This page summarizes the most recent SSRN abstracts posted by the authors of the Jurisdynamics Network. The Network's authors are serious, productive scholars as well as stimulating bloggers, and we hope you will read and download these papers. This page has its own RSS feed, which you are invited to download by clicking here:
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Frank A. Pasquale, REVISION: The Hippocratic Math,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1995692 (February 2, 2012)
Not many policymakers or scholars can write with the authority of Gregg Bloche. Bloche is not only a law professor, but a physician, who knows his way around a hospital. Throughout The Hippocratic Myth, Bloche cements his authority in the mind of the reader by relating stories of his experience as a clinician. In each of these stories, his humane and insightful approach as psychiatrist shines through. I do not say this to imply that Bloche uses his book to brag about his own abilities. Rather, t
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: ACTA and Its Complex Politics,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1953899 (January 25, 2012)
Written for a special issue on the politics of intellectual property, this article examines the "country club" approach the negotiating parties of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) embraced to establish new and higher international intellectual property enforcement standards. It points out that the agreement is flawed not only because it is a country club agreement but also because it is a bad country club agreement.
The article then situates ACTA in the context of a recent trend o
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: No Personality Rights for Pop Stars in Hong Kong?,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1672311 (January 25, 2012)
Referred to as 'the Pearl of the Orient' for generations, Hong Kong is a glamorous city known for its lavish lifestyle and the rich and famous. Its entertainment products, in particular movies, television programs, and music, are highly popular in not only Asia, but also different parts of the world. Yet, the region does not offer strong protection of personality rights to celebrities. This development provides an interesting contrast to developments in the United States, where Hollywood actors
J.B. Ruhl, REVISION: What Should We Do About the Climate Change Winners?,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1953928 (January 8, 2012)
Many people and businesses in the United States stand to receive market and nonmarket benefits from climate change as it moves forward over the next 100 years. Speaking of climate change benefits is not for polite “green” conversation, but ignoring them — as climate policy dialogue and legal scholarship consistently have — will not make them go away. It is important to take climate change benefits into account if they lead people and businesses to believe that climate change will not be so bad f
Jim Chen, Progressive Taxation: An Aesthetic and Moral Defense,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1980731 (January 6, 2012)
The power to tax is at once the power to create and the power to destroy. If the United States government hopes to discharge its primary duty as creator and protector of its citizens' wealth, it must be willing to destroy wealth, from time to time, by redistributing it. More than any other tool, the means by which government finances and depletes its treasury affects the societal distribution of wealth. Differential taxation and targeted spending are the most significant and most effective m
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: The Middle Kingdom and the Intellectual Property World,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1934887 (December 5, 2011)
Delivered as the keynote opening address at the Symposium on "China's Role in Regulating the Global Information Economy," this Article scrutinizes China's participation in the international intellectual property regime and its role in both the WTO and WIPO. It begins by discussing China's engagement with international intellectual property norms before its accession to the WTO in December 2001. It points out that China is not a "norm breaker" that one typically infers from its disappointing reco
Daniel A. Farber, REVISION: A Fatal Loss of Balance: Dred Scott Revisited,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1782963 (December 5, 2011)
This essay focuses on three aspects of the Dred Scott opinion: its effort to ensure that blacks could never be citizens, let alone equal ones; its deployment of a "limited government" argument for a narrow interpretation of Congress's enumerated power over the territories; and its path-breaking defense of property rights against government regulation. These constitutional tropes of racism, narrowing of federal power, and protection of property were to remain dominant for another seventy-five yea
Tom W. Bell, REVISION: 'Property' in the Constitution: The View from the Third Amendment,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1944647 (November 30, 2011)
During World War II, after Japan attacked the Aleutian Islands off Alaska's coast, the United States forcibly evacuated the islands' natives and quartered soldiers in private homes. That hitherto unremarked violation of the Third Amendment gives us a fresh perspective on what “Property” means in the U.S. Constitution. As a general legal matter, property includes not just real estate - land, fixtures attached thereto, and related rights - but also various kinds of personal property, ranging from
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: TRIPS Enforcement and Developing Countries,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1736030 (November 16, 2011)
In January 2009, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body released a panel report on China - Measures Affecting the Protection and Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights. The dispute concerned the inadequacy of protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in China under the TRIPS Agreement. While both China and the United States were quick to declare victory in this dispute, less developed countries might have become the dispute's unintended and unannounced winner.
