Law Commons^™

The Meaning And Malleableness Of Liberty From 1897-1945, Quentin E. Smith

The Purdue Historian

This paper covers how the substance and meaning of liberty changed during the ending years of the Gilded Age (1870-1900) through the beginning ages of the Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968). Economic liberty took shape in the cases Allegeyer v. Louisiana (1897) and Lochner v. New York (1905). Civil liberties would take several more years to come into the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction. The case Gitlow v. New York (1925) began the establishment of incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the states, otherwise known as our fundamental liberties (note: The Supreme Court used selective incorporation, however). In the case U.S. v. …

Equity, Law And The Seventh Amendment, Samuel Bray

Journal Articles

The Seventh Amendment requires that the civil jury trial right be “preserved” in “Suits at common law.” Those bits of constitutional text have long set the justices on a path of historical reconstruction. For roughly two centuries, the Supreme Court has determined the scope of the civil jury trial right in federal court by reference to historic English courts. But no one is happy with the current test. In one widely used variant, it requires an inquiry into analogous 1791 actions, followed by an inquiry into the legal or equitable provenance of the remedy sought, and then a weighing that …

The Federal Option: Delaware As A De Facto Agency, Omari Scott Simmons

Washington Law Review

Despite over 200 years of deliberation and debate, the United States has not adopted a federal corporate chartering law. Instead, Delaware is the “Federal Option” for corporate law and adjudication. The contemporary federal corporate chartering debate is, in part, a referendum on its role. Although the federal government has regulated other aspects of interstate commerce and has the power to charter corporations and preempt Delaware pursuant to its Commerce Clause power, it has not done so. Despite the rich and robust scholarly discussion of Delaware’s jurisdictional dominance, its role as a de facto national regulator remains underdeveloped. This Article addresses …

Is Incorporation The Solution To The Enigma Of Corporate Tax Residency For International Tax Purposes?, Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln Iv

Texas A&M Law Review

Incorporation of a company for testing residency—if applied uniformly—is likely the best and most accurate way to reflect corporate residency for tax purposes. However, it does not always reflect economic reality. There is not a consensus on what the best approach is. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”) countries overwhelmingly use three tests for residency: incorporation, central management and control, and domicile. Indeed, a court in the United States or other jurisdictions may often ask if tax-avoidance motives exist when incorporation occurs in one jurisdiction and central management and control occurs in another.

This Article follows the 2017 …

Dual Allegiance: Federal And State Treason Prosecutions, The Treason Clause, And The Fourteenth Amendment, Alexander Gouzoules

Faculty Publications

The Treason Clause creates an individual right at a criminal trial that could have logically been placed within the Fifth Amendment rather than Article III: “No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.” It has effectively prevented expansive uses of the charge at the federal level. But states may also charge citizens with treason against state governments, and many such prosecutions have played important roles in American history.

This article reviews the parallel histories of state and federal treason prosecutions. It then analyzes …

Core Criminal Procedure, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutional criminal procedural rights are familiar to contemporary criminal law scholars and practitioners alike. But today, U.S. criminal justice may diverge substantially from its centuries-old framework when all three branches recognize only a core set of inviolable rights, implicitly or explicitly discarding others. This criminal procedural line drawing takes place when the U.S. criminal justice system engages in law enforcement cooperation with foreign criminal justice systems in order to advance criminal cases.

This Article describes the two forms of this criminal procedural line drawing. The first is a “core criminal procedure” approach, rooted in fundamental rights, that arises in the …

Variations On A Theme: Corporate Law In Latin America, Continental Europe, And The United States, Ángel R. Oquendo

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

The regulation of incorporated companies in Latin America and Continental Europe appears to distance itself from that in the United States. It differs in how it structures itself and handles incorporation, incorporators, piercing, governance, discipline, and shareholders. In their regulatory exertions, both regimes rely, certainly, on legislation and adjudication yet do so differently, qualitatively in addition to quantitatively.

