Archive for June, 2008
The Astonishingly Cheap Seat in the Oval Office
posted by Dave Hoffman
On Openleft, Chris Bowers has a good post in which he argues that the $5B estimated combined cost for this year’s federal campaign needs to be put into perspective. He notes:
“* Five billion, over two years, comes out to about $11.50, each year, for every American adult aged 18 or older. So, if you donate $25 to federal candidates total over the two years, then you are above the national mean. Is that really such a major barrier to entry, or such a large burden on individuals?* Five billion, over two years, comes to less than one five-thousandth of our gross domestic product in that time period. So yes, it is a lot of money, but the vast size of the country needs to be taken into account as well.
* The United States Postal Service will take in about $150 billion over those two years. Both are essential public services in this country, and surely our federal elections are as important as our postal service.”
I’m not sure why Bowers thinks that five billion is a lot of money to spend in pursuit control of the federal government, the ability to change the course of the nation’s history, and (for most office holders) a decent back-end pension. Especially for presidential candidates, it’s cheap. At that price, you could also buy the Wall Street Journal and Craigslist, but would be a billion short in buying a an online advertising firm, and well-short of buying Facebook (as of 2007). If you were a company producing $5 billion in revenue, you’d be the 428th biggest publicly traded corporation in the country, just ahead of casualty insurer W. R. Berkley. To put it another way, if you are disposed to think of the President as the CEO of a company called the United States, it costs just $5 billion to gain control over a revenue stream of something like $2.5 trillion and the ability to spend over $3 trillion a year. At that price, it’s a steal!
June 23, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Posted in: Politics
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Autoadmit Lititgation Update, a Continuing Series
posted by Dave Hoffman
In May, I blogged about a motion to quash a subpoena seeking information about an anonymous poster’s identity in the Autoadmit litigation. Although it briefly looked like Judge Droney might throw out the case on SMJ grounds, last week he denied the motion to quash, and let the lawsuit proceed (while denying defendant’s petition to continue to proceed anonymously). The decision makes all of the expected moves. I do think it odd that posters’ expectation of privacy could be vitiated by AT&T’s Internet Services Privacy Policy (which states that they will comply with discovery requests). This argument would suggest that there is never an expectation of privacy online – a result that I imagine Solove would find somewhat objectionable.
Curiously, in a motion filed Friday to extend the time to file their amended complaint to August 7, plaintiffs state that they “recently learned that the subscriber disclosed by AT&T is not John Doe 21 (“AK47″) but likely knows his identity.” In light the admissions in AK47′s pro se motion to quash, I’m left a little confused as to what is going on in the litigation. Also of interest, plaintiffs state that they are “close to identifying five additional pseudonymous defendants in the case. Specifically, Plaintiffs are in the process of scheduling a deposition with one pseudonymous defendant . . . Plaintiffs have discovered the identities of three additional pseudonymous defendants, and are very close to deciding whether to name these individuals as defendants.”
June 23, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Posted in: Law Student Discussions
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Futurology and Academia
posted by Frank Pasquale
Futurology is often derided as a pastime of trendspotters and luftmenschen. But the recent European Patent Office “Scenarios for the Future” report rehabilitated the genre a bit. I’ve mentioned before that an IP prof has to be a bit of a prognosticator; I’m happy to see Carlin Romano developing the theme (far more eloquently than I could) in this recent review of the Future of Reputation and The Future of the Internet:
Both . . . books, excellent and ultimately upbeat in their separate but related missions, will increase our literacy in their complex yet still intelligible fields. . . .”The best way to predict the future”, the US computer scientist Alan Kay remarked in 1971, “is to invent it.” Pre-emptive description, however, ranks second best. The chief identifying criterion of the future is that it continuously steps back from us, making nothing about it, strictly speaking, true or false.
