Law and Economics Commons^™

Stay Of Execution In Administrative Matters: Practice And Jurisprudential Policy, Mohamed Ngassi Saqout

Revue Marocaine de Droit, d'Economie et de Gestion (Moroccan Journal of Law, Economics and Management)

The stay of execution (sursis à exécution) in administrative law must be understood within its philosophical context. Any legal system rests on an ideal, and administrative law is fundamentally grounded in the principle of administration's submission to law under judicial control. Far from being mere technical questions, administrative law norms and institutions carry political and ideological meaning, seeking to balance two legitimate but contradictory demands: protecting individual rights against despotic administrative power, while safeguarding the necessary authority of the state. The author examines how jurisprudential practice navigates this tension through the stay of execution mechanism.

Tax Delegation Post-Loper Bright, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

In its recent decision in Loper Bright, the Supreme Court has fundamentally shifted the contours of judicial deference to administrative interpretations by repealing the Chevron doctrine. However, while the Court has curtailed deference, it simultaneously underscored the legitimacy of statutory delegation to agencies. The Internal Revenue Code (Code) is the most intricate legislative text within the U.S. legal framework, necessitating significant technical expertise for its application. It is, therefore, unsurprising that Congress often delegates authority to the IRS for the execution of the statute. In light of the Court's decision in Loper Bright, it becomes imperative to clarify the parameters …

Deep Cuts: Four Critiques Of Legal Ideology, Justin Deystone, Akbar Rasulov

Publications

This Article begins an effort to rekindle the intellectual tradition of critical legal theory. The context for the project is significant. On the one hand is the grip of a social crisis, the contours of which continue to confound the commentariat. Racism, xenophobia, gendered violence, migration and nation, climate change, health pandemics, political corruption. The parade is as intimidating as it is spectacular. On the other hand, the very tools of criticism we depend upon in identifying these characters in the parade, much less the spectacle of the parade itself, are themselves in crisis. There is, in a word, a …

A False Sense Of Security: How Congress And The Sec Are Dropping The Ball On Cryptocurrency, Tessa E. Shurr

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Today, companies use blockchain technology and digital assets for a variety of purposes. This Comment analyzes the digital token. If the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) views a digital token as a security, then the issuer of the digital token must comply with the registration and extensive disclosure requirements of federal securities laws.

To determine whether a digital asset is a security, the SEC relies on the test that the Supreme Court established in SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. Rather than enforcing a statute or agency rule, the SEC enforces securities laws by applying the Howey test on a fact-intensive …

The 'Authority' Of Law: Joseph Raz Reconsidered, Andrew Stumpff Morrison

Law & Economics Working Papers

The article presents a critical reassessment of the legal philosophical writings of Joseph Raz. The critique develops from the author’s previous argument that law is – contra recent near-consensus – best understood as “the command of the sovereign, backed by force.” Given that this is the distinctly defining feature of law, Raz’s extended preoccupation with “reasons for obeying law” is misplaced and even nonsensical.

A Philosophical Defense Of Judicial Minimalism, Cory A. Evans

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes, criticizes and ultimately defends judicial minimalism, a contemporary theory of judging that has come to the forefront of American jurisprudence in the early part of the 21st Century. In this dissertation I offer the first formal definition of judicial minimalism, apply that definition to case law and the literature, refute many objections to judicial minimalism including objections based on tough case counterexamples, offer a new version of the argument of epistemic humility and offer a new argument in support of judicial minimalism from the perspective of law and economics.

A 2016 Copa America Bump For Major League Soccer? Strengthening The Case For Legal Action Arising From The Corrupted 2022 World Cup Bid, Jeff Todd, R. Todd Jewell

William & Mary Business Law Review

Governmental and private investigations have generated evidence of corruption in the bidding process to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which went to Qatar rather than the United States. One economic study has shown an increase in professional soccer attendance in European countries that host the World Cup and the European Championships. Accordingly, Major League Soccer and its investor-operators could pursue tort and unfair competition claims to argue that denial of a 2022 World Cup USA will result in lowered attendance, and thus lost profits and diminished business value. Key differences in American and European soccer leagues and sports markets …

Dorothy Moser Medlin Papers - Accession 1049, Dorothy Moser Medlin

Manuscript Collection

(The Dorothy Moser Medlin Papers are currently in processing.)

