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2015

Law reform

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Full-Text Articles in Law

When 'Good' Corporate Governance Makes 'Bad' (Financial) Firms: The Global Crisis And The Limits Of Private Law, Nicholas Howson Dec 2015

When 'Good' Corporate Governance Makes 'Bad' (Financial) Firms: The Global Crisis And The Limits Of Private Law, Nicholas Howson

Nicholas Howson

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, investors, analysts, legislators, and pundits have spotlighted “good” or “improved” corporate governance as a remedy for all that presently ails us. It is one remedy in a long wish list that includes tougher requirements for risk capital, liquidity, and leverage; compensation and bonus reform; reimposition ofthe Glass-Steagall-like separation of bank “utility” and “casino” functions; the downsizing or breakup of institutions deemed “too big to fail;” enhanced consumer protection; securities law liability for secondary violators (like credit rating agencies); direct taxation of proprietary trading; “macroprudential” regulation; and new transparency requirements for …


Spending Medicare’S Dollars Wisely: Taking Aim At Hospitals’ Cultures Of Overtreatment, Jessica Mantel Dec 2015

Spending Medicare’S Dollars Wisely: Taking Aim At Hospitals’ Cultures Of Overtreatment, Jessica Mantel

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

With Medicare’s rising costs threatening the country’s fiscal health, policymakers have focused their attention on a primary cause of Medicare’s high price tag—the overtreatment of patients. Guided by professional norms that demand they do “everything possible” for their patients, physicians frequently order additional diagnostic tests, perform more procedures, utilize costly technologies, and provide more inpatient care. Much of this care, however, does not improve Medicare patients’ health, but only increases Medicare spending. Reducing the overtreatment of patients requires aligning physicians’ interests with the government’s goal of spending Medicare’s dollars wisely. Toward that end, recent Medicare payment reforms establish a range …


From Incentive To Commodity To Asset: How International Law Is Reconceptualizing Intellectual Property, Rochelle Dreyfuss, Susy Frankel Dec 2015

From Incentive To Commodity To Asset: How International Law Is Reconceptualizing Intellectual Property, Rochelle Dreyfuss, Susy Frankel

Michigan Journal of International Law

The intellectual property landscape is changing. As Jerry Reichman once observed, intellectual property rights were islands in a sea of the public domain until domestic laws expanded to include such “innovations” as business methods, software, scents, and sounds and turned the public domain into a pond surrounded by a continent of rights. Reichman spoke towards the end of the 20th century, and whatever problems accompanied this change, in truth (to paraphrase Voltaire’s view of the Holy Roman Empire), the concept of “intellectual property rights” was predominantly about neither “property” nor “rights” (nor was it always “intellectual”). Rather, copyright, patent, and …


Lets Talk About Sexual Assault A Feminist Exploration Of The Relationship Between Legal And Experiential Discourses, Dana Erin Phillips Nov 2015

Lets Talk About Sexual Assault A Feminist Exploration Of The Relationship Between Legal And Experiential Discourses, Dana Erin Phillips

LLM Theses

This thesis challenges the tendency within feminist legal thought to imagine a sharp division between law and lived experience, and specifically between feminist methods that engage legal discourse and those that invoke grassroots narratives grounded in experience. In order to better elucidate the relationship between legal and experiential discourses, the author compares recent legal discourse on sexual assault focusing on two Supreme Court of Canada decisions with women's own accounts of sexual violence, as presented in mainstream news media in the wake of the 2014 Jian Ghomeshi story. The findings, examined through the lens of feminist scholarship, support a view …


Panel 3: Lunch [Keynote Speaker], Roderick A. Macdonald, Harry W. Arthurs Oct 2015

Panel 3: Lunch [Keynote Speaker], Roderick A. Macdonald, Harry W. Arthurs

Harry Arthurs

PANEL III: KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Moderator: Lorne Sossin, Dean, Osgoode Hall Law School; Remarks: Mamdouh Shoukri, President & Vice-Chancellor, York University; Introduction: Harry A. Arthurs, Professor Emeritus, Osgoode Hall Law School; Keynote Speaker: Roderick A. Macdonald, F.R. Scott Professor of Constitutional and Public Law, Faculty of Law, McGill University, "Law Reform for Dummies (Third Edition)."