Both Zittrain and Solove exhibit a common trait of technologically oriented futurists: they tend to assume current values and a wish to preserve them in the face of fresh logistical forces. [Yet] Solove’s examples, such as Jennifer Ringley, the twenty-year-old student who opened her whole life to regular webcam monitoring in 1996 and didn’t shut down until 2004, remind us of truths more explored by Frankfurt School philosophers than American futurists – that technology also changes our values, or at least adjusts them. The iPod, for instance, pressures us to tolerate forms of distraction formerly considered rude, such as the teenager who makes her purchase without removing her earphones.
Both Solove and Zittrain deserve Kierkegaard’s accolade, that to occupy oneself with the future is “an indication of man’s nobility”. Like many “cyberphilosophers”, they are discovering the future in the present with less wonted gloom and doom – and more incisive solutions – than many traditional literary and humanistic pronouncers on the subject.
As someone who has written on the ways new technology can shape values (and believes in the continuing relevance of the Frankfurt School)–I greatly appreciated Romano’s sharp review of these two important books.
June 23, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Posted in: Book Reviews, Intellectual Property, Privacy, Technology
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Carlin – A Loss
posted by Deven Desai
As lawyers one can be paid rather well to write; not just to write but to use language in a sophisticated way. As lawyers we also need to remember to keep our sense of humor. So it is sad to say that George Carlin died yesterday. His ability to leverage language to draw out irony and dissonance in a joke will be missed. Many know Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” (and the Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica case which puts wardrobe malfunctions in better perspective). Another generation may recall him as Rufus in the Bill and Ted’s movies. Here is one on my favorite Carlin routines. It is about baseball and football:
June 23, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Posted in: Uncategorized
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The Citizenship Exam and Popular Culture
posted by Jessica Silbey
Every year as part of my constitutional law final exam, I give my students a mini “citizenship exam.” I ask six questions that derive from the U.S. Citizenship Exam, which are about the U.S. Constitution. I tell my students they can go to the U.S. government website and review the questions there, or they can just read the Constitution. Doing either should prepare them well for that portion of the exam. The questions I ask are straight forward and, I would suppose, easy: How does one amend the Constitution per Article V? What are the first ten amendments called? Who, according to the Constitution, has the power to declare war? Most students score 100% on this portion of the final exam — as I would hope. But sometimes I am surprised, unhappily so, by a pattern I see in the wrong answers. I asked the last question — the power to declare war — this year, and I was worried and angry by the number of students who answered that question: the President. (Angry: Weren’t they paying attention? Worried: What kind of teacher am I?) And then I thought about the question and how, as with some of the questions in the past, the right answer conflicts with our present experience of our political order and popular culture.
Of course the Constitution does say that Congress declares war, not the President, but since World War II, the United States Congress hasn’t declared war on any nation despite having authorized troops to serve in many, many war zones. No wonder students are confused. All the more reason they should have heard and remembered the classes on the war powers, I think. And all the more reason I should have been that much clearer in class. So although popular cuture can wreak havoc on learning, it can, of course, also be a teacher’s best friend. I tend to embrace it in my classroom (playing Billy Bragg’s Everywhere when I teach Korematsu, showing clips from West Wing when teaching Roe v. Wade). But in this case, I forgot the lesson. For our unit on war powers, I should have played this clip of President Bush declaring “mission accomplished” on May 1, 2003. Nothing like the problem staring you in the face to jump start a classroom discussion on the separation of powers. (And the problem can be defined in any number of ways for a good discussion about the constitutional order — the scope of the implied Art II powers, Congress’s reluctance to declare war but its willingness to fund it, etc.). Playing this clip by MoveOn.org would have just derailed the pedagogical lesson (so I will try and refrain next year) but perhaps it would good in some class. Suggestions welcome.
June 22, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Posted in: Constitutional Law, Culture, Education
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Excellent Globe Article on Novel Problems Raised by Google
posted by Frank Pasquale
The Boston Globe Ideas section (and blog) have published some great pieces recently, and Drake Bennett’s piece on Google is no exception. Bennett does an excellent job canvassing the myriad new legal problems generated by the search company’s dominance. Here’s a taste:
There is no evidence that Google systematically distorts its results. According to a Google spokesman, “It’s in our best interest to act responsibly and be as transparent as possible.” The problem, critics argue, is that the workings of Google’s search algorithm are a closely guarded secret, so we have to take the company at its word.
