Law Commons^™

The Visible Hand: Coordination Functions Of The Regulatory State, Robert B. Ahdieh

Faculty Scholarship

We live in a coordination economy. As one surveys the myriad challenges of modern social and economic life, an ever increasing proportion is defined not by the need to reconcile competing interests, but by the challenge of getting everyone on the same page. Conflict is not absent in these settings. It is not, however, the determinative factor in shaping our behaviors and resulting interactions. That essential ingredient, instead, is coordination.

Such coordination is commonly understood as the function of the market. As it turns out, however, optimal coordination will not always emerge, as if led “by an invisible hand.” Even …

What’S Privacy Got To Do, Got To Do With It: Why Information Should Drop Privacy And Seek Legal Love On Its Own Terms, Christopher E. Paxton

Christopher E Paxton

My paper argues that because the privacy interests at stake are so varied and so difficult to pin down, privacy law in the United States should shift away from privacy qua privacy and focus on the protection of information by adopting something akin to the European Union’s Data Protection and Database Directives.

Charity And Information: Correcting The Failure Of A Disjunctive Social Norm, Brian Broughman, Robert Cooter

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Charitable donations fund social goods that the state and markets undersupply. Despite widespread belief in the importance of private charity, most Americans donate little or nothing. Experiments in behavioral economics show that anonymity, not human nature, causes low contributions. Anonymity poses a particular challenge for charity because of the special character of the obligation. Charity is a disjunctive social norm, meaning the obligation is owed to "A or B or C or ...". Disclosure of each individual's aggregate conduct is necessary for the effectiveness of any disjunctive social norm. To revitalize charity we propose a public registry where each taxpayer …

The Story Of Us: Resolving The Face-Off Between Autobiographical Speech And Information Privacy, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

Increasingly more “ordinary” Americans are choosing to share their life experiences with a public audience. In doing so, however, they are revealing more than their own personal stories, they are exposing private information about others as well. The face-off between autobiographical speech and information privacy is coming to a head, and our legal system is not prepared to handle it.

In a prior article, I established that autobiographical speech is a unique and important category of speech that is at risk of being undervalued under current law. This article builds on my earlier work by addressing the emerging conflict between …

Something Judicious This Way Comes...The Use Of Foreshadowing As A Persuasive Device In Judicial Narrative, Michael J. Higdon

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ill Telecommunications: How Internet Infrastructure Providers Lose First Amendment Protection, Nicholas Bramble

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently proposed an Internet nondiscrimination rule: "Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner." Among other requests, the FCC sought comment on whether the proposed nondiscrimination rule would "promote free speech, civic participation, and democratic engagement," and whether it would "impose any burdens on access providers' speech that would be cognizable for purposes of the First Amendment." The purpose of this Article is to suggest that a wide range of responses to these First Amendment questions, offered by telecommunications providers …

There Is A Time To Keep Silent And A Time To Speak, The Hard Part Is Knowing Which Is Which: Striking The Balance Between Privacy Protection And The Flow Of Health Care Information, Daniel J. Gilman, James C. Cooper

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Health information technology (HIT) has become a signal element of federal health policy, especially as the recently enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act or ARRA) comprises numerous provisions related to HIT and commits tens of billions of dollars to its development and adoption. These provisions charge various agencies of the federal government with both general and specific HIT-related implementation tasks including, inter alia, providing funding for HIT in various contexts: the implementation of interoperable HIT, HIT-related infrastructure, and HIT-related training and research. The Recovery Act also contains various regulatory provisions pertaining to HIT. Provisions of the …

It Is Time: Why The Fda Should Start Disclosing Drug Trial Data, Mustafa Ünlü

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Although [drug] manufacturers bear the cost of research data generation, it is oftentimes a worthwhile investment that also confers significant commercial advantages. Consequently, they have argued that research data should be considered a trade secret and kept confidential. The FDA's longstanding position has been to accept this proposition. Even when Congress appeared to mandate disclosure or weaken the underlying rationale for secrecy, the FDA has continued to treat research data as confidential. A strong argument against a default posture of confidentiality is that research data disclosure would promote broad public interests by eliminating the societal costs brought about by keeping …

