Law Commons^™

Custom, Normative Practice, And The Law, Gerald J. Postema

Duke Law Journal

Legally binding custom is conventionally analyzed in terms of two independent elements: regularities of behavior (usus) and convictions of actors engaging in the behavior that it is legally required (opinio juris). This additive conception of custom is deeply flawed. This Essay argues that we must abandon the additive conception and replace it with an account of custom that understands legally relevant customs as norms that arise from discursive normative practices embedded in rich contexts of social interaction characterized by intermeshing anticipations and interconnected conduct. The hallmark of legally binding customs, it is argued, is not the addition of belief or …

International Adjudication And Custom Breaking By Domestic Courts , Suzanne Katzenstein

Duke Law Journal

This Essay identifies a fundamental but overlooked tension between international adjudication and the evolution of customary international law (CIL). According to the traditional understanding, the evolution of CIL requires one or more states to deviate from existing customary rules and engage in new conduct—a concept that I refer to as "custom breaking." A deviation's legal status is determined over time, as other states respond by deciding whether to follow the proposed break or adhere to the existing rule. Therefore, the deviation cannot be classified definitively as either legal or illegal at the time it occurs. During the period of state …

The Custom-To-Failure Cycle, Steven L. Schwarcz, Lucy Chang

Duke Law Journal

In areas of complexity, people often rely on heuristics—by which we broadly mean simplifications of reality that allow people to make decisions in spite of their limited ability to process information. When this reliance becomes routine and widespread within a community, it can develop into a custom. As long as such a heuristic-based custom reasonably approximates reality, society continues to benefit. In the financial sector, however, rapid changes in markets and products have disconnected some of these customs from reality, leading to massive failures, and increasing financial complexity is accelerating the rate of change, threatening future failures. We examine this …

Distinguishing The “Truly National” From The “Truly Local”: Customary Allocation, Commercial Activity, And Collective Action, Neil S. Siegel

Duke Law Journal

This Essay makes two claims about different methods of defining the expanse and limits of the Commerce Clause. My first claim is that approaches that privilege traditional subjects of state regulation are unworkable and undesirable. These approaches are unworkable in light of the frequency with which the federal government and the states regulate the same subject matter in our world of largely overlapping federal and state legislative jurisdiction. The approaches are undesirable because the question of customary allocation is unrelated to the principal reason why Congress possesses the power to regulate interstate commerce: solving collective action problems involving multiple states. …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Toward A Functional Approach To Sovereign Equality, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

Under the principle of sovereign equality of nations, nation states are entitled to equal dignity (evidenced by conventions like their voting rights in the United Nations), have the identical capacity to contract (evidenced by their ability to enter into treaties), and are not subject to a superior sovereign (evidenced by the lack of a global leviathan). This principle also has had an important effect in the field of international civil litigation, in areas such as judicial jurisdiction or sovereign immunity. As that principle has weakened over the twentieth century, risks of aggravation to comity have risen, resulting in the development …

Law School Forum: William And Mary Law School, Davison M. Douglas

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

State Of Rhode Island And Providence Plantations: Survey Of State Documents And Law-Related Materials, Nanette Kelley Balliot, Tom Evans, Colleen Mcconaghy Hanna

Survey of RI State Documents and Law-Related Materials

No abstract provided.

Perfecting Criminal Markets, David Jaros

All Faculty Scholarship

From illicit drugs to human smuggling to prostitution, legislators may actually be perfecting the very criminal markets they seek to destroy. Criminal laws often create new dangers and new criminal opportunities. Criminalizing drugs creates the opportunity to sell fake drugs. Raising the penalties for illegal immigration increases the risk that smugglers will rely on dangerous methods that can injure or kill their human cargo. Banning prostitution increases the underground spread of sexually transmitted disease. Lawmakers traditionally respond to these “second order” problems in predictable fashion — with a new wave of criminalization that imposes additional penalties on fake drug dealers, …

Cartels As Rational Business Strategy: Crime Pays, John M. Connor, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is the first to analyze whether cartel sanctions are optimal. The conventional wisdom is that the current level of sanctions is adequate or excessive. The article demonstrates, however, that the combined level of current United States cartel sanctions is only 9% to 21% as large as it should be to protect potential victims of cartelization optimally. Consequently, the average level of United States anti-cartel sanctions should be approximately quintupled.

