Law and Society Commons^™

Expansion Of New Law In Southeast May Stave Off Black Land Loss, Thomas W. Mitchell, Sarah Stein, Ann Carpenter

Faculty Scholarship

Landownership and homeownership are significant contributors to the creation of wealth and thus, drivers of intergenerational economic mobility. However, many people who have inherited family land are unable to realize these opportunities because of the legal effect of their particular form of landownership, often called heirs' property. These landowners are more likely to lose their land through what is known as a partition sale—a property sale resulting from a dispute between co-owners, often ignited by an outside party with an investment interest in the land. This Partners Update article explores the repercussions of heirs' property ownership and examines legislative solutions …

Toward A Theory Of Intercountry Human Rights: Global Capitalism And The Rise And Fall Of Intercountry Adoption, Barbara Stark

Indiana Law Journal

This Article proposes another mechanism for enforcement, an alternative to self-serving domestic policing and weak international bureaucracy. “Intercountry,” as opposed to “international,” human rights would apply to specific rights in specific contexts and be enforceable through the legal mechanisms and other resources of the state parties that accepted them. Intercountry adoption is a useful context in which to consider this proposal for several reasons.

First, as a practical matter, there have probably never been more babies and children in orphanages, on the street, on the market, or on their own. Yet intercountry adoptions have declined to levels not seen for …

Mandatory Tax Penalty Insurance, Michael Abramowicz

Indiana Law Journal

In a mandatory tax penalty insurance regime, taxpayers would be required to find insurers to certify portions of their tax returns. A certifying insurer would be subject to a governmental auditing regime insurers of randomly selected filings would pay an amount equal to the inverse of the selection probability multiplied by the underpayment, or they would receive money from the government in the case of overpayment. The insurers function as private auditors with no incentive to underestimate their customers' tax liability. Such a regime will consume real resources, ultimately paid by taxpayers, and thus should not be imposed universally. But …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Finding International Law In Private Governance: How Codes Of Conduct In The Apparel Industry Refer To International Instruments, Phillip Paiement, Sophie Melchers

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Multinational enterprises increasingly use Codes of Conduct to govern the conditions of labor and production among their suppliers' operations around the globe. These Codes of Conduct, produced unilaterally by companies as well as by multi-stakeholder bodies, often include references to public international law instruments. This article takes a closer look at thirty-eight Codes of Conduct from the global apparel industry and uses social network analysis to identify the patterns in these Codes and how they refer to international legal instruments. Although some international legal instruments stipulate rules that can be directly transposed into the private context of supply chains, this …

Practising Law For Rich And Poor People: Towards A More Progressive Approach, Allan C. Hutchinson

Articles & Book Chapters

It is 50 years since Stephen Wexler’s essay, Practicing Law for Poor People, was published.By any reasonable measure, this has become and remains an iconic piece. Whether he is agreed with or disagreed with, Wexler’s arguments continue to define the terms of the debate about the proper role and responsibilities of those who practise law for poor people. Critics and jurists can be for or against Wexler’s account, but they cannot make serious headway without it. As such, Wexler’s essay deserves to be celebrated and showcased as it reaches its half-century milestone. However, his ideas and their informing assumptions about …

Inequality In The Sharing Economy, Gregory M. Stein

Brooklyn Law Review

The rise of the sharing economy benefits consumers and providers alike. Consumers can access a wider range of goods and services on an as-needed basis and no longer need to own a smaller number of costly assets that sit unused most of the time. Providers can engage in profitable short-term ventures, working on their own schedule and enjoying many new opportunities to supplement their income. Sharing economy platforms often employ dynamic pricing, which means that the price of a good or service varies in real time as supply and demand change. Under dynamic pricing, the price of a good or …

Session 6: Innovating The Built Environment Post-Covid-19, Marc Palatucci, Richard Lyall, Timothy Harris, Steven Bender, Peter Smirniotopoulos, Ryan Mathesin

SITIE Symposiums

ABSTRACT: Innovating the Built Environment for a Post-COVID-19 World

It would seem an act of academic malpractice to teach a course titled Innovating the Built Environment: How the Law Responds to Disruptive Change, and host an all-day symposium as an integral part of that course, and not endeavor to address the most-disruptive thing to happen to the built environment in more than 100 years: The coronavirus pandemic. This "disruption" to real estate is the proverbial elephant in the room. Hopefully, it will maintain a minimum six-foot distance from others as we address how it impacts the four Special Topics …

Session 5: Real Estate Tokenization, Joseph Vincent, Steven Bender, Peter Smirniotopoulos

SITIE Symposiums

ABSTRACT: Is “tokenization” the next great leap forward needed to make homeownership more appealing to Millennials and Gen Z’s?

