Law Commons^™

"Stranger Than Fiction": Taxing Virtual Worlds, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Virtual worlds, including massive multi-player on-line role-playing games (game worlds), such as City of Heroes, Everquest, and World of Warcraft, have become popular sources of entertainment. Game worlds provide scripted contexts for events such as quests. Other virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are unstructured virtual environments that lack specific goals but allow participants to socialize and engage virtually in such activities as shopping or attending a concert. Many of these worlds have become commodified, with millions of dollars of real-world trade in virtual items taking place every year. Most game worlds prohibit these real market transactions, but some worlds …

Statutory Speed Bumps: The Roles Third Parties Play In Tax Compliance, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Recent legal and economic scholarship has recognized that the government can use structural systems as an efficient way to reduce prohibited behavior. The federal tax system employs structural mechanisms, such as withholding taxes, to foster compliance. The use of structural systems to reduce tax evasion need not be limited to tax administration, however. The Article argues that substantive federal income tax law can - and in many contexts does - foster compliance by harnessing the structural incentives of third parties. Although this phenomenon has gone largely unnoticed, third parties are routinely used by the tax system to verify the bona …

Flattening The World Of Legal Services? The Ethical And Liability Minefields Of Offshoring Legal And Law-Related Services, Carole Silver, Mary C. Daly

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article examines offshore outsourcing of legal and law-related services as the newest twist in the international market for legal services. We consider the impact of offshore outsourcing on the profession generally and analyze the ethical issues raised by offshore outsourcing, both as it exists today and as the practice may develop in the future. The article begins by situating offshore outsourcing in the framework of relationships created in the context of delivery of legal services. This framework is used, in turn, to construct a structure of analysis for the ethical implications of offshore outsourcing. Lawyers who outsource to offshore …

Not Quite "Them," Not Quite "Us": Why It's Difficult For Former Deans To Go Home Again, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

Here is the final version of the article that discusses the many lessons I learned while serving in the administration of three different law schools. Among other things, the article discusses the problems with shared governance and with linking rights and responsibilities of faculty members. Comments are always welcome

Property And Empire: The Law Of Imperialism In Johnson V. M'Intosh, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

Chief Justice Marshall's opinion in Johnson v. M'Intosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543 (1823), has long been a puzzle, both in its doctrinal structure and in long, strange dicta which are both triumphal and elegiac. In this Essay, I show that the opinion becomes newly intelligible when read in the context of the law and theory of colonialism, concerned, like the case itself, with the expropriation of continents and relations between dominant and subject peoples.

I examine several instances where the seeming incoherence of the opinion instead shows its debt to imperial jurisprudence, which rested on a distinction between …

Judging Untried Cases, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

That federal criminal trials are an endangered species is clear. During fiscal year 2004, only 4% (3346) of the 83,391 federal defendants in terminated cases went to trial. And, trends that Professor Ronald Wright highlights in his insightful article have continued past the end point of his data. In 1994, 4639 defendants obtained verdicts from juries and 1050 from judges; in 2003, just 2909 and 615, respectively, did so. Every time one thinks that the system has hit an equilibrium at some “natural” distribution, the trial rate goes down a bit more.

Battle Of The Branches: The Separation Of Powers Doctrine In State Education Funding Suits, Sarah Seo

Faculty Scholarship

What is the scope of judicial power to enforce positive rights, such as the right to education? This Note analyzes litigation outcomes in state education finance lawsuits to examine how state courts exercise their authority within the limits of the separation of powers doctrine. The Note argues that practical, non-legal factors play an important role in a judge's decision to grant remedies addressing unconstitutional legislative inaction to provide an adequate public education. In conclusion, the Note discusses the efficacy of education litigation in light of the judicial s jurisdictional limits, as well as the realities of state politics.

