SelectedWorks @ Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law
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The Potential Unintended Consequences of the O\u27Bannon Decision
No full textThe O’Bannon decision made a significant change to one of the philosophical pillars of intercollegiate athletics in allowing for greater compensation for student athletes. At the same time, the court took only an incremental step in the direction of pay for college athletes: The decision was limited to football and men’s basketball players — as opposed to non-revenue-generating sports — and it set a yearly cap of $5,000 for each of these athletes. However, the court left open the possibility for — indeed, it almost seemed to invite — future challenges to the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s restrictions on student-athlete compensation. In this regard, the court’s incremental step in college athlete pay may be a harbinger of more dramatic and structural changes to come in the college athletic system. While this Essay does not take a normative position on the legal or economic justifications for such a possible change in intercollegiate athletics, it does seek to describe some of the potential unintended consequences of a free(r) marketplace for student-athlete services. In particular, this Essay analyzes the possible implications and impact on Title IX, as well as college athletic opportunities and values more generally. In doing so, this Essay attempts to explain why the court’s more cautious approach may be needed going forward to balance the varied interest in the college athletic system
Public Lands and the Federal Government’s Compact-Based “Duty to Dispose”: A Case Study of Utah’s H.B. 148 – The Transfer of Public Lands Act
No full textRecent legislation passed in March 2012 in the State of Utah — the “Transfer of Public Lands Act and Related Study,” (“TPLA”) also commonly referred to as House Bill 148 (“H.B. 148”) — has demanded that the federal government, by December 31, 2014, “extinguish title” to certain public lands that the federal government currently holds (totaling an estimated more than 20 million acres). It also calls for the transfer of such acreage to the State and establishes procedures for the development of a management regime for this increased state portfolio of land holdings resulting from the transfer. The State of Utah claims that the federal government made promises to it (at statehood when the federal government obtained the lands) that the federal ownership would be of limited duration and that the bulk of those lands would be timely disposed of by the federal government into private ownership or otherwise returned to the State. Utah’s TPLA presents fascinating issues for the areas of public lands, natural resources, federalism, contracts, and constitutional law. It represents a new chapter in the long book of wrangling between states in the West and the federal government over natural resources and public lands ownership, control, and management. The impact is potentially considerable — thirty-one percent of our nation’s lands are owned by the federal government, and 63.9% of the lands in Utah are owned by the federal government. This Article provides an overview of the legal arguments on both sides of the TPLA debate. In the end, there is a credible case that rules of construction support an interpretation of the Utah Enabling Act that includes some form of a duty to dispose on the part of the federal government. At a minimum, the legal arguments in favor of the TPLA are serious and, if taken seriously, the TPLA presents an opportunity for further clarification of public lands law and the relationship between the states and the federal government regarding those lands. Moreover, other states are exploring similar avenues to assert their claims vis-à-vis the federal government and are in various stages of developing land transfer strategies that will model or learn from the TPLA. That fact further underscores the need for a renewed serious and informed legal discussion on the issues related to disposal obligations of the federal government. This Article takes a first step into that discussion
India’s State of Legal Education: The Road from NLSIU to Jindal
No full textThis narrative is a reflection of the changes that the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) ushered in India, prior to globalization. It reflects on the challenges to legal education in India pre-globalization and the efforts made through the creation of NLSIU to address these challenges, and it also introduces some of the challenges facing Indian legal education in a globalized world
Corporate Social Responsibility in a Remedy-Seeking Society: A Public Choice Perspective
No full textWritten for the Chapman Law Review Symposium on “What Can Law & Economics Teach Us About the Corporate Social Responsibility Debate?,” this Article applies the lessons of public choice theory to examine corporate social responsibility. The Article adopts a broad definition of corporate social responsibility activism to include both (1) those efforts that seek to convince corporations to voluntarily take into account corporate social responsibility in their own decision-making, and (2) the efforts to alter the legal landscape and expand legal obligations of corporations beyond traditional notions of harm and duty so as to force corporations to invest in interests other than shareholders and profits because they must comply with these new laws. After surveying the corporate social responsibility debate, this Article examines public interest-labeled groups (including corporate social responsibility groups) under a public choice lens and determines that they seek to maximize their budgets, maximize influence, maximize membership, secure their jobs, and in the case of corporate social responsibility sometimes directly effectuate wealth transfers into their organizations or constituencies (e.g., from shareholders to stakeholders). When rent-seeking for legal change is the more efficient use of corporate social responsibility advocates’ limited resources, those groups will invest in the creation of law. This Article pays special attention to a broad definition of rent-seeking that includes the investments made, through precedent-building litigation models, in the creation of legal liability regimes or realistic new threats of legal liability in an effort to obtain leverage over corporations in settlements or other negotiations designed to convince corporations to change behavior. According to studies on settlement dynamics, when novel new litigation theories start to survive motions to dismiss, corporate defendants have more incentives to settle to avoid harm to reputation or brand, in addition to avoiding adverse judgments. The Article concludes using the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) as a case study illustrating how the interest-group dynamic can play out in the development of a corporate social responsibility-driven liability regime
