Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons^™

The Paradox Of Intellectual Property At The U.S. Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court is dramatically more politically polarized in the Roberts Court era, and the justices have been criticized for highly ideological and partisan decision-making. Yet, we show that there is one area of law that is becoming less ideologically divided and predictable: intellectual property (IP). In an earlier study, we showed that, prior to the Roberts Court, IP case outcomes were predictable based on judicial ideology, with more conservative justices embracing IP rights, as they do for real property. In the last two decades, IP has become more influential on the economy and society, through the increasing dominance of …

Customary Corruption, Ani B. Satz, Liza Vertinsky

Faculty Articles

For over a hundred years, it has been well-accepted among tort scholars that physicians—as one of the legally recognized professions— determine their own customary practices. Within tort law, and medical malpractice more specifically, customary practice establishes whether physicians breach or uphold the required standard of care toward their patients. The results of our hand-coded examination of decided cases and statutes show a more complex picture. While some states have endeavored to shift the standard away from professional custom, it continues to play a critical, and in many cases a determinative, role in establishing physician liability in most states.

Using illustrative …

The War On Tenure, Deepa Das Acevedo

Faculty Articles

Legislative attacks on faculty tenure are proliferating at an alarming rate. Politicians seeking to abolish or restrict the practice argue that tenure encourages bad behavior and impedes warranted terminations, granting undeserving academics “jobs for life.” But does tenure really facilitate—much less incentivize—such undesirable outcomes? This Article marshals an original and unprecedented dataset of “tenured-terminations” as well as existing social science research to show that the likely answer to both questions is “No.”

Instead, the data suggest that tenure is largely operating as it should: as a form of “just cause” employment where cause for termination is difficult but not impossible …

Law, Growth, And The Identity Hurdle: A Theory Of Legal Reform, Martin W. Sybblis

Faculty Articles

This Article offers a new theoretical approach to understanding resistance to legal change in the corporate and commercial context by introducing the sociological concept of "community economic identity" (CEI) into legal scholarship. I argue that community leaders (typically, but not exclusively, from the political, legal, and business spheres) generate public and recognizable identities-e.g., "Coal Country" or "Motor City"-with respect to some commercial activities. These identities influence how law reform is conceived and deployed within jurisdictional boundaries (i.e., country, state, town, region, etc.). CEI complicates the prevailing public choice narrative regarding the influence of special interests in the law reform process. …

Regulatory Competition And State Capacity, Martin W. Sybblis

Faculty Articles

This Article explores an underlying tension in the regulatory competition literature regarding why some jurisdictions are more attractive to firms than others. It pays special attention to offshore financial centers (OFCs). OFCs court the business of nonresidents, offer business friendly regulatory environments, and provide for minimal, if any, taxation on their customers. On the one extreme, OFCs are theorized as merely products of legislative capture— thereby lacking any meaningful agency of their own. On the other hand, OFCs are conceptualized as well-governed jurisdictions that attract investment because of the high quality of their laws and legal institutions—indicating some ability to …

Buying Happiness: Property, Acquisition, And Subjective Well-Being, David Fagundes

Faculty Articles

Acquiring property is a central part of the modern American vision of the good life. The assumption that accruing more land or chattels will make us better off is so central to the contemporary preoccupation with acquisition that it typically goes without saying. Yet an increasing body of evidence from psychologists and economists who study hedonics—the science of happiness—yields the surprising conclusion that getting and having property does not actually increase our subjective well-being. In fact, it might even decrease it. While scholars have integrated the insights of hedonics into other areas of law, no scholarship has yet done so …

An Analysis Of Future Coaches’ Emerging Dispositions On Social Justice: The Wooden Effect, Brian Culp

Faculty Articles

This qualitative study explored the extent to which an archetype presented through a non-fiction text could impact aspiring coaches’ (AC’s) dispositions regarding social justice. Forty-three aspiring coaches at a Midwestern university enrolled in a foundations class that presented issues related to inequity were studied. Analysis of student journals indicated changes in AC’s philosophies regarding social justice, an appreciation for the perspectives of underrepresented groups and emergent critical perspectives when examining sport processes. Results of the study imply that a focus on democratic education and constructivism in coaching preparation programs may be of benefit. A means by which praxis of this …

The Attrition Of Rights Under Parole, Tonja Jacobi, Song Richardson, Gregory Barr

Faculty Articles

We conduct a detailed doctrinal and empirical study of the adverse effects of parole on the constitutional rights of both individual parolees and the communities in which they live. We show that parolees' Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights have been eroded by a multitude of punitive conditions endorsed by the courts. Punitive parole conditions actually increase parolees' vulnerability to criminal elements, and thus likely worsen recidivism. Simultaneously, the parole system broadly undermines the rights of nonparolees, including family members, cotenants, and communities. We show that police target parolee-dense neighborhoods for additional Terry stops, even when income, race, population, and …

Suburban Poverty: Barriers To Services And Injury Prevention Among Marginalized Women Who Use Methamphetamine, Miriam W. Boeri, Benjamin Tyndall, Denise R. Woodall

Faculty Articles

Objective: This paper aims to identify the needed healthcare and social services barriers for women living in suburban communities who are using or have used methamphetamine. Drug users are vulnerable to injury, violence and transmission of infectious diseases, and having access to healthcare has been shown to positively influence prevention and intervention among this population. Yet little is known regarding the social context of suburban drug users, their risks behaviors, and their access to healthcare.

Methods: The data collection involved participant observation in the field, face-to-face interviews and focus groups. Audio-recorded in-depth life histories, drug use histories, and resource needs …