Public Law and Legal Theory Commons^™

Opting Out Of Regulation: A Public Choice Analysis Of Contractual Choice Of Law, Erin A. O'Hara

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article uses public choice theory to analyze the function of choice-of-law clauses in contracts. Choice-of-law clauses are now quite common and are increasingly enforced, especially with the proliferation of international and Internet transactions. Because these clauses can be used by parties to avoid regulation, academics are now vigorously debating the extent to which this contractual opt out should be permitted. The Article presents a positive political theory of the interplay of legislative action and the enforcement of choice of law. It demonstrates that the important normative debate over choice of law is somewhat misguided because both sides fail to …

Faith, Hope, And Rationality Or Public Choice And The Perils Of Occam's Razor, Cynthia R. Farina

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Regulatory Improvement Legislation: Risk Assessment, Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Judicial Review, Fred Anderson, Mary Ann Chirba-Martin, E. Donald Elliott, Cynthia R. Farina, Ernest Gellhorn, John D. Graham, C. Boyden Gray, Jeffrey Holmstead, Ronald M. Levin, Lars Noah, Katherine Rhyne, Jonathan Baert Weiner

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

As the number, cost, and complexity of federal regulations have grown over the past twenty years, there has been growing interest in the use of analytic tools such as risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis to improve the regulatory process. The application of these tools to public health, safety, and environmental problems has become commonplace in the peer-reviewed scientific and medical literatures. Recent studies prepared by Resources for the Future, the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis have demonstrated how formal analyses can and often do help government agencies achieve more protection against hazards …

After Seattle: Public International Organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations (Ngos), And Democratic Legitimacy In An Era Of Globalization: An Essay In Contested Legitimacy, Kenneth Anderson

Working Papers

This working monograph (about 120,000 words) analyzes the relationship between public international organizations such as the United Nations system and international non-governmental organizations under conditions of globalization. It argues that international organizations and international NGOs are locked in an embrace of mutual legitimation, each giving the other important political legitimacy, in favor of liberal internationalism and at the expense of democratic sovereignty. The monograph argues that the legitimacy that each gives the other is based on flawed assumptions about the nature of civil society and "international civil society," on the one hand, and global governance and the possibilities of international, …

The Reading Wars: Understanding The Debate Over How Best To Teach Children To Read, Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

Review essay on National Reading Panel, Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction; G. Coles, Reading Lessons: The Debate Over Literacy; G. Coles, Misreading Reading: The Bad Science That Hurts Children; M. Stout, The Feel-Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down of America's Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem; D. McGuinness, Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It. What is it about teaching reading that arouses such passions in Americans? Shall we have phonics or whole language or both? Why this debate should be …

Racial Profiling: The Criterion Of Disproportionate Numbers, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article critiques a common criterion employed to identify examples of racial profiling in law enforcement.

Reclaiming The Labor Movement Through Union Dues? A Postmodern Perspective In The Mirror Of Public Choice Theory, Harry G. Hutchison

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) seeming powerlessness to process dues objector cases has led to a proliferation of state sponsored "paycheck protection" laws and popular referenda devised to ensure that workers will not be obliged to pay dues for non-germane purposes. Recently, California captured national attention as the site of a richly contested paycheck protection referendum. Such proposals have electrified union advocates and have enlivened the debate over the proper use of union dues. In addition, recent attempts to reform campaign finance have run aground on the thorny issue of union political contributions (both in-kind and in cash). Concurrently, …

Expanding Directions, Exploding Parameters: Culture And Nation In Latcrit Coalitional Imagination, Elizabeth M. Iglesias, Francisco Valdes

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The articles and commentaries in this Symposium are excellent points of departure for reflecting upon the advances thus far achieved in the evolution of this still very young community of scholars. The articles and commentaries that follow this brief Introduction comprise the second "free-standing" law review Symposium on LatCrit theory organized specifically in response to student interests and initiatives. The timing is fitting, for this Symposium also coincides with the fifth anniversary of LatCrit theory's emergence in the American legal academy. Since then, five annual conferences and four additional colloquia have produced, in total, nine published symposia in both mainstream …

Fear Of Law: Thoughts On Fear Of Judging And The State Of The Federal Sentencing Guidelines (Sentencing Symposium), Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

To understand Fear of Judging and the debate over the Federal Sentencing Guidelines requires some familiarity with the sentencing reform movement that led to the adoption of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines in 1987, as well as at least a rudimentary grasp of the structure of the Guidelines themselves. For those readers who require an introduction to both subjects, the next section of this Article attempts to provide one. Those already familiar with the Guidelines and their history can skip to Section III, where the discussion of Fear of Judging begins in earnest.

Culture, Nationhood, And The Human Rights Ideal, Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol, Sharon Elizabeth Rush

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Symposium on nation and culture illustrates these LatCrit goals and advances them. The two main works and the commentaries on them are rich explorations and representations of the voices and concerns of LatCrit theory. This Foreword engages all the works by focusing on the concept of voice and silence. Part I locates the works in the axis of silence and power. Part II explores how critical theory and international human rights norms can be used to develop a progressive methodology to analyze and detect the exclusion or silencing of myriad voices. This Part develops a LatCritical Human Rights paradigm …

Putting Hate In Its Place: The Codification Of Bias Crime Statutes In A Modern Penal Code, Anthony M. Dillof

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Bankruptcy Reorganization: Legal Dynamics Associated With Economic Discontinuity, Young Rock Noh

