Law Commons^™

Frozen Embryos And Divorce: Technological Marvel Meets The Human Condition, Thomas D. Arado

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Through the ingenuity of humankind, life can now be created in a petri dish and with it comes a genesis of the legal rights to that life. The 1978 birth of Louise Brown, the first child born using in vitro fertilization (IVF), opened up a new world of legal wrangling which culminated in the Tennessee Supreme Court decision of Davis v. Davis in 1992. The issue of frozen preembryos in divorce cases raises constitutional, property and contract issues, which courts will increasingly have to address. The constitutional issue pits the one party's right to procreate against the other party's right …

Harmonizing The Battle Of The Forms: A Comparison Of The United States, Canada, And The United Nations Convention On Contracts For The International Sale Of Goods, Charles Sukurs

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

As trade between the United States and Canada continues to increase on the heels of the free trade agreements of the early 1990s, the question of which body of commercial law to apply to these transactions becomes increasingly important. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) serves as the default governing law for many of these transactions. In spite of its lack of use and the confusion it has brought to choice of law provisions as a self-executing treaty, many scholars have suggested that the CISG can continue to serve as a body of …

An Inconsistently Sensitive Mind: Richard Posner's Celebration Of Insurance Law And Continuing Blind Spots Of Econominalism, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner is well known for bringing economic analysis to bear on a host of issues, including infamously controversial notions such the market for baby sale. Not surprisingly, Posner's insurance law opinions reflect economics, but perhaps not to the degree one would expect. A review of Posner's 20 years of opinions relating to insurance issues reviews his pragmatic jurisprudence as well. Decisions frequently reflect not only economics but also situational context and considerations of business reality as well as a sophisticated grasp of basic insurance doctrine and contract law. As a general matter, Posner also displays considerably …

The Property/Contract Interface, Thomas W. Merrill, Henry E. Smith

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the distinction between in personam contract rights and in rem property rights. It presents a functional explanation for why the legal system utilizes these two modalities of rights, grounded in the pattern of information costs associated with each modality. To test this theory, the Article examines four legal institutions that fall along the property/contract interface – bailments, landlord-tenant law, security interests, and trusts – in order to determine how the legal doctrine varies as the underlying situation shifts from in personam, to in rem, to certain relations intermediate between these poles. With respect to each institution, we …

Restrictive Covenants, Employee Training, And The Limits Of Transaction-Cost Analysis, Gillian Lester

Faculty Scholarship

Restrictive covenants are an increasingly common feature of employment, used across a wide range of industries, occupations, and employees. In its most common form, a restrictive covenant prohibits an employee from competing with the employer within a certain geographic area fora specified period of time after departure, usually one or two years. Sometimes these clauses are drawn more narrowly, proscribing specific activities such as continued dealings with former customers. Regardless of scope, the typical remedy when an employee breaches such a covenant is injunctive relief.

A substantial literature within law and economics debates the merits of restrictive covenants from an …

Is Article 2 The Best We Can Do?, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

You will all be happy to know that, haying listened to my colleagues for the last three hours, I have completely forgotten what I was planning to say. But I haven't forgotten why I am here. I am the proverbial skunk at the garden party, and I hope to fulfill my role as the only skeptic in the group. I must tell you candidly, however, that I agree with everything Gail Hillebrand had to say. That doesn't mean she is going to agree with anything that I have to say, but perhaps there are two skeptics here this afternoon.

My …

Precontractual Reliance, Lucian A. Bebchuk, Omri Ben-Shahar

Articles

During contractual negotiations, parties often make reliance expenditures that would increase the surplus should a contract be made. This paper analyzes decisions to invest in precontractual reliance under alternative legal regimes. Investments in reliance will be socially suboptimal in the absence of any precontractual liability-and will be socially excessive under strict liability for all reliance expenditures. Given the results for these polar cases, we focus on exploring how "intermediate"-liability rules could be best designed to induce efficient reliance decisions. One of our results indicates that the case for liability is shown to be stronger when a party retracts from terms …

Contracting With Electronic Agents, Anthony J. Bellia

Journal Articles

Established contract doctrine provides no clear answer to the question whether exchanges arranged by the interaction of electronic agents are enforceable. This Article explores whether the law should enforce exchanges arranged by the interaction of electronic agents. It examine how normative theories of contractual obligation inform the issue, with an eye toward the strengths and weaknesses of each theory. The theories that most strongly support the enforcement of exchanges arranged by electronic agents, this Article explains, are those that ground contractual obligation in protecting the ability of individuals to pursue their reasonable objectives through reliable arrangements.