Law Commons^™

Designing And Constructing Commercial Agreements In The 21st Century, Jeffrey Ritter

St. Thomas Law Review

In the 21s century, commercial agreements crafted by attorneys structure relationships in which the administration and execution of those relationships is largely, if not exclusively, governed through the use of digital technologies. These technologies communicate information, record and report activities taken by the parties in furtherance of their relationship, make payments of monies and other compensation, and provide the evidence with which disputes among the parties will be resolved. All of these functions are designed and executed through technology systems that monitor and record activities that are the basis for determining compliance with the requirements of those agreements at a …

The Disappearance Of A Dinosaur: Reassignment Clauses Are Losing Their Footing In College Coaches' Contracts, Martin J. Greenberg, Brandon Leibsohn

Marquette Sports Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Aftermath Of Catastrophes: Valuing Business Interruption Insurance Losses, Chris French

Faculty Scholarship

With the onslaught of tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods in recent years, business interruption losses have been staggering. Many businesses do not survive such catastrophes. Even business owners that purchased business interruption insurance, which is intended to ensure that a business’s revenue stream continues during an interruption in its operations, often find that their insurers have dramatically different views regarding the amount of the losses that should be reimbursed. The reason for this disparity in views is that the loss valuation provisions in business interruption insurance policies provide very little guidance regarding how business interruption losses should be calculated. Thus, disputes …

From Pigs To Hogs, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

The question of whether, and to what extent, markets price contract terms in government bond issues has been one of considerable debate in the literature. We use a natural experiment thrown up by the Euro area sovereign debt crisis of 2010-2013 to test whether a particular set of contract terms – ones that gave an advantage to sovereign guaranteed bonds over garden variety sovereign bonds – was priced. These contract terms turned out to be important for the holders of guaranteed bonds during the Greek debt restructuring of 2012, where they helped the holders of guaranteed bonds escape the haircut …

Private Ordering In The Market For Professional Services, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

Freedom of contract is significantly restricted in the market for professional services. Under the so-called “corporate practice doctrine,” professionals such as doctors and lawyers are prohibited from practicing within corporate entities, and laypeople are likewise prohibited from investing in professional service firms. Defenders of this prohibition argue that it can be justified as a means of protecting professional independence and thereby increasing the quality of care. In fact, however, the available evidence suggests that investment restrictions are counterproductive to their stated goal. In practice, these restrictions raise costs and reduce access without measurably improving the quality of service at all. …

Legal Osmosis: The Role Of Brain Science In Protecting Adolescents, Cheryl B. Preston, Brandon T. Crowther

Hofstra Law Review

In the last decade, the Supreme Court relied on scientific findings presented in amicus curiae briefs filed by various medical and psychological organizations and health professionals in three juvenile justice cases, Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, and Miller v. Alabama. Theresearch showed that the structure and function of adolescent brains are distinct from those of adults, which supports the position that adolescents, as a class, are generally immature in three separate, but related, ways. First, adolescents are more likely to engage in risky behavior than adults; second, adolescents are less able to control their impulses than adults; and finally, …

Indiana Jones: Contracts Originalist, W. Mark C. Weidemaier

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Prizes! Innovating, Risk Shifting, And Avoiding Contracts And Grants, Steven L. Schooner, Nathaniel E. Castellano

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This short piece introduces prizes (or prize contests), which have become the darling of the Obama administration. Public managers increasingly find prizes more attractive than the more conventional and heavily regulated vehicles that they replace, contracts and grants. The paper explains some of the advantages of this increasingly popular approach and signals a cautionary note, particularly to contestants. Unfortunately, the government has not yet provided a straightforward means for contestants to obtain meaningful review if and when disputes arise. Accordingly, the authors suggest that, while shifting risk to the private sector is fair game, contest-sponsoring agencies should respect the private …

The Rise And Fall Of Unconscionability As The 'Law Of The Poor', Anne Fleming

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What happened to unconscionability? Here’s one version of the story: The doctrine of unconscionability experienced a brief resurgence in the mid-1960s at the hands of naive, left-liberal, activist judges, who used it to rewrite private consumer contracts according to their own sense of justice. These folks meant well, no doubt, much like present-day consumer protection crusaders who seek to ensure the “fairness” of financial products and services. But courts’ refusal to enforce terms they deemed "unconscionable” served only to increase the cost of doing business with low-income households. Judges ended up hurting the very people they were trying to help. …