In the United States, there have been two court cases dealing with this issue, lawsuits brought against Google by online companies that saw their rankings, and, as a result, their earnings, suddenly and precipitously drop, and that accused Google of having intentionally targeted them – one was a company that offered strategies to improve Google rankings, a practice Google has publicly condemned. In both cases, the courts ruled for Google, arguing that whether or not it had manipulated its rankings, those rankings were “evaluative opinions” and therefore protected by the First Amendment.
One response, in light of the legal protection that Google enjoys, is to craft new laws around the use of search engines themselves. In Finland, for example, it is now illegal for companies to do Web searches on prospective hires . . . .
Another is an idea put forward by Pasquale of Seton Hall. In a few recent papers, he has proposed what he calls a “right of reply” to search results. If, for example, the top results to a query about an individual are slanderous or otherwise damaging to his reputation, that person, Pasquale argues, should have the right to put an asterisk by the findings that links to a rebuttal.
Pasquale and others have also argued that it may be time to rethink the legal protection Google’s rankings now enjoy. The company’s secret page-ranking algorithm is at the heart of Google’s success: It was the founding technology of the company, and has been modified over the years to produce more useful results and foil companies that try to manipulate it. But critics now suggest that Google’s technology is now too influential to remain one company’s black box.
Google and its defenders argue that making the search algorithm public would be a disaster, not only for the company, which would lose much of its competitive advantage, but for Web searching itself, since everyone who wanted to game the rankings would have a road map for how to do it. In response, Oren Bracha, an assistant professor of law at the University of Texas, suggests that cases of potential search engine bias could be treated the way terrorism trials with classified information now are: in a sealed proceeding that prevented evidence from leaking out into the wider world. . . .
Google is now grappling with the consequences of its runaway success. It has been so good at making so much information so readily available that its own search function has come to seem less like a private service and more like a right. In theory, of course, it is easy for a Google user to defect to another search engine. But there is a reason “Google” has become a verb: Google has so outpaced its rivals that it has begun to look like a monopoly, a necessity where users have only one real option. And the more we come to rely on Google, the more Google may have to listen to the rest of us. [emphasis added]
That is an eloquent conclusion for an extraordinarily insightful article.
June 22, 2008 at 12:08 am
Posted in: Google & Search Engines
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Northwestern’s Third Year
posted by Sarah Waldeck
As reported at Above the Law and TaxProf, Northwestern has announced a program that allows its students to complete their legal degrees in two years instead of the usual three. Upon inspection, the two-year program is less revolutionary than it initially sounds. As described by Inside Higher Ed, the two-year program is an accelerated version of the usual fare, with students taking the same courses and credit hours as those in the three-year program.
The two-year option may have stolen the headlines, but what Northwestern announced about its third year is at least as interesting. Northwestern will allow students to spend a semester in full-time experiential programs, such as legal clinics and law firm apprenticeships. The move comes on the heels of the Carnegie Report, which urged law schools to incorporate a practical skills component wherever possible and to think creatively about the third year. Last March Washington and Lee responded by making all third-year courses experiential. While Northwestern has not gone this far, its experiential semester is likely to make its competitors follow suit. (Fear not, aspiring professors. Northwestern will have “research opportunities” available for you.)
P.S. The talk of practical skills reminded me of “reading the law,” or becoming a lawyer through apprenticeship, without ever going to law school. I had thought that reading the law was only of historical interest. But a little surfing revealed what many readers probably already know: four states still allow people to become lawyers after extended apprenticeships (provided they pass the bar exam). You can get the overview here.
June 21, 2008 at 10:00 am
Posted in: Law School
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Brain Thoughts
posted by Deven Desai
As some of you know I sometimes put material here that falls more under the everything category. I like the category. Lawyers do well when they encounter information and ideas outside the world of law. Attention to how the brain works has grown in the law. One might argue that the law requires some conception of what it is to be human, to have intent, to think one way or another.
