Global Health Research Center of Central Asia
Columbia Law School Scholarship ArchiveNot a member yet
5770 research outputs found
Sort by
Section 5 in Action: Reinvigorating the FTC Act and the Rule of Law
Get PDFThe Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 didn’t just create a new agency. It created new law for that agency to enforce. The heart of that law is Section 5, which provides that ‘unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce’ are ‘hereby declared unlawful’. In passing this law, Congress also tasked the FTC with identifying the range of methods of competition that qualify as unfair, since lawmakers recognized they could not specify them all prospectively.
This is a straightforward reading of the statute, and yet it is somewhat controversial. There is a school of thought that considers Section 5’s prohibition of unfair methods of competition to be almost a dead letter. According to this view, Section 5 should be read merely as extending Sherman Act enforcement authority to the FTC. Even though the statute outlaws a clearly distinct category of conduct, it is argued that ‘unfair methods of competition’ should be defined by reference to Sherman ‘rule of reason’ case law
Beyond the Labor Exemption: Labor\u27s Antimonopoly Vision and the Fight for Greater Democracy
No full textAlthough the labor movement and the antimonopoly movement both oppose concentrated economic power and bemoan rising inequality, their projects are frequently viewed as divergent, if not incompatible. According to the conventional account, the labor movement has historically lacked an affirmative antimonopoly agenda, instead focusing its demands on achieving a labor exemption to the antitrust laws. This chapter shows, however, that left-leaning industrial unions from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century repeatedly and insistently used the language of antimonopoly to argue that private concentrations of economic power posed a grave threat to workers and to democracy. But labor’s vision differed from that of prominent antimonopolists. In labor’s view, the cure for monopoly power was not necessarily decentralization or smaller business organization. Rather, antimonopolism demanded that firms’ autonomy and power be democratically constrained by the firm’s workers and by a more democratic state. Ultimately, a commitment to antimonopolism meant a commitment to a more democratic political economy
Supplementing the Record: The Life and Career of Judge Edmund L. Palmieri
Get PDFFor approximately ninety years, lower federal court judges have hired law clerks to process the work of the courts. While the law clerks typically go onto successful careers as attorneys, law professors, government officials, and judges, it is rare that the former apprentices become so famous that their mentors are lost in their oversized shadows. This is the case, however, for former federal district court Judge Edmund L. Palmieri. A highly respected jurist who sat in the Southern District of New York for over three decades, Palmieri has seemingly become the answer to the following trivial pursuit question: What federal judge hired a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg as his law clerk?
While Palmieri should be lauded for offering Ginsburg a position in his chambers, and credited for launching Ginsburg\u27s groundbreaking career, it is unfair to reduce him to an historical footnote in the story of the Notorious RBG. First of all, Ginsburg was neither the first nor the last female law clerk Palmieri hired; during a time when women struggled to find equality of opportunity in the legal profession, almost one-third of the Judge\u27s law clerks were women. And the first three female law clerks hired by Palmieri were Jewish. These progressive hiring practices alone warrant a closer look at the Judge.
Additionally, Palmieri provides a model of what a modern clerkship should be – an invaluable educational opportunity in which a judge serves as role model, teacher, and mentor to newly-minted lawyers. Finally, Palmieri was a loving family man and dedicated public servant who applied his keen intellect to skillfully handle a wide variety of unique cases and novel legal issues which passed through his courtroom. A cultured man who spoke three languages, Palmieri was equally comfortable walking the streets of Brooklyn as he was the sidewalks of the Champs-Élysées. For these reasons, this essay will endeavor to extract Judge Edmund L. Palmieri from the long shadow of his favorite law clerk and return him to his proper place in the history of the federal judiciary
Contract Production in M&A Markets
Get PDFContract scholarship has devoted considerable attention to how contract terms are designed to incentivize parties to fulfill their obligations. Less attention has been paid to the production of contracts and the tradeoffs between using boilerplate terms and designing bespoke provisions. In thick markets everyone uses the standard form despite the known drawbacks of boilerplate. But in thinner markets, such as the private deal M&A world, parties trade off costs and benefits of using standard provisions and customizing clauses. This Article reports on a case study of contract production in the M&A markets. We find evidence of an informal information network that transforms bespoke changes in contract terms into industry-wide standard provisions. This organic coordination structure leads to both market-wide coordination as well as a diversity in this response as individual actors implement bespoke variations of the new standard
GHG Accounting for Low-emissions Branded Steel and Aluminum Products
Get PDFIron, steel, and aluminum products are major sources of GHG emissions, and these emissions have traditionally been hard to abate. As of 2020, the iron and steel and the aluminum industries accounted for 7% and 3% of global GHG emissions respectively. In recent years, demand has increased substantially for “green” iron, steel, and aluminum products which can allow purchasing companies to reduce their reported upstream scope 3 GHG emissions. In response to increased demand, companies in these industries have made an expanding array of green products available to customers.
“GHG Accounting for Low-emissions Branded Steel and Aluminum Products,” draws from an original analysis of over a dozen steel and aluminum low carbon brands and argues that while green-branded products can play a role in incentivizing and supporting the expansion of green procurement, they exist in a market that lacks the transparent, harmonized system for emissions accounting necessary to drive broad-based emissions reductions in the materials sector. This paper provides concrete steps to achieving a transparent and cohesive green market for low-emissions branded steel and aluminum products
\u3cem\u3eMoore v. United States\u3c/em\u3e, Brief for the American Tax Policy Institute as Amicus Curiae in Support of Respondent
Get PDFPetitioners’ case is not about realization, notwithstanding their claim that it “squarely and cleanly” raises that issue. The income taxed by the mandatory repatriation tax (MRT) was, in fact, realized by an Indian limited liability company (KisanKraft) while petitioners owned a stake in it. So the question here is not whether there was realized income, but who can be taxed on it. The Court has long recognized the constitutional power of Congress to tax the owners of an entity on income realized by that entity. Just as Congress has the power to tax a partner on the income earned by a partnership, Congress has the authority to tax U.S. shareholders on their share of income realized by a foreign corporation.
