Commercial Law Commons^™

Copyright Preemption After The Procd Case: A Market-Based Approach, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

As information becomes increasingly available in digital form, a little noted yet significant legal change is occurring in the way in which information providers use the law to establish the terms under which they market their products. Electronic information providers, in contrast to their hard-copy counterparts, have continually turned to the private law of contract both to supplement and modify the public law of copyright.' While this trend began when most users were relatively large commercial, academic, or governmental enterprises, it accelerated as software providers began to market pre-packaged software to consumers, using the infamous "shrinkwrap" as a device to …

Unconscionability In California: A Need For Restraint And Consistency, H.G. Prince

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Decoupling Sales Law From The Acceptance-Rejection Fulcrum, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

The determination of whether the buyer has accepted or rejected goods provides the sales law solution to the problems of allocating burden of proof, assigning duties to salvage goods in failed transactions, and reducing systematic undercompensation. But one doctrine is unlikely to provide the best solution to each of these distinct problems. Decoupling the rules addressing burden of proof, salvage, and undercompensation from the doctrines of acceptance and rejection, and thus from one another, would significantly improve sales law.

This strategy has a distinguished precedent in the history of sales law. Karl Llewellyn based his objection to the doctrine of …

Debt, Accelerated Depreciation, And The Tale Of A Teakettle: Tax Shelter Abuse Reconsidered, Theodore S. Sims

Faculty Scholarship

For more than thirty years a consuming preoccupation of the income tax has been the control of "tax sheltered" investments. Of most widespread concern have been acquisitions, financed by debt, of assets that enjoy some sort of "tax-preferred" treatment, most commonly some advantageous form of depreciation. Tax-favored treatment has been conferred on many productive assets through deliberate congressional action. Nevertheless, debt-financed acquisitions of those very same assets have been regarded as exploiting the available tax benefits in ways that seemed "abusive" and have widely been regarded as "bad." This perplexing, fundamentally self-contradictory state of affairs has levied constant demands on …

Drafting Commercial Law For The New Millennium: Will The Current Process Suffice?, Neil B. Cohen, Barry Zaretsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bank Holding Company Act: Has It Lived Its Life, The , Carl Felsenfeld

Faculty Scholarship

The Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 (BHCA) "regulates the acquisition of state and national banks by bank holding companies." The BHCA also regulates the nonbanking activities of bank holding companies and their nonbank subsidiaries. The BHCA was enacted and remains on the books for two fundamental reasons: 1) to prevent undue concentration in banking; and 2) to avoid the mixing of banking with other businesses unrelated to banking (generally called "commerce"). Both of these purposes have been or are being discredited, and it is time to ask whether the BHCA should be repealed. On several levels, banking is combined …

But The Proposed Uniform Commercial Code Was Adopted Is The Ucc Dead, Or Alive And Well, Carl Felsenfeld

Faculty Scholarship

The oldest living resident may recognize that the title above is de- rived from an article written by Professor Frederick K. Beutel of the Yale Law School, which appeared in the 1952 Yale Law Journal. Professor Beutel began his article by stating that the UCC should not be adopted and concluded by advising that it would "mark the beginning of the end of fairness and uniformity in the commercial law." Beutel's advice was not taken, and, with relatively modest modifications, the UCC has been adopted in all states. This Essay investigates whether Professor Beutel's concerns were justified.

Directors' Duty Of Care And The Business Judgment Rule: American Precedents And Australian Choices, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

Regardless of local differences in detail, directors occupy a central position in systems of corporate law. Significant and pervasive questions surround the expectations defined by the law for directors’ performance in office, along with the circumstances under which directors incur personal liability. This essay begins by explaining the development, in the United States, of the law defining the duty of care a director owes to a corporation, along with the circumstances under which a director will be personally liable for breaching that duty. It then examines the relevance of these developments to the current Australian context.

Strange Bedfellows For Electronic Funds Transfers: Proposed Article 4a Of The Uniform Commercial Code And The Uncitral Model Law Symposium: Revised U.C.C. Articles 3 &(And) 4 And New Article 4a, Carl Felsenfeld

Faculty Scholarship

Two pieces of proposed legislation that will affect the same subject matter are proceeding down parallel tracks. If all goes as planned, the tracks will at some time turn inward and there may be a collision. Each piece has as its core concern the subject of electronic funds transfers ("EFTs"), the modern device that has overtaken checks as the principal form of money transfer.' Basically, however, before the promulgation of Article 4A there was no legislation, either in the United States or abroad, that governed EFTs in the way that Articles 3 and 4 of the Uniform Commercial Code ("U.C.C.") …

