Law | Open Access Articles | Digital Commons Network™

Titling And Untitled Housing In Panama City, Jorge L. Esquirol

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Trouble Counting Votes - Comparing Voting Mechanisms In The United States And Selected Other Countries, Frank Emmert, Christopher Page, Antony Page

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Decentralized Responses To Good Fortune And Bad Luck, Richard A. Epstein

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

Most forms of egalitarian theory impose on government (and through it other people) to redress the inequalities of fortune that result from bad luck. This Article takes issue with the various forms of this large claim, and argues that decentralized forms of assistance are likely in the long run to do better by the very standards by which egalitarians justify their own program. The alleviation of poverty depends in the first instance on increases in wealth that can only come through private innovation and technological advances. These have in fact produced major improvements in overall well-being, with disproportionate advances for …

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Does Political Bias In The Judiciary Matter?: Implications Of Judicial Bias Studies For Legal And Constitutional Reform, Eric A. Posner

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

Recent empirical scholarship that shows that judges decide cases in a manner that is consistent with their political biases has motivated a stream of proposals for reform, including judicial term limits, limitations on judicial review of statutes and agency actions, revision of the judicial appointments process, and mandatory mixed party representation on judicial panels. However, these proposals incorrectly assume that judicial bias is necessarily harmful, and do not fully consider the costs to other values even when reduction of judicial bias is justified. To evaluate proposals for reform, one needs a theory of judicial review, one that explains how bias …

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Experimental Gasoline Markets, Cary A. Deck, Bart J. Wilson

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Zone pricing in wholesale gasoline markets is a contentious topic in the public policy debate. With a controlled laboratory experiment, we investigate the competitive effects of zone pricing on consumers, retail stations, and refiners vis-à-vis the proposed policy prescription of uniform wholesale pricing to retailers. We also examine the issue of divorcement and the “rockets and feathers” phenomenon. The former is the legal restriction that refiners and retailers cannot be vertically integrated, and the latter is the perception that retail gasoline prices rise faster than they fall in response to random walk movements in the world price for oil.

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An Empirical Investigation Into Appellate Structure And The Perceived Quality Of Appellate Review, Rafael I. Pardo, Jonathan Remy Nash

Scholarship@WashULaw

Commentators have theorized that several factors may improve the process, and thus perhaps the accuracy, of appellate review: (1) review by a panel of judges, (2) subject-matter expertise in the area of the appeal, (3) other law-finding ability, (4) adherence to traditional notions of appellate hierarchy, and (5) the judicial independence of appellate judges. The considerable discussion that has expounded upon these theories has occurred in a vacuum of abstract generalization. This Paper adds a new dimension by presenting results from an empirical study of bankruptcy appellate opinions issued over a three-year period. The federal bankruptcy appellate structure provides certain …

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Illness And Inability To Repay: The Role Of Debtor Health In The Discharge Of Educational Debt, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

For a debtor to obtain a discharge of student loans in bankruptcy, the debtor must establish that their repayment would impose an undue hardship. This Article presents the results of an empirical study of bankruptcy court doctrine over a ten-year period that involved undue hardship discharge proceedings where the court reported information on the debtor's health status, monthly household income, and monthly household expenses. The data show that a medical condition increased a debtor's odds of being granted a discharge by 140% but that household income and expense levels did not have a statistically significant association with legal outcome. These …

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The Utility Of Opacity In Judicial Selection, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

Does too much transparency in the selection of judges undermine the independence of the judiciary? This Essay seeks to provide insight into answering this question by focusing on the opaque process by which federal bankruptcy judges are selected. Part I begins with an account that anchors the concepts of judicial independence and judicial accountability to the concept of judicial quality. It proceeds to situate within this account the selection process, suggesting that the process can function as a form of judicial accountability, albeit one that diminishes judicial quality in those instances where the process becomes politicized. A brief discussion follows …

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Restoring The Victim And The Community: A Look At The Tribal Response To Sexual Violence Committed By Non-Indians In Indian Country Through Non-Criminal Approaches, Amber Halldin

North Dakota Law Review

No abstract provided.

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North Dakota's Pro-Shareholder Law: A Major Advancement, Carl C. Icahn

North Dakota Law Review

No abstract provided.