As part of the sy
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: TRIPS and Its Achilles' Heel,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1765808 (November 15, 2011)
Written for the "15 Years of TRIPS Implementation" Symposium, this article examines why the TRIPS Agreement fails to provide effective global enforcement of intellectual property rights. It attributes such failure to five sets of challenges: historical, economic, tactical, disciplinary, and technological.
The article then outlines the various actions taken by both developed and less developed countries to steer the TRIPS Agreement and the larger international intellectual property system towa
Frank A. Pasquale, REVISION: Network Accountability for the Domestic Intelligence Apparatus,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1680390 (November 11, 2011)
A new domestic intelligence network has made vast amounts of data available to federal and state agencies and law enforcement officials. The network is anchored by “fusion centers,” novel sites of intergovernmental collaboration that generate and share intelligence and information. Several fusion centers have generated controversy for engaging in extraordinary measures that place citizens on watch lists, invade citizens' privacy, and chill free expression. In addition to eroding civil liberties,
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: Digital Copyright and Confuzzling Rhetoric,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1775886 (November 9, 2011)
The entertainment industry tells people they shouldn't steal music because they wouldn't steal a car, but has anybody ever downloaded a car? Music fans praise Napster and other file-sharing services for helping to free artists from the stranglehold of the music industry, but how many of these services actually have shared profits with songwriters and performing artists? Industry representatives claim that people use YouTube primarily to listen to or watch copyrighted contents, but are they missi
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: Enforcement, Economics and Estimates,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1711184 (November 9, 2011)
This article focuses on intellectual property enforcement, a topic that is of great importance to both developed and less developed countries. It begins by refuting the simple, and often politically motivated, claim that many countries fail to provide effective intellectual property enforcement by virtue of their lack of political will. Drawing on the latest economic literature, this article shows that high enforcement standards come with a hefty price tag and difficult trade-offs.
The articl
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: Moral Rights 2.0,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1692500 (November 9, 2011)
In recent years, commentators have developed a renewed interest in moral rights. Although there remain significant differences between U.S. and European copyright laws, these differences are unlikely to present significant challenges to the future development of moral rights. Instead, challenges are likely to come from the changing socio-technological environment, due in no small part to the internet and the arrival of new media technologies.
In the digital age, the protection of moral rights
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: Digital Copyright Reform and Legal Transplants in Hong Kong,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1538638 (November 8, 2011)
Since the mid-1990s, countries have struggled to respond to copyright challenges created by the internet and new communications technologies. Although the law and policy debate in recent years has focused primarily on the entertainment industry's aggressive tactics toward individual end-users, online service providers, and other third parties, a recent wave of legislative actions and lobbying efforts has rejuvenated the debate on the proper legal response to the digital copyright challenges.
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: The Political Economy of Data Protection,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1046781 (November 3, 2011)
Information is the lifeblood of a knowledge-based economy. The control of data and the ability to translate them into meaningful information is indispensable to businesspeople, policymakers, scientists, engineers, researchers, students, and consumers. Having useful, and at times exclusive, information improves productivity, advances education and training, and helps create a more informed citizenry. In the past two decades, those who collected or obtained access to a large amount of data began t
J.B. Ruhl, The Endangered Species Act's Fall from Grace in the Supreme Court,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1953339 (November 3, 2011)
Thirty-five years ago, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) had as auspicious a debut in the United States Supreme Court as any statute could hope for. In Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, a majority of the Court proclaimed that the ESA was intended “to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost” and backed up those and other bold words by preventing a nearly completed federal dam from impounding its reservoir because doing so would eliminate the only known (at the tim
Chad M. Oldfather, REVISION: The Prospect of Open Deliberations on the Wisconsin Supreme Court,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1952572 (November 3, 2011)
In the wake of recent episodes of dysfunction on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson proposed a number of reforms for her colleagues' consideration. The most notable among these was a call for the court to open its deliberations to the public. Although this proposal was rejected by the other justices, it raised interesting questions about why judicial deliberations in American appellate courts are uniformly closed affairs, and what the effects of open deliberations migh
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: The Graduated Response,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1579782 (November 2, 2011)
In the past few years, the entertainment industry has deployed aggressive tactics toward individual end-users, online service providers, and other third parties. One of the latest proposals that the industry has been exploring is the so-called “graduated response” or “three strikes” system, which threatens to suspend the service of internet users after they have received two warnings from their ISPs about potentially illegal online file-sharing activities.