Upholding the MRT as a tax imposed on realized income of the foreign corporation will fully dispose of the case, without taking on complicated questions like whether realization is always constitutionally required and what comprises realization. By contrast, finding that the MRT violates a constitutional shareholder-level realization requirement could be profoundly destabilizing: there will be a flood of litigation about the constitutionality of a host of other provisions
Comments on Preliminary Draft 9
Get PDFWe are writing to offer our views on Preliminary Draft No. 9 (“PD9”) and express our deep and persistent concern about the direction and methodology that the Project continues to take, which we have sought to address and remedy at multiple points over the last several years. The elements of PD9 that we describe below are, in our view, particularly striking illustrations of the problems that we have previously identified. The gravity and salience of PD9’s problems are borne out in the comments of Judge Pierre Leval, who describes elements of the draft as requiring “a substantial editing and rewriting.” Failure to undertake those fundamental revisions will perpetuate an erroneous view of the current law, with “profound consequences.” Pierre N. Leval, Comments on PD9, at 4-5 (“Leval Comments on PD9”). Judge Leval limits his comments to the fair use provisions in PD9; we note that the same concerns arise in an additional area: PD9’s treatment of the derivative works right. Judge McKeown has also highlighted significant problems in both these areas, stating, inter alia, that “the fair use section offers a position that is flatly at odds with the Supreme Court’s teaching that factor one requires justification.” M. Margaret McKeown, Comments on PD9, at 1. We elaborate on our concerns more fully below
In California and Europe, a New Dawn for Corporate Climate Disclosure
Get PDFThe Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to finalize a new rule this month to cover required corporate climate disclosures by public-reporting companies. But the bigger news is that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has announced that he will soon sign into law two climate change disclosure bills passed by the state Legislature
The End of Family Court: How Abolishing the Court Brings Justice to Children and Families
No full textPart of the Families, Law, and Society series.
At the turn of the twentieth century, American social reformers created the first juvenile court. They imagined a therapeutic court where informality, specially trained public servants, and a kindly, all-knowing judge would assist children and families. But the dream of a benevolent means of judicial problem-solving was never realized. A century later, children and families continue to be failed by this deeply flawed court.
The End of Family Court rejects the foundational premise that family court can do good when intervening in family life and challenges its endless reinvention to survive. Jane M. Spinak illustrates how the procedures and policies of modern family court are deeply entwined in a heritage of racism, a profound disdain for poverty, and assimilationist norms intent on fixing children and families who are different. And the court’s interventionist goals remain steeped in an approach to equity and well-being that demands individual rather than collective responsibility for the security and welfare of families.
Spinak proposes concrete steps toward abolishing the court: shifting most family supports out of the court’s sphere, vastly reducing the types and number of matters that need court intervention, and ensuring that any case that requires legal adjudication has the due process protections of a court of law. She calls for strategies that center trusting and respecting the abilities of communities to create and sustain meaningful solutions for families. An abolitionist approach, in turn, celebrates a radical imagination that embraces and supports all families in a fair and equal economic and political democracy.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1368/thumbnail.jp
Permitting CO2 Pipelines
Get PDFBoth emissions reductions and removal of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere are essential if we hope to minimize the damage caused by climate change and globally reduce our net emissions of greenhouse gasses to zero. Some CO2 removal techniques, like “direct air capture” that uses chemical and electrochemical processes to capture atmospheric CO2 at relatively low concentrations, generate a stream of captured CO2 that is then injected into underground rock formations referred to as “geologic storage.” CO2 pipelines represent the most efficient way to transport high volumes of captured CO2 to geologic storage locations. However, while 5,000 miles of CO2 pipeline have already been constructed across the South and Midwest United States, the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) most recent estimates suggest that between 30,000 and 96,000 miles of CO2 pipelines will be needed to support the United States’ 2050 net-zero emissions goal.
The Biden Administration has strongly supported the adoption of carbon removal and storage technologies, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 directed DOE to fund four regional “direct air capture hubs” (DAC Hubs) — networks that connect direct air capture projects with sequestration facilities and commercial users of captured CO2. However, the CO2 pipelines that will be needed to support DAC Hubs remain subject to erratic regulation. Few of the federal legal frameworks governing pipeline infrastructure were designed with CO2 pipelines in mind, and most regulation of CO2 pipeline siting, development, and operation is conducted at the state level.
This paper assesses the legal framework for developing CO2 pipelines to support DAC Hub projects. The analysis in this paper focuses on privately owned and developed CO2 pipelines, rather than assessing the feasibility of government agencies (state or federal) constructing and operating pipelines of their own. Through this lens, this paper offers a detailed review of permitting and regulatory regimes in ten states distributed across the continental United States that were identified as potential candidates for DAC Hubs: Alabama, Arizona, California, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming. Building from this regulatory review, this paper identifies four key barriers to the wide-scale rapid development of CO2 pipelines necessary to support a comprehensive system of national DAC Hubs, and suggests four key recommendations for improving the state and federal frameworks surrounding CO2 pipelines