without increasing crime.

The Uncopyrightability Of Edicts Of Government, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Peter S. Menell

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This amicus brief filed in the Supreme Court appeal of Georgia, et al., v. Public.Resource.Org.,explores the interplay of copyright law and the edicts of government doctrine. The “edicts of government” doctrine was first validated by the U.S. Supreme Court in a series of nineteenth century cases. Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591 (1834); Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244 (1888); Callaghan v. Meyers, 128 U.S. 617 (1888). While the doctrine has never been directly recognized in the express wording of the copyright statute, it is nevertheless firmly rooted in foundational copyright principles that are …

In-Group Bias And The Police: Evidence From Award Nominations, Nayoung Rim, Roman G. Rivera, Bocar A. Ba

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This paper examines the impact of in-group bias on the internal dynamics of a police department. Prior studies have documented racial bias in policing, but little is known about bias against officers due to lack of available data. We construct a novel panel dataset of Chicago Police Department officers, with detailed information on officer characteristics and work productivity. Exploiting quasi-random variation in supervisor assignment, we find that white supervisors are less likely to nominate black officers than white or Hispanic officers. We find weaker evidence that male supervisors are less likely to nominate female officers than male officers. We explore …

Gender-Identity Protection, Trade, And The Trump Administration: A Tale Of Reluctant Progressivism, Jean Galbraith, Beatrix Lu

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The Trump Administration has been hostile to transgender people, stripping away many protections from discrimination established by the prior administration. It is therefore striking that President Trump’s signature international agreement to date—the “new NAFTA” recently negotiated with Canada and Mexico—includes a provision requiring all three countries to implement appropriate policies to protect workers against discrimination based on gender identity. This provision has a similar requirement with respect to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, notwithstanding the fact that the Trump Administration’s domestic policies have also shown hostility to such protections. How did this provision come to be included in …

Role Of Knowledge Networks And Boundary Organizations In Coproduction: A Short History Of A Decision Support Tool And Model For Adapting Multiuse Reservoir And Water-Energy Governance To Climate Change In California, Sonya Ziaja

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Climate adaptation relies on theoretical frameworks of coproduced science and knowledge networks to produce acceptable outcomes for politically contentious resources. As adaptation moves from theory to implementation, there is a need for positive case studies to use as benchmarks. Building from literature on actionable science this paper presents one such positive case—the development of a hydropower and reservoir decision-support tool. The focus of this history is on the multiple phases of interaction (and noninteraction) between researchers and a semidefined community of stakeholders. The lessons presented from the Integrated Forecast and Reservoir Management (INFORM) system project stress that collaborations between managers …

Toward Fair And Sustainable Capitalism: A Comprehensive Proposal To Help American Workers, Restore Fair Gainsharing Between Employees And Shareholders, And Increase American Competitiveness By Reorienting Our Corporate Governance System Toward Sustainable Long-Term Growth And Encouraging Investments In America’S Future, Leo E. Strine Jr.

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To promote fair and sustainable capitalism and help business and labor work together to build an American economy that works for all, this paper presents a comprehensive proposal to reform the American corporate governance system by aligning the incentives of those who control large U.S. corporations with the interests of working Americans who must put their hard-earned savings in mutual funds in their 401(k) and 529 plans. The proposal would achieve this through a series of measured, coherent changes to current laws and regulations, including: requiring not just operating companies, but institutional investors, to give appropriate consideration to and make …

The Reverse Agency Problem In The Age Of Compliance, Asaf Eckstein, Gideon Parchomovsky

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The agency problem, the idea that corporate directors and officers are motivated to prioritize their self-interest over the interest of their corporation, has had long-lasting impact on corporate law theory and practice. In recent years, however, as federal agencies have stepped up enforcement efforts against corporations, a new problem that is the mirror image of the agency problem has surfaced—the reverse agency problem. The surge in criminal investigations against corporations, combined with the rising popularity of settlement mechanisms including Pretrial Diversion Agreements (PDAs), and corporate plea agreements, has led corporations to sacrifice directors and officers in order to reach settlements …

The American Pathology Of Inequitable Access To Medical Care, Allison K. Hoffman, Mark A. Hall

