Yearly Archives: 2014
Jan 27, 2014 Saule T. OmarovaCorporate Law
Peter Conti-Brown, The Institutions of Federal Reserve Independence, Rock Center for Corp. Governance at Stanford Univ. Working Paper No. 139 (2014), available at SSRN.
Exactly one hundred years after its birth, the Federal Reserve remains one of the most powerful and mysterious institutions in the world. The recent global financial crisis made it exceedingly clear how much the Fed can do – and, in fact, does do – to shore up failing financial markets and prevent the entire economic system from collapsing. That same display of strength under fire, however, exposed the darker side of Fed power: what if it’s abused or misused in ways that can hurt all of us? Both revered and feared for its apparent ability to pull at the hidden strings that keep the national (and even global) economy going, the Fed has emerged from the latest crisis with an expanded regulatory mandate and an even greater political visibility. Some applaud this development, while others criticize it. Yet, despite all of our post-crisis wisdom and divided opinions, how well do we know the Fed? Do we actually understand the sources and nature of the Fed’s century-old “magic”?
If you hesitate at all before giving an affirmative answer, you should read Peter Conti-Brown’s recent article, The Institutions of Federal Reserve Independence, a brand new draft of which is currently available on SSRN. This piece is an opening move in Conti-Brown’s larger project – a book entitled The Structure of Federal Reserve Independence (Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2015). The book promises to offer a comprehensive and historically-grounded analysis of the Fed’s “independence,” that critical ingredient of its powerful magic. To Conti-Brown, however, the Fed’s independence is much more than a dry legal concept – it is a complex real-life phenomenon, a unique “ecosystem” continuously evolving through interactions among multiple legal, political, administrative, ideological, and even cultural factors. From his perspective, it doesn’t make sense to speak of the central bank’s “independence” as a static formal attribute that means the same thing in every context. Instead, the task is to understand the key mechanisms, both formal and informal, through which the Fed exercises its independence vis-à-vis specific parties, or audiences. Continue reading "Demystifying the Fed"
Jan 24, 2014 Kerry AbramsFamily Law
What comes to mind when you hear the term “au pair”? If you’re like me, you may imagine a young adult from an upper-middle class family going abroad for a year to help care for another family’s children—a kind of student exchange program with some child care duties included as part of the bargain. But as Janie A. Chuang shows in her recent article, The U.S. Au Pair Program: Labor Exploitation and the Myth of Cultural Exchange, the au pair program that the U.S. government currently offers is not uncommonly a site of disturbing and exploitative labor practices that look much more like an abusive guest worker program than a cultural exchange. In fact, according to Chuang, the framing of the au pair program as a cultural exchange may actually contribute to the vulnerability of its foreign participants.
As Chuang notes in her article, the au pair concept was initially one of cultural exchange: au pair is a French term meaning “on par with,” and refers to “a European practice of having a young person come to a foreign country to learn the language and experience the culture through immersion in the home life of a host family while assisting with childcare and light housework.” Under the U.S. program, au pairs must be between the ages of 18 and 26. For one to two years, they live with “host families” and provide childcare in exchange for room, board, and a small stipend. Despite the labor provided by au pairs, however, the program is not run under the auspices of the Department of Labor, as are other employment-based visa programs. Instead, they are run under the State Department’s J-1 Exchange Visitor Program, a program that facilitates cultural exchange by providing temporary visits by people such as camp counselors, interns, and academic researchers. Categorizing the work as involving cultural exchange rather than labor allows employers to bypass the step of showing that they could not find a qualified American worker to perform the job. Continue reading "Labor Protection Parity for Au Pairs"
Jan 22, 2014 Davina CooperEquality
In their engaging, highly readable article, Jon Binnie and Christian Klesse explore the effects of intergenerationality within Polish transnational sexual solidarity movements. Specifically, the authors examine how chronological age and people’s histories and trajectories of political activism shape the interactions taking place between lesbian and gay activists from Poland and those from Western Europe.
The authors locate their discussion within queer conversations about time and futurity. According to Lee Edelman, whose blistering critique of heterosexual reproductive futurity proved very popular within certain quarters of queer studies, “The image of the Child invariably shapes the logic within which the political itself must be thought”; there is only one position to take when it comes to the Child and that is to be “for” it. Edelman argues instead for an “unthinkable” politics that refuses to be oriented to the future and its beneficiaries. But this is not the position Binnie and Klesse adopt. Rejecting Edelman’s account of queer, the authors draw instead on José Esteban Muñoz’s argument of queer time, where “Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond . . . the present.” Thus, the authors indicate the possibility of a “queer child” as one who stands in for, and gestures to, a different future—where sexual diversity is a regular and accepted dimension of social life. Continue reading "Generations of Activism and Queer Time"
Jan 21, 2014 Mary CrossleyHealth Law
As New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg left office, commentary on his public health initiatives abounded; the reviews ranged from lauding him as an innovative pioneer to painting him as a meddling nanny-in-chief. At the core of these contrasting views lies a sharp divergence in how commentators understand the scope of the state’s proper interest in protecting its citizens from today’s primary threats to their health, threats posed by chronic and non-communicable conditions such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Does the state’s interest in protecting public health—and thus its police power to advance that interest—extend to combating such conditions’ growing prevalence? Or is the state’s public health authority limited to addressing health threats like those that historically have occupied public health officials, threats like communicable diseases, tainted food, and unsafe water? In short, what makes health threats “public”?
