Global Health Research Center of Central Asia
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Commercial Finance: A Transactional Approach
No full textThe Commercial Finance book is designed to update (and replace) the course on Secured Credit traditionally taught in law school. By shifting the focus to commercial finance from Article 9, and by shifting the materials to emphasize pro-active document design and analysis as opposed to re-active case analysis, the book supports a course that is at once more consonant with the likely career paths of our students and at the same time more experiential than the doctrinal materials that they replace. The course omits the coverage of consumer transactions, which fills a large part of the traditional Secured Credit course, and substitutes a discussion of mortgages parallel to its discussion of lending under Article 9. Within the curriculum, the course parallels the course on corporate finance — covering all of the major types of lending to businesses that do not involve the public securities markets — and provides an excellent foundation for a commercial bankruptcy course.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1123/thumbnail.jp
Price Gouging in a Pandemic
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic led to acute supply shortages across the country as well as concerns over price increases amid surging demand. In the process, it reawakened a debate about whether and how to regulate “price gouging” — a controversy that continues as inflation has accelerated even as the pandemic abates. Animating this debate is a longstanding conflict between laissez-faire economics, which champions price fluctuations as a means to allocate scarce goods, and perceived norms of consumer fairness, which are thought to cut strongly against sharp price hikes amid shortages.
This Article provides a new, empirically grounded perspective on the price gouging debate that challenges several aspects of conventional wisdom. We report results from a survey experiment administered to a large, nationally representative sample during the height of the pandemic’s initial wave. We presented participants with a variety of vignettes involving price increases, eliciting their reactions along two dimensions: the degree of unfairness they perceived, and the legal response they favored. Overall, we find that participants are more tolerant of price increases than either the existing behavioral economics literature predicts or most state price gouging statutes countenance. But we also find that price fairness perceptions can be highly sensitive to context. For example, participants are much more tolerant of moderate price increases if they previously are asked to contemplate large price increases. Moreover, participants are substantially more willing to accept a price increase when it is accompanied by an apology or a public-minded rationale, such as supporting furloughed employees, or both. We explore the implications of our findings for behavioral economics, pricing practices, and legal reform
Intra-EU Investment Disputes and the Monopoly Over the Interpretation of EU Law
Get PDFFollowing a recent European Charter Treaty (“ECT”) decision, it appears that the fate of intra-EU investment disputes, when adjudicated in fora other than the Luxembourg courts, is finally all but sealed. In Green Power, an arbitration tribunal confirmed prior decisions taken in different jurisdictions that there is no room for adjudicating intra-EU investment disputes away from Luxembourg. This decision sided with the approach already developed by the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) in three decisions, namely, Achmea, Komstroy, and PL Holdings, which in turn led to legislative action by the Energy Charter Treaty aiming to put an end to a different choice of venue. This initiative is in line with the often-expressed volition of the Luxembourg courts to preserve their monopoly over the interpretation of EU laws. While, from a strict legal perspective, the position of the Luxembourg courts is not entirely persuasive, and we advance in what follows arguments to this effect, it appears that ultimately discussion of the issue will soon be considered “water under the bridge” and the CJEU will preserve its monopoly over the adjudication of intra-EU investment disputes in the foreseeable future. With this arrangement, although EU member states can participate as individual entities in fora like the ECT, they (and their investors) can submit disputes arising from their participation therein only to Luxembourg
CRT2 S1E2
No full textPhoto of Joyce McMillan, thought leader, advocate, activist, community organizer, and educator.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/crt2_podcast/1008/thumbnail.jp
The Legal Case for Equity in Local Climate Action Planning
Get PDFOver the last half decade, local climate action plans have regularly come to incorporate considerations of racial and socioeconomic equity, recognizing the ways in which low-income communities and communities of color experience earlier and worse consequences from global warming, and these communities are also at risk of being harmed by policies meant to address climate change. Until now, however, the discourse on equity in climate action planning has largely pertained to policy; it acknowledges the disproportionate harm that certain communities experience as a result of climate change and policies to address climate change, and suggests policy tools that can address these disparities. Missing is a discussion of why local governments are compelled or strongly encouraged by law to develop climate plans that aim to address racial and socioeconomic inequity alongside rising GHG emissions. This Article seeks to fill in the missing legal context for why equitable climate action planning is strongly encouraged by three aspects of federal law: the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and recent federal law developments like the Inflation Reduction Act and Justice40. While none of these mandate that local governments consider equity in their climate action planning, they do provide a compelling legal argument for local climate policy that is equitable and racially just.