The Presidential Signing Statements Controversy, Ronald A. Cass, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

Presidential signing statements have come out of obscurity and into the headlines. Along with salutary attention to an interesting issue, the new public visibility of signing statements has generated much overblown commentary. The desire to make these little-known documents interesting to the public – and to score points in the inevitable political battles over any practice engaged in by a sitting President – has produced a lot of discussion that misleads the public and has tended to obscure the significant issues surrounding the use of signing statements. Reflection may help put the discussion in a more useful perspective. We offer …

If You Prompt Them, They Will Rule: The Warranty Of Habitability Meets New Court Information Systems, Mary Zulack

Faculty Scholarship

A recent conference on housing rights invited participants to think about the impacts, actual and potential, of the judge-made doctrine of the implied warranty of habitability in residential tenancies. This essay focuses on the warranty, and suggests establishing technology systems for judges to help them give new
life to the doctrine and thereby to accelerate actual repair of rental housing through court mandates.

The conference attendees seemed to agree that when trial judges are presented with claimed breaches of the warranty of habitability, they have not, on the whole, used the doctrine to order that repairs actually be effectuated. They …

End Natural Life Sentences For Juveniles, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons (125 S. Ct. 1183) banned executions of persons who commit capital murder before they reach age 18. Roper overturned death sentences for 72 people in 18 states (Streib, 2005). Most (but not all) were resentenced to natural life or life in prison without the possibility of parole (or JLWOP). Juvenile justice advocates now want to extend Roper’s maturity heuristic, proportionality analysis, aversion to errors, and deference to international laws and norms to argue for a constitutional ban on natural life sentences for adolescent offenders. This move could have a far …

The Social Costs Of Property Rights In Broadcast (And Cable) Signals, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

The use of property as a regulatory mechanism in the telecommunications sector is hardly novel. Since the early twentieth century, policy makers and regulators in the United States have experimented with different mechanisms for allocating private rights in the radio spectrum. In 1959, Ronald Coase proposed that the FCC auction rights in the broadcast spectrum and convert broadcast licenses into tradable commodities. However, it was not until very recently that the FCC implemented Coase's idea. At least part of the reason for the long delay in implementing this seemingly efficient mechanism lay in the public nature of broadcasting and the …

The "Prudent Retiree Rule": What To Do When Retirement Security Is Impossible, Jeffrey N. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The starting question for public policy analysis in the retirement security area ought to be this: “Is retirement security possible?” My text is drawn from the classic trust case Harvard College v. Amory, decided in 1830, in which the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court announced the prudent investor rule by stating, “Do what you will, the capital is at hazard.” The modern understanding of that text is not that there are no “risk free” assets. After all, the United States government assures the timely payment of principal and interest on Treasury securities backstopped in turn by Treasury’s unlimited call on …

Moral And Religious Convictions As Categories For Special Treatment: The Exemption Strategy, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

My topic differs from the usual inquiries about morality and law, such as how far law should embody morality, whether legal interpretation (always or sometimes) includes moral judgment, and whether an immoral law really counts as law. Concentrating on exemptions from ordinary legal requirements, I am interested in instances when the law might make especially relevant the moral judgments of individual actors. I am particularly interested in whether the law should ever treat moral judgments based on religious conviction differently from moral judgments that lack such a basis.

A striking example for both questions is conscientious objection to military service. …

Ingenious Arguments Or A Serious Constitutional Problem? A Comment On Professor Epstein's Paper, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

In his observations about IRBs, Professor Richard Epstein makes persuasive arguments about the dangerous reach of the IRB laws, but he prefaces this policy analysis with a brief excursus into constitutional law that requires some comment. His view is that the constitutional debate over IRBs arises not so much from a substantial constitutional problem as from “ingenious arguments.” Yet this conclusion rests on mistaken assumptions – both about the IRB laws and about the constitutional objections – and because so much is at stake in the constitutional question, it is necessary to point out the inaccuracies.