Lindsay Wiley’s article “Rethinking the New Public Health” reconsiders this debate and suggests a novel approach to finding a middle path between the public health expansionists (who view any problem diminishing the health and longevity of a significant number of people as a public health problem subject to regulatory intervention) and the public health minimalists (who would confine the state’s regulatory authority to addressing those collective threats against which responsible individuals cannot protect themselves). By identifying and analyzing a common strand of thought in public health and public nuisance law, Wiley provides a theoretical basis for identifying those “public bads” that are properly targets of public health interventions. Wiley would define those “public bads” as having not only economic, but also epidemiological meaning. Continue reading "What Makes Health “Public”? Finding a Middle Path"
Jan 20, 2014 Aya GruberCriminal Law
For decades, I have felt quite Janus-faced about gender crime laws. My feminist face cringes at the thought of widespread sexual and nonsexual violence against women occurring with utter impunity. My anti-authoritarian face furrows in consternation at reports of mass incarceration, prison abuses, and authoritarian police and prosecuting norms. This personal philosophical dissonance has led me on a quest to figure out whether the United States’s penal system holds any liberatory potential for women, and, if not, what can be done about violent gender subordination. In this vein, I have sought out scholarship that neither repeats the battered women advocates’ mantra that there should be “zero tolerance” for gender crime, nor holds to liberal ideals that instinctively prioritize “neutral” (defendants’) rights. This led me to Leigh Goodmark’s complex, insightful, and no doubt controversial book, A Troubled Marriage: Domestic Violence and the Legal System. The book is meticulous in its research, spanning decades of historical developments in the law of intimate abuse. It brings together many strains of feminist and criminal law theory to formulate a comprehensive re-envisioning of the domestic violence law reform project.
The book consists of two main interventions―a theoretical intervention and a practical intervention. Theoretically, the book critiques “dominance feminism,” a brand of feminist legal theory developed primarily by Catharine MacKinnon, for steering the anti-abuse movement in a prosecutorial direction. While MacKinnon’s writings have far less to do with domestic violence than with rape, pornography, and sexual harassment, the book makes a compelling case that dominance feminism-type ideas were highly influential in the domestic violence arena. Practically, the book calls for “antiessentialist” domestic violence law and policy, meaning that domestic violence reform must be disentangled from popular reductionist characterizations of battered women as non-poor white women subject to brutal violence, who have tried unsuccessfully to separate in the past, and desire batterers’ incarceration but are too afraid to pursue prosecution. For Goodmark, rejecting essentialist images necessitates rejection of most state punitive responses to intimate abuse. The book accordingly advocates reforms “outside the criminal law,” such as truth commissions, batterer inventions, and even microfinance. Continue reading "Rethinking Domestic Violence, Rethinking Violence"
Jan 17, 2014 Linda MullenixCourts Law
As some may remember, Dallas attorney Fred Baron created an uproar in the legal community in 1993 when he mounted a full-bore attack against the infamous Georgine nationwide asbestos settlement class. In 1997, Laurence Tribe — arguing an array of substantive and procedural objections — ultimately convinced the Supreme Court in Amchem v. Windsor to disapprove that settlement. Fred Baron, then, largely was responsible for helping to establish that settlement classes are legitimate, but that they must include structural assurances of due process fairness to absent class members.
Less well-known and long-forgotten in Amchem’s wake, Baron also lobbed an array of ethical objections at the settling parties, although the Supreme Court ultimately deflected these challenges. The Georgine settling parties had simultaneously presented the federal district court with a class complaint and a settlement. Baron raised the question of the duties that plaintiffs’ attorneys owed to class members in the absence of a formal class certification at the outset of the litigation. On this, he held two somewhat discordant views. On one hand, he opined that absent a formal class certification at the front-end of class litigation, no class was created and therefore the plaintiffs’ attorneys could not negotiate a settlement on behalf of the class. There was no attorney-client relationship until the class came into existence. Thus, he argued, the entire Georgine settlement was illegitimate and the class could not be bound by a back-end class certification. On the other hand, he argued that an attorney-client relationship existed throughout and class counsel owed fiduciary duties to the class members, even without a filed class complaint. In this regard, class counsel had violated their fiduciary duties to the Georgine class. Continue reading "Front-End Duties to the Class"
Jan 16, 2014 Mark TushnetConstitutional Law
Every once in a while you read an article that makes you smack your head and say, “Duh—this is so obvious (and obviously right)—that I can’t understand why I didn’t see it before.” That’s the mark of a terrific article. It says something that is obvious after you’ve read it, but that wasn’t at all obvious (to you, at least) before. Deborah Hellman’s article on the Supreme Court’s treatment of “avoiding corruption” as a justification for campaign finance regulation is terrific in that way.
