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Transnational Legal Orders and Global Health
No full textIn studying how public health laws operate, many scholars and practitioners frequently put the the state in the center. This chapter argues that we must look beyond the state. By utilizing a transnational law frame, scholars and practitioners are able to see the many international, regional, and domestic actors that shape national lawmaking on health. A transnational legal analysis allows for the assessment of the factors, including the broader sociopolitical and economic forces that inform lawmaking and domestic actors as they are subject to intersecting layers of governance emanating from national, international, and transnational governance
Corporations in 100 Pages (2nd Edition)
No full textThis book is a primer on corporate law for law students and anyone else interested in the foundations of corporate law. The book provides a self-contained, accessible presentation of the field’s essentials: what corporations are, how they are governed, their interactions with their investors and other stakeholders, major transactions (M&A), and parallels with alternative entities including partnerships. Optional background chapters cover the investor ecosystem, contemporary corporate governance, and corporate finance. The book’s exposition of doctrine and policy is nuanced and sophisticated yet short and simple enough for a quick read.https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/books/1348/thumbnail.jp
Op-Ed: Ghislaine Maxwell’s case puts a spotlight on trafficking’s victim-defendants
No full textIn the sex-trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, British socialite and close associate of the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors and the defense have presented dueling theories. Prosecutor Lara Pomerantz has alleged that Maxwell and Epstein were “partners in crime” in perpetrating horrific sexual abuse. Maxwell’s attorney Bobbi Sternheim presented a quite different narrative. She argued that Maxwell is on trial because she is a “convenient stand-in” for Epstein. She suggested that Maxwell was a victim of Epstein’s manipulations.
What if both sides are right
Franchisor Power as Employment Control
Get PDFLabor and employment laws are systematically underenforced in low-wage, franchised workplaces. Union contracts, and the benefits and protections they provide, are nonexistent. The Fight for Fifteen movement has brought attention to the low wages, systemic violations of workers’ rights, and lack of collective representation in fast-food franchises. Given that franchisees can be judgment-proof and cannot set industry standards, the deterrence, remedial, and collective bargaining goals of labor and employment laws can depend on holding the franchisor (the brand) responsible under the joint employer doctrine. In a series of cases, however, a dominant approach has emerged that essentially foreclosed the possibility that franchisors and their subordinate companies (franchisees) are joint employers. Recent political developments mirror this foreclosure and pose a historic narrowing of the scope of joint employer liability. This Article challenges courts, administrative agencies, and legislators to take more seriously franchisors’ power over their franchisees and the working conditions of low-wage fast-food workers. To advance this argument, we rely on insights from an original empirical data set of (1) forty-four contracts between leading fast-food franchisors and franchisees in 2016 and (2) comprehensive documentation provided in joint employer legal proceedings against two major fast-food franchisors in the United States: McDonald’s and Domino’s Pizza. Our proposed “power as employment control” construct considers, within the confines of existing doctrines, the cumulative effects of lead franchisor firms’ reserved (unexercised) and exercised influence over the working conditions in their subordinate businesses. By giving power more consideration in analyses of joint employer liability, courts, administrative agencies, and policy-makers can bring more justice and consistency to this hotly contested area
A ‘No Exceptions’ Tax System for the 21st Century
No full textWith a new administration come new opportunities. Here I present a tax proposal that I believe could garner support on both sides of the aisle. It has elements of the negative income tax, first proposed by conservative economist Milton Friedman; the flat tax (also called the “fair tax”), supported by many conservatives; and a universal basic income, promoted by Democrat Andrew Yang, combined in a way that is of the utmost simplicity. Call it the “No Exceptions Tax” (NExT). NExT is a federal personal income tax that replaces the current one. Here’s how it work
The Future of Materialist Constitutionalism
