Law Commons^™

Cross-Border Securitization: Without Law, But Not Lawless, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

The Article discusses two puzzles posed by cross-border securitization.

First, why do the innovators in this area "give away" their creations through publications and other means rather than attempt to extract licensing fees by registering copyrights, patents, and trade names? The Article shows that innovators benefit from "giving away" their innovations through fees of the first clients or future clients to a greater extent than through licensing fees. Second, how can securitization markets develop under fragmented and unpredictable laws? The Article argues that cross-border securitization is flourishing under a "law merchant," which is later incorporated into domestic laws. In fact, …

On Commodifying Intangibles, Wendy J. Gordon, Sam Postbrief

Faculty Scholarship

It was made clear long ago that property and value are different things. Value exists. It is a fact. It can arise from law, and much of law aims at creating more value in the world. But value can also arise in spite of law (consider, for example, the fortunes that bootleggers made during the Roaring Twenties), or in law's interstices. When a particular value arises despite a lack of explicit legal protection, its possessors often ask courts or legislatures to give them a legal entitlement to preserve and further exploit that value. Typically the holders demand (1) a liberty …

Defining The Limits Of Free-Riding In Cyberspace: Trademark Liability For Metatagging, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

The Internet has the potential to revolutionize global communication, offering a relatively low-cost means for information exchange. Since its inception as a research network, the Internet has developed into a "a vast library including millions of readily available and indexed publications and a sprawling mall offering goods and services."' The World Wide Web ("Web"), a tool which helps to organize the enormous amount of information available on the Internet, has been a catalyst in the Internet's emergence as a viable commercial marketplace.

Arbitration In Banking And Finance, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

The world's bifurcation into debtors and creditors has created yet another class of people: those involved in resolving disputes between lenders and borrowers. To promote reliability in financial dispute resolution, credit agreements have generally provided that potential controversies will be submitted either to courts in the bank's home jurisdiction, or to courts of a major money center such as London or New York.

Autopoiesis And The "Relative Autonomy" Of Law, Hugh Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

Recent accounts of the relation between law and other social spheres have emphasized law's "relative autonomy." The intuition behind the "relative autonomy" formula is that law is neither wholly independent of, nor entirely reducible to, political, economic and other social processes. Sensible as this intuition is, however, the idea of "relative autonomy" by itself remains purely negative. It excludes two unpalatable extremes – pure formalism and pure instrumentalism – but it does not by itself characterize, in positive theoretical terms, the relation between law and other social discourses or practices.

This Article examines an attempt in recent German social thought …

Managing Legal Change: The Transformation Of Establishment Clause Law, Hugh Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

One perspective on the Supreme Court is to see it as a manager of legal change. At a particular time, and with respect to a particular issue of federal law, a majority of Justices may coalesce around a law-transforming project. Because the Court enjoys nearly complete control over its docket, such a coalition of Justices may select carefully the cases most advantageous to the law -transforming project. And because the Court's pronouncements on matters of federal law are binding on all other interpreters, the Court may enforce its legal transformation by exercising its disciplinary powers of review. The Court's implementation …

Labor Law Obstacles To The Collective Negotiation And Implementation Of Employee Stock Ownership Plans: A Response To Henry Hansmann And Other "Survivalists", Jeffrey M. Hirsch

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Between Truth And Provocation: Reclaiming Reason In American Legal Scholarship, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Truth has regained a strong voice in American legal scholarship. Like a groggy patient slowly emerging from a traumatic operation, legal theory is being coaxed back to consciousness by Dan Farber and Suzanna Sherry. They are fighting the debilitating illness of radical multiculturalism and its attendant relativism; they proclaim that the cure can be found in the power of truth, the force or reason, and the integrity of the word. Unfortunately, the patient is unlikely to recover while in the care of Farber and Sherry, even though their operation must be judged a success on its own terms. By equating …

Deconstructing Homo[Genous] Americanus: The White Ethnic Immigrant Narrative And Its Exclusionary Effect, Sylvia R. Lazos

