Jun 21, 2016 Martha ChamallasTorts
The Stanford rape case has given new prominence to the role of bystanders in sexual assault cases. Many have heralded the actions of the two Swedish graduate students who intervened to stop the sexual assault of an unconscious woman and forcibly detain her attacker until police arrived. However, in the world of tort law, attitudes towards bystanders and bystander intervention are ambivalent, at best.
To begin with, one of the most enduring tort doctrines is the no-duty-to-rescue rule. Its protection is so broad that it shields the most callous persons who refuse to provide assistance, even if they could easily prevent a serious injury to another at little risk to themselves. Bystanders, we are told, are under no legal obligation to act and are allowed to remain passive in the face of suffering and simply go about their own business. As an expression of fundamental values of personal autonomy and individualism, letting bystanders off the hook can appear natural and appropriate. Even the term “bystander” itself suggests lack of involvement and lack of interest. In Bystander Interventions, Sarah Swan cuts against this narrative, exploring the new world of bystander intervention strategies and making the case for reforming tort doctrine and other bodies of law to encourage “active” bystanders. Continue reading "Bystanders v. Bullies"
Jun 20, 2016 Lee Anne FennellProperty
Property often seems like a force field, a socially protected clearing in which an owner can act (within specified bounds) or do nothing at all. On this account, property is institutionalized noninterference. Trouble arises, we are given to understand, only when someone—an owner, an outsider, or the government—does something that impinges on someone else’s entitlements. The pervasive language of exclusion and encroachment, of boundaries defended and breached, cultivates the perception that property law operates to constrain action, not to compel it.
Two recent articles challenge the idea that property law is, or should be, complacent about inactivity. Nadav Shoked’s piece, The Duty to Maintain, examines the affirmative obligations that law routinely places on owners and finds them to be normatively well-grounded. And in Passive Takings, Christopher Serkin suggests that there are circumstances in which government should be subject to takings liability for passivity as well as for action. Each of these pieces emphasizes the contingent and interdependent nature of property interests, and each highlights the weakness and ultimate incoherence of using a line between acts and omissions to determine the duties owed by and to owners. Continue reading "Do Something! Sins of Omission in Property Law"
Jun 17, 2016 Rebecca RoipheLegal Profession
Eric Fish,
Prosecutorial Constitutionalism,
S. Cal. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2016), available at
SSRN.
In his intriguing new article, Prosecutorial Constitutionalism, Eric Fish develops a theory about when prosecutors ought to act as public officials, interpreting the Constitution as a judge would do, and when they should serve as advocates seeking a conviction or the maximum punishment possible. He concludes that when the adversary system fails, prosecutors should assume the role of judges. They should act according to their own interpretation of the Constitution, as other public officials are expected to do.
When prosecutors are in full control of the criminal justice process, as in plea bargaining or charging, the adversary checks are absent, and prosecutors should interpret and apply the Constitution to protect defendants’ rights. Similarly, when judges under-enforce constitutional norms out of procedural or structural concerns like separation of powers, the prosecutor should serve as a guardian of defendants’ rights rather than their adversary. In other moments when the system is functioning as a proper check, prosecutors should be free to pursue convictions and high sentences with zeal. Continue reading "Can Prosecutors Be Both Coach and Referee?"
Jun 16, 2016 Marco JimenezLexRemedies
The division between law and equity has a long and important history in Anglo-American jurisprudence, and one whose effects continue to resonate in American courts to this day. Indeed, whenever I teach remedies, I tell my students that this is an area of law where history still matters—that if they want to understand the difference between legal and equitable remedies, and to know the types of remedies that their clients might be entitled to in a given case, they need to be at least somewhat familiar with the history of the contest between the English courts of law and the Court of Chancery, which was responsible for developing and administering the rules of equity. Why? Because it was the battle over jurisdictional turf that took place between these courts hundreds of years ago that gave rise to a rule (i.e., the irreparable injury rule) that still operates whenever judges are called upon to decide whether an aggrieved party is entitled to an equitable remedy. Specifically, the irreparable injury rule requires that an aggrieved party seeking an equitable remedy (e.g., specific performance of a contract) must show that there is no adequate legal remedy (e.g., money damages) to put it in the position it would have occupied had the wrongdoer not committed its wrong (e.g., breach of contract).