The Anomaly Of Entrapment, Jessica A. Roth

Articles

Now in our second decade after 9/11, we are firmly in the prevention era of law enforcement. Faced with the unacceptable consequences of identifying threats too late, government agents are moving aggressively to identify potential terrorists before they strike. Undercover agents and confidential informants necessarily play a large role in such efforts. As a result of such operations, we have seen a number of cases brought to trial in the federal courts in which defendants have asserted the entrapment defense. To date, the defense has not succeeded. However, as a consequence of these cases, the United States Supreme Court may …

Visual Clarity In Contract Drafting, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

No abstract provided.

Mining Contracts: How To Read And Understand Them, International Senior Lawyers Project, Openoil, Revenue Watch Institute-Natural Resource Governance Institue, Vale Columbia Center On Sustainable International Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Books

In December 2013, a diverse group of 14 experts from Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Europe worked together for five days to produce a user-friendly guide in English and in French on "Mining Contracts: How to Read and Understand Them," to help policy makers, civil society, citizens, and the media understand the often complex and opaque terms of mining contracts. With increasing calls for contract transparency – and the growing recognition of the importance of the terms of contracts for resource-rich countries – this book explains in layman’s terms the principal features of a contract, compares different approaches …

Stop, Look, And Listen! The Legality Of Standard Form Contracts, Atty. Edward Chico

Center for Business Research and Development

The proliferation of standard form contracts in today’s market calls for a law that would regulate and in some cases prohibit outright unfair contract terms, which deleteriously affect the buying public.

Sovereign Debt And The Three And A Half Minute Transaction: What Sticky Boilerplate Reveals About Contract Law And Practice, Andrea Boyack

Faculty Publications

The Three and a Half Minute Transaction: Boilerplate and the Limits of Contractual Design, by Mitu Gulati and Robert E. Scott, is a cautionary tale about modern legal practice where the protagonist is the standard sovereign debt contract. The book discloses an undeniable flaw in sovereign bond boilerplate (the widely used pari passu clause) that, in spite of expensive, sophisticated lawyering, perpetuates a risky disconnect between party intent and contract terms. The fact that boilerplate terms persist even in elite sovereign-lending practices suggests that the problem of over-reliance on standard form language is ubiquitous.When contract terms diverge from client risk …

Hypothetical Efficiency Is Not Grounds For Breach, Daniel M. Isaacs

West Virginia Law Review

The law does not approve of the efficient breach of contract; it merely provides or fails to provide remedies. Although there are situations where the law implies contract terms, there is no basis for an implied covenant of efficiency. Hypothetical contracts, purporting to incorporate a release where the cost of performance to the promisor exceeds its value to the promisee, cannot be used to bind people to results, even efficient ones, to which they did not agree. Where it is inefficient to demand performance, flexibility should come from the promisee who, having received in trust the power to limit the …

Teaching Negotiation Ethics, Art Hinshaw

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

The Advance Directive Statute Revisited, Samuel W. Wardle

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Waiving Goodbye To Arbitration: Factoring Prejudice When A Party Delays Assertion Of Its Contractual Right To Arbitrate: Elliot V. Kb Home N.C., Inc., Kristen Sanocki

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This note addresses the lawsuit described above, Elliott v. KB Home N.C., Inc., concerning whether KB Home waived its contractual right to arbitration by waiting three years to assert that right, which ultimately prejudiced a class of plaintiffs pursuing litigation against it. After examining how North Carolina courts decide whether to compel arbitration, this note will analyze the four-factor test North Carolina courts use to determine whether a party has sat on its right to arbitrate for too long, subjecting itself to waiver of arbitration. Finally, this note contends that North Carolina's four-factor test, as opposed to a bright-line rule, …

Putting The Cisg Where It Belongs: In The Uniform Commercial Code, Kina Grbic

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Marvin V. Marvin: The Scope Of Equity With Respect To Non-Marital Relationships, John F. Dellagrotta

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Vertical Boilerplate, James Gibson

