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Articles 1 - 30 of 35
Full-Text Articles in Contracts
After Ftx: Can The Original Bitcoin Use Case Be Saved?, Mark Burge
After Ftx: Can The Original Bitcoin Use Case Be Saved?, Mark Burge
Faculty Scholarship
Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies spawned by the innovation of blockchain programming have exploded in prominence, both in gains of massive market value and in dramatic market losses, the latter most notably seen in connection with the failure of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange in November 2022. After years of investment and speculation, however, something crucial has faded: the original use case for Bitcoin as a system of payment. Can cryptocurrency-as-a-payment-system be saved, or are day traders and speculators the actual cryptocurrency future? This article suggests that cryptocurrency has been hobbled by a lack of foundational commercial and consumer-protection law that …
Confidentiality Clauses In Settlement Agreements After The Consumer Review Fairness Act, Wayne Barnes
Confidentiality Clauses In Settlement Agreements After The Consumer Review Fairness Act, Wayne Barnes
Faculty Scholarship
Online commerce has skyrocketed in recent years, and shoppers are purchasing goods or services online in greater numbers every year. The COVID-19 pandemic has only hastened the trend. One significant aspect of online shopping is the presence of consumer reviews posted by prior purchasers of goods or services, describing their experience with the products, the services and/or the selling merchant. A vast majority of online shoppers say that they rely on these reviews to help inform their purchasing decisions. Positive reviews can be tremendously beneficial to a business’ profitability, whereas negative reviews can be equally detrimental. Users of the internet …
The Intersection Of Nfts And Structured Finance, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
The Intersection Of Nfts And Structured Finance, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
Faculty Scholarship
Blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) continue to invade financial markets. Whether through partnerships between financial institutions and tech firms or through in-house initiatives at some of the nation’s largest banks, blockchain-based products, services, and transactional structures are a major point of interest. In a recent work by Professor Steven Schwarcz, the growing NFT market is analyzed using the traditional tools of structured finance. Creating a new conceptual model called non-cash-flow monetizations, Professor Schwarcz reveals the risks to investors and markets, if the tokenization of non-traditional and largely illiquid assets proliferates. Having identified the potential harms, he offers …
The Failure Of Market Efficiency, William Magnuson
The Failure Of Market Efficiency, William Magnuson
Faculty Scholarship
Recent years have witnessed the near total triumph of market efficiency as a regulatory goal. Policymakers regularly proclaim their devotion to ensuring efficient capital markets. Courts use market efficiency as a guiding light for crafting legal doctrine. And scholars have explored in great depth the mechanisms of market efficiency and the role of law in promoting it. There is strong evidence that, at least on some metrics, our capital markets are indeed more efficient than they have ever been. But the pursuit of efficiency has come at a cost. By focusing our attention narrowly on economic efficiency concerns—such as competition, …
Floating Liens Over Crypto-In-Commerce, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
Floating Liens Over Crypto-In-Commerce, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
Faculty Scholarship
Commercial law and crypto are colliding. Against the backdrop of explosive growth (and discord) in the digital asset market, there has been a series of recent revisions to American commercial law aimed at addressing new and emerging technologies. These changes to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) are designed to facilitate the buying and selling of digital assets as well as their use as collateral. However, to date, the literature exploring these changes has mainly focused on understanding the basics of the new regime. This Essay moves beyond that baseline by showing how the UCC amendments can be used to structure …
The Private Law Of Stablecoins, Kara J. Bruce, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
The Private Law Of Stablecoins, Kara J. Bruce, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato
Faculty Scholarship
