Law Commons^™

Judging Foreign States, Zachary D. Clopton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Famed foreign relations law principles, including the act of state doctrine, the public law taboo, and Zschernig’s foreign affairs preemption, rely on the notion that U.S. courts should not sit in judgment on foreign states. Judges in these cases, as well as scholars writing in the area, frequently suggest that U.S. courts should sit out of important disputes due to considerations of sovereign equality and international comity. Yet, in less attention-grabbing cases, U.S. courts routinely sit in judgment on foreign judgments, laws, legal systems, and interests, sometimes concluding that they do meet U.S. standards. The first goal of this project, …

Embedded Contracts And A Continuum Of Sovereign Debt, Odette Lienau

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

What is the relationship of a government to its population as it pertains to sovereign debt? And how does this fit into the larger web of relationships and obligations that make up the international financial arena? These questions are incredibly difficult to think through – beyond the capacity of one author alone. I am therefore grateful to have the company of Yuri Biondi, Barry Herman, Tomoko Ishikawa, and Kunibert Raffer in beginning to consider them. In addressing their thoughtful and thought-provoking comments, I see this response less as an opportunity to answer every potential challenge or differential emphasis. Indeed, the …

Consenting To Computer Use, James Grimmelmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) makes it a crime to “access a computer without authorization or exceed authorized access.” Courts and commentators have struggled to explain what types of conduct by a computer user are “without authorization.” But this approach is backwards; authorization is not so much a question of what a computer user does, as it is a question of what a computer owner allows.

In other words, authorization under the CFAA is an issue of consent, not conduct; to understand authorization, we need to understand consent. Building on Peter Westen’s taxonomy of consent, I argue …

Gridlock?, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Common Law Of War, Jens D. Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In recent litigation before U.S. federal courts, the government has argued that military commissions have jurisdiction to prosecute offenses against the "common law of war," which the government defines as a body of domestic offenses, such as inchoate conspiracy, that violate the American law of war. This Article challenges that definition by arguing that stray references to the term "common law of war"in historical materials meant something completely different. By examining the Lieber Code, the writings of early natural law theorists, and early American judicial decisions, this Article concludes that the "common law of war" referred to a branch of …

The Mechanisms Of Derivatives Market Efficiency, Dan Awrey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

These are not your parents' financial markets. A generation ago, the image of Wall Street was one of floor traders and stockbrokers, of opening bells and ticker symbols, of titans of industry and barbarians at the gate. These images reflected the prevailing view in which stock markets stood at the center of the financial universe. The high point of this equity-centric view coincided with the development of a significant body of empirical literature examining the efficient market hypothesis (EMH): the prediction that prices within an efficient stock market will fully incorporate all available information. Over time, this equity-centric view became …

When Empathy Bites Back: Cautionary Tales From Neuroscience For Capital Sentencing, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Amelia Courtney Hritz, Caisa Elizabeth Royer, John H. Blume

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The neuroscience of empathy provides one more reason to believe that the decision to sentence another human being to death is inevitably an arbitrary one, and one that cannot be divorced from either race or caprice. While we can tinker with aspects of capital trials that exacerbate caprice and discrimination stemming from empathy, we cannot alter basic neural responses to the pain of others and therefore cannot rationalize (in either sense of the word) empathic responses.

Don't End Or Audit The Fed: Central Bank Independence In An Age Of Austerity, Neil H. Buchanan, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Federal Reserve (the Fed) is the central bank of the United States. Because of its power and importance in guiding the economy, the Fed's independence from direct political influence has made it a target of ideologically motivated attacks throughout its history, with an especially aggressive round of attacks coming in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and ongoing today. We defend Fed independence. We point to the Fed's exemplary performance during and after the 2008 crisis, and we offer the example of a potential future crisis in which Congress falls to increase the debt ceiling to show how …

Recovering Socialism For Feminist Legal Theory In The 21 St Century, Cynthia Grant Bowman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article argues that a significant strand of feminist theory in the 1970s and 1980s — socialist feminism — has largely been ignored by feminist jurisprudence in the United States and explores potential contributions to legal theory of recapturing the insights of socialist feminism. It describes both the context out of which that theory grew, in the civil rights, anti-war, and anti-imperialist struggles of the 1960s, and the contents of the theory as developed in the writings of certain authors such as Heidi Hartmann, Zillah Eisenstein, and Iris Young, as well as their predecessors in the U.K., and in the …

Legitimacy And Impartiality As Basic Principles For Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Odette Lienau

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This essay suggests that attentiveness to the principles of legitimacy and impartiality may contribute to the instrumental success of any sovereign debt restructuring, and highlights institutional elements or practices often associated with these goals. An additional question can be raised as to whether these principles might have a further claim to special consideration, as part of emerging customary international law or general principles of law. Any determination along these lines is made difficult by the fact that legitimacy is a composite principle, constituted of multiple procedural and substantive norms, and perhaps lacks the necessary specificity to be a legal rule …

