Public Law and Legal Theory Commons^™

Unequal Ownership, Ofer Eldar, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

Market concentration and weak competition do not just lead to lower efficiency but also result in corporate profits flowing primarily to wealthy households that own a disproportionate share of public corporations. We demonstrate that this is a growing distributional problem not only due to familiar reasons in the literature, most notably shifts in market power, but also due to changes in the socio-economic makeup of ownership. Over the past twenty years, households in the bottom 90 percent of wealth have seen their share of stock ownership decline by half. That is, the ownership of corporations has become increasingly concentrated among …

Partisan Impact? Rejecting The Wisconsin Supreme Court’S New Remedial Redistricting Criterion, Anthony Sikorski

Marquette Law Review

In Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the districting maps for the Wisconsin Legislature that the court had adopted at the close of the Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission trilogy of cases. In so doing, while the Clarke majority based its decision on the maps containing noncontiguous districts, in violation of article IV, sections 4 and 5 of the Wisconsin Constitution, it not-so-subtly introduced a new criterion that would be used to judge remedial maps: “partisan impact.” This Comment critiques the partisan impact criterion through a textualist lens, concluding that the Wisconsin Constitution does …

Reform For Realists: The False Promise Of Condorcet Voting, G. Michael Parsons, Rachel Hutchinson

Marquette Law Review

As Americans grow disenchanted with democracy, many scholars suggest that election reforms may offer a path forward. The fastest growing of these reforms is ranked choice voting (RCV). In RCV elections, voters rank candidates in order of preference: first, second, third, and so on. The candidates with the least support are eliminated, and ballots that ranked those candidates count for their next choice instead. This method has over a century of use in public elections and provides proven benefits well-suited to many of the problems facing our country.

Yet some social choice theorists now argue that reformers have backed the …

Special-Purpose Governments, Conor Clarke, Henry Hansmann

Scholarship@WashULaw

When one thinks of government, what comes to mind are familiar general-purpose entities like states, counties, and cities. But more than half of the 90,000 governments in the United States are strikingly different: They are “special-purpose” governments that do one thing, such as supply water, fight fire, or pick up the trash. These entities have expanded far more rapidly than any other form of government. Yet they remain understudied, and they present at least two puzzles. First, special-purpose governments are difficult to distinguish from entities that are typically regarded as business organizations—such as consumer cooperatives—and thus underscore the nebulous border …

Lost Innocence, Mateo Valdivieso

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Human trafficking is defined as involving “force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act” (U.S. Department of Homeland Security). It disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, particularly children within the U.S. welfare system. This research aims to analyze the characteristics of this system that produce vulnerabilities in welfare children that heighten their risk of being trafficked. The study focuses on socio-economic, psychological, and environmental vulnerabilities, examining how these factors, combined with increased internet accessibility, exacerbate the risks of trafficking. Using a qualitative approach, the research uses secondary data from peer-reviewed journal articles, government reports, and reputable …

No Right To Exclude: The European Union’S Reparative Migration Obligations, Steffi Colao

American University International Law Review

In this article, I unify the diverse but related ways that scholars, activists and people on the move have demanded migration as a form of reparations. I first compare (mostly U.S.-based) theoretical arguments for migration as a form of reparations for colonization, military occupation, and climate harm. I then turn to international legal traditions of reparations to highlight the ways that reparative migration might be actualized in response to human rights violations. 

Looking at EU and international legal standards on remedies, I show how these arguments are not necessarily radical but, in fact, could be at least partially possible under …

Masthead & Table Of Contents

Dalhousie Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Urgensi Pembentukan Lembaga Pengawas Data Pribadi Sebagai Upaya Preventif Kebocoran Data Pribadi, Salsa Hardafi

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

The rapid advancement of information technology has intensified the risks of personal data breaches and violations of privacy rights. Although Law Number 27 of 2022 on Personal Data Protection (PDP Law) has established a comprehensive legal framework for personal data protection in Indonesia, its effective implementation remains constrained by the absence of the Personal Data Protection Supervisory Authority (PDP Authority). This institutional absence creates a structural authority vacuum that weakens preventive measures, law enforcement mechanisms, and alternative dispute resolution in personal data protection. Through normative legal analysis using Hans Kelsen’s Stufenbau Theory, Nonet and Selznick’s Responsive Law Theory, and Satjipto …

The Hunger Games: Food As A Right, Not A Privilege, Camesha F. Little

FIU Law Review

Despite the United Nations' explicit declaration that all humans have a right to food, food insecurity and hunger remain persistent problems in the United States and around the globe. The dystopian landscapes depicted in novels such as The Hunger Games and Parable of the Sower—societies crippled by poverty, oppression, and pervasive starvation—resonate with sobering contemporary realities. This Article examines existing food laws, food rights, and the current protections safeguarding the United States food supply from a humanitarian perspective. Ultimately, this Article argues that the human right to food must expand to encompass a right to healthy or natural food, and …

Fifty Years Of Protecting The Surviving Spouse: The Origin And Evolution Of Florida's Elective Share, Flavia Argamasilla

