The Geography of Equal Protection
By Christopher R. Leslie. Full text here. This Article examines the geographic dimension of equal protection analysis. Whether a law violates the Equal Protection Clause generally depends on what level of scrutiny a court applies in reviewing that law. Laws that employ suspect classifications are subjected to heightened scrutiny. Whether a classification is suspect depends in…
Continue ReadingWhat Legal Authority Does the Fed Need During a Financial Crisis?
By Eric A. Posner. Full text here. The financial crisis of 2007–08 revealed gaps in the laws that authorize federal agencies to provide emergency liquidity support. On numerous occasions the Fed, FDIC, and Treasury acted without legal authorization, exposing them to criticism from Congress and the U.S. government to legal liability. I propose reforms that would…
Continue ReadingCoverage Information in Insurance Law
By Daniel Schwarcz. Full text here. The central goal of insurance law is to clarify, produce, and disseminate information about the scope of insurers’ coverage obligations to policyholders. This Article examines how insurance law and regulation seek to achieve these objectives, and to what ends. To do so, it distinguishes among three different types of coverage…
Continue ReadingBoard and Shareholder Power, Revisited
By Simone M. Sepe. Full text here. This Article offers a novel theory of the optimal balance of power between boards and shareholders. It does so by shedding light on the information structure of the shareholder-manager relationship, showing that shareholders face problems of adverse selection in addition to classic problems of managerial opportunism, i.e., moral hazard.…
Continue ReadingNote: Copyrighted Laws: Enabling and Preserving Access to Incorporated Private Standards
By James M. Sweeney. Full text here. Traditional laws—statutes, judicial opinions, and regulations—are not eligible for copyright protection. This principle is firmly established in over one hundred years of case law, despite the Copyright Code not expressly addressing the eligibility of laws. This has caused little controversy. In the last few decades, however, federal agencies have…
Continue ReadingNote: Embracing Ambiguity and Adopting Propriety: Using Comparative Law To Explore Avenues for Protecting the LGBT Population Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
By Charles Barrera Moore. Full text here. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was initially lauded for expanding the scope of crimes considered to violate international norms; however, as inclusive as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court has been for gender-based crimes, the ICC has yet to extend the same benefits to the lesbian,…
Continue ReadingNote: Getting Back to Basics: Recognizing and Understanding the Swing Voter on the Supreme Court of the United States
By Kristin M. McGaver. Full text here. There is an extensive history and tradition of labeling Supreme Court Justices as “swing voters” and “swing Justices.” And yet, the content of these labels remain woefully unclear. Modern uses of the terms fall on a continuum, conveying negative to positive sentiments with no clear definition. Complicating things further,…
Continue ReadingThe Value of the Standard
By Norman V. Siebrasse & Thomas F. Cotter. Full text here. Standard-setting organizations (SSOs) often require member firms to license their standard-essential patents (SEPs) on undefined “fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory” (FRAND) terms. Courts and commentators in turn have proposed various principles for calculating FRAND royalties, among them that the royalty should not reflect “the value of…
Continue ReadingThe Substantially Impaired Sex: Uncovering the Gendered Nature of Disability Discrimination
By Jennifer Bennett Shinall. Full text here. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 was a landmark piece of legislation that prohibited private-sector employers from discriminating against qualified disabled workers. Although the Act is over a quarter-century old, legal scholars have never considered whether it has been uniformly efficacious—that is, whether the Act has served…
Continue ReadingCracking the Code: An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Bankruptcy Outcomes
By Sara S. Greene, Parina Patel & Katherine Porter. Full text here. Chapter 13 is a cornerstone of the bankruptcy system. Its legal requirements strike a balance between the rehabilitation of debtors through keeping assets and reducing debt, and the repayment of creditors over a period of years. Despite the accolades from policymakers, the hard truth…
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