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis attempts to discover the factors leading to such failures and to propose a cure. It argues that the basic structure of Chapter 11 of the Code, the debtor in possession structure, is one of the essential factors causing such a high rate of failure. The thesis further asserts that it is possible to reduce the rate of unsuccessful reorganization if the bankruptcy court exercises its power of case management more actively and expeditiously. For example, the court can screen the debtors' filing for relief before the reorganization case proceeds too far. Chapter II of this thesis examines the …

On The Frontier Of Procedural Innovation: Advance Pricing Agreements And The Struggle To Allocate Income For Cross Border Taxation, Diane M. Ring

Michigan Journal of International Law

This paper outlines a recent procedural innovation in the tax area, the Advance Pricing Agreement Program ("APA" program), and evaluates its success. Such a case study can play a significant role in linking procedural innovation to the broader issues of administrative law theory and regulatory reform. For example, a working model such as the APA program, built on flexibility and creativity, may support administrative theories advocating discretion, flexibility, and experimentation. Conversely, some interest group theories of regulation (e.g., public choice theory), can prompt critical examination of reforms like APAs that exhibit limited openness to scrutiny. The APA program is an …

Board Of Podiatric Medicine, Monisha Ann Coelho

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Board Of Pharmacy, Jenny K. Li

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

The Nature And Function Of Criminal Theory, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The practice of teaching and writing in the field of criminal law has changed dramatically in the last half-century. In the United States and England, and to a lesser extent in other English-speaking countries, we have witnessed a turn toward theoretical inquires of a greater depth and variety than had existed previously in the history of Anglo-American law. The subjects of this new literature include the nature and rationale of punishment; the theory of justification and of excuse, that is, of wrongdoing and responsibility; the relevance of consequences to the gravity of offenses (the problem of moral luck); and the …

America, Defender Of Democratic Legitimacy?, James C. Hathaway

Articles

American exceptionalism - a belief that the United States has a unique mission to lead the world, but ought logically to be exempt from the rules it promotes - is at the root of much of the American academy's effort to rationalize the US government's increasing rejection of multilateralism as the cornerstone of modern public international law. Even American scholars who disagree fundamentally on the problems with multilateralism (Kenneth Anderson arguing that it favours anti-democratic intervention by unelected NGOs, Michael Reisman asserting that it privileges elitist state-based lawmaking in the face of more democratic non-state 'lawmaking' processes) can agree on …

Three Faces Of Private Property, Michael A. Heller

Articles

Private property is a rather elusive concept. Any kid knows what it means for something to be mine or yours, but grownup legal theorists get flustered when they try to pin down the term. Typically they, actually we, turn to a familiar analytic toolkit: including, for example, Blackstone's image of private property as "sole and despotic dominion"; Hardin's metaphor of the "tragedy of the commons"; and, more generally, the division of ownership into a trilogy of private, commons, and state forms. While each analytic tool has a distinguished pedigree and certain present usefulness, each also imposes a cost because it …

Phoebe's Lament (Symposium: Empirical Research In Commercial Transactions), James J. White

Articles

Assume a bright hypothetical social scientist - call her Phoebe - who is completely ignorant of legal research as it is practiced in today's law schools. Phoebe might speculate about legal research as follows. First, she would note that the law schools are joined with and are the exclusive source of the practitioners of a profession. Second, she would note that commercial and legal actors rub up against and are influenced by the law in countless ways every day. Third, she might remark that this interaction occurs practically on the doorsteps of our law schools. Unlike anthropologists, who may have …

Preliminary Thoughts On The Virtues Of Passive Dialogue, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The judicial, legislative, and executive branches interact in many ways. These interactions fuel a constitutional dialogue that serves as a backdrop to myriad governmental activities, both large and small. The judiciary's participation is necessary, desirable, and, as a practical matter, inevitable. In my article I analyze two competing models that bear on the normative question: What form should the judiciary's participation take?

Debates over the judiciary's appropriate role in the public constitutional dialogue have captured scholarly attention for decades. Recent attention has focused on a growing distinction between the active and passive models of judicial participation. My article approaches this …

Epstein's Property, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In an era of skepticism about common law traditions and sensitivity to claims of distributive injustice, Richard Epstein has been an unflinching defender of private property rights. He has insisted that property rights are intelligible, and reminded us of their importance to social and economic welfare. In this paper, I shall offer what I believe is a friendly interpretation of Epstein's writings on property, and then pose some internal questions about the approach he has outlined. I begin with a quick summary of his description of property rights in an ideal legal regime.

Rational Recreation And The Law: The Transformation Of Popular Urban Leisure In Victorian England , Rachel Vorspan

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, Rachel Vorspan investigates the complex role played by the courts in the social and cultural transformation of Victorian England. Through focusing on judicial rulings in the recreational as well as political and industrial contexts she explains how the English judiciary played an important function in "rationalizing" the major institutions and practices of urban leisure

Localism And Regionalism, Richard Briffault

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Against Centralization, Gerald E. Frug

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Queen, The Attorney General, And The Modern Charitable Fiduciary: A Historical Perspective On Charitable Enforcement Reform, David Villar Patton

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Electronic Formulary Management And Medicaid: Maximizing Economic Efficiency And Quality Of Care In The Age Of Electronic Prescribing, Mark A. Buckles

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Civil Forfeiture And The Excessive Fines Clause: Does Bajakajian Provide False Hope For Drug-Related Offenders?, Chet Little

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Toward A Multicultural Theory Of Property Rights, Danaya C. Wright

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Disabling Certitudes: An Introduction To The Role Of Mythologies Of Conquest In Law, Jo Carrillo

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Remapping The Domain Of Property In Africa, L. Amede Obiora

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.