This collection contains most of the records of Dorothy Medlin’s work and correspondence and also includes reference materials, notes, microfilm, photographic negatives related both to her professional and personal life. Additions include a FLES Handbook, co-authored by Dorothy Medlin and a decorative mirror belonging to Dorothy Medlin.

Major series in this collection include: some original 18th century writings and ephemera and primary source material of André Morellet, extensive collection of secondary material on André Morellet's writings and translations, Winthrop related files, literary manuscripts and notes by Dorothy Medlin (1966-2011), copies …

Commerce, Religion, And The Rule Of Law, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

The rule of law and religion can act as commercial substitutes. Both can create the trust required for material prosperity. The rule of law simplifies social interactions, turning people into formal legal agents and generating a map of society that the state can observe and control, thus credibly committing to the enforcement of the legal rights demanded by impersonal markets. Religion, in contrast, embraces complex social identities. Within these communities, economic actors can monitor and sanction misbehavior. Both approaches have benefits and problems. The rule of law allows for trade among strangers, fostering peaceful pluralism. However, law breeds what Montesquieu …

Community Versus Market Values Of Life, Robert Cooter, David Depianto

William & Mary Law Review

Individuals and communities make choices affecting the risk of accidental death. Individuals balance risk and cost in market choices, for example, by purchasing costly safety products or taking a dangerous job for higher pay. Communities balance risk and cost through social norms of precaution, which prescribe how much risk people may impose on others and on themselves. For example, social norms dictate that bicyclists should wear helmets and automobile passengers should wear seat belts. In both cases, the balance between the fatality risk and the cost of reducing it reveals an implicit value of a statistical life, or “VSL”— an …

Confounding Ockham's Razor: Minilateralism And International Economic Regulation, Eric C. Chaffee

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

In Minilateralism: How Trade Alliances, Soft Law, and Financial Engineering Are Redefining Economic Statecraft, Professor Chris Brummer embraces the complexity of the global economic system and its regulation by exploring the emerging role and dominance of varying strands of economic collaboration and regulation that he collectively refers to as “minilateralism.” In describing the turn toward minilateralism, Brummer notes a number of key features of this new minilateral system, including a shift away from global cooperation to strategic alliances composed of the smallest group necessary to achieve a particular goal, a turn from formal treaties to informal non-binding accords and other …

Delaware’S Familiarity, Brian J. Broughman, Darian M. Ibrahim

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Up Close And Personal With Delaware, Darian M. Ibrahim, Brian J. Broughman

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

When Should Bankruptcy Be An Option (For People, Places, Or Things)?, David A. Skeel Jr.

William & Mary Law Review

When many people think about bankruptcy, they have a simple left-to-right spectrum of possibilities in mind. The spectrum starts with personal bankruptcy, moves next to corporations and other businesses, and then to municipalities, states, and finally countries. We assume that bankruptcy makes the most sense for individuals; that it makes a great deal of sense for corporations; that it is plausible but a little more suspect for cities; that it would be quite odd for states; and that bankruptcy is unimaginable for a country.

In this Article, I argue that the left-to-right spectrum is sensible but mistaken. After defining “bankruptcy,” …

A Structuralist Approach To The Two State Action Doctrines, Justin Deystone

Publications

By all accounts, the constitutional and antitrust state-action doctrines are strangers. Courts and scholars see the constitutional state-action doctrine as about the applicability of constitutional rights in private disputes, and the antitrust state-action doctrine as a judicial negotiation between the scope of the Sherman Act and the demands of federalism. In this conventional view, the only thing the doctrines share in common is that they are both an awful mess. This Article challenges the conventional wisdom and argues that the two state-action doctrines are fundamentally connected, and when viewed in a certain light, not even that messy. It is not …