The United States imposes a diverse arsenal of sanctions against collusion: criminal fines and restitution payments for the firms involved and prison, house arrest and fines for the corporate …

Ideas For Law Students And Recent Graduates Entering The Real World, Wendy Collins Perdue

Law Faculty Publications

In light of a more challenging job market for law school graduates due to the recession, the Virginia Lawyer asked the deans of Virginia's law schools for their thoughts on how law students could better prepare themselves for their employment searches. This was Dean Wendy Perdue's contribution.

An Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To State Pension Reform, Jeremy Stuart Buck

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Public pension systems are underfunded, straining state budgets. Historically, many states have presumed that they can modify pension benefits only as to newly-hired employees, and that they must leave benefit accruals untouched for current workers. More recently, though, states have begun enacting more fundamental pension reform that modifies future accruals or even reduces cost-of-living allowances for retirees. Nearly all such new reforms have been the subject of one or more lawsuits alleging that the federal and/or state constitution bars the legislature from reducing benefits or accrual patterns. This dissertation examines the legal underpinnings for arguments made against pension reform, and …

The Basel Iii Liquidity Coverage Ratio And Financial Stability, Andrew W. Hartlage

Michigan Law Review

Banks and other financial institutions may increase the amount of credit available in the financial system by borrowing for short terms and lending for long terms. Though this "maturity transformation" is a useful and productive function of banks, it gives rise to the possibility that even prudently managed banks could fail due to a lack of liquid assets. The financial crisis of 2007-2008 revealed the extent to which the U.S. financial system is exposed to the risk of a system-wide failure from insufficient liquidity. Financial regulators from economies around the world have responded to the crisis by proposing new, internationally …

Common Ownership And Equality Of Autonomy, Anna Di Robilant

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, common ownership has enjoyed unprecedented favour among policy-makers and citizens in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Conservation land trusts, affordable-housing co-operatives, community gardens, and neighborhood-managed parks are spreading throughout major cities. Normatively, these common-ownership regimes are seen as yielding a variety of benefits, such as a communitarian ethos in the efficient use of scarce resources, or greater freedom to interact and create in new ways. The design of common-ownership regimes, however, requires difficult trade-offs. Most importantly, successful achievement of the goals of common-ownership regimes requires the limitation of individual co-owners’ ability to freely use the common …

Reconstituting Constitutions—Institutions And Culture: The Mexican Constitution And Nafta: Human Rights Vis-À-Vis Commerce, Imer Flores

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The aim of this Essay is threefold. First, this Essay will focus on the main characteristics of both the great transformation, experienced in the Mexican institutional economic framework during the last thirty-five years, in general, and within the past twenty years, in particular, that were made through constitutional reforms. In addition, the greater expectation that such structural reforms generated in the process of re-enacting the constitution in the political context, should be along the lines of human rights and separation of powers. Second, this Essay will attempt to bring into play the role of treaties in this transformational process, by …

On Cowbells In Rock Anthems (And Property In Ip): A Review Of Justifying Intellectual Property, Eric R. Claeys

San Diego Law Review

I am going to start this Article with two confessions. First, when I was fourteen, my favorite rock song was (Don’t Fear) The Reaper, by Blue Oyster Cult. Second, one of my favorite Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketches is from the 2000 season, “Behind the Music: Blue Oyster Cult.” The sketch is a tribute in memory of Gene Frenkle, the member of Blue Oyster Cult who played the cowbell on (Don’t Fear) The Reaper. The SNL sketch purports to explain how the cowbell made it onto the studio recording. In the sketch, members of the regular SNL cast pretend to …

