My colleague Rick Marcus, one of the current “greats” in the world of civil procedure, recently wrote a paper called “Bending in the Breeze: American Class Actions in the Twenty-First Century.” In the paper, Professor Marcus appraises the future of the federal class action. Professor Marcus is in a good position to do so; he… Continue reading Rick Marcus on the Future of the American Class Action
What drives forum-shopping? Is it that sophisticated litigants seek jurisdictions that offer judicial expertise and predictable application of the law, or is it that sophisticated litigants seek to game the system by seeking out judges more likely to be biased in their favor? In “What Drives Bankruptcy Forum Shopping? Evidence from Market Data,” Professor Jared… Continue reading Jared Ellias on Bankruptcy Forum Shopping
I have been thinking a lot about my brilliant colleague Veena Dubal’s work on the underbelly of the gig economy or (as Dubal prefers to call it) the precariat. Professor Dubal’s two articles, Wage Slave or Entrepreneur? and The Drive to Precarity combine sophisticated doctrinal analysis with deep ethnographic research to raise some big questions… Continue reading Veena Dubal on Employee Status in the Gig Economy
We’re closing in on a decade since the height of the financial crisis, so perhaps it’s not surprising that reflection on financial regulation is in the air. Much of the focus has been on two divergent ideas. On the one hand, President Trump evidenced a deregulatory approach when he famously announced he would “do a… Continue reading John Crawford on Post-Recession Financial Reform
A “unicorn” in Silicon Valley lingo is a private company that has achieved a valuation of $1 billion or more. During the first dot-com craze in the late 1990s, such creatures were truly imaginary, as companies rushed to go public in the relatively early stages of growth. More recently, unicorns have become startlingly common, as… Continue reading Abe Cable on Stock Options at Unicorn Start-Ups
My colleague Zach Price, who writes about constitutional law, with a specific emphasis on separation of powers and executive power, has written a timely and very important new article called “Funding Conditions and Separation of Powers,” forthcoming in Vanderbilt Law Review. The article tackles a heady issue of law and politics: when are congressional conditions… Continue reading Zach Price on Congressional Control of Executive Spending
As it emerged from decades of legal apartheid, South Africa also embarked on an ambitious program of water-law reform. At its core were two ideas. The first was to treat an old legal concept—the public-trust doctrine—as a foundation for the emerging legal system. That meant treating water as a common resource, to be held by… Continue reading David Takacs on South Africa’s Treatment of Water Rights
My colleague Manoj Viswanathan has written a new article, “Tax Compliance in a Decentralizing Economy,” forthcoming in Georgia State University Law Review. This article reveals the threat to tax compliance that is posed both by new technologies that enable on-demand sharing of services and by blockchain technology that facilitates cryptocurrency (e.g., Bitcoin) transactions and other… Continue reading Manoj Viswanathan on Centralized Intermediaries and Tax Compliance
In his scholarly works, Professor Dave Owen often starts by telling the story that everyone knows about a certain central doctrine of environmental law, and then uses empirical data to meticulously pick apart why that narrative that everyone knows is right is actually wrong. In so doing, he’s not just trying to skewer sacred cows;… Continue reading Dave Owen on Debunking the Myths of Environmental Law
My colleague Scott Dodson, one of the country’s leading civil procedure scholars, has written a fascinating new article urging a litigation role for the rules committees that draft federal procedural rules. Professor Dodson’s article, “Should the Rules Committees Have an Amicus Role?,” appears in the Virginia Law Review. The article argues that the rules committees… Continue reading Scott Dodson on Rules Committee Amicus Practice