Scholarly Works

This Article examines why the assumption of sameness is so pervasive in our society, and why the very idea of diversity is so resisted. The assumption and the corollary mandate to be the same are embedded in American cultural ideology, in how Americans think of themselves, in the stories that we tell regarding who we are and where we come from, in how we construct our values and norms, and in how Americans make sense of our chaotic social world. The assumption and mandate of sameness not only influence American culture, they also guide judges' thinking and decision-making in key …

Foreigners In Their Own Land: Cultural Land And Transnational Corporations---Emergent International Rights And Wrongs, Martin A. Geer

Scholarly Works

Unique and vital components of human culture and the environment are struggling for survival in the Amazon River basin. The rain forest of Amazonia is shared by indigenous peoples and an immensely diverse tropical flora and fauna. This unique culture and physical ecology, however, is threatened by transnational oil corporations which are irreparably devastating Amazonia and its native cultures through oil production activities.

The failure of public international law to address the post World War II emergence of transnational corporations (TNCs) as a major international force has been the subject of significant review by scholars and policy makers. TNCs, often …

Race, Angst And Capital Punishment: The Burger Court's Existential Struggle, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

This article chronicles the Burger Court's inability to fashion a suitable remedy for racism in the discretionary system of capital sentencing. The article discusses the Court's initial response, “remedial paralysis,” which is evident, not only in McGautha v. California, where the Court refused to find that the Due Process Clause was violated by standardless death sentencing, but also in Furman v. Georgia, where the Court decided to abolish the death penalty. The article further explores the Court's reinstatement of the death penalty, and two of the Court's forays into “bad faith” denial that sustained the death penalty, particularly the Court's …

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Recent case developments in Insurance Law in years 1998 and 1999.

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Recent case developments in Insurance law in the year 1998.

Mandatory Pre-Dispute Arbitration: Steps Need To Be Taken To Prevent Unfairness To Employees And Consumers, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

Courts, arbitral organizations and governmental agencies are increasingly recognizing that mandatory binding arbitration can be used both to disadvantage employees and consumers, and to evade legal requirements. Over the last decade, private parties such as employers, manufacturers and financial organizations began using binding arbitration agreements to skirt the public law, and public juries, with increasing intensity. As so often happens, overreaching may once again be giving way to retrenchment, as the tide seems to be turning away from the “anything goes” approach of the earlier 1990s.

Comparativist Ruminations From The Bayou On Child Custody Jurisdiction: The Uccja, The Pkpa, And The Hague Convention On Child Abduction, Christopher L. Blakesley

Scholarly Works

Interstate and international jurisdictional problems are often vexing. They are worse in matters of child custody. In the past, jurisdiction to obtain custody or to modify a custody decree required only presence or domicile. The United States population is transient and custody decisions are subject to modification. The volatility of child custody disputes and the tendency of parents to move to different and separate jurisdictions traditionally caused and continue to cause difficult problems for children, parents, and the legal system. Before the promulgation of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA) and the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act (PKPA), it was …

Re-Viewing History: The Use Of The Past As Negative Precedent In United States V. Virginia, Deborah A. Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Risk Assessment, Redevelopment, And Environmental Justice: Evaluating The Brownfields Bargain, John S. Applegate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Sense And Sensibility: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Mentoring Style As A Blend Of Rigor And Compassion, David C. Williams, Susan H. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Short Changing Short-Term Risk: A Study Of Superfund Remedy Selection, John S. Applegate, Steven M. Wesloh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Unlike most environmental statutes, CERCLA requires a lengthy period of labor-intensive activity to achieve its clean-up goals. This aspect of the Superfund program does not receive sufficient attention in policy and legal analyses of CERCLA, nor during site-specific remedy selection decision-making. The risks of the remediation period-to workers, to site neighbors, and to the natural environment-are substantial, as this Article illustrates. However, the confusing and sometimes dismissive treatment of remediation risk in the EPA 's detailed guidance for Superfund decision-makers invites the neglect of the short-term effectiveness criterion in the remedy selection process. A study of remedy selection documents in …

Poland's 1997 Constitution In Its Historical Context, Daniel H. Cole

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Religiously Devout Judges: Issues Of Personal Integrity And Public Benefit, Daniel O. Conkle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Reframing The Misappropriation Theory Of Insider Trading Liability: A Post-O'Hagan Suggestion, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

For almost two decades, the United States Supreme Court was silent as to the validity of the so-called 'fraud on the source" misappropriation theory of insider trading liability. This changed in June 1997 when the theory received a resounding endorsement from the Court in United States v. O'Hagan.