If single-family homeownership and time-sharing had a love child, what would it look like? Is it possible to adapt successful models for office sharing to homeownership so renters who lament not owning an appreciating asset could have a stake in “something” while not being tied down to one specific residential structure or a single geographic location, to make homeownership more attractive to younger generations? And, if so, does blockchain technology hold the key (pun intended) to fractional ownerships in real …

Session 4: Atlanta Beltline, Art Lansing, Rob Turner, Jim Langford, Kristen Lohse, Claire Martini

SITIE Symposiums

ABSTRACT: What Would it Take to Connect All of Greater Seattle’s Neighborhoods with Walking and Biking Trails?

Major U.S. cities have endeavored, independently of each other, over the past several decades to create greenway systems connecting residents and visitors with neighborhoods and attractions, increasing opportunities for walking and biking and reducing their reliance on vehicular traffic. Atlanta’s BeltLine--a twenty-two-mile loop of historic railroad right-of-ways encircling the city’s downtown and midtown areas, seeks to reinvent the city if transformed into a green corridor—is perhaps one of the best examples of how a Seattle Greenway might be accomplished (although Atlanta’s concerted …

Session 3: Virtual Luncheon Session, Student Submissions

SITIE Symposiums

A Working Lunch brainstorming discussion, moderated by Professor Smirniotopoulos, to discuss “What Comes Next?” in the context of Innovating the Built Environment: How the Law Responds to Disruptive Change.

Registered students in Prof. Smirniotopoulos’s Innovating the Built Environment course will take one-to-two minutes each to present their initial project ideas for their Final Projects in the course, as well as outlining and moderating a discussion of the Challenges and Opportunities presented by their ideas. Symposium participants are encouraged to set up lunch in front of their computers and participate actively in discussing each student’s project idea, providing relevant …

Session 2: Wework, Ryan Mathisen, Peter Smirniotopoulos, Paul Swegle

SITIE Symposiums

ABSTRACT: When Worlds Collide: How an 86-Year Old Federal Law (The Securities Act of 1933) Exposed the Flaws in WeWork’s “Innovative Business Model.”

Co-working pioneer WeWork, a wholly owned subsidiary of The We Company, grew meteorically through an extremely aggressive building and master-lease acquisition strategy over the past several years. Substantial, early stage funding from SoftBank, a Japan-based high-tech venture capital investment bank, reinforced WeWork’s unicorn status. But was WeWork’s business model truly unique, bringing with it the promise of a very profitable real estate operating company in the future? Or was it the company’s early stage, venture …

Session 1: Crew Seattle Presentation, Emily Alvarado, Jeanne Marie Coronado, Tory Laughlin Taylor, Colin Morgan-Cross

SITIE Symposiums

ABSTRACT: Is there Still a Place in Seattle for the Single-Family Detached Housing Typology, Given the Acute Need for Affordable Housing?

This expert panel will explore the intersection between existing zoning laws and well-established neighborhood patterns of development, on the one hand, and the acute need for the increased production and availability of affordable housing, in the greater Seattle area, including in and near the City of Seattle’s Central Business District, as well as other close-in employment centers, on the other hand. The genesis of this Special Topic in the Innovating the Built Environment SITIE2020 course came out of …

Opening Session, Annette Clark, Steven Bender, Peter Smirniotopoulos

SITIE Symposiums

The SITIE2020 Symposium: Innovating the Built Environment was offered entirely online, through the Zoom platform. Each of six (6) symposium sessions, outlined below, were offered in a continuous Zoom session with breaks throughout the day, allowing our audience to select those sessions of greatest interest to them. Students enrolled in Professor Smirniotopoulos’s Summer Institute course—Innovating the Built Environment: How the Law Responds to Disruptive Change—participated all day.

Proceedings Of The Sitie2020 Symposium, Seattle Journal Of Technology, Environmental, And Innovation Law

SITIE Symposiums

Complete Summary of Proceedings.

