Law Commons^™

On The Use And Misuse Of Stock Price, Ira M. Millstein Center For Global Markets And Corporate Ownership

Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership

In 2013, in an effort to better understand the purpose, use, and potential misuse of stock prices in public equity markets, the Millstein Center and the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute (IRRCi) issued a call for papers on the role prices play as a corporate governance mechanism. In lieu of completed projects, proposals were sought for new research that explored how equity prices affect the decision-making processes of corporate management, boards of directors, and investors. On September 19, 2014, the Millstein Center and the IRRCi hosted a gathering entitled the Conference on the Use and Misuse of Stock Price, …

Discussion On Transparent And Effective Disclosure, Ira M. Millstein Center For Global Markets And Corporate Ownership

Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership

On January 22, 2015, the Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership and the Center for Audit Quality hosted a Discussion on Transparent and Effective Disclosure. The following is a summary of the panel discussions.

Middle School Teachers' Perceptions Of Bullying And Their Practices In Reporting Bullying Incidents, Katherine Eileen Blust

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Student self-report surveys showed bullying behaviors were problematic among students in one Midwest middle school. Despite implementing a version of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, students continued to self-report bullying behaviors that occurred on school property during school hours. It is crucial that educators are proactive in intervening and preventing bullying to establish a safe environment for academic success. The purpose of this study was to describe teachers' perceptions of bullying behaviors and their practices in reporting bullying incidents. Bandura's social learning and Locke's social contract theories served as the study's framework. Teachers were asked to describe behaviors they perceived …

Religious Accommodations For Sabbatarian Observance Among Library Staff, Paul A. Hartog

The Christian Librarian

Over the last twenty-five years, litigation related to religious discrimination in the workplace has been on the rise. One of the tension points has been the religious practice of Sabbath keeping, leading to employment scheduling conflicts. Title VII and its subsequent amendments require that employers seek “reasonable accommodations” for Sabbatarian observance. Such adjustments should not cause “undue hardship” to the employer, who is required to make a “good faith effort” at accommodation. This article discusses creative alternatives that managers of public libraries and nonsectarian academic libraries may implement when accommodating Seventh-Day Adventist and similar Sabbatarian staff members.

Anglim's "Encyclopedia Of Religion And The Law In America, 2nd Ed." (Book Review), John D. Laing

The Christian Librarian

A review of Anglim, C.T. (2009). Encyclopedia of religion and the law in America, 2nd ed. Amenia, NY: Grey House Publishing. 847 pp. $165.00. ISBN 9781592372980

The Equipoise Effect, Bert Huang

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores an overlooked way to use the remedy of disgorgement in torts, contracts, and regulation. It begins with a reminder that disgorging net gains does not force the liable actor to take a loss; by definition, it allows him to break even. As a matter of incentives, it places him in a sort of equipoise. This equipoise effect has a logical upshot that might seem counterintuitive: Substituting disgorgement for any other remedy, part of the time, can emulate the incentive effect of using that other remedy all of the time.

In theory, then, courts or regulators can sometimes …

False Confessions From The Viewpoint Of Federal Polygraph Examiners, Bradford Beyer

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

While confessions are a powerful form of evidence, innocent people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. Many researchers have studied false confessions through laboratory experiments with university students or by focusing on proven cases of false confession. These approaches have led many researchers to form a conceptual framework that law enforcement interrogative methods are a key cause of false confessions. A gap exists in the literature as few researchers have queried law enforcement about false confessions or consulted with officers who specialize in interrogation. For this study, a qualitative case study approach was used to explore the experiences …

A Policy Analysis Of California Veterans Treatment Court Legislation, Larisa Elisabeth Owen

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Veterans treatment courts (VTCs) and agencies that work with veterans experiencing posttraumatic stress and substance use disorders have been unable to provide evidence-based treatment that includes veterans' families in recovery and treatment. This limitation has resulted in treatment gaps that appear to have had an adverse impact on veterans and their families. The purpose of this qualitative content analysis was to examine the formulation of AB 2371, a 2012 legislative amendment to California code PC 1170.9, and evaluate whether lawmakers considered family-oriented treatment in passing the amendment. Schneider and Ingram's theory of social construction of target populations constituted the theoretical …