In December 2008, the RIAA made a fo
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: The TRIPS Enforcement Dispute,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1676558 (October 27, 2011)
2010 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the entering into force of the WTO TRIPS Agreement. When the Agreement was adopted, commentators quickly extolled the unprecedented benefits of having a set of multilateral enforcement norms built into the international intellectual property regime. Although intellectual property rights holders continue to rely on protection offered by the TRIPS Agreement, many of them have now become frustrated with the inadequacy of such protection. The agreement's enfor
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: Six Secret (and Now Open) Fears of ACTA,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1624813 (October 25, 2011)
In April 2009, Japan, the United States, the European Community, and other negotiating parties of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement released a joint consolidated draft of the once-secret agreement. Although the release of this document has alleviated some of the concerns about the lack of transparency and public participation, there remain many unanswered questions.
Written for a symposium on intellectual property law, this article argues that ACTA remains highly problematic and dangero
Peter K. Yu, Enforcement, Enforcement, What Enforcement?,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1948326 (October 24, 2011)
The protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights has been a very hot topic in the past few years. From the introduction of the Protect IP Act of 2011 to the adoption of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to a recent U.S.-China dispute before the WTO, the topic has dominated policy debates at both the domestic and international levels. While most policymakers, industry representatives, and commentators have recognized the critical importance of intellectual property enfo
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: Sinic Trade Agreements,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1706208 (October 20, 2011)
In the past decade, the European Union and the United States have pushed aggressively for the development of bilateral and regional trade agreements. What are the strengths and weaknesses of these agreements? Are China's bilateral and regional trade agreements different from these agreements? What are China's goals and negotiation strategies? What will happen if China's bilateral approach clashes with that of the European Union or the United States?
This Article begins by examining China's gr
Tom W. Bell, The Third Amendment: Forgotten but Not Gone,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1946034 (October 20, 2011)
Pity the Third Amendment. The other amendments of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights inspire public adoration and volumes of legal research. Meanwhile, the Third Amendment languishes in comparative oblivion or, worse yet, suffers ridicule. The Third Amendment has especially suffered from a lack of serious and sustained legal analysis. This paper aims to fill the most glaring gaps in Third Amendment scholarship, so as to round out our knowledge of the Bill of Rights and to pay the Th
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: Intellectual Property and Human Rights in the Nonmultilateral Era,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1926102 (October 19, 2011)
In the past decade, countries have actively pushed for the establishment of bilateral, plurilateral and regional trade and investment agreements. Of major concern are the adoption of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the ongoing negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Although commentators have examined the conflict and tension between intellectual property and human rights in the past, the arrival of these agreements has ushered in a new era of nonmultilateralis
Peter K. Yu, Intellectual Property and Asian Values,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1945104 (October 17, 2011)
From Niall Ferguson to Fareed Zakaria, commentators have paid growing attention to the rise of Asia and its implications for the West. Recent years have also seen the emergence of a growing volume of literature on intellectual property developments in Asia, in particular China and India. Few commentators, however, have explored whether Asian countries will take unified positions on international intellectual property law and policy.
Commissioned for a forthcoming symposium, this article fills t
Gregory N. Mandel, REVISION: The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Chan,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1871503 (October 4, 2011)
The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see clim
Jim Chen, REVISION: Modern Disaster Theory: Evaluating Disaster Law as a Portfolio of Legal Rules,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1910669 (September 22, 2011)
Disaster law consists of a portfolio of legal rules for dealing with catastrophic risks. This essay takes preliminary steps toward modeling that metaphor in quantitative terms made familiar through modern portfolio theory. Modern disaster theory, by analogy to the foundational model of corporate finance, treats disaster law as the best portfolio of legal rules. Optimal legal preparedness for disaster consists of identifying, adopting, and maintaining that portfolio of rules at the frontier of ef
Arthur J. Cockfield, International Tax Competition: The Last Battleground of Globalization,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1931079 (September 21, 2011)
Increasingly linked by regional and global ties, national economies depend more than ever on international investments and trade. While trade and investment have become international, however, taxation has remained national, preserving and strengthening one of the few remaining barriers to cross-border economic flows. Given their general unwillingness to be bound by multilateral tax agreements, governments increasingly study the tax policies in place elsewhere to ensure that their tax rules gove
Peter K. Yu, REVISION: Are Developing Countries Playing a Better TRIPS Game?,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1915117 (August 30, 2011)
The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights entered into force more than fifteen years ago. Although commentators have widely criticized the Agreement for its lack of tailoring to the needs, interests, conditions, and priorities of less developed countries, few have looked at whether these countries have responded to the TRIPS Agreement better than they did in the past. This Article fills the void by examining the Agreement at its various stages of development.