Law Faculty Publications

Despite what we learn in law school about the “meeting of the minds,” most contracts are merely boilerplate—take-it-or-leave-it propositions. Negotiation is nonexistent; we rely on our collective market power as consumers to regulate contracts’ content. But boilerplate imposes certain information costs because it often arrives late in the transaction and is hard to understand. If those costs get too high, then the market mechanism fails. So how high are boilerplate’s information costs? A few studies have attempted to measure them, but they all use a “horizontal” approach—i.e., they sample a single stratum of boilerplate and assume that it represents the …

Beaten To "Submissions": Talent Agents Score A Victory Over Managers On Submissions Of Motion Picture Screenplays, Matthew H. Schwartz

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Remedies: A Guide For The Perplexed, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

Remedies is one of a law student’s most practical courses. Remedies students and their professors learn to work with their eyes on the question at the end of litigation: what can the court do for the successful plaintiff? Remedies develops students’ professional identities and broadens their professional horizons by reorganizing their analysis of procedure, torts, contracts, and property around choosing and measuring relief - compensatory damages, punitive damages, an injunction, specific performance, disgorgement, and restitution. This article discusses the law-school course in Remedies - the content of the Remedies course, the Remedies classroom experience, and Remedies outside the classroom through …

Viability Of Arbitration Clauses In West Virginia Oil And Gas Leases: It Is All About The Lease!!!, Phillip T. Glyptis

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sex Matters: Considering Gender In Consumer Contracts, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

We hear about the so-called “War on Women” and persisting salary gaps between men and women in the popular media, but contracts scholars and policymakers rarely discuss gender. Instead, dominant voices in the contracts field often reflect classical and economics-driven theories built on assumptions of gender neutral and economically rational actors. Furthermore, many mistakenly assume that market competition and antidiscrimination legislation address any improper biases in contracting. This Article therefore aims to shed light on gender’s importance by distilling data from my own e-survey of Colorado consumers along with others’ research regarding gender differences in contract outcomes, interests and behaviors. …

Civil Recourse Theory's Reductionism, Guido Calabresi

Indiana Law Journal

American Association of Law Schools Torts & Compensation Systems Panel

Nonmarket Values In Family Businesses, Benjamin Means

William & Mary Law Review

Despite the economic importance of family businesses, legal scholarship has often overlooked their distinctive character. Instead, scholars focus on the chosen form of business organization— partnership, corporation, LLC—and assume that the participants are economically rational actors who seek to maximize their individual preferences. This Article contends that family businesses are extensions of family relationships and that nonmarket values affect their goals and governance choices.

Just as family law scholars have shown that contract principles can be applied to regulate intimate relationships, corporate law scholars should recognize that the intimacy of family life often substitutes for arm’s length bargaining in family …

Nearly A Century In Reserve: Organized Baseball: Collective Bargaining And The Antitrust Exemption Enter The 80'S, Nancy Jean Meissner

Pepperdine Law Review

In her comment, the author fashions a compelling argument for congressional elimination of baseball's exemption from federal antitrust laws. After noting that the exemption had been formulated in 1922 by the Supreme Court, the author explains that it has been abused by baseball club owners to create a virtual monopoly over ballplayers through the reserve system. Although the reserve system's control was somewhat diluted in 1976, with the advent of free agency and collective bargaining, club owners are currently negotiating for mandatory compensation for the loss of free agents. The resultant threat of a player's strike has served to focus …

Negotiations Between The Wga And Amptp: How To Avoid Strikes And Still Promote Members' Needs, Jillian N. Morphis

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

The article focuses on the collective bargaining agreement negotiations between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and Writers Guild of America (WGA). The role of the WGA is to ensure the rights of writers are not violated and checks on their credit, legislation registration of their writings and enforcement of contracts, while AMPTP is a collective bargaining negotiating association. The strikes by WGA, the negotiation and mediation techniques are also discussed.

Beyond Nondiscrimination: At&T Mobility Llc V. Concepcion And The Further Federalization Of U.S. Arbitration Law, Edward P. Boyle, David N. Cinotti

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

The article presents information on the court case of AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion that was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court and which questioned the preemption of state law and the Federal Arbitration Act related to the enforcement of arbitration agreement. The unconscionability doctrine, the case law related to arbitration and the contract law is discussed. The interpretation of arbitration law is also discussed.