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What most defines access to health care in the United States may be its stark inequity. Daily headlines in top newspapers paint the highs and lows. Articles entitled: “We Mapped the Uninsured. You’ll notice a Pattern: They tend to live in the South, and they tend to be poor” and op-eds with titles like “Do Poor People Have a Right to Health Care?” and “What it’s Like to Be Black and Pregnant when you Know How Dangerous That Can Be” run side-by-side with headlines touting “The Operating Room of the Future,^” and advances in gene therapy that promise cures …

Due Process In International Antitrust Enforcement: An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Christopher S. Yoo

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The past year has witnessed an upsurge of international interest in due process in antitrust enforcement, reflected in two new comparative studies and International Competition Network’s (ICN’s) May 2019 adoption of its Recommended Practices for Investigative Process and Framework for Competition Agency Procedures and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Competition Committee’s discussion of the Draft Recommendation on Transparency and Procedural Fairness in Competition Law Enforcement in June 2019. This article reviews those developments, traces key differences among them, and looks ahead to what comes next.

Environmental Racism In St. Louis, Thomas Harvey, John Mcannar, Michael-John Voss, Dutchtown South Community Corporation, Action St. Louis, Sierra Club

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This report calls out environmental racism-"the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color"1-in St. Louis. While these disparities have been part of the long-standing discriminatory and profit-driven policies and practices known too well by black St. Louisans, the issue of environmental racism has rarely been addressed in the City.

At least three recent reports- For the Sake of All,2 Segregation in St. Louis: Dismantling the Divide,3 and Equity lndicators4-document the heavy health, economic, and quality of life burdens that the St. Louis region imposes on its black residents. This report complements those by focusing on the burdens related …

Redefining Leadership In The Age Of The Sdgs: Accelerating And Scaling Up Delivery Through Innovation And Inclusion, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Rangita De Silva De Alwis

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In 2015 the United Nations adopted seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to promote prosperity while protecting the environment. Our research examines how the SDGs, considered the grandest vision for sustainable development for the world, can be accelerated by ambitious leaders in the field of innovation. Through careful selection based on the type of industry, scale, impact, and diversity, we study a cohort of bold leaders who are shaping a brave new world. In turn, the urgent charge of the SDGs provides a platform and an innovation lab to incubate new ideas for inclusion and technologies.

Mashups And Fair Use: The Bold Misadventures Of The Seussian Starship Enterprise, Peter Menell, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, David Nimmer

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This amicus brief filed in the Ninth Circuit appeal of Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. ComicMix seeks to rectify and restore the balances underlying the Copyright Act of 1976 — particularly the interplay of the Section 106(2) right to prepare derivative works and the fair use doctrine. The District Court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on the ground that OH THE PLACES YOU’LL BOLDLY GO! — the defendants’ illustrated book combining Dr. Seuss’s OH THE PLACES YOU’LL GO! and other Dr. Seuss books with Star Trek characters and themes — made fair use of the Dr. Seuss works.

Based …

Rulers Or Rules? International Law, Elite Cues And Public Opinion, Anton Strezhnev, Beth A. Simmons, Matthew D. Kim

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One of the mechanisms by which international law can shape domestic politics is through its effects on public opinion. However, a growing number of national leaders have begun to advocate policies that ignore or even deny international law constraints. This article investigates whether international law messages can still shift public opinion even in the face of countervailing elite cues. It reports results from survey experiments conducted in three countries, the United States, Australia and India, which examined attitudes on a highly salient domestic political issue: restrictions on refugee admissions. In each experimental vignette, respondents were asked about their opinion on …

Choice Architecture For Healthier Insurance Choices: Ordering And Partitioning Can Improve Decisions, Benedict G.C. Dellaert, Eric J. Johnson, Tom Baker

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Health insurance decisions are a challenge for many consumers and influence welfare, health outcomes, and longevity. Two choice architecture tools are examined that can improve these decisions: informed ordering of options (from best to worst) and choice set partitioning. It is hypothesized that these tools can improve choices by changing: (1) decision focus: the options in a set on which consumers focus their attention, and (2) decision strategy: how consumers integrate the different attributes that make up the options. The first experiment focuses on the mediating role of the hypothesized decision processes on consumer decision outcomes. The outcome results are …