Stablecoins are one of the cornerstones of the crypto world. They’ve attracted significant attention over the past few years, ranging from Wall Street to kitchen table investors, and even the White House. As a less volatile alternative to crypto-assets like bitcoin, stablecoins have the potential to change the way we make payments, unlock the groundwork needed for more blockchain-based applications, and even reorient the economy toward private money. But how stable are these stablecoins, really? Can they be relied upon in the way their many proponents claim? And how much of the popular beliefs about stablecoins match their realities? That’s …
#Fintok And Financial Regulation, Nikita Aggarwal, D. Bondy Valdovinos Kaye, Christopher K. Odinet
#Fintok And Financial Regulation, Nikita Aggarwal, D. Bondy Valdovinos Kaye, Christopher K. Odinet
Faculty Scholarship
Social media platforms are becoming an increasingly important site for consumer finance. This phenomenon is referred to as “FinTok,” a reference to the “#fintok” hashtag that identifies financial content on TikTok, a popular social media platform. This Essay examines the new methodological possibilities for consumer financial regulation due to FinTok. It argues that FinTok content offers a novel and valuable source of data for identifying emerging fintech trends and associated consumer risks. As such, financial regulators should use FinTok content analysis—and social media content analysis more broadly—as an additional method for the supervision and regulation of consumer financial markets. The …
The Uniform Commercial Code Survey: Introduction, Jennifer S. Martin, Colin P. Marks, Wayne Barnes
The Uniform Commercial Code Survey: Introduction, Jennifer S. Martin, Colin P. Marks, Wayne Barnes
Faculty Scholarship
The survey that follows highlights the most important developments of 2020 dealing with domestic and international sales of goods, personal property leases, payments, letters of credit, documents of title. investment securities, and secured transactions.
The Contract Interpretation Policy Debate: A Primer, Joshua M. Silverstein
The Contract Interpretation Policy Debate: A Primer, Joshua M. Silverstein
Faculty Scholarship
Contract interpretation is one of the most significant areas of commercial law. As a result, there is an extensive academic and judicial debate over the optimal method for construing agreements. Throughout this exchange, scholars and courts have advanced a wide array of conceptual, theoretical, and empirical arguments in support of the two primary schools of interpretation— textualism and contextualism—as well as various hybrid positions. This Essay is intended to serve as a primer on those arguments.
Contract Interpretation And The Parol Evidence Rule: Toward Conceptual Clarification, Joshua M. Silverstein
Contract Interpretation And The Parol Evidence Rule: Toward Conceptual Clarification, Joshua M. Silverstein
Faculty Scholarship
Contract interpretation is one of the most important topics in commercial law. Unfortunately, the law of interpretation is extraordinarily convoluted. In essentially every American state, the jurisprudence is riddled with inconsistency and ambiguity. This causes multiple problems. Contracting parties are forced to expend additional resources when negotiating and drafting agreements. Disputes over contractual meaning are more likely to end up in litigation. And courts make a greater number of errors in the interpretive process. Together, these impacts result in significant unfairness and undermine economic efficiency. Efforts to remedy the doctrinal incoherence are thus warranted.
The goal of this Article is …
Does Contract Law Need Morality?, Kimberly D. Krawiec, Wenhao Liu
Does Contract Law Need Morality?, Kimberly D. Krawiec, Wenhao Liu
Faculty Scholarship
In The Dignity of Commerce, Nathan Oman sets out an ambitious market theory of contract, which he argues is a superior normative foundation for contract law than either the moralist or economic justifications that currently dominate contract theory. In doing so, he sets out a robust defense of commerce and the market-place as contributing to human flourishing that is a refreshing and welcome contribution in an era of market alarmism. But the mar-ket theory ultimately falls short as either a normative or prescriptive theory of contract. The extent to which law, public policy, and the-ory should account for values …
Market Information And The Elite Law Firm, Elisabeth De Fontenay
Market Information And The Elite Law Firm, Elisabeth De Fontenay
Faculty Scholarship
As a subcategory of contract negotiations, corporate transactions present information problems that have not been fully analyzed. In particular, the literature does not address the possibility that parties may simply be unaware of value-increasing transaction terms or their outside option. Such unawareness can arise even for transactions that attract many competing parties, if the bargaining process is such that (1) the price terms are negotiated and fixed prior to the non-price terms, contrary to the standard assumption; and (2) some of the non-price terms remain private for some period of time.