The video below is from TED. It is Prof. Vilayanur Ramachandran giving the talk “A journey to the center of your mind.” He looks at specific conditions affecting the brain and offers some fascinating insights about how the brain functions and at the end a view of creativity that is fascinating. In addition TED delivers again with an excellent example of a good lecture. So watch, learn, and enjoy. (Approx. 24 minutes).
June 20, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Posted in: Technology
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When Less is More (Fair Use Edition)
posted by Frank Pasquale
It’s hard to think of two movies conveying American joie de vivre and weltschmerz as well as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Requiem for a Dream (respectively). So why not superimpose the music from one on images from the other (in Requiem for a Day Off)?
Like Reese’s Pieces, two great movies that taste great together. Shakes McFadden’s work here reminds me of the growing genre of minimally transformative mashups. Two years ago we saw the Nietzsche Family Circus; now there’s Garfield Minus Garfield, a cartoon “Hamlet Without the Prince” which simply excises the feline protagonist from every frame of Jim Davis’s cartoon strips. Davis himself loves the concept:
“I think it’s the body of work that makes me laugh — the more you read of these strips, the funnier it gets,” Mr. Davis said. As for Garfield himself, “this makes a compelling argument that maybe he doesn’t need to be there. Less is more.”
McFadden masterfully re-cuts Ferris, but doesn’t appear to add much to Clint Mansell’s music (which may well be inspired by Phillip Glass). I suppose Mansell would have a better chance at a copyright infringement suit than the moviemakers. But I still find it bizarre that courts might ask, in the fair use inquiry, whether the video comments on the music (parody), or merely uses it as a convenient platform to make a humorous point (satire). Then again, I always thought the guy in the Numa Numa video was parodying Romanian dance music.
Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan; Cross-posted from Madisonian.
June 20, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Posted in: Intellectual Property
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Floods and Agricultural Conservation
posted by Steph Tai
Today’s Washington Post has an article on suggestions by natural resources professors that the recent flooding in Iowa have some manmade bases. Some of the human-related causes include increased wetlands development, increased use of subsurface drainage pipes, lowered crop rotation (away from crops that put down deep roots, and towards shallow-rooted crops like corn), and additional generation of sediment due to agricultural and development practices.
Many of these causes of flooding relate to agricultural practices. But whether the 2008 Farm Bill–the remainder of which was passed last night over an earlier presidential veto (complicated story)–will happen to address some of these potential problems will probably be in debate. A focus on growing corn is still likely to increase, given some of the biofuels production incentives contained in the 2008 Farm Bill.
Moreover, as environmentalists critical of the new Farm Bill have pointed out, the enrollment cap in the Conservation Reserve Program (in which farmers are given incentives to take environmentally sensitive lands out of crop production) is reduced from 39.2 million acres (in the earlier version of the bill) to 32 million acres in the current Farm Bill. And the enrollment cap for the Wetlands Reserve Program (in which farmers are given incentives to reserve wetlands) is reduced by 25%. And the 2008 Farm Bill didn’t contain the stronger of the contemplated Sodsaver provisions, which would have created disincentives for farmers to plow up native prairie grasses.
On the other hand, the Farm Bill also contains the first federal energy crop program to encourage the growth of cellulosic energy crops like switchgrass, which have deeper roots, And some of the payouts for the different voluntary conservation programs have increased, potentially increasing the incentives for farmers to enter these voluntary programs (in an attempt to address earlier criticisms that too often, farmers would find it more financially rewarding to opt out, rather than in).
Me, I’m still going through the various relevant provisions of this massive +200 page document to see what I think. But I’m interested in hearing from those of you who are more immersed in the agricultural side of things!