A Machine Learning Classifier For Corporate Opportunity Waivers, Gabriel V. Rauterberg, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Rauterberg & Talley (2017) develop a data set of “corporate opportunity waivers” (COWs) – significant contractual modifications of fiduciary duties – sampled from SEC filings. Part of their analysis utilizes a machine learning (ML) classifier to extend their data set beyond the hand-coded sample. Because the ML approach is likely unfamiliar to some readers, and in the light of its great potential across other areas of law and finance research, this note explains the basic components using a simple example, and it demonstrates strategies for calibrating and evaluating the classifier.

Gateway-Schmateway: An Exchange Between George Bermann And Alan Rau, Alan Scott Rau, George Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

What role do national courts play in international arbitration? Is international arbitration an “autonomous dispute resolution process, governed primarily by non-national rules and accepted international commercial rules and practices” where the influence of national courts is merely secondary? Or, in light of the fact that “international arbitration always operates in the shadow of national courts,” is it not more accurate to say that national courts and international arbitration act in partnership? On April 27, 2015, the Pepperdine Law Review convened a group of distinguished authorities from international practice and academia to discuss these and other related issues for a symposium …

The State Courts Centre For Dispute Resolution: Serving The Society With Quality Dispute Resolution Services, Dorcas Quek Anderson

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Court Alternative Dispute Resolution (“ADR”) has its origins in a 1994 pilot project in the Subordinate Courts (as it was known then) to have selected District Judges assist in resolving civil disputes using ADR processes. Within two decades, Court ADR has been extended to the entire gamut of cases filed in court, including civil claims, minor criminal offences and family disputes. Court ADR services, which have been known as “Court Dispute Resolution”, have become integral to the delivery of justice in the State Courts. As the Honourable The Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon has observed, ADR has been promoted as the …

A Turning Point For The Mediation Profession – Or A Slippery Slope?, Nadja Alexander

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In this post on the Kluwer Mediation Blog, issues affecting practitioners in the mediation profession are explored.

China’S New Law On Exploration And Exploitation Of Resources In The International Seabed Area Of 2016, Nengye Liu, Rakhyun Kim

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Despite its rich metallic mineral resources on land,1 the People’s Republic of China (China) has been actively exploring for deep seabed minerals in the international seabed area (the Area).2 The legal framework is provided by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC).3 China and the Russian Federation are the only States currently sponsoring exploration of all three types of deep seabed mineral deposit in the Area (polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, seafloor massive sulphides in the South West Indian Ridge, the Central Indian Ridge, and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts in the …

Introduction, Ingrid B. Wuerth

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Comparative constitutional law is today an exciting and increasingly diverse field of academic inquiry in US and Canadian law schools, as the excellent papers for this Symposium illustrate. Looking back, the 1990s were also a dynamic period for comparative constitutional law, with a predictable emphasis on constitution drafting in Eastern Europe and South Africa. As law and economics and empirical work became popular tools of legal analysis, comparative constitutional law initially drifted instead toward a focus on constitutional courts and on positive and negative liberties. Moreover, once the focus shifted away from active constitution drafting projects, questions re-surfaced about why …

The Promise Of The Rule Of (Environmental) Law: A Reply To Pardy’S Unbearable Licence, Jocelyn Stacey

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This short reply clarifies and defends the argument presented in “The Environmental Emergency and the Legality of Discretion in Environmental Law.” It responds to the arguments that were made, and that could have been made, in Pardy’s critique “An Unbearable Licence.” The reply further develops the public-justification conception of the rule of law, arguing that it is at home within Canadian public law. It also argues that this conception of the rule of law highlights possibilities for future research directions in Canadian environmental law.