A Lockean Theory Of Intellectual Property Revisited, Adam D. Moore

San Diego Law Review

The primary, and perhaps sole, function of government according to Locke was to secure and protect the lives, liberties, and property of individuals who consented, explicitly or tacitly, to a specific political union. The question that I will address in this Article, and one that I took up over fifteen years ago, is: should we consider intellectual works to be the proper subjects of Lockean property claims? My answer then and now is “yes,” with the acknowledgement that such a view may require substantial revisions to Anglo-American systems of intellectual property. I will argue that intellectual property rights are no …

Toward A Lockean Moral Justification Of Legal Protection Of Intellectual Property, Kenneth Einar Himma

San Diego Law Review

This Article attempts to provide the beginnings of a viable moral justification for recognizing and providing legal protection of intellectual property. The argument follows a line of arguments that is fairly characterized as “inspired” by John Locke’s attempt to justify legal protection of what he took to be a natural, objective, moral right to material property. That is to say, it is Lockean in spirit in the following sense: Locke grounds his argument for original acquisition in the idea that a person is justified in acquiring something from the commons in virtue of an investment he makes of something that …

Access And The Public Domain, Randal C. Picker

San Diego Law Review

[T]his Article sketches out the emerging public domain. Part III considers three conceptual questions for structuring use of the public domain, focusing on the extent to which the public domain should be viral; on whether we should insist that the public domain be accessed only through the original artifacts embodying it; and on whether private appropriability incentives for distribution of public domain scans match overall social interests. Part IV turns to the tools for restricting use of the public domain, to copyright, contract, the DMCA, and the CFAA. Each of these matters for access to the public domain and for …

Patents As Promoters Of Competition: The Guild Origins Of Patent Law In The Venetian Republic, Ted Sichelman, Sean O'Connor

San Diego Law Review

[T]his Article describes the artisan and merchant guild systems of the Venetian Republic. Part III explores the emergence of the patent system as a means for foreigners and Venetian citizens to compete with the guilds, as well as the eventual addition of negative exclusive rights to the basic license form of positive patent privileges. In so doing, contrary to the speculation of some scholars, we reject with near certainty the contention that the first patent law statute granting exclusionary rights for—in modern parlance—technological inventions was a silk-specific directive enacted by the Venetian Grand Council in the late fourteenth or early …

Transition Relief For Tax Reform’S Third Rail: Reforming The Home Mortgage Interest Deduction After The Housing Market Crash, Nicholaus W. Norvell

San Diego Law Review

This Comment argues that Congress should—in this order of preference—eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, replace it with a credit, or substantially modify it, and that Congress can adopt any of these policies without substantial short-term fallout in the housing market. Part II of this Comment examines how the mortgage interest deduction works, its history, and its intended benefits. Part III scrutinizes the deduction’s inability to achieve its primary objective—increasing homeownership—and examines its negative effects on housing prices, household indebtedness, the environment, and wealth disparity. Accordingly, this Part argues that Congress should reform the deduction, discusses three basic options available for …

China's Rare Earths Export Quotas: Out Of The China-Raw Materials Gate, But Past The Wto's Finish Line?, Han-Wei Liu, John Maughan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Several recent studies have discussed the ramifications of the China – Raw Materials case for China's rare earths. However, none of these studies has conducted a thorough investigation of China's current export quota regime for rare earths or how it might stand up under WTO rules, assuming that it would be treated the same. This article makes no such assumption, investigating China's export quota regime for rare earths as it stands in early June 2012. The regime is somewhat improved over that applied during the Raw Materials case and could allow a more favourable WTO ruling. However, if General Agreement …

Killing Them With Kindness: Examining "Consumer-Friendly" Arbitration Clauses After At&T; Mobility V. Concepcion, Myriam E. Gilles

Articles

The article focuses on the U.S. Supreme Court case AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, in which California's "Discover Bank rule" was struck by the Court under the Federal Arbitration Act, which was upheld by the California Supreme Court in the court case Discover Bank v. Superior Court. It provides information that the rule is a judge-made rule which depicts that class action waivers are unforceable in arbitration agreements if such agreements are mentioned in standard form consumer contracts.

