By Allan Erbsen. Full text here. This Article constructs frameworks for analyzing federalism’s undertheorized horizontal dimension.  Discussions of federalism generally focus on the hierarchical (or vertical) allocation of power between the national and state governments while overlooking the horizontal allocation of power among coequal states.  Models of federal-state relations tend to treat the fifty states as…

By Steven L. Schwarcz. Full text here. Why did the recent subprime mortgage meltdown undermine financial-market stability notwithstanding the protections provided by market norms and financial regulation? This Essay attempts to answer that question by identifying anomalies and obvious protections that failed by examining hypotheses that might explain the anomalies and failures. Although some of the…

By Michael H. LeRoy. Full text here. State courts are creating conditions for moral hazard in the arbitration of employment disputes. The problem begins when employers compel individuals to arbitrate their legal claims, denying them access to juries and other benefits of a trial. This empirical study identifies a disturbing trend: state courts vacated many arbitration…

By Alan L. Durham. Full text here. According to well-established principles, one cannot patent natural laws or phenomena per se, but one can patent new and useful applications of those laws and phenomena. Justice Breyer’s opinion in Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings v. Metabolite Laboratories, Inc. applies this distinction to inventions exploiting natural relationships, such as…

By A. Mechele Dickerson. Full text here. For several years, bankruptcy and corporate governance scholars have discussed “control rights” in bankruptcy cases and have debated how those rights should be allocated. Data indicate that, as a positive matter, creditors effectively have the ability to decide the fate of an insolvent firm. The scholarship does not, however,…

By Austen L. Parrish. Full text here. A fierce debate rages among leading international law theorists that implicates the role of national courts in solving global challenges. On one side of the debate are scholars who are critical of international law and its institutions. These scholars, often referred to as Sovereigntists, see international law as a…

By Ted Sampsell-Jones. Full text here. Criminal defendants have the constitutional right to choose between testifying and remaining silent at trial. Within that broad constitutional framework, many legal rules affect the defendant’s decision. Some rules burden testimony and encourage silence, while others burden silence and encourage testimony. There is no way for the state to be…

By Glen Staszewski. Full text here. This Article explains that elected officials are not politically accountable for their specific policy decisions in the manner that is typically envisioned by modern public law. It claims, however, that public officials in a democracy can be held deliberatively accountable by a requirement or expectation that they give reasoned explanations…

By Fred C. Zacharias. Full text here. The American legal profession is highly regulated. Lawyers are governed by state-enforced professional codes, supervised by courts, and constrained by civil liability rules, civil and criminal statutes, and administrative standards. Nevertheless, commentators and various actors in the legal system continue to conceptualize law as a “self-regulated profession.” The…

By Neomi Rao. Full text here. This Article presents a public choice analysis of how the executive branch in the United States determines questions of compliance with international law. In contrast to traditional theories that treat the state as a unitary entity, the public choice approach examines the different interests and incentives of the many executive…