Foll
Daniel A. Farber, Law, Sustainability, and the Pursuit of Happiness,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1918204 (August 28, 2011)
Environmental law focuses on regulating the production of energy and goods. Less attention has been given to reducing the environmental footprint of consumption. This Article brings together several strands of research, including psychological and economic research on subjective well-being; research on energy efficiency; writings by urban planners on sustainable communities; and recent work on individual behavior and sustainability. The conclusion, in a nutshell, is that changes in consumption
Ronen Perry, REVISION: Non-Adjudicatory ADR, Representation, and Case Outcomes,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1883143 (August 18, 2011)
In recent decades there has been increasing recognition of the importance of non-adjudicatory ADR, like mediation, conciliation, and settlement conferences. The Article focuses on small claims settlement conferences, using the Israeli labor law system as a test case. It examines the impact of representation on the outcome of settlement conferences, and the effect of using settlement conferences on the outcome of the case itself. In doing so the Article contributes to the growing literature and p
Daniel A. Farber, Environmental Disasters: An Introduction,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1898401 (August 1, 2011)
In an environmental disaster, a disaster causes environmental harm, environmental change causes an acute risk to humans, or both take place. Examples include the BP Oil Spill, the London killer for of 1952, the 2003 European heat wave, and the 2011 Japanese tsunami. Climate change will intensify the connection between disaster issues and the environment. Given the interwoven nature of disasters and environment, we should consider what environmental law and disaster law can learn from each other.
Andrea M. Matwyshyn, Resilience: Building Better Users and Fair Trade Practices in Information,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1885191 (July 14, 2011)
This Article expands the concept of resilience into the software and digital contracting ecosystem. It argues that technology law and policy can be tooled in part to adopt an explicit focus on building users' resilience and sense of self-efficacy, particularly in connection with data privacy and information security. With the assistance of strengthened fair trade practices in privacy, contract law offers one avenue for explicit trust-reinforcing mechanisms to assist consumers in becoming more re
Andrea M. Matwyshyn, Corporate Cyborgs and Technology Risks,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1737813 (July 14, 2011)
Using the securities industry as a case study of cyborg transformation, this article raises questions with regard to information management and information security. The piece concludes by calling for a legal information accountability regime which more effectively blends regimes of corporate, securities, contract, intellectual property, tort and criminal law.
Daniel A. Farber, Climate Justice,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1883186 (July 12, 2011)
In their book Climate Change Justice, Eric Posner and David Weisbach advocate adoption of an economically optimal climate treaty coupled with foreign aid (to handle distributional issues with poor countries) and increased investment (to transfer funds to future generations harmed by climate change.) Although this conventional analysis provides the main framework of their proposed approach to climate policy, Posner and Weisbach to their credit introduce a number of important qualifications. This
Gaia Bernstein, REVISION: Over-Parenting,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1588246 (July 2, 2011)
Today the child is king. Child rearing practices have changed significantly over the last two decades. Contemporary parents engage in Intensive Parenting. Parents devote their time to actively enriching the child, ensuring the child's individual needs are addressed and he is able to reach his full potential. They also keep abreast of the newest child rearing knowledge and consistently monitor the child's progress and whereabouts. Parents are expected to be cultivating, informed and monitoring. T
Daniel A. Farber, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Unconstitutionality of Secession,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1862443 (June 13, 2011)
If the Civil War killed secession as a practical matter, the Fourteenth Amendment drove a stake through its heart as a constitutional matter. For Nineteenth Century Americans, citizenship involved both the citizen's allegiance to the sovereign and the sovereign's duty to protect the citizen's rights. Lincoln and other Republicans believed that national citizenship was primary, while Southerners viewed state citizenship as the primary basis for allegiance. The first sentence of the Fourteenth A
Jordan K. Paradise, REVISION: Decoding the Research Exemption,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=897742 (May 28, 2011)