The first set of …

How Does "Equal Liberty" Fare In Relation To Other Approaches To The Religion Clauses?, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

As one of four contributors to an issue celebrating Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager's Religious Freedom and the Constitution, I have chosen to write an Essay that differs from an ordinary review. I compare the authors' approach with two other recent formulations of what should be central for the jurisprudence of the Religion Clauses. Since I have recently published my own treatment of the Free Exercise Clause, and a second volume on the Establishment Clause is in the pipeline toward publication, I do not here present my own positive views (though I provide references for interested readers). Those views …

Economic Policy In The Public Interest, Jagdish N. Bhagwati

Faculty Scholarship

Economists, whose discipline has always had a strong relationship to moral philosophy (Adam Smith, the author of The Wealth of Nations, also wrote the celebrated Theory of Moral Sentiments), have always seen their role in society as that of pursuing the public good. They properly see themselves as guardians of the public interest, and to be engaged in public-policy debates against special interests who wish to ‘capture’ policy to advance their narrowly circumscribed, self-serving agendas.

Leo Strine's Third Way: Responding To Agency Capitalism, Ronald J. Gilson

Faculty Scholarship

Ten years ago, Tony Blair's "New Labour" government sought an agenda that replaced ideology with a pragmatic focus on both the creation of wealth and its distribution. Not surprisingly, part of this effort involved proposals to bridge the gap between capital and labor through refraining corporate governance. A "third way" as it was then styled, would walk a fine line between privileging markets and allocational efficiency at the cost of social justice on the one hand, and accepting less for everyone as long as the distribution was fair on the other. Motivated by changes in how we save for retirement …

The Rise Of Independent Directors In The United States, 1950-2005: Of Shareholder Value And Stock Market Prices, Jeffrey N. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

Between 1950 and 2005, the composition of large public company boards dramatically shifted towards independent directors, from approximately 20% independents to 75% independents. The standards for independence also became increasingly rigorous over the period. The available empirical evidence provides no convincing explanation for this change. This Article explains the trend in terms of two interrelated developments in U.S. political economy: first, the shift to shareholder value as the primary corporate objective; second, the greater informativeness of stock market prices. The overriding effect is to commit the firm to a shareholder wealth maximizing strategy as best measured by stock price performance. …

Introduction: Mandatory Rules Of Law In International Arbitration, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

The notion of mandatory rules of law has long been of interest in private international law. It is no wonder that the subject has also emerged as something of a preoccupation of those who are involved in the world of international commercial arbitration. As both legal academics and international arbitrators, the editors of this special issue of the American Review of International Arbitration took a keen interest in how mandatory rules might “fit” into the international arbitration picture.

To better understand the phenomenon of mandatory rules (and to gauge whether its importance might possibly even be exaggerated in the international …

Stricter Rules On Storm Water Discharges Taking Effect, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

On. 8, 2008, new requirements will take effect in New York requiring some previously unregulated entities to file for permits to discharge storm water, and imposing stricter or different requirements on those entities that are already regulated.

The state is requiring urbanized communities and publicly owned institutions, referred to as municipal separate storm sewer systems (MS4s), to establish fully functional stormwater management programs (SWMPs) by that date. The state has issued new draft permits for MS4s and also for operators of construction sites over one acre, which go into effect on Jan. 8.

Survey Of Climate Change Litigation, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Approximately 35 lawsuits have been filed in the United States concerning global climate change, together with several administrative proceedings and officially threatened actions. About half of them have led to judicial decisions, and several of those are under appeal; most of the rest are pending.

Much attention has deservedly gone to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. the EPA, but that is only the tip of the figurative iceberg; and unlike most of the real ones, it is growing rather than melting.

This article surveys U.S. climate change litigation. The lawsuits can be broadly divided between those …

Institutional Competence And Organizational Prosecutions, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

The business pages regularly provide graphic stories about corporate deferred prosecution agreements (“DPAs”). And commentators regularly fulminate about this alleged abuse of government power, quite confident (or w illfully blind to the fact) that the removal of this non-nuclear option from the prosecutorial arsenal would substantially lessen the ability of prosecutors to obtain cooperation from firms and their employees. Yet this emerging practice has received all too little scholarly attention, and Professor Brandon Garrett has made an important contribution by carefully examining the available facts and creatively drawing on the structure reform literature to highlight questions it raises about legitimacy …

Not Just Doctrine: The True Motivation For Federal Incorporation And International Human Rights Litigation, Daniel Abebe

Faculty Scholarship

The legal status of international human rights litigation under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) has been the subject of much debate, culminating in the Supreme Court's decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692 (2004). The debate has been almost exclusively doctrinal and has focused on the Judiciary Act of 1789, the historical treatment of the law of nations as general or federal common law, the evolution of the Supreme Court's international law jurisprudence, and the integration of customary international law (CIL) into the domestic legal system.