Get PDFThis is a review essay of Camila Vergara, Systemic Corruption (Princeton 2020). In this lively and important book, Vergara argues that corruption should be given a structural definition, one that connects corruption with inequality and is plebeian rather than elitist. After surveying the work of thinkers from Machiavelli to Arendt, she proposes a set of solutions grounded in the civic republican tradition./= / \u3e/= / \u3eI press several points in my essay. First, Vergara\u27s linkage of corruption with inequality is promising, but introduces tension between a general problem (domination of the many by the few) and a more specific problem (the domination of perennial outcasts). Second, the materialist-consequentialist mindset required to maintain an anti-corruption constitution, while valiant, will revive an older question: the extent to which any written text can constrain future politics, much less interpretation, in a maximal sense. Third, turning to the American experiment, we have learned that what is plebeian or local isn\u27t necessarily liberationist. Fourth, Vergara\u27s proposal to create a new network of local constituent assemblies is exciting but would require clear limits on their roles as such an innovation introduces additional layers of complexity to existing, often already dysfunctional, forms of governance. Five, allowing non-citizens to participate in such assemblies is defensible but controversial. Six, some of Vergara\u27s insights about the need for direct levers of popular control of elected officials could be cashed out through other methods, such as a national referendum to overturn presidential orders or Supreme Court decisions. As we have seen at the state and local level, such means of direct democracy have been successfully used to advance egalitarian objectives
Presidential Removal: The Marbury Problem and the Madison Solutions
Get PDFMarbury v. Madison is not just a puzzling judicial review precedent. It is also a puzzle about presidential removal. Why was it not taken for granted that Jefferson, Secretary of State Madison, or another executive official could simply fire Marbury? Why did Chief Justice Marshall also conclude in the unanimous decision that Marbury could not be removed?
This symposium essay summarizes recent research (especially by Jane Manners and Lev Menand) to solve this problem: an office appointed to a term of years restricted removal in the Anglo-American tradition, demonstrating that presidential removal was not a default rule. This essay also summarizes my research on the first Congress, showing that this rule was not limited to arguably judicial or quasi-judicial offices like Marbury\u27s office of justice of the peace. The Madison solution here is that then-Rep. Madison in 1789, in the debates creating the new Treasury Department, proposed an office of Comptroller with a limited term of office -- and he and his colleagues understood that such terms would protect the Comptroller from presidential removal.
But Chief Justice Marshall\u27s Marbury decision suggests another problem: He used the word vest to connote special legal protection for an office-holder. Does this mean that the word vest in the Constitution also had an original public meaning of exclusive and infeasible powers, so that Article II vested complete and exclusive executive power in the president, as the unitary theorists posit? This essay briefly previews new research suggesting that vest did not have such an original public meaning with respect to powers
As a Public Health Threat, Mass Shootings Require Public Health Solutions
No full textAs the media covers another spate of mass shootings, a familiar and all-too-predictable pattern is emerging yet again: debates over gun control and whether it is too soon to discuss policy, littered with accusations of who is shamelessly taking advantage of the tragedy. In the end, arguments tend to center around a false binary of guns in the hands of those who are safe and those who are dangerous, with little progress made. But these public shootings demonstrate the limitations of one of the most commonly used arguments against gun restrictions, that of the “law-abiding citizen.” Following this argument has real-world consequences, which demand real-world solutions that acknowledge the public health threat guns pose
Selling Out: An Instrumentalist Theory of Legal Ethics
Get PDFLegal ethics has received attention mostly from scholars who view it as a field for the application of moral philosophy. However, economic analysis is also useful in the study of legal ethics, because it can illuminate the incentives that generate ethical dilemmas and controversies. This is especially true in the subfield this paper devotes its attention to, lawyer conflict of interest rules. The problem I focus on is the incentive of the lawyer to sell out his client-for example, by providing confidential information to a potential adversary or by providing legal misinformation to the client in order to aid the adversary. The lawyer is in a unique position to auction off the client\u27s legal rights to the highest bidder. Troublingly, in those instances where the client most values his legal right, the lawyer will find it more profitable to sell out the client than to arrange a mutually beneficial consent to a conflict of interest. I examine implications for the regulation of legal ethics