Law Commons^™

Some Economic Insights Into Application Of Payments Doctrine: Walker-Thomas Revisited, James W. Bowers

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Contractual relations frequently involve multiple transactions, which might give rise either to a single aggregate debt, or else to multiple differing obligations. This conflict creates the application of payments problem. Unsurprisingly, the common law developed long-standing rules for the application of partial payments to multiple, but remedially distinguishable debts. The subject is made timely again by the recent enactments of the 1999 revision of Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Article 9 instructs courts how to solve the application of payments problem when some partial payments might satisfy “purchase money” security interests. The enactments repealed the common law application …

Introduction To Rethinking Payments Law, Steven L. Harris

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Uniformity And Diversity In Payment Systems, Clayton P. Gillette, Steven D. Walt

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The rules governing the transfer of value between users of payment systems differ among payment systems. Rules allocating loss from unauthorized payment, erroneous payment, and the reversibility of payment vary according to whether payment is made by check, credit or debit card, wholesale wire transfer, or letter of credit. Thirty-five years after the New Payments Code failed to attract enough support to become law, academics and practitioners recently have proposed that payment system rules be uniform. This Article rejects this initially attractive position. It argues that the optimal standardization of payment system rules allows diverse rules among payment systems. The …

Reimagining Payment Systems: Allocation Of Risk For Unauthorized Payment Inception, Linda J. Rusch

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Payment systems have evolved as new mechanisms for transferring value have been created. The legal infrastructure supporting those mechanisms has evolved in a piecemeal fashion resulting in very different risk allocations depending upon the mechanism used to transfer value. This article argues that the time has come to revise payments law to address the risk allocation issues in a direct fashion based upon uniform policy positions, regardless of the mechanism used to transfer value. To illustrate that concept, an approach to drafting statutory language for drafting allocation of risk from unauthorized payment inceptions is proposed.

Uncertainty And Loss In The Free Speech Rights Of Public Employees Under Garcetti V. Ceballos, Sarah F. Suma

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Resolving a circuit split, the Supreme Court declared in Garcetti v. Ceballos that the First Amendment does not protect speech made pursuant to a public employee's work duties, regardless of whether the speech relates to a matter of public concern or the government's restrictions are justifiable. This article argues that a bright line rule eliminating First Amendment protection for job-duty speech is inconsistent with the theories underlying free speech protection. Further, this article explores practical drawbacks to Garcetti's bright-line rule, including inconsistent judicial determination of the scope of job duties, a disincentive to report government abuse through one's chain-of-command, …

Constitutional Transplants And The Mutation Effect, Horacio Spector

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article is concerned with constitutional transplantation, that is, the borrowing of constitutional institutions and precedents from foreign jurisdictions. It pursues two main goals. First, it argues that the borrowing of constitutional texts can be successful over long periods of time, and that when the transplanted texts fail, this failure is not easily attributable to transplantation alone. Second, it introduces the notion of a "mutation effect" to the theoretical analyses of judicial transplants. By "mutation" of precedents, the author means the process of continuing to extend the scope of a holding, regardless of its factual basis, to cover situations not …

Domestic Bonds, Credit Derivatives, And The Next Transformation Of Sovereign Debt, Anna Gelpern

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Financial markets in poor and middle-income countries are experiencing a fundamental shift. Until recently, most of them were shallow-to-nonexistent and closed to foreigners. Governments often had to rely on risky borrowing abroad; the private sector had even fewer options. But between 1995 and 2005, domestic debt in the emerging markets grew from $1 trillion to $4 trillion dollars. In Mexico, domestic debt went from just over twenty percent of the total government debt stock in 1995 to nearly eighty percent in 2007. Over the same period, derivative contracts to transfer emerging market credit risk surpassed the market capitalization of the …

Corporate Social Responsibility: The Role Of Law And Markets And The Case Of Developing Countries, Antonio Vives

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In order for the corporation to engage in responsible practices, many obstacles must be overcome. One such obstacle is the belief of many managers that the corporation would be violating its fiduciary responsibility if it engaged in activities that go beyond what is required by the law. Another obstacle is that many of those practices have a real cost but are perceived not to have a corresponding tangible benefit. The article discusses and dismisses these perceived obstacles and argues that it is both through law and the workings of the market that responsible behavior can enhance society's welfare. It is …

Order Without (Enforceable) Law: Why Countries Enter Into Non-Enforceable Competition Policy Chapters In Free Trade Agreements, D. Daniel Sokol

Chicago-Kent Law Review

There has been an explosion in the past ten to fifteen years of bilateral and regional free trade agreements in Latin America (together, preferential free trade agreements or PTAs). The purpose of PTAs is to increase trade, regulatory, and investment liberalization. As trade liberalization requires more than just a reduction of tariffs, PTAs include "chapters" in a number of areas of domestic regulation. These chapters that address domestic regulation create binding commitments to liberalize domestic regulation that may impact foreign trade. Among chapters that address domestic regulation, many of the Latin American PTAs include a chapter on antitrust or competition …

The Future Of The Economic Analysis Of Law In Latin America: A Proposal For Model Codes, Juan Javier Del Granado, M. C. Mirow

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Nothing excites civilian lawyers and judges more than commissions for codification. Codification is more than an academic enterprise. Codification projects directly cut across the interface between law and life. ALACDE intends to harness this Latin American interest in codification to bring the economic approach to Latin America. A new-generation law and economics civil and commercial code will be a conscious project to restate Roman law's usefulness for coping with today's problems. Through law and economics, Roman law will renew itself. As a paradigmatic private-law system, Roman law is eminently amenable to a state-of-the-art fusion with law and economics. Sensitivity to …

What Is The Point Of International Criminal Justice?, Mirjan Damaška

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The first part of the article discusses the goals international criminal courts have set for themselves. The author believes that these goals are too numerous, that they are often in conflict, and that the courts are not well suited for the achievement of some of them. This situation generates disparity between the courts' aspiration and achievement, a degree of disorientation, and difficulty in assessing the courts' performance. Disillusionment stemming from unfulfilled expectations, and inconsistencies springing from disorientation, are harmful to any system of justice, and especially to international criminal courts whose legitimacy is still fragile.

In the second part of …