Law and Economics Commons^™

Niche Markets And Their Lessons, Cally Jordan

Faculty Papers & Publications

Markets are full of nooks and crannies. Out of the glare of the big economies and their public exchanges, markets specializing by financial product, activity, or industry thrive, often attracting little by way of formal regulatory oversight. But there is another kind of specialized market, one which is geographically and politically determined albeit internationally focused. Luxembourg, Ireland, Dubai, Bahrain, Malaysia, Singapore, Switzerland, among others, these are some of the world’s niche markets.

It is a hard business being a niche market, operating in a competitive and often unforgiving environment, engaging in constant repositioning and facing inherent limitations on growth. Surprisingly, …

Conditional Spending After Nfib V. Sebelius: The Example Of Federal Education Law, Eloise Pasachoff

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In NFIB v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court’s recent case addressing the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the Court concluded that the expansion of Medicaid in that Act was unconstitutionally coercive and therefore exceeded the scope of Congress’s authority under the Spending Clause. This was the first time that the Court treated coercion as an issue of more than mere theoretical possibility under the Spending Clause. In the wake of the Court’s decision, commentators have expressed either the concern or the hope that NFIB’s coercion analysis may lead to the undoing of much of the federal regulatory state, …

A Natural Experiment: Asset Manager Liability, Cally Jordan

Faculty Papers & Publications

It is a natural experiment: two highly integrated national economies, sharing a vast continent, a common language and hundreds of years of common experience. They are bound by a free trade agreement which has fostered strong trade flows in goods, services and capital. Yet, in important respects, the structural characteristics of their financial institutions, and the regulatory framework in which they operate, are different, so different in fact, that one country has been crippled for several years now by the global financial crisis and the other has emerged virtually unscathed. The countries, of course, are Canada and the United States. …

International Financial Standards And The Explanatory Force Of Lex Mercatoria, Cally Jordan

Faculty Papers & Publications

The global financial crisis has cast a strong light on some hitherto obscure corners of the financial world, provoking an outpouring of calls for concerted international action. “Hard law” having disappointed, can “soft law”, in the form of international financial standards, substitute for traditional national legislation. This article examines some of the difficulties associated with the “international standards as soft law” discourse.

First of all, conceptual problems in the “soft law” discourse itself reveal profoundly different patterns of legal thought cutting across national boundaries, resulting in different understandings of international financial standards. Secondly, recent experience, over the past decade, with …

Community Economic Development And The Paradox Of Power, Michael R. Diamond

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article starts from the premise that poverty is a growing problem in the United States. Intergenerational poverty, the entrenchment of a class of very poor people, is a major sub set of that problem and is tied very closely to the issue of race. The author claims that missing in the fight by the poor and their allies against stratified poverty is the creation and utilization of power. This paper examines the disparate ways in which commentators have defined power. It suggests that those seeking to obtain power must understand the concept’s varying meanings and direct their activities to …

Cadbury Twenty Years On, Cally Jordan

Faculty Papers & Publications

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the Cadbury Report, one of the most significant events in modern corporate governance. The Cadbury Report, and its simple two page 'best practices', triggered a global debate on corporate governance. 'Cadbury' codes of corporate governance spread like wildfire. The legacy of the Cadbury Report lives on in the UK with no diminution in the appeal of its voluntary code/comply or explain approach to corporate governance. But there are several clouds looming on the horizon. Comply or explain and voluntary codes of corporate governance appear to have run their course elsewhere …

The Wider Context: The Future Of Capital Markets Regulation In Developed Markets, Cally Jordan

Faculty Papers & Publications

At a time of such great turbulence, looking to the future directions of capital markets and their regulation in developed economies is a particularly risky business. We are in the midst of a great sea change. Nevertheless, there are several current, and readily observable, phenomena which are likely to shape capital markets regulation in the near future. First of all, the blurring of the distinctions between developed and developing markets themselves, as well as that between domestic and international markets, has put into question the adequacy of existing regulatory frameworks. Also, the transatlantic dialogue, London – New York, has given …

Flexible Work Arrangements: Improving Job Quality And Workforce Stability For Low-Wage Workers And Their Employers, Jessica Glenn, Liz Watson

Published Reports

In 2009, workers and their families across the country felt the impact of serious economic downturn, with unemployment reaching a 26-year high. While recent news suggests things may be improving, we cannot forget that for many low-wage and hourly workers -- who now represent over a quarter of the U.S. workforce -- the recession only exacerbated their ongoing struggle to hold down quality jobs while caring for their families.

Low-wage workers face many of the same challenges that the rest of us face in reconciling our work, family and personal lives, but for many of these workers, it's simply a …

The Business Case For Flexible Work Arrangements, Anna Danziger, Shelley Waters Boots

Memos and Fact Sheets

The business case for flexibility aims to outline the documented positive effects on businesses when they provide their workers with options to work less or to have more discretion over when, where and how their work is done.

This brief fact sheet lists some of the key findings from research on the business case for flexible work arrangements.

Public Legal Reason, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay develops an ideal of public legal reason--a normative theory of legal reasons that is appropriate for a society characterized by religious and moral pluralism. One of the implications of this theory is that normative theorizing about public and private law should eschew reliance on the deep premises of deontology or consequentialism and should instead rely on what the author calls public values--values that can be affirmed without relying on the deep and controversial premises of particular comprehensive moral doctrines.

The ideal of public legal reason is then applied to a particular question--whether welfarism (a particular form of normative …

“Head Start Works Because We Do”: Head Start Programs, Community Action Agencies, And The Struggle Over Unionization, Eloise Pasachoff

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the summer of 2002, the city of Boston watched a fierce battle unfold between low-wage workers who provide child care and the social service agencies that employ them. Boston requires its city contractors to pay more than twice the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour to their employees, according to the terms of the city's "living wage" ordinance. The social service agencies, which receive government subsidies to run their child care programs, claimed that they could not afford to pay this rate. These agencies mounted an intense legal and political campaign, arguing that they would be forced to …