Against The Received Wisdom: Why The Criminal Justice System Should Give Kids A Break, Stephen J. Morse

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Professor Gideon Yaffe’s recent, intricately argued book, The Age of Culpability: Children and the Nature of Criminal Responsibility, argues against the nearly uniform position in both law and scholarship that the criminal justice system should give juveniles a break not because on average they have different capacities relevant to responsibility than adults, but because juveniles have little say about the criminal law, primarily because they do not have a vote. For Professor Yaffe, age has political rather than behavioral significance. The book has many excellent general analyses about responsibility, but all are in aid of the central thesis about …

The Technology Enterprise: Systemic Bias Against Women, Lori Andrews

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No abstract provided.

Making Sustainability Disclosure Sustainable, Jill E. Fisch

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Sustainability is receiving increasing attention from issuers, investors and regulators. The desire to understand issuer sustainability practices and their relationship to economic performance has resulted in a proliferation of sustainability disclosure regimes and standards. The range of approaches to disclosure, however, limit the comparability and reliability of the information disclosed. The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) has solicited comment on whether to require expanded sustainability disclosures in issuer’s periodic financial reporting, and investors have communicated broad-based support for such expanded disclosures, but, to date, the SEC has not required general sustainability disclosure.

This Article argues that claims about the relationship …

Social Activism Through Shareholder Activism, Lisa Fairfax

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In 1952, the SEC altered the shareholder proposal rule to exclude proposals made “primarily for the purpose of promoting general economic, political, racial, religious, social or similar causes.” The SEC did not reference civil rights activist James Peck or otherwise acknowledge that its actions were prompted by Peck’s 1951 shareholder proposal to Greyhound for desegregating seating. Instead, the SEC indicated that its change simply reflected a codification of a position the SEC staff had taken in 1945.

Today, the shareholder proposal rule has evolved, giving way to several amendments that now enable shareholders to submit proposals on the proxy statement …

Our Administered Constitution: Administrative Constitutionalism From The Founding To The Present, Sophia Z. Lee

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This article argues that administrative agencies have been primary interpreters and implementers of the federal Constitution throughout the history of the United States, although the scale and scope of this "administrative constitutionalism" has changed significantly over time as the balance of opportunities and constraints has shifted. Courts have nonetheless cast an increasingly long shadow over the administered Constitution. In part, this is because of the well-known expansion of judicial review in the 20th century. But the shift has as much to do with changes in the legal profession, legal theory, and lawyers’ roles in agency administration. The result is that …

Apple V. Pepper: Rationalizing Antitrust’S Indirect Purchaser Rule, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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In Apple v. Pepper the Supreme Court held that consumers who allegedly paid too much for apps sold on Apple’s iStore could sue Apple for antitrust damages because they were “direct purchasers.” The decision reflects some bizarre complexities that have resulted from the Supreme Court’s 1977 decision in Illinois Brick, which held that only direct purchasers could sue for overcharge injuries under the federal antitrust laws. The indirect purchaser rule was problematic from the beginning. First, it was plainly inconsistent with the antitrust damages statute, which gives an action to “any person who shall be injured in his business …

Competition Policy For Labour Markets, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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Competition law in many jurisdictions defines its consumer welfare goal in terms of low consumer prices. For example, mergers are challenged when they threaten to cause a price increase from reduced competition in the post-merger market. While the consumer welfare principle is under attack in some circles, it remains the most widely expressed goal of antitrust policy.

We would do better, however, to define consumer welfare in terms of output rather than price. Competition policy should strive to facilitate the highest output in any market that is consistent with sustainable competition. That goal is in most ways the same as …

Adrift On Erie: Characterizing Forum-Selection Clauses, Kermit Roosevelt Iii, Bethan R. Jones

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Erie is one of our most famous cases, but also one of the most mysterious. It has become something of a Rorschach test, a pattern onto which scholars project their own concerns. This article presents a simple view of Erie as a case about power: first, who has the power to make certain laws and second, who has the power to interpret them. From this perspective, Erie has nothing to do with substance-procedure characterization—the topic now understood to be governed by Erie analysis. Indeed, early post-Erie cases describe Erie as concerned with power. The substance-procedure distinction enters the picture …

Procedure In Context, Catherine T. Struve

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No abstract provided.