Law Commons^™

Targeting Poverty In The Courts: Improving The Measurement Of Ability To Pay, Meghan M. O'Neil, Jj Prescott

Law & Economics Working Papers

Ability-to-pay determinations are essential when governments use money-based alternative sanctions, like fines, to enforce laws. One longstanding difficulty in the U.S. has been the extreme lack of guidance on how courts are to determine a litigant’s ability to pay. The result has been a seat-of-the-pants approach that is inefficient and inaccurate, and, as a consequence, very socially costly. Fortunately, online platform technology presents a promising avenue for reform. In particular, platform technology offers the potential to increase litigant access, reduce costs, and ensure consistent and fair treatment—all of which should lead to more accurate sanctions. We use interviews, surveys, and …

Newsroom: Have We Outgrown Brown? 02-06-2018, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Re-Examining The Law And Economics Of The Business Judgment Rule: Notes For Its Implementation In Non-Us Jurisdictions, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The business judgment rule, as it has been traditionally understood, seems to be based on three underlying assumptions that make this rule economically desirable. First, directors are subject to a credible threat of being sued for a breach of the duty of care. Second, the primary role of the corporation is to maximise shareholder value. Third, shareholders want the directors to pursue those investment projects with the highest net present value regardless of their volatility. This article challenges these assumptions and argues that the business judgment rule might not be desirable in some jurisdictions outside the United States and even …

The Bylaw Puzzle In Delaware Corporate Law, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

In less than a decade, Delaware’s legislature has overruled its courts and reshaped Delaware corporate law on two different occasions, with proxy access bylaws in 2009 and with shareholder litigation bylaws in 2015. Having two dramatic interventions in quick succession would be puzzling under any circumstances. The interventions are doubly puzzling because with proxy access, Delaware’s legislature authorized the use of bylaws or charter provisions that Delaware’s courts had banned; while with shareholder litigation, it banned bylaws or charter provisions that the courts had authorized. This Article attempts to unravel the puzzle.

I start with corporate law doctrine, and find …

Can Simple Mechanism Design Results Be Used To Implement The Proportionality Standard In Discovery?, Jonah B. Gelbach

All Faculty Scholarship

I point out that the Coase theorem suggests there should not be wasteful discovery, in the sense that the value to the requester is less than the cost to the responder. I use a toy model to show that a sufficiently informed court could design a mechanism under which the Coasean prediction is borne out. I then suggest that the actual information available to courts is too little to effect this mechanism, and I consider alternatives. In discussing mechanisms intended to avoid wasteful discovery where courts have limited information, I emphasize the role of normative considerations.

Shleifer's Failure, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fashioning Entitlements: A Comparative Law And Economic Analysis Of The Judicial Role In Environmental Centralization In The U.S. And Europe, Jason S. Johnston, Michael G. Faure

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper identifies and evaluates, from an economic point of view, the role of the judiciary the steady shift of environmental regulatory authority to higher, more centralized levels of government in both the U.S. and Europe. We supply both a positive analysis of how the decisions made by judges have affected the incentives of both private and public actors to pollute the natural environment, and normative answers to the question of whether judges have acted so as to create incentives that move levels of pollution in an efficient direction, toward their optimal, cost-minimizing (or net-benefit-maximizing) levels. Highlights of the analysis …

Afterthoughts From A "Buzz Killer", Sarah Krakoff

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Judicial Expedience On Attorney Fees In Class Actions, Eric Helland, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

Judges facing exogenous constraints on their pecuniary income have an incentive to reduce their workload to increase their private welfare. In the face of an increase in caseload, this incentive will induce judges to attempt to terminate some cases more rapidly. In class action cases, failing to grant an attorney fee request will delay termination. This conflict is likely to lead judges to authorize higher fees as court congestion increases. Using two data sets of class action settlements, we show that attorney fees are significantly and positively related to the congestion level of the court hearing the case.

The Tuna Court: Law And Norms In The World's Premier Fish Market, Eric Feldman

All Faculty Scholarship

Legal scholars have long emphasized the corrosive impact of conflict on long-term commercial and interpersonal relationships. To minimize the negative consequences of such conflict, members of close-knit groups who anticipate future interactions create ways of resolving their disputes with reference to internal group norms rather than relying on state-mandated legal rules. From farmers in California’s Shasta County to jewelers in midtown Manhattan and neighbors in Sanders County, the literature describes people who create norms of conflict management that are faster and less expensive than relying on formal law, and lessen the harm that conflict causes to their relationships. This article …

Valuation Averaging: A New Procedure For Resolving Valuation Disputes, Keith Sharfman

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

In this Article, Professor Sharfman addresses the problem of "discretionary valuation": that courts resolve valuation disputes arbitrarily and unpredictably, thus harming litigants and society. As a solution, he proposes the enactment of "valuation averaging," a new procedure for resolving valuation disputes modeled on the algorithmic valuation processes often agreed to by sophisticated private firms in advance of any dispute. He argues that by replacing the discretion of judges and juries with a mechanical valuation process, valuation averaging would cause litigants to introduce more plausible and conciliatory valuations into evidence and thereby reduce the cost of valuation litigation and increase the …

Responding To Developments In Economics And The Courts: Entry In The Merger Guidelines, Jonathan Baker

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Semtek, Forum Shopping, And Federal Common Law, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lawyers On The Auction Block: Evaluation And Selection Of Class Counsel By Auction, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

The lead counsel auction has attracted increasing attention. Auction advocates argue that auctions introduce competitive market forces that improve the selection and compensation of class counsel. The benefits of the auction, the;' claim, include lower legal fees and better representation. Careful scrutiny reveals that auction advocates have overlooked substantial methodological problems with the design and implementation of the lead counsel auction. Even if these problems were overcome, the auction procedure is flawed: Auctions are poor tools for selecting firms based on multiple criteria, compromise the judicial role, and are unlikely to produce reasonable fee awards. Although the existing record is …

Chaos And The Law Of Borrowed Servant: An Argument For Consistency, J. Dennis Hynes

Publications

No abstract provided.

Agenda: Boundaries And Water: Allocation And Use Of A Shared Resource, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Boundaries and Water: Allocation and Use of a Shared Resource (Summer Conference, June 5-7)

Conference organizers and/or faculty included University of Colorado School of Law professors David H. Getches, Lawrence J. MacDonnell and Charles F. Wilkinson.

Boundaries and Water: Allocation and Use of a Shared Resource is the topic of the Center's annual summer program on water this June. Most of the major rivers in the western United States are shared between two or more states. Often tribal governments play an important role in water allocation and use decisions. International considerations also may be involved in some cases. These interjurisdictional issues extend to groundwater as well as surface water.

This conference will provide the …

Withdrawals Of Public Lands Under The Federal Land Policy And Management Act, David H. Getches

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

17 pages.

Transboundary Groundwater Law: Focus On The U.S.-Mexico Boundary [Includes Appended Opinion In City Of El Paso Ex Rel. Pub. Serv. Bd. V. Reynolds, Civ. No. 80-730 Hb, 563 F. Supp. 279 (D.N.M. 1983)], Albert E. Utton

Groundwater: Allocation, Development and Pollution (Summer Conference, June 6-9)

48 pages.

Book Review, Howard C. Klemme

Publications

No abstract provided.