Measuring The Effects Of Feminist Legal Research: Looking Critically At "Failure" And "Success", Lisa Philipps Oct 2015

Measuring The Effects Of Feminist Legal Research: Looking Critically At "Failure" And "Success", Lisa Philipps

Lisa Philipps

No abstract provided.


Choices And Commitments For Women: Challenging The Supreme Court Of Canada In The Context Of Social Assitance, Mary Jane Mossman Oct 2015

Choices And Commitments For Women: Challenging The Supreme Court Of Canada In The Context Of Social Assitance, Mary Jane Mossman

Mary Jane Mossman

No abstract provided.


Feminism, Consequences, Accountability, Sonia Lawrence Oct 2015

Feminism, Consequences, Accountability, Sonia Lawrence

Sonia Lawrence

No abstract provided.


Regulating To Achieve Stability In The Domain Of High-Frequency Trading, Lindsey C. Crump Oct 2015

Regulating To Achieve Stability In The Domain Of High-Frequency Trading, Lindsey C. Crump

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

High-frequency trading has become a darling of capital markets debate. This debate thrives because the true and long-lasting effects of high-frequency trading are still unknown. On one hand, high-frequency trading evidences recent and powerful advances in trading technology; on the other, it is said to harness speed at the expense of fairness, prudence, and stability. In part because of this duality, the regulation of high-frequency trading in the United States has been slow to develop. Other nations, however, have been quicker to react and to promulgate laws that directly, or indirectly, affect high-frequency trading. This Note explores the legal responses …


Three Words And The Future Of The Affordable Care Act, Nicholas Bagley Oct 2015

Three Words And The Future Of The Affordable Care Act, Nicholas Bagley

Articles

As an essential part of its effort to achieve near universal coverage, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) extends sizable tax credits to most people who buy insurance on the newly established health care exchanges. Yet several lawsuits have been filed challenging the availability of those tax credits in the thirty-four states that refused to set up their own exchanges. The lawsuits are premised on a strained interpretation of the ACA that, if accepted, would make a hash of other provisions of the statute and undermine its effort to extend coverage to the uninsured. The courts should reject this latest effort …


Medicine As A Public Calling, Nicholas Bagley Oct 2015

Medicine As A Public Calling, Nicholas Bagley

Michigan Law Review

The debate over how to tame private medical spending tends to pit advocates of government-provided insurance—a single-payer scheme—against those who would prefer to harness market forces to hold down costs. When it is mentioned at all, the possibility of regulating the medical industry as a public utility is brusquely dismissed as anathema to the American regulatory tradition. This dismissiveness, however, rests on a failure to appreciate just how deeply the public utility model shaped health law in the twentieth century— and how it continues to shape health law today. Closer economic regulation of the medical industry may or may not …


An Administrative Meter Maid: Using Inter Partes Review And Post-Grant Review To Curb Exclusivity Parking Via The "Failure To Market" Provision Of The Hatch-Waxman Act, Brian T. Apel Oct 2015

An Administrative Meter Maid: Using Inter Partes Review And Post-Grant Review To Curb Exclusivity Parking Via The "Failure To Market" Provision Of The Hatch-Waxman Act, Brian T. Apel

Michigan Law Review

Congress created the unique Hatch-Waxman framework in 1984 to increase the availability of low-cost generic drugs while preserving patent incentives for new drug development. The Hatch-Waxman Act rewards generic drug companies that successfully challenge a pharmaceutical patent: 180 days of market exclusivity before any other generic firm can enter the market. When a generic firm obtains this reward, sometimes drug developers agree to pay generic firms to delay entering the market. These pay-for-delay agreements give rise to exclusivity parking and run counter to congressional intent by delaying full generic drug competition. The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act created …