Apparently, civil and common law continue to specialize respectively though not exclusively in statutes and binding precedents. Still, they ever more frequently intrude into each other’s apparent specialty, while leaving their own imprint on it. The tendency to converge coexists with that …

Timbs V. Indiana: The Constitutionality Of Civil Forfeiture When Used By States, Kris Fernandez

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

In Timbs v. Indiana, Petitioner Tyson Timbs asks the Supreme Court to incorporate the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment against the states, providing extra protection for individuals against fines and forfeiture that are “grossly disproportionate” to the harm caused. The decision to incorporate the Excessive Fines Clause and the guidelines for applying that incorporation would have a substantial effect on governments, which often rely on the revenue gained from forfeiture. This commentary argues that the Supreme Court of the United States should incorporate the Excessive Fines Clause based on historical support of an individual’s right to be …

The Diverging Right(S) To Bear Arms: Private Armament And The Second And Fourteenth Amendments In Historical Context, Alexander Gouzoules

Faculty Publications

This article compares the historical evolution of the social understanding of private armament with contemporary legal doctrine on the right to bear arms. The District of Columbia v. Heller decision, which held that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to self-defense, and the McDonald v. City of Chicago decision, which held the Second Amendment to be incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment, both turned on extensive historical analysis. But by reading a broad “individual right to self-defense” into both the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, the Court assumed continuity between the social understandings at the time of these amendments’ respective ratifications. …

Newsroom: From Farm To School 1-2-2018, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Will Delaware Be Different? An Empirical Study Of Tc Heartland And The Shift To Defendant Choice Of Venue, Ofer Eldar, Neel U. Sukhatme

Faculty Scholarship

Why do some venues evolve into litigation havens while others do not? Venues might compete for litigation for various reasons, such as enhancing their judges’ prestige and increasing revenues for the local bar. This competition is framed by the party that chooses the venue. Whether plaintiffs or defendants primarily choose venue is crucial because, we argue, the two scenarios are not symmetrical.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods illustrates this dynamic. There, the Court effectively shifted venue choice in many patent infringement cases from plaintiffs to corporate defendants. We use TC Heartland to empirically measure …

Fundamental Rights, Federal States, And Sovereignty: Some Random Remarks, Donald H. Regan

Articles

I am not an EU lawyer. The days are long gone when I could know a substantial fraction of EU law just by knowing about the free movement of goods. I get a fleeting glimpse of where the EU is going every year at the Jean Monnet Seminar in Dubrovnik, but no more than a glimpse. Still, when the editors invited me to write this Editorial Note, I could not refuse. Looking for inspiration, I read or reread all the previous twelve Notes. This was an enjoyable and informative exercise in itself, but only a few of the essays suggested …

Emerging From Daimler's Shadow: Registration Statutes As A Means To General Jurisdiction Over Foreign Corporations, Nicholas D'Angelo

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Note argues for the increased exercise of general jurisdiction based on registration statutes. Carefully drafted state statutes, explicitly stating that corporations registering to do business in a state thereby consent to general jurisdiction, not only solve the consequences of Daimler, but also fully comport with traditional values of fairness.

Part I outlines the jurisprudential history related to general jurisdiction. Section A begins with the concept of territoriality introduced in Pennoyer and the minimum contacts analysis in International Shoe, then discusses the modern doctrine in Perkins, Helicopteros, and Goodyear, culminating with Daimler. Section …

Three Vital Issues: Incorporation Of The Second Amendment, Federal Government Power, And Separation Of Powers - October 2009 Term, Michael C. Dorf, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.

