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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Modern Law Of Corporate Groups: An Empirical Study Of Piercing The Corporate Veil In The Parent-Subsidiary Context, John H. Matheson
The Modern Law Of Corporate Groups: An Empirical Study Of Piercing The Corporate Veil In The Parent-Subsidiary Context, John H. Matheson
Articles
Today, massive corporations – both national and international – dominate financial and commercial activities, exercising enormous economic power. The standard organizational structure for these businesses has a parent corporation as the sole shareholder of multiple, separately incorporated operating subsidiaries (or layers of subsidiaries) in a corporate group. One particular application of the law of corporate groups entails dealing with the ramifications of subsidiary insolvency. Given the massive financial assets of many multinational parent corporations, actions to ignore the legal separateness of a corporate subsidiary of a parent company offer some of the biggest potential payoffs for claimants. In today's global …
Climate Change And Reassessing The "Right" Level Of Government: A Response To Bronin, Alexandra B. Klass
Climate Change And Reassessing The "Right" Level Of Government: A Response To Bronin, Alexandra B. Klass
Articles
Climate change has caused lawmakers, policymakers, and scholars to reassess the traditional role of federal, state, and local governments to regulate a broad range of environmental, energy, and land-use issues. While the problem of climate change would appear to be best addressed at the international, or at least the federal level, it has been local governments and states that have taken the first and most important steps in recognizing the problem and experimenting with different ways to address it. While some of these experiments show how the "lower" levels of government can have a significant and positive impact on national-level …
Equitable Prescription Drug Coverage: Preventing Sex Discrimination In Employer-Provided Health Plans, Stephen F. Befort, Elizabeth C. Borer
Equitable Prescription Drug Coverage: Preventing Sex Discrimination In Employer-Provided Health Plans, Stephen F. Befort, Elizabeth C. Borer
Articles
Nearly half of large, employer-sponsored group health plans in the United States do not cover prescription contraceptives used by women. This exclusion contributes to unintended pregnancies, higher out-of-pocket expenses, and adverse social consequences. The federal courts currently are split on whether this exclusion violates Title VII as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). In a recent decision that is of first impression at the circuit court level, the Eighth Circuit ruled in In re Union Pacific Railroad Employment Practices Litigation that the lack of contraception coverage in an employee health insurance plan that covered Rogaine and Viagra for men …
Rule Of Law: What Does It Mean?, Robert Stein
Rule Of Law: What Does It Mean?, Robert Stein
Articles
I congratulate the Editors of the Journal of International Law on organizing this Symposium on the subject of the Rule of Law, specifically, Creating a Rule of Law Culture. The Journal was established during the time I served as Dean of the Law School, and I take pride in the way it has grown through the years.
Teaching The Rule Of Law, Robert Stein
Teaching The Rule Of Law, Robert Stein
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We have heard throughout the day of the enormous amount of rule of law work going on all over the world. This primarily began in the early nineties after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Mostly Unintended Effects Of Mandatory Penalties: Two Centuries Of Consistent Findings, Michael Tonry
The Mostly Unintended Effects Of Mandatory Penalties: Two Centuries Of Consistent Findings, Michael Tonry
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No abstract provided.
What Explains Persistent Racial Disproportionality In Minnesota's Prison And Jail Populations?, Richard Frase
What Explains Persistent Racial Disproportionality In Minnesota's Prison And Jail Populations?, Richard Frase
Articles
No abstract provided.
The Untold Story Of America's First Sentencing Commission, Michael Tonry
The Untold Story Of America's First Sentencing Commission, Michael Tonry
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No abstract provided.
Second Look Provisions In The Proposed Model Penal Code Revisions, Richard Frase
Second Look Provisions In The Proposed Model Penal Code Revisions, Richard Frase
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No abstract provided.
Norval Morris's Contributions To Sentencing Structures, Theory, And Practice, Richard Frase
Norval Morris's Contributions To Sentencing Structures, Theory, And Practice, Richard Frase
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No abstract provided.