Mandatory Arbitration In Consumer Finance And Investor Contracts, Michael S. Barr Oct 2015

Mandatory Arbitration In Consumer Finance And Investor Contracts, Michael S. Barr

Articles

Mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses are pervasive in consumer financial and investor contracts—for credit cards, bank accounts, auto loans, broker-dealer services, and many others. These clauses often ill serve households. Consumers are typically presented with contracts on a “take it or leave it” basis, with no ability to negotiate over terms. Arbitration provisions are often not clearly disclosed, and in any event are not salient for consumers, who do not focus on the importance of the provision in the event that a dispute over the contract later arises, and who may misforecast the likelihood of being in such a dispute. The …


Mainstreaming Equality In Federal Budgeting: Addressing Educational Inequities With Regard To The States, Elizabeth K. Hinson Sep 2015

Mainstreaming Equality In Federal Budgeting: Addressing Educational Inequities With Regard To The States, Elizabeth K. Hinson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Great Society reformers targeted poverty as the defining characteristic for a novel federal education policy in the United States in 1965. Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), reincarnated within the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, distributes financial aid to disadvantaged students within public schools solely based upon students’ socioeconomic status. This Article does not dispute that financial resources improve student outcomes, but this Article argues that Title I’s funding formula is ineffective, and a new funding scheme – specifically, a mainstreaming equality funding scheme – must replace it. The implementation of this funding scheme …


Lessons From Institutional Shareholder Services: Governing Benefit Corporations' Third-Party Standard, Tammi S. Etheridge Sep 2015

Lessons From Institutional Shareholder Services: Governing Benefit Corporations' Third-Party Standard, Tammi S. Etheridge

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Almost one hundred years ago, Henry Ford, as CEO of the Ford Motor Company, announced a plan to cease payment of special dividends to shareholders. Instead, the company would reinvest its profits to employ more workers and build more factories. Investing in new workers and factories would cut the cost of cars and make them affordable to more people. Ford publicly declared that his “ambition [was] to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting …


Behavioral Public Choice And The Law, Gary M. Lucas Jr., Slavisa Tasic Sep 2015

Behavioral Public Choice And The Law, Gary M. Lucas Jr., Slavisa Tasic

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.


The Institutional Appetite For Quack Corporate Governance, Alicia J. Davis Sep 2015

The Institutional Appetite For Quack Corporate Governance, Alicia J. Davis

Articles

This Article offers evidence that higher quality internal corporate governance is associated with higher levels of ownership by institutional investors. This finding is consistent with the idea that institutions have greater reason than individual investors to prefer well-governed firms, but surprising given the substantial empirical evidence that casts doubt on the efficacy of internal governance mechanisms. The study described in this Article also finds that higher quality external governance is associated with lower proportions of ownership by certain types of institutional investors, also a somewhat surprising result given available empirical evidence on the positive relationship between external governance and firm …


Proportional Response: The Need For More—And More Standardized—Veterans’ Courts, Claudia Arno Jul 2015

Proportional Response: The Need For More—And More Standardized—Veterans’ Courts, Claudia Arno

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Over the past two decades, judges and legislators in a number of states have recognized significant shortcomings in the ways traditional systems of criminal corrections address cases involving criminal offenders who are veterans of the U.S. armed services. This recognition has come at a time when policy-makers have similarly recognized that, for certain subsets of criminal offenders, “diversionary” programs may achieve better policy results than will traditional criminal punishment. In accordance with these dual recognitions, some states have implemented systems of veterans’ courts, in which certain offenders, who are also U.S. veterans, are diverted into programs that provide monitoring, training, …


Access To Justice For Asylum Seekers: Developing An Effective Model Of Holistic Asylum Representation, Sabrineh Ardalan Jul 2015