Regulatory Competition And The Market For Corporate Law, Ofer Eldar, Lorenzo Magnolfi

Faculty Scholarship

This article develops an empirical model of firms’ choice of corporate laws under inertia. Delaware dominates the incorporation market, though recently Nevada, a state whose laws are highly protective of managers, has acquired a sizable market share. Using a novel database of incorporation decisions from 1995- 2013, we show that most firms dislike protectionist laws, such as anti-takeover statutes and liability protections for officers, and that Nevada’s rise is due to the preferences of small firms.Our estimates indicate that despite inertia, Delaware would lose significant market share and revenues if it adopted protectionist laws. Our findings support the hypothesis that …

More Wounding Than Wounds: Hysterectomy, Phenomenology, And The Pain(S) Of Excorporation, Heather Hill-Vasquez

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Focusing on the pain experience of hysterectomy, this article applies and interrogates the foundational descriptive process on which phenomenology is based and suggests that feminism and phenomenology are more compatible than previously asserted. Building upon the work of feminist philosophers who have also explored how feminist and phenomenological approaches share similar methods and intentions—especially in connection with the former’s significant attention to lived experience as a source for the theory feminism employs—the article engages with the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Samuel Mallin who maintain a consistent attention to the body in their phenomenological approaches. Arguing that Mallin’s method of …

Slides: Restoring The Acequias: Fixing What Wasn't Broken, Will Davidson

Innovations in Managing Western Water: New Approaches for Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Outcomes (Martz Summer Conference, June 11-12)

Presenter: Will Davidson, Acequia Assistance Project

26 slides

Three Vital Issues: Incorporation Of The Second Amendment, Federal Government Power, And Separation Of Powers - October 2009 Term, Michael C. Dorf, Erwin Chemerinsky

Michael C. Dorf

No abstract provided.

Delaware's Familiarity, Brian J. Broughman, Darian M. Ibrahim

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Why do corporations choose to incorporate in Delaware over other states? The existing literature primarily falls into two camps — the “race-to-the-top” and the “race-to-the-bottom” — both of which credit Delaware’s success to the quality of its corporate law and the expertise of its judges. We consider an alternative explanation for Delaware’s continued success: familiarity. After decades of dominance, business parties have become increasingly familiar with Delaware law. Using data from a sample of startups financed by venture capital, we find that firms domicile in Delaware as much for familiarity reasons as for its substantive features. The Article finishes by …

Taking Public Access To The Law Seriously: The Problem Of Private Control Over The Availability Of Federal Standards, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

In the 1930s, Harvard professor Erwin Griswold famously complained about the enormous numbers of New Deal regulations that were obscurely published on individual sheets or in “separate paper pamphlets.” Finding these binding federal rules was difficult, leading to “chaos” and an “intolerable” situation. Congress responded, requiring that agencies publish all rules in the Federal Register and in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Currently, recent federal public laws, the entire U.S. Code, the Federal Register, and the CFR are all freely available online as well as in governmental depository libraries. But with respect to thousands of federal regulations, the clock …

The Implications Of Incorporating The Eighth Amendment Prohibition On Excessive Bail, Scott Howe

Scott W. Howe

In its opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago, 130 S.Ct. 3020 (2010), concerning the incorporation of the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court included a footnote that listed the Eighth Amendment prohibition on excessive bail as one of the incorporated Bill of Rights protections. Oddly, the Court had never incorporated the bail clause or even explained what protections it conferred. While strange, these circumstances provide a rare opportunity to reason backward from incorporation to the meaning of the incorporated provision. And by pursuing those backward implications, the paper offers novel arguments about the proper understanding of the bail clause.

I …

Court Of Appeals Of New York, Consumers Union Of United States, Inc. V. New York, Daphne Vlcek

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Delaware Law As Lingua Franca: Theory And Evidence, Brian Broughman, Jesse M. Fried, Darian Ibrahim

Faculty Publications

Why would a firm incorporate in Delaware rather than in its home state? Prior explanations have focused on the inherent features of Delaware corporate law and on the positive network externalities created by so many other firms domiciling in Delaware. We offer an additional explanation: a firm may choose Delaware simply because its law is nationally known and thus can serve as a lingua franca for in-state and out-of-state investors. Analyzing the incorporation decisions of 1,850 venture-capitalist-backed start-ups, we find evidence consistent with this lingua franca explanation. Indeed, the lingua franca effect appears to be more important than other factors …