The Market As A Legal Concept, Justin Deystone

Publications

In the wake of the recent financial crisis of 2008, and in the run-up to what some are calling a perfect fiscal storm, there is no shortage of commentary on the need for fundamental market reform. Though there are certainly disagreements about where the real problems are and what to do, almost all the commentary remains wedded to an old and entirely false image of “free competition.” Of course, there is hardly consensus about whether markets require the heavy hand of regulative control, or are better left to regulate themselves, but a belief in the distinction between these two images …

Efficient Uncertainty In Patent Interpretation, Harry Surden

Publications

Research suggests that widespread uncertainty over the scopes of issued patents creates significant costs for third-party firms and may decrease innovation. This Article addresses the scope uncertainty issue from a theoretical perspective by creating a model of patent claim scope uncertainty.

It is often difficult for third parties to determine the legal coverage of issued patents. Scope underdetermination exists when the words of a patent claim are capable of a broad range of plausible scopes ex ante in light of the procedures for interpreting patents. Underdetermination creates uncertainty about claim coverage because a lay interpreter cannot know which interpretation will …

Judicial Adherence To A Minimum Core Approach To Socio-Economic Rights – A Comparative Perspective, Joie Chowdhury

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

Today’s world is witness to extraordinary inequality and the most desperate poverty. Millions of people across the world have no access to adequate food or water, basic health care or minimum levels of education. There are many avenues through which to approach the issue of improving socio-economic conditions. Courts, especially recently, have in certain countries, been seeking to ameliorate these conditions, to some extent, through the means of socio-economic rights adjudication.

For courts to effectively empower people to realize their socio-economic rights, attention to implementation of judgments is essential. A strong normative base for such judgments is just as crucial, …

Extraterritoriality, Antitrust, And The Pragmatist Style, Justin Deystone

Publications

In the last decades of the 20th century, David Kennedy and Martti Koskenniemi made the case that the modern structure of international legal argument was characterized by "pragmatism." Taking this idea as its baseline, this Article's central argument is that legal pragmatism embodies a dominant style of contemporary legal reasoning, and that as Kennedy and Koskenniemi might have suggested, it is on display in some of the canonical antitrust decisions having an international dimension. The Article also seeks to show that pragmatism's ostensible triumph is best understood as a contest of three distinctly legal pragmatisms: "eclectic pragmatism," as evidenced in …

The Impossibility Of A Prescriptive Paretian, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Most normatively oriented economists appear to be “welfarist” and Paretian to one degree or another: They deem responsiveness to individual preferences, and satisfaction of one or more of the Pareto criteria, to be a desirable attribute of any social welfare function. I show that no strictly “welfarist” or Paretian social welfare function can be normatively prescriptive. Economists who prescribe must embrace at least one value apart from or additional to “welfarism” and Paretianism, and in fact will do best to dispense with Pareto entirely.

The Hidden Harm Of Law And Economics, Daniel I A Cohen

ExpressO

The paper deals with the adverse psychodynamic consequences to an individual and to society, immediately and in the long run, of dissolving individual responsibility for fault as in the doctrine of Law and economics.

At War With The Eclectics: Mapping Pragmatism In Contemporary Legal Analysis, Justin Desautels-Stein

ExpressO

This article has two primary goals. The first is descriptive, and seeks to respond to what appears to be an increasing degree of confusion over the word “pragmatism,” especially as it is used in a good deal of legal literature. This descriptive aim begins by separating out three general categories of pragmatism: (1) the so-called “everyday” pragmatism familiar to the American vernacular, (2) the classical philosophy of the early pragmatist authors like William James and John Dewey, and (3) pragmatism as understood in the context of law. The majority of the article is subsequently concerned with exploring this last category, …

Mission Possible: Reciprocal Deference Between Domestic Regulatory Structures And The Wto, Elizabeth Trujillo