Access To Justice For Asylum Seekers: Developing An Effective Model Of Holistic Asylum Representation, Sabrineh Ardalan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Abducted, beaten, and tortured by government forces that accused him of supporting an opposition group, Matthew fled to the United States with the help of his church pastor.1 The pastor lent Matthew money and helped him obtain a passport and a visa. The pastor also put Matthew in touch with an acquaintance in Boston, who gave him a place to stay for a short time and encouraged him to apply for asylum. The acquaintance sat down with Matthew and helped him fill out the asylum application form. He told Matthew to be as specific and detailed as possible since that …


A Call For An Overhaul Of The U.S. Federal Court System, Huhnkie Lee Jul 2015

A Call For An Overhaul Of The U.S. Federal Court System, Huhnkie Lee

Huhnkie Lee

No abstract provided.


Immigrant Victims, Immigrant Accusers, Michael Kagan Jul 2015

Immigrant Victims, Immigrant Accusers, Michael Kagan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The U visa program provides immigration status to noncitizen victims of crime, ensuring unauthorized immigrants do not become easy prey because they are too afraid to seek help from the police. But under the federal government’s structuring of the U visa program, a victim must also become an accuser to receive immigration benefits. Thus, the U visa implicates the rights of third parties: accused defendants. These defendants are often immigrants themselves who may be deported when U visa recipients level their accusations. Recent state court decisions have created complications in the program by permitting defendants to cross-examine accusers about their …


Loopholes For Circumventing The Constitution: Unrestrained Bulk Surveillance On Americans By Collecting Network Traffic Abroad, Axel Arnbak, Sharon Goldberg Jun 2015

Loopholes For Circumventing The Constitution: Unrestrained Bulk Surveillance On Americans By Collecting Network Traffic Abroad, Axel Arnbak, Sharon Goldberg

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Article reveals interdependent legal and technical loopholes that the US intelligence community could use to circumvent constitutional and statutory safeguards for Americans. These loopholes involve the collection of Internet traffic on foreign territory, and leave Americans as unprotected as foreigners by current United States (US) surveillance laws. This Article will also describe how modern Internet protocols can be manipulated to deliberately divert American’s traffic abroad, where traffic can then be collected under a more permissive legal regime (Executive Order 12333) that is overseen solely by the executive branch of the US government. Although the media has reported on some …


Rethinking Special Education's "Least Restrictive Environment" Requirement, Cari Carson Jun 2015

Rethinking Special Education's "Least Restrictive Environment" Requirement, Cari Carson

Michigan Law Review

The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act promotes the education of students with disabilities together with their nondisabled peers, requiring education in the “least restrictive environment” (“LRE”). This requirement has long been subject to competing interpretations. This Note contends that the dominant interpretation—requiring education in the least restrictive environment available—is deficient and allows students to be placed in unnecessarily restrictive settings. Drawing from child mental health law, this Note proposes an alternative LRE approach that requires education in the least restrictive environment needed and argues that this alternative approach is a better reading of the law.


Cooperative Mineral Interest Development In The Lone Star State: It's Time To Mess With Texas, Matthew K. Trawick May 2015

Cooperative Mineral Interest Development In The Lone Star State: It's Time To Mess With Texas, Matthew K. Trawick

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Since the early discoveries of the Spindletop, King Ranch, and East Texas oil fields, the oil and gas industry has dominated the Texas economy. The industry has also played an important role in shaping state politics and culture. The oil boom of the early 1900s created thousands of jobs for ordinary workers and immense wealth for a select few. Early Texas oil barons made headlines because of their lavish lifestyles and often extreme political beliefs. Legendary wildcatter H.L. Hunt typified this oil-fueled exuberance. Hunt became one of the eight richest individuals in the United States after securing mineral rights to …


Too Many Cooks In The Climate Change Kitchen: The Case For An Administrative Remedy For Damages Caused By Increased Greenhouse Gas Concentrations, Benjamin Reese May 2015