A Relational Theory Of Default Rules For Commercial Contracts, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The relationship between legal rules and the strategies that commercial parties use to deal with risk is among the most important and least understood topics in law and economics. Organizational theorists have generally confined their analyses to the nature of the firm and other permanent relationships. Academic commercial lawyers, in turn, have been far less venturesome than their corporate colleagues in applying fundamental economic insights. Not surprisingly, therefore, we know very little about the inner workings of most commercial relationships. For these reasons (and more) I applaud efforts to integrate economic insights and legal structures, exemplified by Clay Gillette's imaginative …

Rethinking The Regulation Of Coercive Creditor Remedies, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The phenomenal growth of personal installment credit over the past forty years has generated inevitable pressures for regulatory reform of consumer credit markets. Much of the impetus for consumer protection has stemmed from the perceived abuses that mark the process of coercive collection upon default. Some of these abuses have been identified, quite properly, as the sort of deceptive or fraudulent practices often associated with industries experiencing rapid growth. But other creditor remedies, though troublesome to many observers, cannot be as easily characterized. For example, many critics have challenged the common practice of self-help repossession and resale of consumer goods …

National Law And Commercial Justice: Safeguarding Procedural Integrity In International Arbitration, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

The law chosen to govern the merits of an international contract dispute does not always lead to results hat satisfy an arbitrator's personal sense of what is right. The arbitrator therefore may be tempted to resolve the dispute according to his own notion of justice. Seduced away from the rules of the otherwise applicable law, the arbitrator may take on unauthorized powers of amiable composition. While most international arbitrators are conscientious in respecting the bounds of their mission, some have been known to boast of their skill in finding ways to bypass the established rules of the party-chosen law. …

Race, Reform, And Retrenchment: Transformation And Legitimation In Antidiscrimination Law, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

Recent works by neoconservatives and by Critical legal scholars have suggested that civil rights reforms have been an unsuccessful means of achieving racial equality in America. In this Article, Professor Crenshaw considers these critiques and analyzes the continuing role of racism in the subordination of Black Americans. The neoconservative emphasis on formal colorblindness, she argues, fails to recognize the indeterminacy of civil rights laws and the force of lingering racial disparities. The Critical scholars, who emphasize the legitimating role of legal ideology and legal rights rhetoric, are substantially correct, according to Professor Crenshaw, but they fail to appreciate the choices …

Adventures In Finance, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Conflict And Cooperation In Long-Term Contracts, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

This Article uses the techniques of modern decision analysis and game theory to analyze the decisionmaking strategies of parties to long-term commercial contracts. Most parties to long-term contracts initially allocate the risks of future contingencies and agree – either explicitly or implicitly – to adjust this initial risk-allocation scheme if unanticipated events occur. Once contract risks are initially distributed, however, each party's self-interest may compel them to evade their responsibility rather than adjust cooperatively as originally agreed. Visualizing the interactions between contracting parties as an iterated prisoner's dilemma, the Author attempts to clarify the dynamics of this adjustment process. Professor …

Overprotecting The Consumer? Section 2-607(3)(A) Notice Of Breach In Nonprivity Contexts, H.G. Prince

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fishing And Selling, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Consumers are a lot like fish, out there waiting to be hooked. Like most images, this one is a caricature of reality. The choice and search effort of consumers is suppressed in order to explore the implications of selling activity by manufacturers and retailers. In particular, the fishing analogy suggests that there is a tendency toward excessive selling activity if sellers do not take into account the effects of their activity on the costs of their rivals. However, sellers, like fishermen, have an incentive to arrange their affairs to mitigate the dissipation of rents. This argument is developed in Section …

An Economic Analysis Of The Lost-Volume Retail Seller, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Suppose that a customer agrees to buy a boat and before it is delivered, he reneges. The dealer subsequently resells the boat to another customer at the same price. Has the seller suffered damages (aside from incidental damages) and, if so, should he be compensated? This question, dubbed the lost-volume seller problem, has been the subject of considerable legal analysis, usually in the context of explicating section 2-708(2) of the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.). There have been a number of attempts to apply economic analysis to this difficult question, the most recent by Professors Goetz and Scott. Unfortunately, the economic …

Arbitration Of International Contract Disputes, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

International commercial arbitration has been the victim of its own success. Arbitration is often the only dispute resolution process acceptable in business contexts where parties from different countries have rejected recourse to each other's legal system at the outset of the contractual relationship. For example, when a Swedish shipyard contracts to build tankers for an agency of the Libyan government, the Swedes are unlikely to relish the prospect of appearing before Libyan courts, and the Libyans may view submission to the courts of Sweden (or of another industrialized Western nation) as an affront to Libyan national sovereignty. Neither the Swedish …

The Binding Force Of International Arbitral Awards, William W. Park, Jan Paulsson

Faculty Scholarship

A party that submits a controversy to arbitration may later regret having abandoned recourse to the courts. Once the award is rendered, the chosen arbitrator may no longer seem so wise to the losing party, who may refuse to comply with his decision. A legal system must therefore legitimize the arbitrator's authority if the award is to be more than an unenforceable attempt at conciliation.

