Law Commons^™

Buying Voice: Financial Rewards For Whistleblowing Lawyers, Nancy J. Moore, Kathleen Clark

Nancy J Moore

“Buying Voice: Financial Incentives for Whistleblowing Lawyers”

Kathleen Clark and Nancy J. Moore

Abstract

The federal government relies increasingly on whistleblowers to ferret out fraud, and has awarded whistleblowers over $4 billion under the False Claims Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform and Consumer Protection Act. May lawyers ethically seek whistleblower rewards under these federal statutes? A handful of lawyers have tried to do so as FCA qui tam relators. They have not yet succeeded, but several court decisions suggest that they might be able to do so under confidentiality exceptions to state ethics law, which several courts have …

Personal Reflections On Connick V. Thompson, Michael Vitiello

Michael Vitiello

This essay describes my minor role in Connick v. Thompson. After offering that background, I use the case as a vehicle to discuss why I oppose the death penalty.

Rethinking Regulation And Innovation In The U.S. Legal Services Market, Ray W. Campbell

Ray W Campbell

For decades, academics have argued that the US system for regulating the practice of law inhibits innovation. Despite that academic consensus, we live in an age of unparalleled innovation in the way legal services are provided to clients in the United States. What gives? How can we live in a regulatory environment that prevents innovation, and have such an abundance of it? Where is this innovation coming from, and from whence might more innovation come? The answers are neither simple nor obvious. Understanding this changing landscape requires a close look both at how innovations take root and at the US …

The Corporate Gatekeeper In Ethical Perspective, Christopher T. Hines

Christopher T Hines

The fallout from the financial crisis continues to inform the development of corporate and securities law, and the new regulatory landscape for economic activity within the United States is beginning to take form. This evolutionary process, however, has been anything but stable or certain. As might be expected, in concert with such momentous change in law and policy, recriminations for and associated investigations of past activity continue to affect competent regulators as well as market participants. Nevertheless, while many of the underlying causes of the financial crisis are now better understood by both policy makers and scholars, the question remains—given …

Sea Captains And Philosopher Kings: Melville's Billy Budd And Plato's Republic, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

This article shows how Melville’s Billy Budd, rightly one of law and literature’s most widely studied canonical texts, answers Plato’s challenge in Book X of the Republic: Show how “poets” create better citizens, especially better rulers, or banish them from the commonwealth of reasoned law. Captain Vere is a flawed but instructive version of the Republic’s philosopher-king, even as his story is precisely the sort of “poetry” that Plato should willingly allow, by his own republican principles, into the ideal polity. Not surprisingly, the novella shows how law’s agents must be wise, even as their law must be philosophical, if …

Supervisory Responsibility For The Office Of Legal Counsel, Avidan Cover

Avidan Cover

No abstract provided.