Critics of O'Hagan have argued that the Court's decision reaches too far. However, this Article contends that the Court actually endorsed a theory that does not reach far enough. By analyzing and critiquing the reasoning of the majority opinion in O'Hagan, this Article demonstrates that the Court's unnecessarily restrictive misappropriation theory will …

The Unitary Second Amendment, David C. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Peace Through Trade? Developments In Palestinian Trade Law During The Peace Process, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Affirmative Action Awash In Confusion: Backward-Looking-Future-Oriented Justifications For Race-Conscious Measures, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, decided Taxman v. Board of Education of the Township of Piscataway, in August 1996. Eight judges agreed that he Board of Education of Piscataway Township, New Jersey violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by using race, in accordance with its affirmative action policy, to break a tie between two teachers in the Business Department at Piscataway High School when determining which teacher to lay off. A strong dissent by Chief Judge Sloviter was joined by two other Court of Appeals judges. The majority decision is remarkable in its breadth, …

Board Of Education V. Taxman: The Unpublished Opinions, Ann C. Mcginley, Michael J. Yelnosky

Scholarly Works

On June 27, 1997 the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Board of Education v. Taxman to review a judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. That court had ruled, en banc, that the school board in Piscataway, New Jersey violated Title VII when it chose to lay off Sharon Taxman, a teacher at Piscataway High School, rather than Debra Williams, her colleague. Taxman quickly became the most anticipated decision of the Term. However, the case settled in November 1997 before argument, so the issues it raised are unresolved. Taxman quickly became the most …

Contracting Access To The Courts: Myth Or Reality? Bane Or Boon?, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Many scholars of the dispute resolution system perceive a sea change in attitudes toward adjudication that took place in the mid-1970s. Among the events of the time included the Pound Conference, which put the Chief Justice of the United States and the national judicial establishment on record in favor of at least some refinement, if not restriction, on access to courts. In addition, Chief Justice Burger, the driving force behind the Pound Conference, also used his bully pulpit as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to promote ADR, particularly court-annexed arbitration. The availability of judicial adjuncts such as court-annexed arbitration …

Unmet Expectations: Undue Restriction Of The Reasonable Expectations Approach And The Misleading Mythology Of Judicial Role, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

A complete and open embrace of the pure version of the doctrine as enunciated in Judge Keeton's famous article--which expressly provides for finding coverage consistent with the objectively reasonable expectations of the policyholder even where those expectations are contradicted by apparently clear policy language --is viewed by much of the legal and political mainstream as too inconsistent with the prevailing American paradigm of judicial restraint, strict construction of disputed texts, and minimal government involvement in market activity. Some of this resistance to reasonable expectations is the product of an unrealistic reification of the prevailing American politico-legal philosophy of judicial restraint. …

Unreason In Action: A Case Study In The Wrong Approach To Construing The Liability Insurance Pollution Exclusion, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

For more than twenty-five years, a significant component of the scholarly commentary on insurance law has focused on the so-called “reasonable expectations doctrine” enunciated by then-Professor (now Judge) Robert Keeton in his justly celebrated 1970 article. The reasonable expectations principle made a seemingly sudden emergence with the appearance of Keeton's article and has held particular attraction to academics while simultaneously prompting resistance from elements of the bench and bar, and particularly from the insurance industry. The doctrine's life to date can be described as one of early growth followed by subsequent retreat and dilution, with continuing controversy.

However, despite the …

Co-Opting Compassion: The Federal Victim's Rights Amendment, Lynne N. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.