The Article explores all three areas of federal law and suggests ways in which they might interplay with equitable local climate action planning. In addition to delineating new applications for these areas of federal law, the research seeks to provide a legal rationale for local climate policy that is just and equitable that can support local government efforts when their climate action plans face political, fiscal, legal, and other forms of challenge
The (Immediate) Future of Prosecution
Get PDFEven as others make cogent arguments for diminishing the work of prosecutors, work remains – cases that must be brought against a backdrop of existing economic inequality and structural racism and of an array of impoverished institutional alternatives. The (immediate) future of prosecution requires thoughtful engagement with these tragic circumstances, but it also will inevitably involve the co-production of sentences that deter and incapacitate. Across-the-board sentencing discounts based on such circumstances are no substitute for the thoughtful intermediation that only the courtroom working group – judges, prosecutors and defense counsel- can provide. The (immediate) future also requires prosecutors to do more to recognize the distinctive role they can play in combating illegitimate domination
Fixing the Climate: Charles Sabel in Conversation with Filippo Barbera
Get PDFIn this interview with Filippo Barbera, Charles F. Sabel discusses his latest book, Fixing the Climate (Princeton University Press, 2022, with D.G. Victor), that dramatically reorients our thinking about the climate crisis. It provides a road map to institutional design oriented around concrete problem-solving that can finally lead to self-sustaining reductions in emissions that years of global diplomacy have failed to deliver. The discussion touches upon a number of key issues of general interest for social scientists: global governance; decisions under uncertainty and risk; pragmatic solutions to wicked problems; technological solutions and innovation
Unexceptional Protest
Get PDFAnti-protest legislation is billed as applying only in the extreme circumstances of mass-movements and large scale civil disobedience. Mass protest exceptionalism provides justification for passage of anti-protest laws in states otherwise hesitant to expand public order criminal regulation. Examples include a Virginia bill that heightens penalties for a “failure to disperse following a law officer’s order”; a Tennessee law directing criminal penalties for “blocking traffic”; a bill in New York criminalizing “incitement to riot by nonresidents.” These laws might be better described as antiprotest expansions of public order legislation.
While existing critiques of these laws emphasize the chilling effects on free speech, this analysis masks the threat of such legislation in the everyday lives of already targeted people and communities. In actuality, the application of anti-protest legislation is not limited to “exceptional” circumstances, increasing everyday surveillance and public order regulation for Black, Latinx, and other targeted communities. The consequences of anti-protest legislation on highly surveilled communities are alarming.
This Article examines the construction of mass protest law exceptionalism and advocates for using resistance frameworks, such as joyful protest, to better understand the burdens and consequences borne by communities. This analysis incorporates text of recent mass anti-protest legislation, proponents’ arguments in media, and debate in legislative sessions. This framing exposes the lack of exceptionalism, surfaces the thin line between mass protest and everyday public order regulation in targeted communities, and demonstrates the high stakes of ignoring this blurred line when considering mass anti-protest criminal laws
The Right To Amend State Constitutions
Get PDFThis Essay explores the people\u27s right to amend state constitutions and threats to that right today. It explains how democratic proportionality review can help courts distinguish unconstitutional infringement of the right from legitimate regulation. More broadly, the Essay considers the distinctive state constitutional architecture that popular amendment illuminates
Survey of 2022 Cases Under State Environmental Quality Review Act
Get PDFThe courts in New York issued 43 opinions in 2022 under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA). Of these, the largest number — 27 — upheld agency decisions not to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS), and eight overturned such decisions. Six cases upheld actions that had been the subject of an EIS; none overturned such actions. Two cases can’t be classified in this fashion.
These numbers are in line with the longstanding pattern that a project’s greatest litigation vulnerability under SEQRA is the failure to prepare an EIS; if an EIS has been prepared, very rarely will the approvals be annulled on SEQRA grounds.
The most important SEQRA developments in the past year, by far, were the statutory amendments that required much more detailed baseline and cumulative impact analyses, and banned the construction of some new facilities that would add to the pollution burden in disadvantaged communities. We discussed these amendments in detail in our column of May 10, 2023, “New York Adopts Nation’s Strongest Environmental Justice Law,” and we will not repeat that here. There are not yet any judicial decisions under these amendments.
The balance of this column will discuss the most important 2022 cases. All the cases will be included in the forthcoming annual update to Environmental Impact Review in New York (Michael B. Gerrard, Daniel A. Ruzow and Philip Weinberg, eds.)