While debate continues as to whether genetic sequences, which many argue represent natural phenomena rather than inventions, should be subject to standard patent protections, issuance of patents that claim DNA sequences remains common practice. In an attempt to insulate researchers from patent claims that could hinder scientific progress, many countries have provided general exemptions for scientific research. However, there is no international consensus about the extent of required protections,
Jordan K. Paradise, Follow-On Biologics: Implementation Challenges and Opportunities,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1852503 (May 27, 2011)
The March 23, 2010, enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the companion Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 ushered in landmark reform of the American health care system. Along with sweeping overhauls of the health care system generally, PPACA also provides a new regulatory challenge for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A subtitle within PPACA, the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA), bestows upon FDA broa
Daniel A. Farber, REVISION: Making Good Use of Adaptive Management,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1808106 (May 25, 2011)
Over the last two decades, natural resource scientists, managers, and policymakers have increasingly endorsed “adaptive management” of land and natural resources. Indeed, this approach, based on adaptive implementation of resource management and pollution control laws, is now mandated in a variety of contexts at the federal and state level. Yet confusion remains over the meaning of adaptive management, and disagreement persists over its usefulness or feasibility in specific contexts.
This wh
Ronen Perry, REVISION: Differential Preemption,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1838245 (May 18, 2011)
Preemption is a constitutional law doctrine whereby state and local authorities are deprived of their powers in particular areas governed by federal law. In setting the boundaries of state sovereignty within a federal polity, it constitutes one of the pillars of the federal political structure. Viewed differently, preemption is one of the strongest legal unification methods. Recent cases like Williamson v. Mazda and Bruesewitz v. Wyeth highlight the growing salience of preemption in contemporary
Gregory N. Mandel, REVISION: Technology Wars: Mending the Failure of Democratic Discourse,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=669142 (May 10, 2011)
Controversies over the use and regulation of various technologies pervade public discourse and have serious implications for the public interest. Conflicts over the regulation of genetically modified food, nuclear power, and nanotechnology, among others, fuel some of the most socially and politically explosive debates of our time. These technology conflicts extract a substantial cost from society - they create costly inefficiencies, prevent society from optimally managing new technologies, consu
Gregory N. Mandel, REVISION: Regulating Emerging Technologies,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1355674 (May 9, 2011)
A range of emerging technologies, including biotechnology, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology, are expected to transform society. Handling the development and regulation of these promising technologies is a daunting task as the risks presented will not be understood until the technologies are further developed. This paper proposes a new governance model that seeks manage the dynamic of emerging technology promise versus risk by moving the point of first governance earlier in a technology's de
Tom W. Bell, Government Prediction Markets: Why, Who, and How,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1816732 (April 22, 2011)
This paper describes how prediction markets can make governments smarter, cheaper, and more responsive to changing conditions. A prediction market resembles a stock exchange where traders buy and sell not shares of companies, but claims about future events. Academic and commercial use of prediction markets suggests that they offer a useful tool for encouraging, collecting, and quantifying widely scattered expertise. Government administrators have begun experimenting with prediction markets, too
Daniel A. Farber, REVISION: Uncertainty,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1555343 (April 16, 2011)
Many of the pressing policy issues facing us today require confronting the unknown and making difficult choices in the face of limited information. Economists distinguish between “uncertainty” (where the likelihood of the peril is non-quantifiable) and “risk” (where the likelihood is quantifiable). Uncertainty is particularly pernicious in situations where catastrophic outcomes are possible, but conventional decision tools are not equipped to cope with these potentially disastrous results. This
Frank A. Pasquale, William H. Sorrell, Attorney General of Vermont, et al. v. IMS Health Inc., et al. - Amicus Brief in,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1770524 (April 7, 2011)
On April 26, 2011, the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Vermont data mining case, Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc. Respondents claim this is the most important commercial speech case in a decade. Petitioner (the State of Vermont) argues this is the most important medical privacy case since Whalen v. Roe.