Apart from this history, however, one wonders whether the irreparable injury rule (specifically), or the division between legal and equitable remedies (more generally), can be justified along more functional lines. Many commentators believe that it cannot. Professor Douglas Laycock, for instance, in strong and colorful language, has argued that “[a] rule designed to preserve the jurisdictional boundaries between two courts that have long been merged should die unless it serves some modern purpose.” In fact, Laycock has even claimed that the rule is largely dead, being more honored in the breach than in the observance. But if this is true, one may ask (as my students sometimes do), why do professors still teach the irreparable injury rule, and why do courts still invoke it whenever a plaintiff seeks an equitable remedy? And, perhaps more importantly, since courts of law and equity have long been merged in most jurisdictions, what justification (outside of tradition) can there be for continuing to distinguish between legal and equitable remedies in such a manner? It is in providing an answer to these tough and persistent questions that Samuel Bray’s article, The System of Equitable Remedies, makes an important contribution to the field. Continue reading "Justifying the Law-Equity Divide"
Jun 16, 2016 Caprice RobertsLexRemedies
Let equity lure you with its sirens. Equity, first developed by the Court of Chancery, is vital to the law of remedies. It affects a range of rights, remedies, and defenses from public to private disputes. It cannot be forgotten, ignored, or fully merged. The trend, however, is to streamline equity. For example, Douglas Laycock has argued we should move beyond the law-equity divide, and Doug Rendleman has advocated fusion and functionalism for reasons that I separately have acknowledged: equity generates friction and confusion, especially regarding restitution and unjust enrichment. Sam Bray’s The System of Equitable Remedies refutes this movement. Bray instead argues that equity remains distinct from law and comprises its own system that is pervasive, rational, and useful.
I agree: equity is alive and well in America. It is not simply federal and state constitutional rights to jury trials keeping the divide relevant. Federal and state courts keep equity in play in statutory and common-law cases—from ERISA to contracts, environmental law to trade secrets, and beyond. Equity soldiers on, despite law schools’ dropping the Equity course and despite the merger of law and equity in almost all courts and the Rules of Civil Procedure. Complete merger remains elusive. Where law fails or falls short, the pull of equity is greatest. Equitable remedies are key where money substitutes provide inadequate protection. Bray bluntly states the need: “There must be some way for courts to compel action or non-action.” Overall, Bray’s work requires readers to stop and think before dismantling the distinct system of equity. Continue reading "Staying Power of Equity"
Jun 15, 2016 Kim BrooksTax Law
James R. Hines Jr. & Kyle D. Logue,
Delegating Tax, 114
Mich. L. Review 235 (2015).
In modern regulatory states, the theoretically firm lines dividing the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government are increasingly blurred. Teasing out how to design and enforce effective regulation has become a major preoccupation of scholars and policymakers in every area of law.
Delegating Tax, an article by the talented James R. Hines Jr. and Kyle D. Logue, is wonderful reading in that light. The article contrasts the reluctance of Congress to delegate the lawmaking authority of the IRS and Treasury in the tax area with Congress’ increasing willingness to delegate that authority to other federal administrative agencies. The authors make the case for great delegation in the tax area, noting the potential for the executive branch to draw on greater expertise and to respond more quickly. Continue reading "Don’t Delegate This Reading"
Jun 14, 2016 Paula MonopoliTrusts & Estates
Language matters. In her recent article, Not Your Mother’s Will: Gender, Language, and Wills, Karen Sneddon details just how much language matters in the context of wills and trusts. In a comprehensive review of linguistic theory and its intersection with inheritance law, Sneddon illuminates how will clauses and trust structures reflect gender schemas about men and women.