June 19, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Posted in: Environmental Law
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You Know For Kids – The Hula Hoop Turns Fifty
posted by Deven Desai
The Hula Hoop, possibly the greatest fad in American history, turns fifty this week. According the AP, Soviet Russia banned the toy “as a symbol of the ‘emptiness of American culture.’” I love the Hula Hoop because of the Coen Brother’s film The Hudsucker Proxy. If you have not seen it, buy or rent it. The acting from Robbins as the bright-eyed corporate dupe to Newman’s grizzled corporate leader to Leigh’s smart, tough writer to all the great supporting roles combine with the great attention to set detail and offer one of my favorite Coen films. The gore and darkness is not present but the fun and fantastic is. Corporate law folks may find the ideas of the proxy and how it works troublesome, but then again this one is not about legal or historic accuracy; it is fiction pure and simple. Nonetheless, the film captures the feel of black white news reels and fads so well that one might think it is the real stuff. If you need further convincing, just check the clip below the fold. It captures the ridiculousness of fads and the way we may wish the past was rather well.
June 19, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Posted in: Corporate Law, Humor, Securities
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Law Profs on Colbert
posted by Deven Desai
Mike Madison points out that Jonathan Zittrain was on Colbert last night. But so was Neal Katyal. Is this the making of an unofficial showdown? Will academic stature be determined by who can roll with the Colbert? Who offers truthiness? Probably not on both counts.
Given my tech bent, I lean towards Zittrain. Nonetheless, I honestly think both did rather well and enjoyed seeing them navigate the oddity of a comedy interview. The clips are below. As always, draw your own conclusions. Enjoy.
Katyal:
Zittrain:
June 18, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Posted in: Humor
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Respect for the Troops = Benefits Now
posted by Frank Pasquale
Bilmes & Stiglitz’s book The Three Trillion Dollar War explains in depth how aggressively the Administration has denied benefits to many returning veterans. It’s a natural consequence of going to war while cutting taxes–and given Jonathan Chait’s work, I’m not terribly surprised to see the Social Darwinist wing of the Administration trump the military on this issue. I’m happy to see that some are now starting to challenge these policies in court:
Berkeley-based Disability Rights Advocates filed a lawsuit that could affect thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. They allege that the Department of Veterans Affairs is unable to provide timely mental health treatment for returning veterans.
Bipartisan resistance to courts’ evisceration of the ADA may also benefit a large number of veterans:
Advocates for people with disabilities say that recent court rulings have made the employment protections of the disability civil rights law almost meaningless, especially to people with diabetes, epilepsy, cancer, and mental illness. . . . Last year, a version of [the ADA Restoration Act] quickly got support from more than half of the House of Representatives. That forced the business community to negotiate. [Now the] bill’s backers hope to give President Bush something he can sign by the end of July.
As any viewer of Iraq: Alive Day Memories knows, many returning veterans will appreciate these developments.
June 18, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Posted in: Economic Analysis of Law, Employment Law, Law and Inequality, Politics
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Postrel on Positionality: “Just a Phase”
posted by Frank Pasquale
I was intrigued by Virginia Postrel’s latest article on conspicuous consumption. In her book The Substance of Style, Postrel seemed eager to discredit Veblen-inspired thought by claiming that it failed to “credit [luxury] goods’ intrinsic sensory appeal.” Now her position is more nuanced:
An African American family with the same income, family size, and other demographics as a white family will spend about 25 percent more of its income on jewelry, cars, personal care, and apparel. . . .African Americans spend much less on education, health care, entertainment, and home furnishings. (The same is true of Latinos.)
[E]conomists [have] compared the spending patterns of people of the same race in different states—say, blacks in Alabama versus blacks in Massachusetts, or whites in South Carolina versus whites in California. [A]ll else being equal . . . an individual spent more of his income on visible goods as his racial group’s income went down. African Americans don’t necessarily have different tastes from whites. They’re just poorer, on average. In places where blacks in general have more money, individual black people feel less pressure to prove their wealth.