Kosovo's Controversial 100 Percent Tariff: An Analysis Of Its Imposition And The Issues Bleeding Into The Conflict Between Kosovo And Serbia, Ernira Mehmetaj

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

On November 6, 2018, Kosovo imposed a 10 percent tariff on products imported from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Later that month, on November 28, 2018, after Kosovo was denied membership in the International Criminal Police Organization, Kosovo increased the custom tariffs on Serbian and Bosnian goods from 10 to 100 percent. These actions resulted in a standstill of the European Union–mandated Belgrade-Pristina dialogue—a dialogue seeking to normalize the relations between the two states. Having the tumultuous history shared by Kosovo and Serbia as a backdrop, this Note analyzes the international agreements Kosovo is party to, specifically the Central European …

Faith, Law, And Love: Peg Brinig's Legacy, Stephanos Bibas

Notre Dame Law Review

The central question in Peg Brinig’s work is how the law can help intimate associations to raise healthy kids. She pursues this theme through a variety of inquiries, ranging from parochial schools in big-city neighborhoods to covenant-marriage laws in Louisiana. Her answers depend on context, varying with how close each social actor or institution is to the process of raising children. But nearly all her recommendations seek to foster permanent, loving, involved social environments.

Following Brinig’s lead, I’ll celebrate her work by highlighting some of the answers she offers in three different social contexts. In Part I, I’ll explore her …

A Consumer Guide To Empirical Family Law, June Carbone

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article will consider the framework for empirical work on family law, arguing that the failure to ask more sophisticated questions at the beginning of the research has limited its effectiveness. In this sense, Professor Peg Brinig’s work stands out for the creativity of the questions she has asked, her exploration of underutilized databases, and her work’s potential to serve as a foundation for a new paradigm for the integration of empirical work into family law theory.

This Article will discuss the way that theory—and the creation of discourses associated with it—informs empirical research. First, it will maintain that the …

Examining The Case For Socialized Law, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary Friedman

Articles

Most people would agree with Frederick Wilmot-Smith that the rich have no greater claim to justice than the poor. And yet, as Wilmot-Smith points out in his provocative book, Equal Justice: Fair Legal Systems in an Unfair World, our laissez-faire legal-services markets ensure sharply unequal justice for rich and poor. The prescription at the heart of Equal Justice is the deprivatization of markets for legal services. To realize the ideal of equal justice, Wilmot-Smith would equalize the legal talent available to all and replace the market system with a centralized regime loosely analogous to socialized medicine.

Wilmot-Smith’s bold ideas …

Fmc Corp. V. Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Seth T. Bonilla

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In 1998, FMC Corporation agreed to submit to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes’ permitting processes, including the payment of fees, for clean-up work required as part of consent decree negotiations with the Environmental Protection Agency. Then, in 2002, FMC refused to pay the Tribes under a permitting agreement entered into by both parties, even though the company continued to store hazardous waste on land within the Shoshone-Bannock Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho. FMC challenged the Tribes’ authority to enforce the $1.5 million permitting fees first in tribal court and later challenged the Tribes’ authority to exercise civil regulatory and adjudicatory jurisdiction over …

The Unmet Legal Needs Of The Poor In Maine: Is Mandatory Pro Bono The Answer?, Wendy F. Rau

Maine Law Review

In 1989, the Maine Commission on Legal Needs was formed to study the civil legal needs of Maine's poor population and to develop a plan for meeting those needs. Similar projects have been undertaken in a number of other states and by the American Bar Association in recent years. Each study has revealed a significant unmet need among the poor for assistance with legal problems. There seems little doubt that the situation is serious and widespread. The difficulty lies in finding a solution. One proposal that has been advanced is mandatory pro bono, a program that would require attorneys to …

The Replicability Crisis In Patent Law, Janet Freilich

Indiana Law Journal

There is a “replicability crisis” in the scientific literature. Scientists attempting to redo experiments in reputable, peer-reviewed journals have found that staggering numbers of these experiments—up to 90%—do not work. Patents, like scientific articles, contain experiments. These experiments often form the backbone of the patent and provide crucial support for patentability. Patent examiners use these experiments to evaluate whether the invention works, and thus whether the patent should be granted. The replicability crisis in the scientific literature is therefore of utmost importance to the patent system. Transferring the insights of the replicability crisis to patents begs the question of whether …

