Agency Commons^™

Three Out Of Four Economists Recommend Raising The Minimum Wage! A Closer Look At The Debate Surrounding Seattle's Minimum Wage Ordinance, Erica Bergmann

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will discuss the implications of a high minimum wage by examining the debate around the Seattle Ordinance with a particular focus on the IFA lawsuit. To analyze the possible impacts of the Seattle Ordinance, current and historical arguments both in support of and in opposition to minimum wage laws are considered. This Note ultimately concludes that the U.S. District Court rightly denied the IFA’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which would have frustrated Seattle’s experiment before it began. Seattle’s plan to implement a $15 minimum wage, and similar experiments, should be permitted to proceed because the problem of …

A Discussion With Epa's General Counsel Avi Garbow: Environmental Justice, Agency Priorities, And Employment, Avi S. Garbow, General Counsel

Environmental and Animal Law

The Center For International Law & Justice and Environmental Law Society present a discussion with Avi S. Garbow who, during his tenure as EPA General Counsel, has worked closely on the Clean Power Plan, Clean Water Rule and other initiatives.

When “Disruption” Collides With Accountability: Holding Ridesharing Companies Liable For Acts Of Their Drivers, Alexi Pfeffer-Gillett

Scholarly Articles

When Uber launched in San Francisco in 2010, it took the city by storm. Here was a high-tech transportation service that seemingly did everything better than taxicabs: it was more convenient, more accessible, more comfortable, and even cheaper in many instances. Uber’s initial success inspired a number of lower-cost, nonprofessional “ridesharing” options, which have flourished.

Some skeptics, including taxicab operators, have decried the arrival of these peer-to-peer ridesharing services, now classified by regulators as Transportation Network Companies (TNCs). While such complaints could be easily dismissed as the dying groans of a “disrupted” industry, a string of passenger safety incidents has …

A Threat To Or Protection Of Agency Relationships? The Impact Of The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act On Businesses, Jessica Milanowski

American University Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bureaucratic Administration: Experimentation And Immigration Law, Joseph Landau

Faculty Scholarship

In debates about executive branch authority and policy innovation, scholars have focused on two overarching relationships—horizontal tension between the president and Congress and the vertical interplay of federal and state authority. However, these debates have overlooked the role of frontline bureaucratic officials in advancing the laws they administer. This Article looks to immigration law—in which lower-level federal officers exercise discretion delegated down throughout federal agencies—to identify how bottom-up agency influences can inform categorical, across-the-board executive branch policy. In this Article, I argue that decisions by frontline officers can and should be better harnessed to pair local laboratories of executive experimentation …

Fiduciary-Isms: A Study Of Academic Influence On The Expansion Of The Law, Daniel B. Yeager

Faculty Scholarship

Fiduciary law aspires to nullify power imbalances by obligating strong parties to give themselves over to servient parties. For example, due to profound imbalances of legal know-how, lawyers must as fiduciaries pursue their clients’ interests, not their own, lest clients get lost in the competitive shuffle. As a peculiar hybrid of status and contract relations, politics and law, compassion and capitalism, fiduciary law is very much in vogue in academic circles. As vogue as it is, there remains room for my “Fiduciary-isms...”, a meditation on the expansion of fiduciary law from its origins in the law of trusts through partnerships, …

Chipping Away At The Rock: Perez V. Mortgage Bankers Association And The Seminole Rock Deference Doctrine, Kevin O. Leske

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Largely escaping judicial and scholarly examination for close to seventy years, the Seminole Rock deference doctrine directs federal courts to defer to an administrative agency’s interpretation of its own regulation unless such interpretation “is plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.” But at long last the United States Supreme Court is poised to re-evaluate the doctrine.

In March 2015, in Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association, the Court addressed whether a federal agency was required to follow the notice-and-comment procedures of the Administrative Procedure Act after it changed a prior interpretation of its regulation under the “Paralyzed Veterans doctrine.” Although …

Accessory Disloyalty: Comparative Perspectives On Substantial Assistance To Fiduciary Breach, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

Culpable participation in a fiduciary's breach of duty is independently wrongful. Much about this contingent form of liability is open to dispute. In the United States, well-established general doctrine defines the elements requisite to establishing accessory liability, which is categorized as a tort and often referred to as "aiding-and abetting" liability. What's controversial is how the tort applies to particular categories of actors, most recently investment banks that advise boards of target companies in M&A transactions. In the United Kingdom, in contrast, accessory liability in connection with a breach of trust or fiduciary duty is controversial because the law is …

Culpable Participation In Fiduciary Breach, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

This essay makes a case for the salience of tort law to fiduciary law, focusing on actors who culpably participate in a fiduciary's breach of duty, whether by inducing the breach or lending substantial assistance to it. Although the elements of this accessory tort are relatively settled in the United States, how the tort applies to particular categories of actors-most recently investment bankers who serve as M&A advisors-provokes controversy. The paper also explores the less developed terrain of primary actors who breach governance duties that are not fiduciary obligations because the entity's organizational documents eliminate fiduciary duties, as Delaware law …

Fiduciary Breach, Once Removed, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Defining Agency And Its Scope (Ii), Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

Fiduciary law necessarily raises issues of delineation and demarcation, which this paper demonstrates through examples involving common-law agents. Serving as an agent, and thus as a fiduciary, does not necessarily mean that agency law prescribes all duties that the agent owes the principal. The agent may have rights external to the relationship that the agent may exercise, distinct from the duty of loyalty owed the principal. When an agent acts outside the bounds of an agency relationship, the principal’s consent is not requisite to conduct that would constitute disloyalty within the bounds of the agency relationship. The paper illustrates the …

Personal Injury Victims As Insurance Collection Agents: Erisa Preemption Of State Antisubrogation Laws, Jonathan P. Connery

Journal of Law and Policy

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) was enacted in 1974 to protect the pension rights of employees nationwide. However, due to its broad preemptive powers, ERISA has since developed into a tool used by health insurers to recover millions of dollars in tort damages meant to benefit employees with ERISA health plans. This practice, known as subrogation, has been met with legislative backlash in the form of state antisubrogation statutes, which attempt to limit the enforceability of subrogation clauses found in almost all ERISA health plans. However, many courts have held that ERISA preempts these antisubrogation statutes, thereby affirming …