According to the Court, the First Amendment limits the kinds of corruption that can be targeted by campaign finance regulation. Only quid pro quo corruption—the more or less direct exchange of money given to a candidate for the candidate’s vote or other action on a matter of interest to the donor—counts for First Amendment purposes. Professor Hellman points out that “corruption” is what she calls a “derivative concept.” That is, you can’t say that some activity “corrupts” an institution’s proper operation without specifying beforehand what that proper operation should be. After developing that point with examples from universities (nepotism is bad in hiring faculty members because academic departments are supposed to make decisions based on academic criteria, but preferential admission to selective public schools for siblings of a student already enrolled there might be permissible because of their overall goals), she turns to politics. Continue reading "Corruption, Partisan Gerrymandering, Theories of Democracy, and the Supreme Court"
Jan 15, 2014 Richard MurphyAdministrative Law
Lisa Heinzerling, Inside EPA: A Former Insider’s Reflections on the Relationship Between the Obama EPA and the Obama White House, Pace Envtl. L. Rev. (forthcoming), available at SSRN.
Ever wondered what it is like—really like—to be an agency official confronting review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) of your agency’s rule? Readers of JOTWELL’s administrative law blog are disproportionately likely to be part of the small group that wonders about such things, and this post has some very good news for them.
Surely, the best way to find out what it is really like to run a rule through OIRA would be to become an insider, serving as a high-ranking official at a major rulemaking agency. Most of us will never have that option. Fortunately for outsiders, a leading administrative law scholar, Professor Lisa Heinzerling of Georgetown University Law Center, did. She left academia for two years to serve as Senior Climate Policy Counsel to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson from January to July 2009 and then as Associate Administrator of the Office of Policy from July 2009 to December 2010. Now back in the academic fold, she has written a fascinating account of the way that centralized White House review has affected agency rulemaking during the Obama administration. Continue reading "What Does It Feel Like To Have OIRA Review Your Rule?"
Jan 14, 2014 Joseph SeinerWork Law
In his paper, which was presented as the Thomas E. Fairchild Lecture at the University of Wisconsin Law School, Professor Michael Zimmer does a superb job of explaining how employment has factored into the economic inequality that is so prevalent in our society. Professor Zimmer explains how the middle class is quickly disappearing from the workplace, and how economic mobility is quickly on the decline. Most importantly, he charts a course toward rectifying the existing problems.
In the first part of this paper, Professor Zimmer examines how the current economic volatility has created numerous difficulties for everyday workers. In particular, he explores how the permanent-type relationships between employers and employees are going by the wayside, as businesses have moved toward an independent contractor model that allows them greater flexibility in managing their workforce. As the majority of U.S. workers are employees-at-will, most employees today have little security in their paychecks or in their health and retirement benefits. Professor Zimmer also does an excellent job of exploring how unionization has waned across the country. Thus, while workers still have the ability to organize and overcome employment-at-will, it is becoming far less common for them to do so. Continue reading "Inequality in the Workplace and Beyond"
Jan 13, 2014 Browne LewisTrusts & Estates
Testamentary freedom gives a person the right to control the distribution of his or her property upon death. The main way for a person to exercise that right is to execute a Will. In the event a person dies without a Will, his or her estate is distributed based upon the scheme set forth in the applicable intestacy statute. Even though most Americans die without executing Wills, Professor Weisbord is convinced that the decision not to execute a Will is not an indication that a person wants his or her property to be distributed under the intestacy system. Professor Weisbord opines that most people do not understand the consequences of dying intestate.
Professor Weisbord seeks to articulate a reason for the high rate of intestacy. He rejects the argument that people fail to execute Wills because they are afraid to think about their own mortality. To justify his rejection of that argument, Professor Weisbord asserts that people confront and plan for death by using non-testamentary transfer devices like life insurance and retirement plans with death benefit provisions. Professor Weisbord concludes that procrastination is the most plausible explanation for the high rate of intestacy. He maintains that most people procrastinate when it comes to making a Will because the process is complex and intimidating. According to Professor Weisbord, the Will-making process is complicated because the Will has to be attested to by witnesses and drafted using complex legal language. Professor Weisbord states, “In short, simplifying the will-making process would likely reduce testamentary procrastination.” Continue reading "Linking the Certainty of Death and Taxes"