Too Many Cooks In The Climate Change Kitchen: The Case For An Administrative Remedy For Damages Caused By Increased Greenhouse Gas Concentrations, Benjamin Reese

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Recent federal and state court decisions have made clear that federal common law claims against emitters of greenhouse gases are not sustainable; however, those same courts seem to have given state common law tort claims the green light, at least if the claims are brought in the state where the polluters are located. This Note contends that such suits are not an adequate remedy for those injured by climate change because they will face nearly insurmountable barriers in state court, and because there are major policy-level drawbacks to relying on state tort law rather than a federal solution. This Note …


Rights Are Not Enough: Therapeutic Jurisprudence Lessons For Law Reformers, Nathalie Des Rosiers May 2015

Rights Are Not Enough: Therapeutic Jurisprudence Lessons For Law Reformers, Nathalie Des Rosiers

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.


A Simple Theory Of Complex Valuation, Anthony J. Casey, Julia Simon-Kerr May 2015

A Simple Theory Of Complex Valuation, Anthony J. Casey, Julia Simon-Kerr

Michigan Law Review

Complex valuations of assets, companies, government programs, damages, and the like cannot be done without expertise, yet judges routinely pick an arbitrary value that falls somewhere between the extreme numbers suggested by competing experts. This creates costly uncertainty and undermines the legitimacy of the court. Proposals to remedy this well-recognized difficulty have become increasingly convoluted. As a result, no solution has been effectively adopted and the problem persists. This Article suggests that the valuation dilemma stems from a misconception of the inquiry involved. Courts have treated valuation as its own special type of inquiry distinct from traditional fact-finding. We show …


All I Really Need To Know About Antitrust I Learned In 1912, Daniel A. Crane May 2015

All I Really Need To Know About Antitrust I Learned In 1912, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Herbert Hovenkamp has indisputably earned the deanship of contemporary antitrust scholarship. One could point to many different attributes by which he has earned his laurels: fantastic scholarly productivity; clarity and precision in the craft of writing; analytical depth in both law and economics; moderation in a field apt to polarization; and custodianship of the influential Areeda treatise. In this Essay, I hope to honor another quality that has contributed significantly to Herb’s tremendous success as an antitrust scholar—his engagement with history. Much contemporary antitrust scholarship bursts with excitement at the discovery of new phenomena or theories that in all actuality …


How The Ali's Restatement Third Of Property Is Influencing The Law Of Trusts And Estates, Lawrence W. Waggoner May 2015

How The Ali's Restatement Third Of Property Is Influencing The Law Of Trusts And Estates, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

Restatements, once limited to restating existing law, are now substantially devoted to law reform. The ALI's website states its law-reform policy thus: "The American Law Institute is the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law." In 2014, the Brooklyn Law Review published a symposium issue on Restatements of the Law. A paper in that symposium argued against the ALI's law-reform policy. The authors specifically speculated that the reformist rather than restatist character of the recently completed Restatement (Third) of Property: Wills and Other Donative Transfers (Property Restatement) has "very …


Eliminating Financiers From The Equation: A Call For Court-Mandated Fee Shifting In Divorces, Bibeane Metsch-Garcia May 2015

Eliminating Financiers From The Equation: A Call For Court-Mandated Fee Shifting In Divorces, Bibeane Metsch-Garcia

Michigan Law Review

Divorce can be prohibitively costly. Many struggle or simply cannot afford to pay divorce attorneys’ fees, and the economic effects of divorce on women are particularly acute. In the past few years, financing firms have emerged to fund nonmonied spouses, mostly women, who cannot afford to litigate divorces from their wealthy spouses. The services provided come with a hefty price tag: firms take large fees, and their involvement may lead to unethical and potentially damaging practices. This Note explains what third-party divorce finance firms are and why the use of firms is problematic, and offers an alternative, more equitable method …