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A Vexatious Problem Among Many: In Light Of The Conflict Between The Fifth And Sixteenth Amendments, Is Taxation An Uncompensated Taking?, Mark R. Jundt, Vernon R. Pederson

North Dakota Law Review

No abstract provided.

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A New Paradigm For State Corporation Laws, William H. Clark, Jr, Amber A. Hough

North Dakota Law Review

No abstract provided.

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The North Dakota Publicly Traded Corporations Act Of 2007, Legislative Assembly Of The State Of North Dakota

North Dakota Law Review

No abstract provided.

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Upon Further Review: Recognizing Procedural Due Process Rights For Suspended High School Athletes, Ray Yasser, Matthew Block

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

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Users As Innovators: Implications For Patent Doctrine, Katherine J. Strandburg

University of Colorado Law Review

User innovators range from commercial firms, which invent new production methods in expectation of competitive advantage, to individual hobbyists motivated entirely by their enjoyment of the inventive process. In this Article, I consider the implications for patent doctrine of the fact that many user innovators derive sufficient benefit simply from developing and using their inventions to motivate them to invest the effort necessary to invent them. Moreover, user innovators often benefit from "freely revealing" their innovations to others. Trade secrecy and patenting are not central to motivating this inventive activity. This picture of user innovation contrasts sharply with the seller …

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Canadian Legal Ethics: Ready For The Twenty-First Century At Last, Adam M. Dodek

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article analyzes the transformation in the scholarship of legal ethics that has occurred in Canada over the last decade, and maps out an agenda for future research. The author attributes the recent growth of Canadian legal ethics as an academic discipline to a number of interacting factors: a response to external pressures, initiatives within the legal profession, changes in Canadian legal education, and the emergence of a new cadre of legal ethics scholars. This article chronicles the public history of legal ethics in Canada over the last decade and analyzes the first and second wave of scholarship in the …

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Sustainable Professionalism, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article challenges traditional visions of lawyering by building on current alternative narratives and articulating a new discourse of professionalism that is personally, politically, ethically, economically, and professionally sustainable. It is a discourse that makes space for lawyers' principles, interests, and life preferences by balancing them with other important interests (including, but not dominated by, those of clients). It is a discourse that seeks to make good on aspirational promises of equality, access to justice, and protecting the public interest. And it is a discourse that takes seriously obligations to, as well as benefits from, the culturally complicated makeup of …

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The Public Interest, Professionalism, And Pro Bono Publico, Lorne Sossin

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

There is a clear public interest benefit for lawyers to ensure access to the rule of law, especially on the part of the vulnerable. This article seeks to show that the seemingly simple relationship between the legal profession and the public interest is in fact more complicated than it looks. Pro bono may be viewed from two perspectives-that of the lawyer and that of the client. From the perspective of the lawyer, the important question is whether there is ethical motivation to engage in pro bono. If, however, the perspective of the client is paramount, then meeting the client's needs …

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Representing A Minor: A Shared Dilemma In Ontario And Massachusetts, Andrew L. Kaufman

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This commentary considers what lawyers should do when confidential information from their minor clients indicates that the minor's instructions either present a substantial risk of harm to the minor or are irrational. The commentary then asks readers to decide whether and how their personal resolution should be generalized into the law of professional responsibility. The author compares current Ontario and Massachusetts law with a new Massachusetts proposal. The author strongly criticizes the proposal as violating the tenuous compromise between "client-directed" and "best- interests" or "substituted judgment" theories that appear to govern in both jurisdictions in favour of a rule that …

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Resolved, Or Is It? The First Amendment And Giving Money To Terrorists, Jeff Breinholt

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

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Punishment, Deterrence And Social Control: The Paradox Of Punishment In Minority Communities, Jeffery Fagan, Tracey L. Meares

Faculty Scholarship

Since the early 1970s, the number of individuals in jails and state and federal prisons has grown exponentially. Today, nearly two million people are currently incarcerated in state and federal prisons and local jails. The growth of imprisonment has been borne disproportionately by. African-American and Hispanic men from poor communities in urban areas. Rising.incarceration should have greatly reduced the crime rate. After all, incapacitated offenders were no longer free to rob, assault, steal, or commit other crimes. However, no large-scale reduction in crime was detected until the mid-1990s. The failure of crime rates to decline commensurately with increases in the …