Exchanging Information Without Intellectual Property, Michael J. Burstein

Articles

Contracting over information is notoriously difficult. Nearly fifty years ago, Kenneth Arrow articulated a “fundamental paradox” that arises when two parties try to exchange information. To complete such a transaction, the buyer of information must be able to place a value on the information. But once the seller discloses the information, the buyer can take it without paying. The conventional solution to this disclosure paradox is intellectual property. If the information is protected by a patent or a copyright then the seller can disclose the information free in the knowledge that the buyer can be enjoined against making, using, or …

The Mosaic Theory Of The Fourth Amendment, Orin S. Kerr

Michigan Law Review

In the Supreme Court's recent decision on GPS surveillance, United States v. Jones, five justices authored or joined concurring opinions that applied a new approach to interpreting Fourth Amendment protection. Before Jones, Fourth Amendment decisions had always evaluated each step of an investigation individually. Jones introduced what we might call a "mosaic theory" of the Fourth Amendment, by which courts evaluate a collective sequence of government activity as an aggregated whole to consider whether the sequence amounts to a search. This Article considers the implications of a mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment. It explores the choices and puzzles that …

Cyberattacks And The Covert Action Statute: Toward A Domestic Legal Framework For Offensive Cyberoperations, Aaron P. Brecher

Michigan Law Review

Cyberattacks are capable of penetrating and disabling vital national infrastructure, causing catastrophic economic harms, and approximating the effects of war, all from remote locations and without the use of conventional weapons. They can be nearly impossible to attribute definitively to their sources and require relatively few resources to launch. The United States is vulnerable to cyberattacks but also uniquely capable of carrying out cyberattacks of its own. To do so effectively, the United States requires a legal regime that is well suited to cyberattacks' unique attributes and that preserves executive discretion while inducing the executive branch to coordinate with Congress. …

Interpreting Regulations, Kevin M. Stack

Michigan Law Review

The age of statutes has given way to an era of regulations, but our jurisprudence has fallen behind. Despite the centrality of regulations to law, courts have no intelligible approach to regulatory interpretation. The neglect of regulatory interpretation is not only a shortcoming in interpretive theory but also a practical problem for administrative law. Canonical doctrines of administrative law - Chevron, Seminole Rock/Auer, and Accardi - involve interpreting regulations, and yet courts lack a consistent approach. This Article develops a method for interpreting regulations and, more generally, situates regulatory interpretation within debates over legal interpretation. It argues that a purposive …

Terminating Beyond The Limits: Cms Is Overreaching In Its Attempt To Regulate Acos According To Antitrust Standards, Benjamin M. Zegarelli

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Irregularities In Procedure – Reconsidering Section 392, Pearlie M. C. Koh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In corporate administration, procedures, and their due compliance, are often of as much significance as the outcomes of the proceedings they regulate. The consequence of a failure to comply with procedures, whether laid down statutorily or in the company's constitution, is often the invalidation of the subject proceeding. Such invalidation may perhaps be justified on the basis that faithful compliance does much to foster a perception that the outcomes determined at the proceedings so held are fair, a perception that is vitally important to the acceptability of the outcome by all concerned. Nevertheless, it is also the case that corporate …

The Need And Justification For A General Competition-Oriented Compulsory Licensing Regime, Kung-Chung Liu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

There seems to be little or no discussion about the need of and justification for a general compulsory licensing that could be applicable to all IP laws. This author has previously argued, by referencing to competition law, in 2008 that it is paramount for the WTO to revise the TRIPS Agreement, so as to include substantive grounds for granting compulsory patent licenses. In so doing, the preservation of competition should be factored in as one of the public policy objectives. As a follow-up study this paper takes an IP-internal approach (therefore will only consult competition law in a very limited …