FIU Law Review

Currently, Florida’s elective share framework calculates the amount a surviving spouse is entitled to based on a decedent’s “elective estate.” Although this “elective estate” represents a significant improvement from previous law, where a decedent was free to completely disinherit a surviving spouse, issues still loom regarding the fairness of the framework. Granting a surviving spouse a fixed share of 30 percent of the decedent’s “elective estate” regardless of the length of the marriage can lead to inequitable outcomes. For instance, a surviving spouse who was married to the decedent for any period of time, one month even, can elect to …

Beyond A Boundary Of Systemic Anti-Black Racism In The Workplace In Canada, Adelle Blackett

Dalhousie Law Journal

In this lecture, I will, however, focus on one of the legacies of slavery, that is, the largely untold story of racial segregation in the world of work in Canada. We have come so effectively, and rightly, to focus on the effects of discrimination, that we may have inadvertently walked past the history. Reclaiming this history will comprise the first part of my talk.

The second part of my talk will reference the emergence of the duty of fair representation. I will seek to illustrate the weight of the erasure of anti-Black racism through this duty. In other words, far …

Carceral Bonds, Tyler E. Dougherty

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Over the past 50 years, the U.S. financed a massive physical and fiscal expansion of prisons via the municipal bond market—with devastating results. This project is the first to shine a light on the role of municipal debt in state-level carceral decision making, spotlighting the ways that the municipal bond market affects states’ capacities to incarcerate.

This Article argues that the two primary controls of states’ use of the carceral bond market—(1) market discipline and (2) states’ fiscal constitutions—are particularly ineffective at limiting states’ spending on prisons. This failure to restrain states’ spending through the carceral bond market enables private …

Trumpian Populism And The Changing Intellectual Landscape In Antitrust: Century-Old Resonances, The New Right And Possible End Of An Era., Jonathan B. Baker

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Three sides predominated in the U.S. antitrust policy debate during the Biden administration: neo-Brandeisians (or antimonopolists), centrist reformers (or post-Chicagoans), and conservatives (or Chicagoans). At that time, Trumpian populists did not comfortably fit with any of these groups and were at best secondary participants in policy discussions.

Nine months after the start of the second Trump administration, the intellectual landscape was different. Trumpian populism has now taken center stage at the antitrust enforcement agencies through two senior appointments-- Abigail (Gail) Slater as Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust in the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Mark Meador as a Federal Trade …

Foundations For Platform Liability, Kathryn E. Spier, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

From spreading misinformation to selling deadly products, bad actors use technology platforms to their advantage while causing devastating harms to privacy, health, and even democracy. Despite their central role in enabling these bad actors, the platforms almost entirely escape liability. This legal immunity is purportedly grounded in economics. From the beginning, courts and legislatures feared that liability would chill innovation, growth, and user access. They also speculated that platforms have sufficient market incentives to voluntarily police bad actors, making liability unnecessary.

Whereas many scholars have argued that platform immunity is blind to justice, this Article shows that it is also …

Foreword: The Opioid Litigation Conference, Rodger D. Citron

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Property And Information, Jeanne L. Schroeder, David G. Carlson

Articles

The article proceeds as follows. As the information theory is a reaction to legal realism, Part I explores its antecedents in the work of Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld and Ronald H. Coase. Part II presents the information theory as arising from Professor Smith’s interpretation of the Coase theorem.11 In the imaginary world of TC0, we are supposedly indifferent to organizing by property and organizing by contract. Property eclipses contract as the organon of the economy because property reduces the cost of delineation and processing—of speaking and comprehending. We show that this theory is founded on a misunderstanding of Coase. Part III …

Is There A Regulator In The Polish Electronic Delivery Market? The Role Of The President Of Uke, Mateusza Chołodecki

internetowy Kwartalnik Antymonopolowy i Regulacyjny (internet Quarterly on Antitrust and Regulation)

This paper examines the regulatory role of the President of the Office of Electronic Communications (UKE) within the electronic delivery market in Poland, focusing specifically on the statutory competencies granted by the Electronic Delivery Act. The paper identifies significant limitations of the President of UKE’s current regulatory scope, by analysing these competencies and their alignment with Poland’s postal and telecommunications regulatory frameworks. The analysis reveals that the regulatory powers of the President UKE that concern electronic delivery services are narrowly defined, primarily covering oversight over tariffs, T&Cs, and operator designation, without broader supervisory authority or clearly articulated regulatory objectives. Consequently, …

What Might Contract Theory Be?, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Few contract theories begin with so comprehensive a discussion of method as does Stephen Smith’s book, Contract Theory. In the first chapter, “What Is Contract Theory,” Smith describes an interpretive approach guided by four goals: fit with the existing law, internal coherence, moral attractiveness, and transparency to legal actors.

This chapter in Understanding Private Law: Essays in Honour of Stephen A. Smith, does a deep dive into Smith’s description and defense of those goals. Smith pictures the contract theorist as an observer standing outside legal practice, interpreting the law but not participating in it. That picture results in …

Prefatory Matter

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

No abstract provided.