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White Cartels, The Civil Rights Act Of 1866, And The History Of Jones V. Alfred H. Mayer Co., Darrell A. H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

In 2008, Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. turned forty. In Jones, the U.S. Supreme Court held for the first time that Congress can use its enforcement power under the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, to prohibit private racial discrimination in the sale of property. Jones temporarily awoke the Thirteenth Amendment and its enforcement legislation--the Civil Rights Act of 1866--from a century-long slumber. Moreover, it recognized an economic reality: racial discrimination by private actors can be as debilitating as racial discrimination by public actors. In doing so, Jones veered away from three decades of civil rights doctrine--a doctrine that had …

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Introducing A ‘Different Lives’ Approach To The Valuation Of Health And Well-Being, Matthew D. Adler, Paul Dolan

Faculty Scholarship

We introduce a new "different lives" survey format, which asks respondents to rank hypothetical lives described in terms of longevity, health, happiness, income, and other elements of the quality of life. In this short paper, we show that the format is of policy relevance whether a mental state, preference satisfaction or extra-welfarist account of well-being is adopted and discuss some of the advantages the format has over standard formats, such as contingent valuation surveys and QALY-type methods. An exploratory survey indicates that the format is feasible and that health and happiness might be more important than income and life expectancy.

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About Facebook - Change At The Social-Networking Juggernaut Creates New Opportunities For Law Library Outreach, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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Public Health Law For A Brave New World; Book Review: Lawrence O. Gostin, Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard

Scholarly Works

This is book review of Lawrence O. Gostin's new edition of Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 2d ed., 2008). A review of a second edition of a book may be somewhat unusual as subsequent editions of already published works typically do not break new ground. But this book is different. Gostin's first edition, published in 2000, established and defined the modern field of public health law. The revised and expanded second edition emerges in the post-9/11, post-Katrina, post-Bush world. Gostin now seeks to apply public health paradigms to social problems beyond the field's …

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Humanitarian Assistance And The Private Security Debate: An International Humanitarian Law Perspective, Benjamin Perrin

All Faculty Publications

The changing nature of armed conflict has had a dramatic impact on the security risks facing humanitarian personnel. Historically, the safety of humanitarian aid delivery was secured through the consent of the relevant Parties to the conflict. However, non-international ethnically-motivated armed conflicts, failed and failing states, and insurgency-based warfare have fundamentally challenged the viability of this traditional security paradigm. In confronting today's complex security climate, humanitarian organizations are faced with a diverse menu of alternatives to enhance their security. The debate over armed protection that has sharply divided the humanitarian community is explored in this paper, including a critique of …

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Legal Education's Mission, W. Wesley Pue

All Faculty Publications

This paper explores the liberal commitments of legal education against the requirements of liberal democracy, properly understood. It addresses the distinction between liberal education and training in trade technique, assesses pressures militating against liberal education in law, explores tensions within law faculties (such as the challenges presented by religious and cultural diversity) and considers the potential of attaining "grace through skills training". The paper explores arguments developed by Roger Burridge and Juilan Webb in their scholarship on "The Values of Common Law Legal Education."

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Searching For Law While Seeking Justice: The Difficulties Of Enforcing International Humanitarian Law In International Criminal Trials, Benjamin Perrin

All Faculty Publications

International criminal law finds itself at the confluence of public international law, international humanitarian law, human rights law and national criminal laws. Our understanding of the interrelationship between these sources of law has been hampered by the conventional wisdom that public international law doctrines applicable to disputes between states can be readily transposed to the international criminal prosecution of individuals. A detailed analysis of selected decisions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda demonstrates that these tribunals could not simply rely on classical sources of public international law to resolve difficult …

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Institutional Conditionality And State Compliance: The Czech And Slovak Accession To Nato And The Eu, Eva Svobodova

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation studies the interaction between international institutions and nation states. More specifically, it examines how the membership conditionality of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) was adopted by candidate states. It uses the Czech and Slovak accessions to NATO and the EU to argue that, in order to understand the external phenomenon of conditionality, we need to study its effects within states. Critical to this process is national leadership. National leaders determine whether and how conditionality is implemented. Furthermore, this dissertation asserts that successful compliance with NATO and EU conditionality is decisively determined by …