Dead Hands, Living Trees, Historic Compromises: The Senate Reform And Supreme Court Act References Bring The Originalism Debate To Canada, J. Gareth Morley

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Recent American debates about the relationship between the historic political compromises underlying constitutional provisions and their contemporary judicial application have been largely ignored in Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada has only twice referred to originalism—and never positively. But in two 2014 decisions about how central institutions of government—the Senate and the Supreme Court of Canada itself—might be changed, the Court relied on the underlying historic political compromises to interpret the Constitution, rejecting arguments from the text or democratic principle. In this article, I consider how Canadian courts have looked to history in the past and in the 2014 decisions, …

The Objectives And Principles Of The Wto Trips Agreement: A Detailed Anatomy, Alison Slade

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Article 7 (Principles) and Article 8 (Objectives) are prominent within the text of the WTO TRIPS Agreement, yet have figured sparingly in the reasoning of the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB). This discrepancy is accentuated when considered in light of three key factors. First, the pioneering step taken by TRIPS negotiators to include broad declarations of intent within the operative text. Second, the 2001 reinforcement given to these provisions in the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health. Finally, the verbatim replication of these provisions within other international IP instruments, notably, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and the WIPO …

The Death Penalty And The Fifth Amendment, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

Can the Supreme Court find unconstitutional something that the text of the Constitution “contemplates”? If the Bill of Rights mentions a punishment, does that make it a “permissible legislative choice” immune to independent constitutional challenges?

Recent developments have given new hope to those seeking constitutional abolition of the death penalty. But some supporters of the death penalty continue to argue, as they have since Furman v. Georgia, that the death penalty must be constitutional because the Fifth Amendment explicitly contemplates it. The appeal of this argument is obvious, but its strength is largely superficial, and is also mostly irrelevant …

Customary International Law: An Instrument Choice Perspective, Laurence R. Helfer, Ingrid B. Wuerth

Faculty Scholarship

Contemporary international lawmaking is characterized by a rapid growth of “soft law” instruments. Interdisciplinary studies have followed suit, purporting to frame the key question states face as a choice between soft and “hard” law. But this literature focuses on only one form of hard law—treaties—and cooperation through formal institutions. Customary international law (CIL) is barely mentioned. Other scholars dismiss CIL as increasingly irrelevant or even obsolete. Entirely missing from these debates is any consideration of whether and when states might prefer custom over treaties or soft law.

Competing For Refugees: A Market-Based Solution To A Humanitarian Crisis, Joseph Blocher, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

The current refugee crisis demands novel legal solutions, and new ways of summoning the political will to implement them. As a matter of national incentives, the goal must be to design mechanisms that discourage countries of origin from creating refugees, and encourage host countries to welcome them. One way to achieve this would be to recognize that persecuted refugee groups have a financial claim against their countries of origin, and that this claim can be traded to host nations in exchange for acceptance. Modifications to the international apparatus would be necessary, but the basic legal elements of this proposal already …

Sharing Sexism, Katharine T. Bartlett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dna And Distrust, Kerry Abrams, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past three decades, government regulation and funding of DNA testing has reshaped the use of genetic evidence across various fields, including criminal law, family law, and employment law. Courts have struggled with questions of when and whether to treat genetic evidence as implicating individual rights, policy trade-offs, or federalism problems. We identify two modes of genetic testing: identification testing, used to establish a person’s identity, and predictive testing, which seeks to predict outcomes for a person. Judges and lawmakers have often drawn a bright line at predictive testing, while allowing uninhibited identity testing. The U.S. Supreme Court in …

The Metamorphosis Of Corporate Criminal Prosecutions, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

Corporate criminal enforcement has exploded in this country. Billion dollar fines are now routine across a range of industries, where they were unimaginable a decade ago. We have federal prosecutors and the Department of Justice, together with the white-collar bar, to thank for this. Their innovations have transformed what was, in decades past, a backwater area of criminal practice. Yet deep concerns remain that corporate prosecution settlements offer lenient and non-transparent deals that fail to hold either the corporations or the culpable individuals adequately accountable. Now, the DOJ has begun to rethink the evolving corporate prosecution approach through the adoption …