Faculty Scholarship

One of the goals of Article III of GATT is to invalidate domestic regulatory measures, including taxes and non-fiscal policies that amount to non-tariff barriers to trade (NTB) and therefore violate the principles of national treatment. While internal policies that directly discriminate between products based on nationality or origin are clearly in violation of national treatment principles, it is the facially neutral regulatory measures with protectionist and discriminatory effects that are more difficult to assess, even within transparent regulatory processes. However, with their emphasis on the likeness of the products in question, WTO panels run the risk of alienating member …

At War With The Eclectics: Mapping Pragmatism In Contemporary Legal Analysis, Justin Deystone

Publications

This Article has two primary goals. The first is descriptive and seeks to respond to what appears to be an increasing degree of confusion over the word "pragmatism," especially as it is used in a good deal of legal literature. This descriptive aim begins by separating out three general categories of pragmatism: (1) the so-called "everyday" pragmatism familiar to the American vernacular, (2) the classical philosophy of the early pragmatist authors like William James and John Dewey, and (3) pragmatism as understood in the context of law. The majority of the Article is subsequently concerned with exploring this last category, …

Contractarianism, Contractualism, And The Law Of Corporate Insolvency, Riz Mokal

ExpressO

What is the appropriate way of theorising about corporate bankruptcy law? That lies, argues this paper, in rejecting Pareto and Kaldor-Hicks efficiency in favour of a particular conception of transaction cost efficiency, and in rejecting the ‘contractarian’ Creditors’ Bargain Model in favour of the ‘contractualist’ Authentic Consent Model. The paper vindicates these arguments with an analysis of the automatic stay which characterises the collective liquidation regime, of the pari passu principle often said to be at the heart of this regime, and of the liability imposed in some jurisdictions on the managers of terminally distressed companies for failing to take …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Legal Consciousness And Contractual Obligations, Kojo Yelpaala

ExpressO

The Article on “Legal Consciousness and Contractual Obligations” will explore and offer an explanation of the origins of the moral foundations for contractual obligations beyond conventional analysis. Building on themes and threads across many disciplines and theories, it seeks to identify and locate certain unities and common elements that explain human consciousness in exchange relations across cultures. The term contract is used in its non-technical and most inclusive sense to cover agreements, promises, undertakings and other forms of consensus whether or not supported by consideration. Viewed within this broad conceptual framework, where do human beings get the idea that they …

Corporations And The Lateral Obligations Of The Social Contract, Benedict Sheehy

ExpressO

Social contract theorists suggest that society at some level is based on the idea that human people surrender freedom for the privilege of participating in society. That participation implicitly requires more than mere minimal compliance with law. Each human person’s contribution to society above the legal baseline, permits humans to create a society that is at least tolerable. Corporations as non-human act without regard for these supra-legal obligations which results in society suffering injustice. Corporate participation in society has become increasingly unjust and has done so to the extent that we may speak of living in a post-ethical world.

When Should Judges Appoint Experts?: A Law And Economics Perspective, Jonathan T. Tomlin, David Cooper

ExpressO

The Supreme Court’s decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals placed federal judges in the role of “gatekeepers” empowered to evaluate the reliability of often complex expert testimony. Many judges, commentators, and legal scholars have argued that court-appointed experts can assist judges in appropriately carrying out their gatekeeping role. However, previous literature has not evaluated the role of court-appointed experts in a rigorous framework that considers the complex interaction of the incentives of expert witnesses, the impact of expert witnesses on the decision-making of the fact finder, and the knowledge of the judge. In this article, we provide such a …

The Restitutionary Approach To Just Compensation, Tim Kowal

ExpressO

In the wake of the Court’s near-total refusal to impose a check on the legislature through the public use clause, this paper discusses whether any confidence in our property rights be restored through the just compensation clause in the form of restitutionary compensation, rather than the traditional, and myopic, “fair market value” standard. This paper discusses the historical presumption against restitution, elucidated through Bauman v. Ross over a century ago, is founded upon (1) the idea that the public should not be made to pay any more than necessary to effect a public project, and (2) the idea that the …