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Innovating Contract Practices: Merging Contract Design with Information Design
Get PDFThe work and expertise of contracts professionals are vital to the operations of modern organizations and the global economy. Strategic planning as well as everyday transactions can be conceived, developed, secured, and implemented through contractual relationships. This accelerating importance and functionality of contracts is not matched, however, by their traditional format or drafting process. Indeed, their mission-critical value is not fully appreciated by decision makers. Many opportunities offered by contracts remain unexplored if contracts are seen merely as legal tools needed only in case a dispute arises. A fresh approach to contracts and contracting is called for.
Drawing on the Authors’ research into user-centered contract design, contract visualization, and proactive contracting, this paper explores how contract practices can be innovated. The early results of our work in progress indicate that information design, embedded into contract design, has the potential to change fundamentally the way organizations define, shape and manage their trading relationships, offering unexplored opportunities for both research and practice
Teaching Teamwork to Law Students
Get PDFDespite law firms’ demand for first year associates who can work collaboratively, teamwork is infrequently taught in legal education. Law professors unfamiliar with teamwork theory and practice are unlikely to use teams to engage students in their learning. As a result, law schools continue to graduate students who are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the concept of working in teams, particularly interdisciplinary teams.
This article focuses on the teamwork teaching methods we use in the interdisciplinary courses we teach at California Western. We first provide a rationale for teaching teamwork and a brief description of what professional graduate schools are currently doing to incorporate teamwork instruction. We explain how we use teams within our courses, and how we teach our students teamwork. We then discuss the methodology and findings of our surveys to assess whether students believed they were improving in their knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding teamwork, and, if so, which components of the courses they believed were most effective in accomplishing this improvement. Finally, we analyze what we have learned from our survey results and how the results, along with our experience, have changed our views and practices of teaching teamwork to law students
Beyond Seduction: Lessons Learned About Rape, Politics, and Power from Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Moshe Katsav
Get PDFIn the last decade, two influential international political figures, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, and Moshe Katsav, former President of Israel, were accused of engaging in extreme and ongoing patterns of sexual violence. The collection offormal charges against the two men included rape, forcible indecent assault, sexual harassment, and obstruction of justice. The respective narratives surrounding the allegations against Katsav and Strauss-Kahn have their own individual characteristics, and each of the cases unfolded in diverging ways. Yet, the actions of these two men taken together, and the corresponding response of the legal systems in France, Israel, and the United States, offer an opportunity to evaluate contemporary issues of rape and power from a comparative perspective.
This Article begins by telling the stories of how Strauss-Kahn and Katsav engaged in systematic patterns of sexual violence. It provides important background and context against which the two men are evaluated, offering a comparative analysis of the laws under which they faced accusations, formal charges, and in some instances, convictions. It is difficult to understand the ways in which the legal system and even the media responded to these allegations of sexual violence.
This Article considers the victimization of women by the politically powerful by utilizing a framework created originally by Norwegian sociologist Nils Christie that identifies a set of characteristics describing the ideal victim. It next examines some of the legal issues impacted by stereotypes of ideal victims that conflict with the reality of real victims, making recommendations for expanding Christie framework to include an equally comprehensive evaluation of perpetrators and more importantly, the power differential that exists between victim and perpetrator. Midway through this Article, I explore the connection between sexuality, seduction, and sexual violence, and argue for a disentangling of these constructs. Finally, this article concludes by considering how the allegations against these powerful international political figures might advance the conversation on the intersection of sexual violence and power
An Evaluation of the U.S. Policy of Targeted Killing Under International Law: The Case of Anwar Al-Aulaqi (Part I)
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“The Tyranny of the Majority is No Myth”: Its Dangers for Legally Married Same-Sex Couples
Get PDFThis article has three sections. Section 1 explains that sexual minorities, consisting of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer people (LGBTQ), 15 comprise a small number of people within the U.S. and describes the current laws granting and prohibiting legal rights to married or partnered same-sex couples. Thus, the LGBTQ community is dependent on the non-LGBTQ community to decide its rights when those rights are debated at the ballot box, a bad public policy in and of itself. 16 Section II considers the question posed by this symposium: is the tyranny of the majority a danger to minority communities or is it a myth? Using sources such as Alexis de Toqueville, the Federalist papers, and prior U.S. court cases, this section concludes that majority tyranny is a threat to minority communities and has long been recognized as a danger inherent in governments founded on democracy. Section III describes the negative impact that the tyranny of the majority has on married same-sex couples. It also explains why the historic victories in November 2012 may establish that the majority has begun to understand the harm they cause to same-sex couples when they enshrine discrimination into state constitutions and statutes
Beyond What? Beyond Earth Orbit?...! The Applicability of the Registration Convention to Private Commercial Manned Sub-Orbital Spaceflight
Get PDFVisualization: Seeing Contracts for What They Are, and What They Could Become
Get PDFCommercial contract users read their contract documents infrequently, and understand them inadequately. The disincentives may be several: contract language may be too technical and too long; contracts may be organized around ensuring or avoiding legal liability rather than providing guidance toward performing contractual responsibilities; or contracts may rarely include frameworks that would prompt the parties to explore new opportunities. For whatever reason, the neglect by users of contractual documents can lead not only to unpleasant surprises in the performance or enforcement of particular contractual duties, but also to chronic underuse of contracts as potential instruments for planning, innovation, commercial relationship-building and optimal business results. Visualization techniques-i.e., adding graphic images to supplement written words-could invigorate the effectiveness of contract documents and processes. Greater understanding and use of contract materials could reduce transaction costs, prevent disputes, and help to achieve business goals. This paper explores the possibilities for using visualization techniques within and about contracts, and invites others in the legal and commercial contracts community to join collectively in that effort