Liberty, James E. Fleming, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

"To secure the blessings of liberty," the Preamble to the US Constitution proclaims, "We the People . . . ordain and establish this Constitution." The Constitution is said to secure liberty through three principal strategies: the design of the Constitution as a whole; structural arrangements, most notably separation of powers andfederalism; and protection of rights. This chapter focuses on this third strategy of protecting liberty, in particular, through the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. We first examine the several approaches taken to the "Incorporation" of certain basic liberties "enumerated" in the Bill of Rights to apply to the state governments. We …

Private Control Over Access To Public Law: The Perplexing Federal Regulatory Use Of Private Standards, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

To save resources and build on private expertise, federal agencies have incorporated privately drafted standards into thousands of federal regulations — but only by “reference.” These standards range widely, subsuming safety, benefits, and testing standards. An individual who seeks access to this binding law generally cannot freely read it online or in a governmental depository library, as she can the U.S. Code or the Code of Federal Regulations. Instead, she generally must pay a significant fee to the drafting organization, or else she must travel to Washington, D.C., to the Office of the Federal Register’s reading room. This law, under …

Delaware Law As Lingua Franca: Theory And Evidence, Brian Broughman, Jesse Fried, Darian Ibrahim

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Why would a firm incorporate in Delaware rather than in its home state? Prior explanations have focused on the inherent features of Delaware corporate law, as well as the positive network externalities created by so many other firms domiciling in Delaware. We offer an additional explanation: a firm may choose Delaware simply because its law is nationally known and thus can serve as a “lingua franca” for in-state and out-of-state investors. Analyzing the incorporation decisions of 1,850 VC-backed startups, we find evidence consistent with this lingua-franca explanation. Indeed, the lingua-franca effect appears to be more important than other factors that …

The Second Amendment: An Analysis Of District Of Columbia V. Heller, Eileen Kaufman

Eileen Kaufman

No abstract provided.

The Incorporation Doctrine: The Degradation Of State Sovereignty And The Ushering Of Federal Tyranny, Roland Al Achtau

Senior Honors Theses

Abstract

My senior thesis paper will discuss the incorporation doctrine of the Bill of Rights to state governments. The incorporation doctrine has been subject to extensive debate as to the proper relationship between state and federal sovereignty. Proponents of incorporation believe that the incorporation of the Bill of Rights limits state governments from using pre-Civil War practices (such as discrimination and inhumane treatment of persons) and thus would ensure greater liberty to individuals. However, opponents believe that such a transfer of power to the federal government can lead to the demise of state sovereignty and usurpation of national power. In …

The Professional Corporation—Has The Death Knell Been Sounded?, Forest J. Bowman

Pepperdine Law Review

The favorable tax reasons for incorporating a professional practice have been substantially reduced by the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act. The retirement benefits of the professional corporation have effectively been eliminated by TEFRA. In addition, the new allocation of income powers provided by TEFRA may have eliminated the tax incentive for forming a professional corporation. The professional's decision whether to incorporate his practice will now rest with his desires as to how he wishes to carry out that practice. This article discusses the changes that TEFRA has wrought, and its impact on the professionals' decision to incorporate.

Teaching U.S. V. Windsor: The Defense Of Marriage Act And Its Constitutional Implications, Corey A. Ciocchetti

Corey A Ciocchetti

Students are captivated by contemporary, high-profile Supreme Court cases. They recognize the litigants featured on the news, they debate the public policy, sociological and other real world implications of the arguments in school and their peers and parents prod them to discuss their opinions outside of class. I incorporate very recent and noteworthy Supreme Court cases in my legal studies courses with great success. My students are more engaged and prepared than when I assign a textbook chapter (students would rather track the law as it develops in real time). They tend to recall the arguments and legal theories well …