The is an amicus brief supporting Vermont, written by law professors and submitted on behalf of the New England Journal of Medicine
Chad M. Oldfather, Judging, Expertise, and the Rule of Law,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1799568 (April 4, 2011)
Though we live in an era of hyper-specialization, the judiciary has for the most part remained the domain of generalists. Specialized courts exist, however, and commentators regularly claim that further judicial specialization is desirable or inevitable. Yet recent years have witnessed the beginning of a backlash against the increasing division of intellectual labor, such that it is appropriate to question the merits of judicial specialization. This article engages the existing literature on
Elizabeth A. Weeks, REVISION: Public Health Law for a Brave New World; Book Review: Lawrence O. Gostin, Public Health Law: Power, ,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1334762 (March 31, 2011)
This is book review of Lawrence O. Gostin's new edition of Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 2d ed., 2008). A review of a second edition of a book may be somewhat unusual as subsequent editions of already published works typically do not break new ground. But this book is different. Gostin's first edition, published in 2000, established and defined the modern field of public health law. The revised and expanded second edition emerges
stefanie lindquist, REVISION: Consensus, Disorder, and Ideology on the Supreme Court,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1564291 (March 30, 2011)
Ideological models are widely accepted as the basis for many academic studies of the Supreme Court because of their power in predicting the justices' decision making behavior. Not all votes are easily explained or well predicted by attitudes, however. Consensus in Supreme Court voting, particularly the extreme consensus of unanimity, has often puzzled Court observers who adhere to ideological accounts of judicial decision making. Are consensus and (ultimately) unanimity driven by extreme factual
Daniel A. Farber, REVISION: Indirect Land Use Change, Uncertainty, and Biofuels Policy,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1640857 (March 24, 2011)
Indirect land use change (ILUC) is based on the simple observation that use of cropland for biofuels raises food prices and thereby increases the incentive to convert forests and grasslands to crop production, causing the released of stored carbon and decreasing future carbon sequestration. ILUC is mediated by world food and fiber prices and therefore requires no geographic link between the land used for biofuels and the land converted to crops – growing biofuels in Iowa could cause the loss of
Frank A. Pasquale, Restoring Transparency to Automated Authority,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1762766 (February 18, 2011)
Leading finance, health care, and internet firms shroud key operations in secrecy. Our markets, research, and life online are increasingly mediated by institutions that suffer serious transparency deficits. When a private entity grows important enough, it should be subject to transparency requirements that reflect its centrality. The increasing intertwining of governmental, business, and academic entities should provide some leverage for public-spirited appropriators and policymakers to insist
Frank A. Pasquale, Trusting (and Verifying) Online Intermediaries' Policing,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1762236 (February 17, 2011)
All is not well in the land of online self-regulation. However competently internet intermediaries police their sites, nagging questions will remain about their fairness and objectivity in doing so. Is Comcast blocking BitTorrent to stop infringement, to manage traffic, or to decrease access to content that competes with its own for viewers? How much digital due process does Google need to give a site it accuses of harboring malware? If Facebook censors a video of war carnage, is that a toke
Frank A. Pasquale, Dominant Search Engines: An Essential Cultural & Political Facility,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1762241 (February 17, 2011)
When American lawyers talk about "essential facilities," they are usually referring to antitrust doctrine that has required certain platforms to provide access on fair and nondiscriminatory terms to all comers. Some have recently characterized Google as an essential facility. Antitrust law may shape the search engine industry in positive ways. However, scholars and activists must move beyond the crabbed vocabulary of competition policy to develop a richer normative critique of search engine d
J.B. Ruhl, REVISION: Gaming the Past: The Theory and Practice of Historic Baselines in the Administrative State,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1553484 (February 2, 2011)
Goals based on absolute targets, risk, technology, or cost are found throughout the administrative state. “Historic baselines,” points in the past used to ground a policy goal, are just as commonplace, yet remain unexamined. Whether in budgeting or tax, criminal sentencing or environmental protection, historic baselines direct a wide range of agency activities. Their ubiquity raises some important questions. What makes baselines more attractive than other approaches for implementing regulatory g
Jordan K. Paradise, REVISION: An Integrated Approach to Oversight Assessment for Emerging Technologies,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1739957 (January 23, 2011)
Analysis of science and technology oversight systems is often conducted from a single disciplinary perspective and by using a limited set of criteria for evaluation. In this article, we develop an approach that blends risk analysis, social science, public administration, legal, public policy, and ethical perspectives to develop a broad set of criteria for assessing oversight systems. Multiple methods, including historical analysis, expert elicitation, and behavioral consensus, were employed to d
J.B. Ruhl, REVISION: Adaptive Management in the Courts,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1542632 (January 16, 2011)
Adaptive management has become the tonic of natural resources policy. With its core idea of “learning while doing,” adaptive management has infused the natural resources policy world to the point of ubiquity, surfacing in everything from mundane agency permits to grand presidential proclamations. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to suggest that these days adaptive management is natural resources policy. But is it working? Does appending “adaptive” in front of “management” somehow make natural resou
Daniel A. Farber, The BP Blowout and the Social and Environmental Erosion of the Louisiana Coast,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1740844 (January 16, 2011)
The BP Oil Spill was yet another blow to already threatened human and biological communities. It would be hard to think of a more challenging venue for addressing environmental problems. The mix of problems is forbidding, including rapidly eroding wetlands, climate change, endangered species, and a gigantic aquatic dead zone. These problems have mostly been the subject of not-so-benign neglect, akin to the regulatory neglect that cumulated in the disastrous BP Oil Spill.