A simple bargaining model shows that, when such unawareness …
Consumer Preferences For Performances Defaults, Franklin G. Snyder, Ann M. Mirabito
Consumer Preferences For Performances Defaults, Franklin G. Snyder, Ann M. Mirabito
Faculty Scholarship
Commercial law in the United States is designed to facilitate private transactions, and thus to enforce the presumed intent of the parties, who generally are free to negotiate the terms they choose. But these contracts inevitably have gaps, both because the parties cannot anticipate every situation that might arise from their relationship, and because negotiation is not costless. When courts are faced with these gaps in a litigation context, they supply default terms to fill them. These defaults usually are set to reflect what courts believe similar parties would have agreed to if they had addressed the issue. These "majoritarian" …
Defining Agency And Its Scope (Ii), Deborah A. Demott
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 …
Too Clever By Half: Reflections On Perception, Legitimacy, And Choice Of Law Under Revised Article 1 Of The Uniform Commercial Code, Mark Edwin Burge
Too Clever By Half: Reflections On Perception, Legitimacy, And Choice Of Law Under Revised Article 1 Of The Uniform Commercial Code, Mark Edwin Burge
Faculty Scholarship
The overwhelmingly successful 2001 rewrite of Article 1 of the Uniform Commercial Code was accompanied by an overwhelming failure: proposed section 1-301 on contractual choice of law. As originally sent to the states, section 1-301 would have allowed non-consumer parties to a contract to select a governing law that bore no relation to their transaction. Proponents justifiably contended that such autonomy was consistent with emerging international norms and with the nature of contracts creating voluntary private obligations. Despite such arguments, the original version of section 1-301 was resoundingly rejected, gaining zero adoptions by the states before its withdrawal in 2008. …
Contract Resurrected! Contract Formation: Common Law – Ucc – Cisg, Sarah Howard Jenkins
Contract Resurrected! Contract Formation: Common Law – Ucc – Cisg, Sarah Howard Jenkins
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Debt-Buyer Lawsuits And Inaccurate Data, Peter A. Holland
Debt-Buyer Lawsuits And Inaccurate Data, Peter A. Holland
Faculty Scholarship
Pursuant to secret purchase and sale agreements (also known as forward flow agreements), the accounts that banks sell to debt buyers are often sold “as is,” with explicit and emphatic disclaimers that the debts may not be owed, the amounts claimed may not be accurate, and documentation may be missing. Despite their full knowledge that the accuracy and completeness of the data has been specifically disclaimed by the bank, when they sue consumers, debt buyers tell courts that the information obtained from the bank is inherently reliable and accurate. In order to avoid a fraud on the courts, the contents …
The Fiduciary Character Of Agency And The Interpretation Of Instructions, Deborah A. Demott
The Fiduciary Character Of Agency And The Interpretation Of Instructions, Deborah A. Demott
Faculty Scholarship
This chapter in a forthcoming book justifies the conventional characterization of common-law agency as a fiduciary relationship. An agent serves as the principal’s representative in dealings with third parties and facts about the world, situating the agent as an extension of the principal for legally-salient purposes. A principal’s power to furnish instructions to the agent is the fundamental mechanism through which the principal exercises control over the agent, a requisite for an agency relationship. The agent’s fiduciary duty to the principal provides a benchmark for the agent’s interpretation of those instructions. The chapter draws on philosophical literature on the identity …
Redefining Offer In Contract Law, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Redefining Offer In Contract Law, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Testing The Reach Of Ucc Article 9: The Question Of Tax Credit Collateral In Secured Transactions, Christopher K. Odinet
Testing The Reach Of Ucc Article 9: The Question Of Tax Credit Collateral In Secured Transactions, Christopher K. Odinet
Faculty Scholarship
This Article addresses the open question related to the use of tax credits as a source of secured capital. It first lays a foundation by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings of the UCC’s category for general intangibles and shows how classification as a general intangible can and should comport with the legal substance of tax credits as a form of secured financing. The work also investigates the theory and nature that forms the basis of tax credits and their economic value. Next, the Article provides an overview of the relatively meager case law on tax credit financing and explains how courts …