So Much More Than A "Harmless Drudge": Samuel Johnson And His Dictionary, Joan Howland
So Much More Than A "Harmless Drudge": Samuel Johnson And His Dictionary, Joan Howland
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No abstract provided.
Differential Compensation And The "Race To The Bottom" In Consumer Insurance Markets, Daniel Schwarcz
Differential Compensation And The "Race To The Bottom" In Consumer Insurance Markets, Daniel Schwarcz
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No abstract provided.
Redesigning Consumer Dispute Resolution: A Case Study Of The British And American Approaches To Insurance Claims Conflict, Daniel Schwarcz
Redesigning Consumer Dispute Resolution: A Case Study Of The British And American Approaches To Insurance Claims Conflict, Daniel Schwarcz
Articles
Much of insurance law and regulation is concerned with compensating consumers who have been wrongly denied coverage. But policyholders nonetheless have relatively few realistic options for challenging an insurer's adverse coverage determination. Litigation is often too slow and costly for those who have recently suffered significant financial loss. Meanwhile, the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) options that do exist-such as the conciliation services that insurance regulators offer or the existing variants of insurance arbitration-are generally either ineffective or unavailable for most disputes. This Article proposes a new way forward by looking to the United Kingdom's innovative Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), which …
Disclosure, Endorsement, And Identity In Social Marketing, William Mcgeveran
Disclosure, Endorsement, And Identity In Social Marketing, William Mcgeveran
Articles
Social marketing is among the newest advertising trends now emerging on the internet. Using online social networks such as Facebook or MySpace, marketers can send personalized promotional messages featuring an ordinary customer to that customer's friends. Because they reveal a customer's browsing and buying patterns, and because they feature implied endorsements, the messages raise significant concerns about disclosure of personal matters, information quality, and individuals' ability to control the commercial exploitation of their identity. Yet social marketing falls through the cracks between several different legal paradigms that might allow its regulation-spanning from privacy to trademark and unfair competition to consumer …
Optimal Timing Of Legal Intervention: The Role Of Timing Rules, Barbara Luppi, Francesco Parisi
Optimal Timing Of Legal Intervention: The Role Of Timing Rules, Barbara Luppi, Francesco Parisi
Articles
In a recent article, Gersen and Posner (2007) examined the role of timing rules in promoting the optimal timing of legislative action. In this brief essay, we address the issue of optimal timing of lawmaking through the lens of option theory. We provide a formalization of seven alternative timing rules and evaluate the option value of those legislative strategies. This formalization allows us to evaluate the desirability of alternative timing rules in different regulatory environments.
Coordinating Cross-Border Bankruptcy: How Territorialism Saves Universalism, Edward Adams, Jason Fincke
Coordinating Cross-Border Bankruptcy: How Territorialism Saves Universalism, Edward Adams, Jason Fincke
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This article explores the difficulties of coordinating cross-border bankruptcies. These difficulties arise from the lack of a binding set of uniform international rules, forcing multinational businesses to look to domestic laws for guidance. The problem is that without coordinated, concurrent insolvency proceedings, an effective reorganization of a multinational corporation is impossible because a multitude of separate judgments ultimately leads to the dismemberment of a debtor's estate.To address this challenge, an increasing number of countries – including the United States and several European countries such as Germany, Poland, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom – have enacted a Model Law on …
The Regulation Of Creativity Under The Wipo Internet Treaties, Ruth Okediji
The Regulation Of Creativity Under The Wipo Internet Treaties, Ruth Okediji
Articles
The WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WIPO Internet Treaties) recite a need for a digital copyright framework to facilitate 'adequate solutions to questions raised by new economic, social, cultural and technological developments.' It can hardly be contested that the social and cultural developments to which the Treaties refer do not derive from the cultural or economic conditions (much less technological developments) of the developing and least-developed countries. Consistent with their predecessors, the WIPO Internet Treaties marginalize collaborative forms of creative engagement with which citizens in the global South have long identified and continue in the …
A Missed Opportunity: Minnesota's Failed Experiment With Choice-Based Integration, Margaret Hobday, Geneva Finn, Myron Orfield
A Missed Opportunity: Minnesota's Failed Experiment With Choice-Based Integration, Margaret Hobday, Geneva Finn, Myron Orfield
Articles
No abstract provided.