The political problems
Daniel A. Farber, Federal Preemption of State Law: The Current State of Play,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1740043 (January 16, 2011)
This paper reviews the evolving case law on the boundary between state and federal power, covering both basic preemption doctrine and recent cases (particularly in the area of torts). It also provides a look at the evolving law regarding Congress's commerce power and at when state law infringe on the federal government's exclusive jurisdiction over foreign affairs. The paper's general conclusion is that preemption law is likely to remain very messy because it involves overlapping issues: methods
Paul L. Caron, REVISION: The Costs of Estate Tax Dithering,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1599223 (September 26, 2010)
President Obama was widely criticized for “dithering” over the decision of whether to add more troops in the Afghanistan War. Yet Presidents and Congresses over the past decade escaped similar opprobrium for “dithering” in the face of the long-scheduled one-year repeal of the estate tax beginning January 1, 2010, to be followed by the reinstatement of the tax on January 1, 2011. Although the “smart money” agreed after the passage of the Bush tax cuts in 2001 that the Administration and Congres
Alfred L. Brophy, REVISION: The Republics of Liberty and Letters: Progress, Union, and Constitutionalism in Graduation Addresses,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1644996 (September 10, 2010)
In the thirty years leading into Civil War, orators delivered hundreds of addresses to college literary societies throughout the United States. Those addresses, which were frequently given by lawyers, lawyer-trained politicians, and judges, condensed the orators' ideas about law, history, economy, technology, and education together into a short compass. They provide an important and overlooked set of data for understanding how antebellum intellectuals saw law in relation to moral, technological,
Gaia Bernstein, REVISION: In the Shadow of Innovation,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1395779 (August 26, 2010)
We are in the midst of the intellectual property wars. Scholars, judges, legislators, corporations, creators and inventors disagree about the role of intellectual property rights. Yet, surprisingly everyone agrees about innovation - everyone loves innovation. Innovation appears everywhere: In legal scholarship, case law, legislative hearings, newspapers, and blogs. It is uniformly admired and aspired to - though almost never questioned.
Innovation is often assumed to have historically held a
Gaia Bernstein, Regulating Reproductive Technologies: Timing, Uncertainty and Donor Anonymity,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1639135 (July 12, 2010)
Two global trends have emerged in the regulation of Artificial Reproductive Technology (“ART”): the adoption of a comprehensive regime to regulate the practice of ART and the prohibition on gamete donor anonymity. This Essay uses the publication of Naomi Cahn's book, Test Tube Families, which advocates both the adoption of a comprehensive regime and the anonymity prohibition, as a lens through which to assess the suitability of these regulatory trends to the United States.
First, this Essay de
Paul L. Caron, Pursuing a Tax LLM Degree: Where?,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1597337 (April 28, 2010)
This Article and a related article, Pursuing a Tax LLM Degree: Why and When? (http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1577966), provide information and advice about Tax LLM programs to American law students and JD graduates who are thinking about pursuing a Tax LLM degree. In addition to discussing factors that can help prospective Tax LLM students determine which Tax LLM programs would be a good fit for them, this Article compiles information about the following thirteen highly ranked Tax LLM programs