The Myth Of The Presumption Of Innocence, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

James Q. Whitman, in his deeply comparative new article, describes the American criminal justice system, in contrast with continental and inquisitorial systems, as more focused on the danger of innocent persons being arrested and convicted. In this Response, I respond by questioning the comparison on both sides of the equation, not to disagree with its utility or its contours, but because I admire the project and seek to elaborate here on Whitman’s deep concern with unpacking the status of the presumption of innocence and that of mercy. I describe how the American presumption of innocence is more of an ideal …

The Rise Of Bank Prosecutions, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

Before 2008, prosecutions of banks had been quite rare in the federal courts, and the criminal liability of banks and bankers was not a topic that received much public or scholarly attention. In the wake of the last financial crisis, however, critics have begun to ask whether prosecutors adequately held banks and bankers accountable for their crimes. In this Essay, I describe the remarkable rise in the number of bank prosecutions in recent years, as well as the still steeper rise in criminal penalties imposed on banks. 2015 was the year that bank prosecutions finally came into their own, both …

The Puzzle Of Family Law Pluralism, Erez Aloni

All Faculty Publications

Family law is succumbing to pluralism. Scholars have celebrated this trend as a desirable outcome of the struggle for marriage equality. And a pluralistic family law seems to offer distinct benefits: more regimes than just marriage, and greater room for choice within each regime (manifest by more types of legally enforceable intrafamilial contracts). This Article exposes counterintuitive facts that lead to a surprising conclusion: the legal changes that scholars tout as increasing pluralism eviscerate the substance of the choices families are permitted to make.

The policies that appear to extend choice within each regime, in fact, mask what I call …

The Modern Corporation Statement On Company Law: Summary: Fundamental Rules Of Corporate Law, Lynn Stout Et Al., Carol Liao

All Faculty Publications

Corporations play a central role in modern economies. Certain beliefs about corporations and corporate law are widely held and relied upon by business experts, the financial press, and economists who study the firm. Unfortunately, some of these widely-held beliefs are mistaken. This has led to numerous common errors in the way corporate law concepts are understood and applied. The authors of this Summary are experts versed in a variety of national legal systems, including those of the U.S. and U.K. as well as the E.U. We provide this simple Summary of certain fundamentals of corporate law, applicable in almost all …

Regulating Critical Mass: Performativity And City Streets, Alexandra Flynn

All Faculty Publications

On the last Friday of every month, tens of thousands of cyclists across 300 cities ride their bicycles for about an hour. In these events, cyclists disregard laws and regulations by bursting through red lights, traversing highway overpasses, and occupying multiple lanes of the road. These cyclists form part of Critical Mass. For the time in which Critical Mass takes place, participants are part of a nomos, or “normative universe”, which determines laws for their particular community. Critical Mass’ conception as a nomos, together with its interaction or performance among the legal orders set out in municipal, provincial, and federal …

Reconsidering Copyright's Constitutionality, Graham Reynolds

All Faculty Publications

In 1996, in Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin – Michelin & Cie v. National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada (CAW-Canada) (Michelin), Teitelbaum J. of the Federal Court (Trial Division) held both that specific provisions of the Copyright Act did not infringe the right to freedom of expression as protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter) and that, even if they did, these provisions could be justified under s. 1 of the Charter. Since Michelin, these conclusions have been treated by Canadian courts as settled. The purpose of this paper is to challenge these …

The Way We Pay Now: Understanding And Evaluating Performance-Based Executive Pay, David I. Walker

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last ten years, performance-based equity pay, and particularly performance shares, have displaced stock options as the primary instrument for compensating executives of large, public companies in the U.S. This article examines that transformation, analyzing the structure and incentive properties of these newly important instruments and evaluating the benefits and risks from an investor’s perspective. Notable observations include the following: Although technically “stock” instruments, performance shares mimic the incentive characteristics of options. But performance shares avoid the tax, accounting, and other constraints that have led to uniform grants of non-indexed, at the money options. Performance share plans can be …