The same is true for whites. Controlling for differences in housing costs, an increase of $10,000 in the mean income for white households—about like going from South Carolina to California—leads to a 13 percent decrease in spending on visible goods. “Take a $100,000-a-year person in Alabama and a $100,000 person in Boston,” says Hurst. “The $100,000 person in Alabama does more visible consumption than the $100,000 person in Massachusetts.” That’s why a diamond-crusted Rolex screams “nouveau riche.” It signals that the owner came from a poor group and has something to prove. . . . Rich people in poor places want to show off their wealth. And their less affluent counterparts feel pressure to fake it, at least in public. Nobody wants the stigma of being thought poor. [emphasis added]
Nevertheless, Postrel is at pains to convey that positional pressures are but a temporary problem. . . .
June 18, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Posted in: Consumer Protection Law, Economic Analysis of Law, Intellectual Property
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Class Action Challenging Wisconsin’s Diploma Privilege
posted by Sarah Waldeck
As every law school graduate from UW-Madison or Marquette knows, Wisconsin is the last state in the nation to still extend a diploma privilege. Simply put, if students at these schools take certain courses and attain a particular minimum grade in those courses, they can be admitted to practice law in Wisconsin without taking a bar exam.
The Associated Press is reporting that a federal judge in the Western District of Wisconsin has certified a class action challenging the diploma privilege. Anyone who applies to the Wisconsin bar within 30 days of graduating from law school can join the suit, which alleges that the diploma privilege is unconstitutional because it discriminates against out-of-state graduates.
I haven’t thought much about the constitutionality of the diploma privilege, but I have pondered the wisdom of Wisconsin’s policy. As a Madison grad, the issue for me has always been whether it is too easy to gain automatic admission; in other words, should the required minimum grades be higher than they are? I perceive bar exams as performing an important, albeit imperfect (and perhaps too lenient), screening function. Put succinctly, if a graduate can’t pass the bar in the maximum number of times that they are allowed to take it, the public would be better served by having that graduate in a different profession. But I don’t have any empirical data about whether the Wisconsin diploma privilege provides the same sort of screening as a bar exam. (For example, how many graduates in other jurisdictions never pass that jurisdiction’s exam? How many graduates of Madison and Marquette do not qualify for automatic admission?) I do, however, think that a student’s performance in a semester-long class is a more accurate measure of whether she is qualified to be a lawyer, provided that Wisconsin’s bar is set high enough. (Bad pun absolutely intended.)
I’d be interested in relevant data, if anyone knows it. And I’m sure those who are currently sitting in a bar review course have their own opinions about Wisconsin’s system.
June 18, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Posted in: Law School
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Fist Bump in Perspective
posted by Deven Desai
For those who recall the odd insuation or claim that a fist jab or bump is somehow a terrorist symbol, check out Scalzi’s post on Chuck E. Cheese, Al-Qaeda, and fist jabs. It seems that Mr. Cheese is slowly perverting our children through that evil medium the television. But fear not, John has a plan. I’ll leave you to read what it is.
June 18, 2008 at 10:29 am
Posted in: Humor
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Do We Need an Internet Ed. Class?
posted by Deven Desai
While I was attending the excellent privacy conference Dan Solove and Chris Hoofnagle organized in D.C. a few days ago, it occurred to me that just as one takes driver’s ed. before being able to drive a car, it might make sense to have a required Internet Education class in middle school. Driving is a key way people engage in the economy, and the Internet, especially email and social networking use, is becoming as essential if not more so. Given all the benefits and problems of the Internet from meeting new people and peer production to unfortunate gossiping and dog poop events, it dawned on me that Internet Ed. might fill a gap that appeared as I listened to various people at the conference.
June 18, 2008 at 10:13 am
Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy), Sociology of Law, Technology, Web 2.0
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Does it Matter if Dodge v. Ford is Good Law?
posted by Dave Hoffman
Recently, I’ve read several articles and book chapters asserting that corporate law places undue emphasis on Dodge v. Ford. Dodge is traditionally understood to hold that corporations have a exclusive duty to maximize shareholder welfare. The basic argument runs as follows. Courts (Delaware and others) often defer to management’s decisions despite weak claims of shareholder benefit, and permit the consideration of other constituencies. This is true in part because shareholder welfare is a malleable concept, and there are almost no short term considered decisions a Board can make that can’t be justified in the long-term. And, of course, courts are institutionally ill-placed to second guess this kind of nuanced long-term calculus. To the extent that Dodge is the antipode of how courts ordinarily treat claims of waste, the Dodge rule either shouldn’t be taught to students or should be highlighted as, at best, a piece of exceptional dicta.