The Lex Loci Arbitri And International Commercial Arbitration, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

Luke's gospel reports that Jesus once declined to arbitrate a family dispute over an inheritance by asking a disgruntled sibling, "Who set me over you to arbitrate?" Private resolution of business disputes raises a related question: whence springs the arbitrator's authority to render a binding award? A company that submits a controversy to arbitration may later regret having abandoned recourse to the courts. On the day of reckoning, the sage chosen to decide the dispute may no longer seem so wise to the losing party, and the loser might consider refusing to comply with the arbitrator's decision. Some legal system, …

Article One Of The Uniform Land Transactions Act: Is Inconsistency With The U.C.C. An Unnecessary Obstacle?, Ronald B. Brown

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

French Codification Of A Legal Framework For International Commercial Arbitration, W. Laurence Craig, William W. Park, Jan Paulsson

Faculty Scholarship

Resolution of a dispute arising under an international commercial contract frequently has been plagued with uncertainty regarding applicable substantive and procedural law. These problems are not necessarily solved by the presence of an arbitration clause in the contract. In the absence of a clearly defined arbitral system, the parties can not be certain of the rules regarding the arbitral procedure or the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards. By enacting a decree that specifically applies to international commercial arbitration, France has recently taken a major step toward resolving the uncertainties surrounding the resolution of international commercial disputes. The authors analyze …

Tax Characterization Of International Leases: The Contours Of Ownership, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

Pondering the human tendency to pay dearly for short-lived adornments, Shakespeare asks a question of interest to lawyers as well as poets: "Why so large cost, having so short a lease.. .? The lawyer's analysis of the issue might begin with a scenario set in an imaginary world in which the tax effects of business transactions are determined by their legal form rather than their economic substance. In such a world, each of two companies decides to build a new factory. One acquires the land outright, paying in several installments. The other enters into a shortterm lease at a very …

The U.C.C. (Sales) As An Introductory Law School Course, Ronald B. Brown

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Panel: State Action And The Constitutional Accountability Of Private Utilities, Joel Gora

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Supervision Of Transnational Commercial Arbitration: The English Arbitration Act Of 1979, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

Present day interaction between court and arbitrator is reminiscent of the seventeenth century struggle between court and crown, in which King James I claimed that his representatives should have the right to adjudicate disputes according to "natural reason," not according to the "artificial ... judgment of the law." The Lord Chief Justice, Edward Coke, resisted this arrogation of power using words attributed to Bracton: "quod Rex non debet esse sub homine, sed sub Deo et lege." Although under no man, the King was subject to God and the law. The extent to which the modern commercial arbitrator should likewise be …

Protecting The Buyer Of Previously Encumbered Goods: Another Plea For Revision Of Ucc Section 9-307(I), Charles L. Knapp

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Competing State And Federal Roles In Consumer Credit Law , Carl Felsenfeld

Faculty Scholarship

An important problem confronting those in the consumer credit industry is the absence of a cohesive body of law. This impairs creditors of all types and also results in unequal treatment of consumers. In a comprehensive study Mfr. Felsenfeld analyzes the evolution from purely state regulation of consumer credit to a combination of state and federal control. The author suggests that, despite certain merits of local regulation, the consumer credit area may well be preempted by future federal legislation.

Knowledge As A Factor In Determinig Priorities Under The Uniform Commercial Code , Carl Felsenfeld

Faculty Scholarship

Before the Uniform Commercial Code, a second secured party could not perfect his interest over a prior unperfected interest if he had knowledge of that prior interest. The Code, in contrast, promulgates a basic "first-to-file" priority rule in section 9-312(5). In this sharp departure from prior law, the knowledge factor is omitted. Other sections of Article 9, however, allude to certain aspects of the pre-Code knowledge requirements. Mr. Felsenfeld analyses the difficulties and incongruities which may arise from this lack of explicitness with regard to knowledge of prior security interests. He concludes that the courts may and should reconcile such …