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Credit Derivatives Market Design, Creating Fairness And Sustainability, Janis P. Sarra

All Faculty Publications

Now that the first wave of the financial crisis has been resolved through the coordinated efforts of regulators and banks, it is important to address some of the systematic weaknesses of the current financial system. One such weakness is the inappropriate incentive effects of the market for credit derivatives, and in particular, for credit default swaps. As a risk management tool, credit derivatives were originally an effective means of diversifying lending risk. Credit derivatives have worked to cover exposures where there have been credit events of the underlying reference entities. To date, the global market for derivatives has operated largely …

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Titling And Untitled Housing In Panama City, Jorge L. Esquirol

Faculty Publications

Trouble Counting Votes - Comparing Voting Mechanisms In The United States And Selected Other Countries, Frank Emmert, Christopher Page, Antony Page

Faculty Publications

Decentralized Responses To Good Fortune And Bad Luck, Richard A. Epstein

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

Does Political Bias In The Judiciary Matter?: Implications Of Judicial Bias Studies For Legal And Constitutional Reform, Eric A. Posner

Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper Series

Experimental Gasoline Markets, Cary A. Deck, Bart J. Wilson

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

An Empirical Investigation Into Appellate Structure And The Perceived Quality Of Appellate Review, Rafael I. Pardo, Jonathan Remy Nash

Scholarship@WashULaw

Illness And Inability To Repay: The Role Of Debtor Health In The Discharge Of Educational Debt, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

The Utility Of Opacity In Judicial Selection, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

Restoring The Victim And The Community: A Look At The Tribal Response To Sexual Violence Committed By Non-Indians In Indian Country Through Non-Criminal Approaches, Amber Halldin

North Dakota Law Review

North Dakota's Pro-Shareholder Law: A Major Advancement, Carl C. Icahn

North Dakota Law Review

A Vexatious Problem Among Many: In Light Of The Conflict Between The Fifth And Sixteenth Amendments, Is Taxation An Uncompensated Taking?, Mark R. Jundt, Vernon R. Pederson

North Dakota Law Review

A New Paradigm For State Corporation Laws, William H. Clark, Jr, Amber A. Hough

North Dakota Law Review

The North Dakota Publicly Traded Corporations Act Of 2007, Legislative Assembly Of The State Of North Dakota

North Dakota Law Review

Upon Further Review: Recognizing Procedural Due Process Rights For Suspended High School Athletes, Ray Yasser, Matthew Block

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

Users As Innovators: Implications For Patent Doctrine, Katherine J. Strandburg

University of Colorado Law Review

Canadian Legal Ethics: Ready For The Twenty-First Century At Last, Adam M. Dodek

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Sustainable Professionalism, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The Public Interest, Professionalism, And Pro Bono Publico, Lorne Sossin

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Representing A Minor: A Shared Dilemma In Ontario And Massachusetts, Andrew L. Kaufman

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Resolved, Or Is It? The First Amendment And Giving Money To Terrorists, Jeff Breinholt

American University Law Review

Punishment, Deterrence And Social Control: The Paradox Of Punishment In Minority Communities, Jeffery Fagan, Tracey L. Meares

Faculty Scholarship

White Cartels, The Civil Rights Act Of 1866, And The History Of Jones V. Alfred H. Mayer Co., Darrell A. H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

Introducing A ‘Different Lives’ Approach To The Valuation Of Health And Well-Being, Matthew D. Adler, Paul Dolan

Faculty Scholarship

About Facebook - Change At The Social-Networking Juggernaut Creates New Opportunities For Law Library Outreach, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

Public Health Law For A Brave New World; Book Review: Lawrence O. Gostin, Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard

Scholarly Works

Humanitarian Assistance And The Private Security Debate: An International Humanitarian Law Perspective, Benjamin Perrin

All Faculty Publications

Legal Education's Mission, W. Wesley Pue

All Faculty Publications

Searching For Law While Seeking Justice: The Difficulties Of Enforcing International Humanitarian Law In International Criminal Trials, Benjamin Perrin

All Faculty Publications

Institutional Conditionality And State Compliance: The Czech And Slovak Accession To Nato And The Eu, Eva Svobodova

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Credit Derivatives Market Design, Creating Fairness And Sustainability, Janis P. Sarra

All Faculty Publications