Punitive Damages After Exxon Shipping Company V. Baker: The Quest For Predictability And The Role Of Juries, Alexandra Klass
Punitive Damages After Exxon Shipping Company V. Baker: The Quest For Predictability And The Role Of Juries, Alexandra Klass
Articles
This Symposium Essay considers the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Exxon Shipping Company v. Baker on the ability of juries to award punitive damages in a manner that comports with the law. In that case, the Court continued its two-decade crusade to place federal limits on punitive damages awards. The Exxon case was a federal maritime case arising out of the 1989 grounding of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska, resulting in arguably the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. In its decision, the Court for the first time identified “unpredictability” as the fundamental problem …
The Importance Of Deceptive Practice Enforcement In Financial Institution Regulation, Prentiss Cox
The Importance Of Deceptive Practice Enforcement In Financial Institution Regulation, Prentiss Cox
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No abstract provided.
Empirical Legal Studies Before 1940: A Bibliographic Essay, Herbert M. Kritzer
Empirical Legal Studies Before 1940: A Bibliographic Essay, Herbert M. Kritzer
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The modern empirical legal studies movement has well-known antecedents in the law and society and law and economics traditions of the latter half of the 20th century. Less well known is the body of empirical research on legal phenomena from the period prior to World War II. This paper is an extensive bibliographic essay that surveys the English language empirical legal research from approximately 1940 and earlier. The essay is arranged around the themes in the research: criminal justice, civil justice (general studies of civil litigation, auto accident litigation and compensation, divorce, small claims, jurisdiction and procedure, civil juries), debt …
Carbon Capture And Sequestration: Identifying And Managing Risks, Alexandra B. Klass, Elizabeth J. Wilson
Carbon Capture And Sequestration: Identifying And Managing Risks, Alexandra B. Klass, Elizabeth J. Wilson
Articles
Carbon capture and geologic sequestration (CCS) technology promises to provide deep emissions cuts, particularly from coal power generation, but deploying CCS creates risks of its own. This article first considers the risks associated with CCS, which involves capturing CO{sub 2} emissions from industrial sources and power plants, transporting the CO{sub 2} by pipeline, and injecting it underground for permanent sequestration. The article then suggests ways in which these risks can be minimized and managed and considers more broadly when or if CCS should be deployed or whether its use should be limited or rejected in favor of other solutions.
Tort Experiments In The Laboratories Of Democracy, Alexandra B. Klass
Tort Experiments In The Laboratories Of Democracy, Alexandra B. Klass
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This Article considers the broad range of tort experiments states have undertaken in recent years as well as the changing attitudes of Congress and the Supreme Court toward state tort law. Notably, as states have engaged in well-publicized tort reform efforts in the products liability and personal injury areas, they have also increased tort rights and remedies to address new societal problems associated with privacy, publicity, consumer protection, and environmental harm. At the same time, however, just as the Supreme Court was beginning its so-called federalism revolution of the 1990s to limit Congressional authority in the name of states' rights, …
The Accountable Executive, Heidi Kitrosser
The Accountable Executive, Heidi Kitrosser
Articles
This Article was written for the 2008 Minnesota Law Review Symposium, Law & Politics in the 21st Century. The Article examines the core functionalist argument typically made to support unitary executive theory: that the theory advances the constitutional principle of accountability by demanding that all executive branch decisions be placed in the hands of a single, nationally elected official. This Article argues that a unitary executive undermines, rather than bolsters, government accountability. The Article also explains that one need not agree with that proposition to conclude that the accountability justification for unitary executive theory is flawed. Rather, one need only …
Protecting Them From Themselves: The Persistence Of Mutual Benefits Arguments For Sex And Race Inequality, Jill Elaine Hasday
Protecting Them From Themselves: The Persistence Of Mutual Benefits Arguments For Sex And Race Inequality, Jill Elaine Hasday
Articles