The Grip Of Nationalism On Corporate Law, Mariana Pargendler

Indiana Law Journal

Part I provides a brief overview of the relationship between corporate law and nationalism and demonstrates their interaction in the historical experiences of several key jurisdictions. These vignettes are merely illustrative, but they indicate how deep the link between nationalism and corporate law can be. Part II summarizes the evidence on the economic effects of foreign corporate control, showing that it is ultimately inconclusive. Part III explains why corporate law can be an attractive instrument to accomplish nationalist objectives and explores the possible regulatory responses to this phenomenon. Part IV analyzes the implications of these findings for future developments in …

Screened Out Of Housing: The Impact Of Misleading Tenant Screening Reports And The Potential For Criminal Expungement As A Model For Effectively Sealing Evictions, Katelyn Polk

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Having an eviction record “blacklists” tenants from finding future housing. Even renters with mere eviction filings—not eviction orders—on their records face the harsh collateral consequences of eviction. This Note argues that eviction records should be sealed at filing and only released into the public record if a landlord prevails in court. Juvenile record expungement mechanisms in Illinois serve as a model for one way to protect people with eviction records. Recent updates to the Illinois juvenile expungement process provided for the automatic expungement of certain records and strengthened the confidentiality protections of juvenile records. Illinois protects juvenile records because it …

Racialized Tax Inequity: Wealth, Racism, And The U.S. System Of Taxation, Palma Joy Strand, Nicholas A. Mirkay

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article describes the connection between wealth inequality and the increasing structural racism in the U.S. tax system since the 1980s. A long-term sociological view (the why) reveals the historical racialization of wealth and a shift in the tax system overall beginning around 1980 to protect and exacerbate wealth inequality, which has been fueled by racial animus and anxiety. A critical tax view (the how) highlights a shift over the same time period at both federal and state levels from taxes on wealth, to taxes on income, and then to taxes on consumption—from greater to less progressivity. Both of these …

Debt Bondage: How Private Collection Agencies Keep The Formerly Incarcerated Tethered To The Criminal Justice System, Bryan L. Adamson

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article examines the constitutionality of statutes which allow courts to transfer outstanding legal financial obligations to private debt collection agencies. In Washington State, the clerk of courts can transfer the legal financial obligation of a formerly incarcerated person if he or she is only thirty days late making a payment. Upon transfer, the debt collection agencies can assess a “collection fee” of up to 50% of the first $100.000 of the unpaid legal financial obligation, and up to 35% of the unpaid debt over $100,000. This fee becomes part of the LFO debt imposed at sentencing, and like that …

From Public Health To Public Wealth: The Case For Economic Justice, Barbara L. Atwell

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines how we can overlay the principle of serving the common good, which undergirds public health law, onto financial well-being. It suggests that we apply public health law principles to corporate law and culture. In matters of public health, we view quite broadly states' police power to protect the public good. Government is also empowered to protect the general welfare in matters of financial well-being. Using the “general welfare” as a guidepost, this Article challenges the conventional wisdom that corporations exist solely to maximize profit and shareholder value to the exclusion of virtually everything else. It proposes two …

Reflections On The Effects Of Federalism On Opioid Policy, Matthew B. Lawrence

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Law In The Time Of Covid-19, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Books

The COVID-19 crisis has ended and upended lives around the globe. In addition to killing over 160,000 people, more than 35,000 in the United States alone, its secondary effects have been as devastating. These secondary effects pose fundamental challenges to the rules that govern our social, political, and economic lives. These rules are the domain of lawyers. Law in the Time of COVID-19 is the product of a joint effort by members of the faculty of Columbia Law School and several law professors from other schools.

This volume offers guidance for thinking about some the most pressing legal issues the …

The Multiple Selves Of Economic Self-Determination, Odette Lienau

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In this Essay, I argue that the contemporary world requires an explicitly plural and flexible conception of economic self-determination and especially a broader vision of the economic “self” at its center. I contend that older dyadic understandings of economic self-determination, formed largely in light of twentieth-century anticolonial struggles, are no longer sufficient. Individuals can be economically constrained across multiple vectors by newly powerful actors and innovative forms of control. They are thus potentially implicated in multiple political and economic selves—not just personal but also local, national, and transnational.

As such, those seeking to promote economic self-determination should more explicitly recognize …