This Article argues that the focus on doctrine masks underlying international relations …

Establishment Clause Limits On Free Exercise Accommodations, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Among the most vexing questions in the law of the religion clauses is when a legal measure that might otherwise be justified as an accommodation to free exercise is instead a forbidden establishment of religion. In a book about free exercise, I have provided some idea just how complex this question can be. I now tackle it head on. Scholars have fairly observed that the Supreme Court has given us no theory, or no tenable theory, for drawing the line between permissible accommodation and impermissible establishment. We will look at what the Court has said and done, as well as …

Some Reflections About Three Decades Of Working With Incarcerated Mothers, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

Almost thirty years ago I was a second-year student in a law school clinic. I was making my first legal visit to a prison. My client, whom I will call "Dina," was meeting me to talk about some visitation issues with her young son. When she came into the visiting room she was poised and professional in demeanor. She began to explain that her son was being cared for by his paternal grandmother. The grandmother was unwilling to bring him to the prison to see her. As a result Dina had not seen her son for several months. Suddenly, and …

Panel One: Lessons Learned: Gender Analyses Of Past Policies And Practices: Introduction, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Hello. I'm Suzanne Goldberg. I am pleased to welcome you to the first of two afternoon panels as part of the Women's Rights Law Reporter Symposium, "Lessons Learned: Gender Analyses of Past Policies and Practices." Thank you to Dr. Enarson for the wonderful opening to our conversation today. She has inspired us to think about broadening our analytic lens by foregrounding questions of gender in our consideration of disasters and disaster relief.

The Race To The Center And Other Lessons Of Globalization, Jagdish N. Bhagwati

Faculty Scholarship

An Interview with Kenta Tsuda, New York, NY, 1 June 2006.

]agdish Bhagwati is a professor of economics and law at Columbia University and senior fellow in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. His publications include The Economics of Underdeveloped Countries and In Defense of Globalization. He is the founder of the Journal of International Economics and Economics & Politics.

A Critique Of The Efficient Performance Hypothesis, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

The classic economic justification of contract law’s default remedy of expectation damages is grounded on the efficient breach hypothesis: that promisors should be permitted and encouraged to breach when the net gains from breach exceed the net gains from performance. Expectation damages ensure that all and only efficient breaches will occur because promisors will find breach profitable only if its benefits exceed the value of performance to the promisee. The efficient breach hypothesis, and the defense of expectation damages that rests on it, has long been criticized for being inconsistent with the moral intuition that promisors necessarily forfeit their right …

Two Puerto Rican Senators Stay Home, Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

José R. Coleman Tió proposes that Congress grant Puerto Rico equal representation in the House of Representatives through simple legislation. Although Puerto Rico has been subject to U.S. sovereignty since 1898 and Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917, they cannot vote in federal elections — not for Congressmen, not for Senators, not for the President of the United States. This is because Puerto Rico is not a state: the Constitution provides that “[t]he House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen ... by the People of the several States.” But Coleman does not see this constitutional provision …

A World Without Marriage, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The legal status of marriage has become the focus of a great deal of controversy in recent years. Social and religious conservatives have voiced alarm at the decline of marriage in an era in which divorce rates are high and increasing numbers of people live in nonmarital families. For these advocates, social welfare rests on the survival (or revival) of traditional marriage. Meanwhile, critics from the left argue that marriage as the preferred and privileged family form will (and should) soon be a thing of the past. Some feminists, such as Martha Fineman and Nancy Polikoff, want to abolish legal …