The True Identity Of Australian Identity Theft Offences: A Measured Response Or An Unjustified Status Offence?, Alex Steel

Alex Steel

New offences to deal with internet based identity crime have been created worldwide in recent years and there has been concern at the breadth of such offences. This article provides a detailed analysis of Australian versions of these offences and compares them to other internet related offences, with a focus on Australian and Canadian approaches to the issues. After defining what is meant by identity theft and identity crime it provides an overview of some of the differences in the nature of digital crime that have led to calls for specific legislation, and some of the problems that face traditional …

A Board’S Duty To Monitor, Eric J. Pan

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reply: The Complexity Of Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment, and responses to that article by Professors Thráinn Eggertsson, Wendy Gordon, Gregg Macey, Robert Merges, Elinor Ostrom, and Lawrence Solum. This short Reply comments briefly on each of those responses.

That Guy's A Batterer!: A Scarlet Letter Approach To Domestic Violence In The Information Age, Elaine M. Chiu

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

We have all seen the ads and heard the jingles. Some of us may have even visited the websites. "Come meet your soul mate, come meet your future spouse, come find true love, at Match.com, at eHarmony.com, at Yahoo." Internet dating is a booming business. In 2005, an estimated sixteen million Americans spent more than $245 million looking for love on the Internet. Approximately ten-million Americans are current online daters. In addition to these digital matchmakers, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and You Tube offer amazing online communities where folks can advertise their best features. Then, there …

That Guy's A Batterer!: A Scarlet Letter Approach To Domestic Violence In The Information Age, Elaine M. Chiu

Faculty Publications

Despite the remarkable reliance on the Internet as a source of information, we have yet to fully take advantage of it in our movement against domestic violence. Information is used as a weapon in the battle against domestic violence in several limited ways. Yet there is still more we can do with information and, specifically, the Internet, in combating domestic violence. The Scarlet Letter proposal seeks to empower potential victims of domestic violence with information so that they themselves can make choices that will avoid years of suffering and abuse. The idea is to allow public access to the data …

Constructing Commons In The Cultural Environment, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

This Essay considers the problem of understanding intellectual sharing/pooling arrangements and the construction of cultural commons arrangements. We argue that an adaptation of the approach pioneered by Elinor Ostrom and collaborators to commons arrangements in the natural environment may provide a template for the examination of constructed commons in the cultural environment. The approach promises to lead to a better understanding of how participants in commons and pooling arrangements structure their interactions in relation to the environment(s) within which they are embedded and with which they share interdependent relationships. Such an improved understanding is critical for obtaining a more complete …

Envisioning The Smart Grid: Network Architecture, Information Control, And The Public Policy Balancing Act, Elias L. Quinn, Adam L. Reed

University of Colorado Law Review

While smart grid development promises benefits for utilities and consumers alike, the public policy surrounding its rollout remains conflicted. Will regulation guide the structure and usability of the smart grid, or will the ways in which the smart grid is already being applied force specific types of regulation? Early decisions by regulators will surely influence the balancing of policy concerns later in the smart grid development process; yet these decisions will be made in a regulatory environment in which utilities may lack the proper incentives to promote energy efficiency and consumer awareness-both functions of the smart grid. This Article examines …

New Pleading, New Discovery, Scott Dodson

Michigan Law Review

Pleading in federal court has a new narrative. The old narrative was one of notice, with the goal of broad access to the civil justice system. New Pleading, after the landmark Supreme Court cases of Twombly and Iqbal, is focused on factual sufficiency, with the purpose of screening out meritless cases that otherwise might impose discovery costs on defendants. The problem with New Pleading is that factual insufficiency often is a poor proxy for meritlessness. Some plaintifs lack sufficient factual knowledge of the elements of their claims not because the claims lack merit but because the information they need is …

Trade Secret Law And Information Development Incentives, Michael Risch

Michael Risch

Trade secrets differ from other forms of intellectual property in many subtle ways that affect incentives to invest in information development. These differences relate not only to the types of information protected, but also to the requirements one must meet to protect that type of information. The various divergences and intersections of trade secret laws with other intellectual property laws lead to differences in the amount and types of investments companies make in developing information. This chapter explores five types of differential incentives associated with trade secret law: - Trade secret law v. no trade secret law - Trade secret …