Rjr Nabisco And The Runaway Canon, Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In last Term’s RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, the Court finished transforming the presumption against extraterritoriality from a tool meant to effectuate congressional intent into a tool for keeping Congress in check. In the hands of the RJR Nabisco majority, the presumption has become less a method for interpreting statutes than a pronouncement on the proper scope of access to U.S. courts, a pronouncement that Congress must labor to displace. Besides the worrisome implications for separation of powers, the majority’s opinion was also disappointing on practical grounds. By applying the presumption too aggressively, the Court missed an opportunity to …

A Crisis Of Faith & The Scientific Future Of Patent Theory, Oskar Liivak

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The current reward framing for the patent system has resisted all attempts to either confirm or to refute the benefits of the system. Yet that should not surprise us. We should be surprised that we ever thought that the system could be justified at all. The reward framing has infected the patent system with pathological defects that make the system both unjustifiable and unfalsifiable. An alternate framing that focuses on ex ante technology transfer can support and explain many of the doctrinal features of the current patent system, but it can do so while avoiding the pathologies that plague today's …

The Quintessential Law Library And Librarian In A Digital Era, Femi Cadmus

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Libraries, like most institutions and industries today, are faced with disruptive technologies that challenge their relevancy in a digital era. As a result, erstwhile notions and nostalgia associated with the quintessential library and librarian are changing rapidly.

This is a compelling era to reimagine the library, retaining essential traditions alongside the new technologies, which facilitate the preservation, discoverability, accessibility, and delivery of information. It is also an opportunity for libraries to respond creatively and innovatively to change. The quintessential law library and librarian cannot only survive but can also thrive in the digital era by continuing to demonstrate value through …

Revisiting Eisenberg And Plaintiff Success: State Court Civil Trial And Appellate Outcomes, Michael Heise, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Despite what Priest-Klein theory predicts, in earlier research on federal civil cases, Eisenberg found an association between plaintiff success in pretrial motions and at trial. Our extension of Eisenberg’s analysis 20 years later into the state court context, however, does not uncover any statistically significant association between a plaintiff’s success at trial and preserving that trial victory on appeal. Our results imply that a plaintiff’s decision to pursue litigation to a trial court conclusion is analytically distinct from the plaintiff’s decision to defend an appeal of its trial court win brought by a disgruntled defendant. We consider various factors that …

Full Federal Circuit Curbs On Sale Bar's Threat To Patents, Zong-Qiang Bill Tian, Matthew D'Amore

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

How To Think About Religious Freedom In An Egalitarian Age, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Data Institutionalism: A Reply To Andrew Woods, Zachary D. Clopton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In "Against Data Exceptionalism," Andrew K. Woods explores “one of the greatest societal and technological shifts in recent years,” which manifests in the “same old” questions about government power. The global cloud is an important feature of modern technological life that has significant consequences for individual privacy, law enforcement, and governance. Yet, as Woods suggests, the legal challenges presented by the cloud have analogies in age-old puzzles of public and private international law.

Identifying these connections is a conceptual advance, and this contribution should not be understated. But, to my mind, the most telling statement in Woods’s excellent article comes …

The Final Legal-Writing Class: Parting Wisdom For Students, Joel Atlas, Estelle Mckee, Andrea J. Mooney

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The last class of a legal-writing course is a beginning rather than an end for our students. Soon, they will have the opportunity to employ, in real life, the skills they have learned in the course. And professors want their students not only to succeed, but to excel, in practice. To help realize this goal, and as a fitting finale to the course, a professor may choose to provide students with tips for the immediate and long-term future in their profession.

Sharing The Prosperity: Why We Still Need Organized Labor, Angela B. Cornell

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Today economic inequality is greater in the United States than in any other advanced nation. Bringing the minimum wage up to a true living wage is a crucial step forward, as are other employment-related benefits like broadening access to overtime and instituting paid sick leave. But employment statutes such as minimum-wage regulations cannot replace the broad-based benefits that come from organized labor. Unionization places the ability to influence what happens in the workplace directly in workers’ own hands, even as it creates institutions that can advocate for working people at the community, state, and national level. Under an effective labor-law …

The Unresolved Interpretive Ambiguity Of Patent Claims, Oskar Liivak

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Claims are at the heart of every major patent related issue. Most importantly, they determine a patent's potent rights of exclusion. Yet, we cannot predict how courts will set the exact boundaries of claims. This renders smooth operation of the patent system near impossible. For some time, scholars have theorized that a basic policy disagreement is a source of this uncertainty. Some judges favor narrower patents, some favor broader and judges will naturally tend toward their policy preference. Policy disagreements result in claim uncertainty. Recently, scholars Tun- Jen Chiang and Lawrence Solum have taken this view further arguing that this …