Defenders of sex and race inequality often contend that women and people of color are better off with fewer rights and opportunities. This claim straddles substantive debates that are rarely considered together, linking such seemingly disparate disputes as the struggles over race-based affirmative action, antiabortion laws, and marital rape exemptions. The argument posits that women and people of color attempting to secure expanded rights and opportunities do not understand their own best interests and do not realize that they benefit from limits on their prerogatives and choices. Indeed, proponents of this argument insist that restricting the rights and opportunities available …
Why Did Anyone Listen To The Rating Agencies After Enron?, Claire Hill
Why Did Anyone Listen To The Rating Agencies After Enron?, Claire Hill
Articles
Enron was rated investment grade by Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch until four days before it declared bankruptcy - scarcely a ringing endorsement of the agencies’ acumen. Even before Enron, the rating agencies had come in for significant criticism. Yet many investors who lost considerable sums in the financial crisis are saying that they relied on the rating agencies. How can this reliance be reconciled with what preceded it? I argue that an adaptive trait - incorporating new data that potentially conflicts with one’s pre-existing worldview so as to preserve as much of that worldview as possible - proved …
Bargaining In The Shadow Of The Lawsuit: A Social Norms Theory Of Incomplete Contracts, Claire Hill
Bargaining In The Shadow Of The Lawsuit: A Social Norms Theory Of Incomplete Contracts, Claire Hill
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Complex business contracts are notoriously difficult to write and read. Certainly, when litigation arises, courts scarcely have an easy time interpreting them. Indeed, contracts don't look at all as though they are written to tell a court what the parties want. Why can't smart, well-motivated lawyers do a better job? My article argues that they rationally don't try. I argue for a view of contracting in which parties aren't principally trying to set forth an agreement for a court to enforce. Rather, by leaving inartful language and ambiguity in the agreement, parties are bonding themselves not to seek precipitous recourse …
Women, Security, And The Patriarchy Of Internationalized Transitional Justice, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
Women, Security, And The Patriarchy Of Internationalized Transitional Justice, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
Articles
In the contemporary global context, transition from conflict to peace and from authoritarian to democratic governance is a critical preoccupation of many states, particularly the United States. In these contexts, accountability for the abuses committed by prior regimes has been a priority for international institutions, states and new governments. Equally, transitional justice goals have expanded to include fashioning new domestic political and legal institutions and a broad range of structural reform in multiple spheres. Whether an expanded or contracted transitional justice paradigm is used to define the perimeters of change, gender concerns have been markedly absent across political contexts and …
Gender And The Rule Of Law In Transitional Societies, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Michael Hamilton
Gender And The Rule Of Law In Transitional Societies, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Michael Hamilton
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This article examines a unique relationship—specifically, the connection between the rule of law, as it is imported and experienced in post-conflict/post-repression societies, and gender. We assert that some of the most gendered and problematic dimensions of rule of law discourse and practice can arise with intensity in post-conflict or post-repressive societies. In particular, we explore a fundamental contradiction. Transitional societies bring powerful and transformative moments to global attention.
Professor Bainbridge And The Arrowian Moment: A Review Of The New Corporate Governance In Theory And Practice, Brett Mcdonnell
Professor Bainbridge And The Arrowian Moment: A Review Of The New Corporate Governance In Theory And Practice, Brett Mcdonnell
Articles
The New Corporate Governance in Theory and Practice, a new book by Stephen Bainbridge, pulls together the leading arguments for director primacy that Bainbridge has made in a series of articles. In his core argument, Bainbridge uses theoretical work by Kenneth Arrow to explain the attractions of the separation of ownership and control with a centralized hierarchy headed by a board of directors. Bainbridge posits that achieving an optimal tradeoff between authority and accountability is the central problem of corporate law. He uses a key passage from Arrow to argue that in making this tradeoff, lawmakers should always make a …