Sneddon first lays a foundation for her hypothesis that will drafting reflects masculine and feminine roles and norms by acquainting the reader with basic linguistic theory. She notes that wills are one of the most personal and oldest forms of legal writing. Sneddon goes on to introduce the concept of androcentrism as a driver of language-based gender norms. Phrases that focus on men as the typical and women as the atypical mirror what Sneddon describes as the remnants of patrimony. Cultures perform and reproduce gender through language. Using terms like “executor” and “executrix” implies that the latter is the less important variation on the central role. Interestingly, Sneddon asserts that prior to the nineteenth century there were fewer gender distinctions in language and actually more female executors. She suggests that the rise of Victorian ideals relating to the delicate nature of womanhood may have contributed to this shift away from women performing such public duties and that the increase in the gendered form “executrix” reflects those societal changes. Continue reading "Linguistic Theory, Gender Schemas and Wills"
Jun 13, 2016 Robin KarJurisprudence
For philosophers of private law, a central puzzle is to explain how people’s voluntary acts of promising and contracting can produce genuine obligations. One popular class of answers points to personal autonomy—or the capacity, real or hypothetical, to bind one’s will through free acts of self-legislation. For those who believe in personal autonomy and its value, there may seem to be relatively few puzzles about promise or contract. Indeed, promise and contract might seem to offer easy cases.
These initial impressions can, however, be misleading. Whether promise and contract can be grounded in concern for personal autonomy will ultimately depend on what personal autonomy is, why it is valuable, and how promise and contract work. While autonomy-based accounts of promise and contract have proven enormously popular in the legal literature, this popularity has not always been matched by sufficiently close attention to these foundational questions. One of the things I appreciate most about Dori Kimel’s work in Personal Autonomy and Change of Mind in Promise and Contract is that he offers an uncommonly rich description of personal autonomy and its value. Rather than exaggerating the ease with which personal autonomy can be used to explain various details of promise and contract, Kimel faces the difficulties head on. Continue reading "The Art of Promise and Power of Contract"
Jun 13, 2016 Kunal ParkerLegal History
Daniel Ernst’s book, Tocqueville’s Nightmare: The Administrative State in America, is a significant addition to the growing literature on the history of the administrative state. However, it also compels a rethinking of the received historiography of twentieth century American legal thought. It is to the latter contribution that I will devote this brief review.
When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, he observed that the country—in contrast to the states of continental Europe–had very little in the way of centralized bureaucracy. This, for Tocqueville, was a good thing: powerful centralized bureaucracies threatened a significant abridgment of democracy in a country as diverse and spread out as the United States. The “Tocqueville’s nightmare” of Ernst’s title refers, then, to the situation in which too much power might become vested in the hands of bureaucrats unanswerable to the people. Continue reading "The Turn to Procedure"
Jun 10, 2016 Dotan OliarIntellectual Property Law
Zahr Said’s Reforming Copyright Interpretation puts its finger on an important, yet little studied, aspect of copyright law: judicial interpretation. It pushes the ball quite a bit by providing a descriptive taxonomy of courts’ interpretive approaches in copyright law, advancing and defending an interpretive approach that it considers best overall, and applying and exemplifying its framework and arguments with a good number of cases while situating it all within a larger body of law and literature scholarship. For me, that’s tons of progress in one article, and the reason why I like it lots.
In resolving copyright disputes, judges must make interpretive decisions. Decisions regarding interpretation are often outcome-relevant – for example, when they lead a judge to decide whether an issue is a matter of law or fact or whether expert testimony may be admitted or not. These decisions can also be outcome-determinative – for example, when a judge makes an interpretive decision that resolves a case on summary judgment or finds an allegedly infringing use to be fair. The interpretive judgment that these decisions involve often flies under readers’ radars. Said draws our attention to judges’ interpretive choices and to the systemic effect that they have, or could have if they were to be conducted appropriately, on copyright law. Continue reading "Copyright’s Interpretive Turn"