Coming To Grips With The Ethical Challenges For Capital Post-Conviction Representation Posed By Martinez V. Ryan, John H. Blume, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In its groundbreaking decision in Martinez v. Ryan, 556 U.S. 1 (2012), the Supreme Court of the United States held that inadequate assistance of post-conviction counsel could be sufficient “cause” to excuse a procedural default thus allowing a federal court in habeas corpus proceedings to reach the merits of an otherwise barred claim that an inmate was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel at trial. The upshot of Martinez is that, if state post-conviction counsel unreasonably (and prejudicially) fails to raise a viable claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel, then there is “cause” …

Strategic Rulemaking Disclosure, Jennifer Nou, Edward H. Stiglitz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Congressional enactments and executive orders instruct agencies to publish their anticipated rules in what is known as the Unified Agenda. The Agenda’s stated purpose is to ensure that political actors can monitor regulatory development. Agencies have come under fire in recent years, however, for conspicuous omissions and irregularities. Critics allege that agencies hide their regulations from the public strategically, that is, to thwart potential political opposition. Others contend that such behavior is benign, perhaps the inevitable result of changing internal priorities or unforeseen events.

To examine these competing hypotheses, this Article uses a new dataset spanning over thirty years of …

Res Judicata As Requisite For Justice, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

From historical, jurisprudential, and comparative perspectives, this Article tries to synthesize res judicata while integrating it with the rest of law. From near their beginnings, all systems of justice have delivered a core of res judicata comprising the substance of bar and defense preclusion. This core is universal not because it represents a universal value, but rather because it responds to a universal institutional need. Any justice system must have adjudicators; to be effective, their judgments must mean something with bindingness; and the minimal bindingness is that, except in specified circumstances, the disgruntled cannot undo a judgment in an effort …

The 2015 Changes To The Federal Rules Matter For Your Patent Case And Tech Business: Getting In The Courthouse Door Just Got Tougher, Matthew D'Amore

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Changing Market For Criminal Law Casebooks, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In the following Review, I analyze the leading criminal law casebooks on the market and describe the ways in which they do — and do not — respond to the needs of criminal law teachers. At least part of the issue is the changing nature of law teaching — what actually happens in the classroom has changed in the last three decades. Moreover, there may be less uniformity in classroom practice than in the past; in other words, what works in one law school might not work in another, due in part to the changing profile of law students, as …

Executive Opportunism, Presidential Signing Statements, And The Separation Of Powers, Daniel B. Rodriguez, Edward H. Stiglitz, Barry R. Weingast

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Executive discretion over policy outcomes is an inevitable feature of our political system. However, in recent years, the President has sought to expand his discretion through a variety of controversial and legally questionable tactics. Through a series of simple separation of powers models, we study one such tactic, employed by both Democratic and Republican presidents: the use of signing statements, which purport to have status in the interpretation of statutory meaning. Our models also show that signing statements upset the constitutional vision of lawmaking and, in a wide range of cases, exacerbate legislative gridlock. We argue that courts should not …

Supreme Court Tie In Teacher Case Delivers A Crucial Victory To Unions, Angela B. Cornell

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Redundant Public-Private Enforcement, Zachary D. Clopton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Redundancy is a four-letter word. According to courts and scholars, redundant litigation is costly, unfair, and confounding. Modern civil procedure has a (nearly) maximalist preference for centralization, and various rules seek to limit duplicative suits within and across court systems. This seemingly dominant view stands in marked contrast to the reality of the modern regulatory state. Redundant public-private enforcement, in which public and private actors have overlapping authority to enforce the law, is ubiquitous. Redundant enforcement also is noticeably underrepresented in the substantial literature on private and public enforcement, which typically treats government agencies and private attorneys general as substitutes …

Systemically Significant Prices, Robert C. Hockett, Saule T. Omarova

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Some prices and indices in national or transnational markets take on particular market-wide importance, either because (a) they are associated with ubiquitous inputs to production, (b) they are associated with highly popular asset classes, (c) they tend by convention to be used as benchmarks in determining other prices, or (d) some combination of the above. Examples include prevailing wage and salary rates, certain energy and commodity prices, and such indices and borrowing rates as the Standard & Poor’s 500, the Federal Funds Rate, and the Libor and Euribor interbank lending rate benchmarks.

We call such prices and indices 'systemically important' …

"Never Having Loved At All": An Overlooked Interest That Grounds The Abortion Right, Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Feminist and some other abortion rights advocates typically ground the right to abortion in bodily integrity, thus conceptualizing abortion as vindicating a right to disassociate oneself from an intruder. Although valid as a matter of logic, the bodily integrity argument is libertarian and seemingly selfish. But a fundamentally associative interest also grounds the abortion right. A woman who cannot raise a child but is legally required to bear one must undergo the psychic pain of forced separation from an infant whom she is biologically programmed to love. Human mothers, like other mammalian mothers, grieve the loss of their young, as …