Known And Unknown, Property And Contract: Comments On Hoofnagle And Moringiello, James Grimmelmann
Known And Unknown, Property And Contract: Comments On Hoofnagle And Moringiello, James Grimmelmann
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Rethinking The Laws Of Good Faith Purchase, Alan Schwartz, Robert E. Scott
Rethinking The Laws Of Good Faith Purchase, Alan Schwartz, Robert E. Scott
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay is a comparative economic analysis of the disparate doctrines governing the good faith purchase of stolen or misappropriated goods. We argue that prior treatments have misconceived the problem. An owner will take optimal precautions to prevent theft if she is faced with the loss of her goods; and a purchaser will make an optimal investigation into his seller's title if faced with the loss of the goods. An owner and a buyer cannot both be faced with the full loss, however. This presents a problem of "double moral hazard" and it cannot be solved in a first-best efficient …
Freedom Of Contract Vs. Free Alienability: An Old Struggle Emerges In A New Context, Neil B. Cohen, William Henning
Freedom Of Contract Vs. Free Alienability: An Old Struggle Emerges In A New Context, Neil B. Cohen, William Henning
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Resolving The Dilemma Of Nonjusticiable Causation In Failure-To-Warn Litigation, Neil B. Cohen, Aaron Twerski
Resolving The Dilemma Of Nonjusticiable Causation In Failure-To-Warn Litigation, Neil B. Cohen, Aaron Twerski
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Contracting Out Of The Ucc, Sarah Howard Jenkins
Contracting Out Of The Ucc, Sarah Howard Jenkins
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Contracting Out Of Article 2: Minimizing The Obligation Of Performance & Liability For Breach, Sarah Howard Jenkins
Contracting Out Of Article 2: Minimizing The Obligation Of Performance & Liability For Breach, Sarah Howard Jenkins
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Sense And Nonsense Of Web Site Terms Of Use Agreements, Sharon Sandeen
The Sense And Nonsense Of Web Site Terms Of Use Agreements, Sharon Sandeen
Faculty Scholarship
This article examines the purpose, use and enforceability of TOUs. In so doing it looks beyond the common question of whether TOUs are enforceable to ask whether and under what circumstances TOUs are necessary. This article explores whether the nature of the Internet is so different from the brick-and-mortar world that TOUs are needed for web sites but not for retail stores. A review of many of the existing TOUs reveals that major differences exist in the number and nature of their provisions. On one extreme are the TOUs of companies like Disney, Barnes and Noble and Amazon that apparently …
The Rise And Fall Of Article 2, Robert E. Scott
The Rise And Fall Of Article 2, Robert E. Scott
Faculty Scholarship
In August 13,2001 the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws voted eighty-nine to fifty-three to reject the Amendments to Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code that had just been approved in May by the American Law Institute. The vote followed a last minute effort by the Article 2 drafting committee to amend the scope provisions of Article 2 in response to continuing criticism from representatives of the software and information industries. Several months later, at the request of the NCCUSL leadership, amended Article 2 with its revised scope provision was withdrawn from the agenda of the ALI …
Is Article 2 The Best We Can Do?, Robert E. Scott
Is Article 2 The Best We Can Do?, Robert E. Scott
Faculty Scholarship
You will all be happy to know that, haying listened to my colleagues for the last three hours, I have completely forgotten what I was planning to say. But I haven't forgotten why I am here. I am the proverbial skunk at the garden party, and I hope to fulfill my role as the only skeptic in the group. I must tell you candidly, however, that I agree with everything Gail Hillebrand had to say. That doesn't mean she is going to agree with anything that I have to say, but perhaps there are two skeptics here this afternoon.
My …
Of Textualism, Party Autonomy, And Good Faith, Michael P. Van Alstine
Of Textualism, Party Autonomy, And Good Faith, Michael P. Van Alstine
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.