I am pretty sure I disagree with this critique of teaching Dodge.
Fundamentally, it is a mistake to think of any one opinion, or set of opinions, as representative of how trial and appellate courts resolve the real-world fact patterns presented by complaints. There is certainly some relationship between the law that courts write in reasoned decisions and the decisions they don’t explain, but I don’t know why we would assume that relationship is a parallel one. I’m thus as unconvinced that Dodge represents the law-in-action as the cases often cited on the broader-constituency side of the argument. To know how courts actually treat a claim that officers have not maximized shareholder wealth, we would have to look at a representative sample of complaints, and grind out some statistics. Tedious? Sure! Absent such a study, the best we can say about any particular case or set of cases is that it is a way that a particular court has approached a problem at a particular time. Maybe students find the reasoning the court provides persuasive, and maybe it fits well with other cases (on like and unlike legal issues) they’ve read during the semester, thus helping them to develop a situation sense on what kinds of arguments resonate with legally-trained minds. But that’s it. Saying that Dodge is unrepresentative of how court opinions treat waste and care claims doesn’t tell us all that much, in the end, about how such cases are resolved.
June 18, 2008 at 1:28 am
Posted in: Corporate Law
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Sleepless in Science Fiction
posted by Frank Pasquale
There is an interesting collection of articles on transhumanism this month in a publication called The Global Spiral. Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s article Cybernetics is an Anti-Humanism sets the stage for the discussion:
In recent years, the enterprise of “making life from scratch” has been organized as a formal scientific discipline under the seemingly innocuous name of synthetic biology. In June 2007, the occasion of the first Kavli Futures Symposium at the University of Greenland in Ilulissat, leading researchers from around the world gathered to announce the convergence of work in synthetic biology and nanotechnology and to take stock of the most recent advances in the manufacture of artificial cells. Their call for a global effort to promote “the construction or redesign of biological systems components that do not naturally exist” evoked memories of the statement that was issued in Asilomar, California more than thirty years earlier, in 1975, by the pioneers of biotechnology. Like their predecessors, the founders of synthetic biology insisted not only on the splendid things they were poised to achieve, but also on the dangers that might flow from them. Accordingly, they invited society to prepare itself for the consequences, while laying down rules of ethical conduct for themselves. We know what became of the charter drawn up at Asilomar. A few years later, this attempt by scientists to regulate their own research had fallen to pieces. The dynamics of technological advance and the greed of the marketplace refused to suffer any limitation.
Count me as unsurprised–”self-regulation” is all too often a euphemism for no regulation at all. Given Dupuy’s observations of the mutual reinforcement of market and technological forces, I found Katherine Hayles’s treatment of a science fiction novel on genetic enhancement particularly interesting:
June 17, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Posted in: Bioethics
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Some More Tips For Summer (and Maybe Junior Associates): Work Assignments
posted by Deven Desai
The last post looked at the social side of summer associate positions. As that post and the comments note, the social side is part of the work environment and interview process. But the social does not address specifics about work. So what to do when an assignment is received?
Law firms, like some parts of law school, can forget that the summer associate knows little about the work being assigned. So what do you do when a real live case matter comes your way? Again work like crazy to master it. This environment may drop you into the deep end. If the critical thinking and writing aspects of law school reached you at all, they will help you get through an experience similar to the first year of law school. You have some skills, some knowledge, a good brain, and not as much guidance as you may desire. Welcome to the working world. Problem solving is what will lead to success. Still there are some fundamental tips that can enhance your ability to perform well.
June 17, 2008 at 10:18 am
Posted in: Law Practice
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