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Deglobalization, Tax Competition, and the Potential Revival Of the Welfare State
No full textBefore 1980 the world was relatively closed. There were significant barriers to cross-border trade and investment in the form of tariffs and exchange controls. Martin Feldstein, former President Reagan’s chief economic adviser, coauthored an article in 1979 that showed that investment in the U.S. economy was about equal to U.S. savings, so the United States could manage without any foreign direct or portfolio investment
Environment Scan of Generative AI Infrastructure for Clinical and Translational Science
No full textThis study reports a comprehensive environmental scan of the generative AI (GenAI) infrastructure in the national network for clinical and translational science across 36 institutions supported by the CTSA Program led by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at the United States. Key findings indicate a diverse range of institutional strategies, with most organizations in the experimental phase of GenAI deployment. The results underscore the need for a more coordinated approach to GenAI governance, emphasizing collaboration among senior leaders, clinicians, information technology staff, and researchers. Our analysis reveals that 53% of institutions identified data security as a primary concern, followed by lack of clinician trust (50%) and AI bias (44%), which must be addressed to ensure the ethical and effective implementation of GenAI technologies
Crisis and Change at the United Nations: Non-Amendment Reform and Institutional Evolution
Get PDFThe Security Council’s inaction in response to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine has once again put a spotlight on structural problems at the United Nations (“U.N.”). Security Council paralysis—particularly the (mis)use of the veto power afforded to the permanent five (“P5”) members of the Council—has long prompted calls for reform. Yet the same veto power prevents nearly all efforts to reform the organization through the formal amendment process provided in the U.N. Charter.
This article argues that there is an alternative way forward: what we call “non-amendment reform.” Rather than seek formal amendments that are unlikely to survive the veto of the P5 members, advocates of change should support change through evolving interpretations of the Charter. Non-amendment reform can provide a way for the United Nations to act in the face of a veto threat. Indeed, thanks to an earlier non-amendment reform, the Uniting for Peace Resolution, paralysis of the Security Council during the wars in Gaza and Ukraine has not prevented the United Nations from acting.
Although non-amendment reform has been overlooked by scholars, it has long been critical to the capacity of the United Nations to respond to crises. This article demonstrates that a four-stage process—trigger, proposal, contestation leading to a new interpretation, and consolidation—has led to non-amendment reform at key moments throughout the United Nations’ history. Learning a lesson from the past, today’s advocates of change should channel their efforts towards non-amendment reform to enable the United Nations to meet the challenges of the moment. This article outlines four current opportunities to do just that
Read But Not Understood? An Empirical Analysis Of Consumer Comprehension In Homeowners Insurance
Get PDFModern contract law assumes that consumers meaningfully assent to the standard forms that govern their daily lives. However, this assumption is widely regarded as a legal fiction for two key reasons: first, most consumers do not read standard forms, and second, even those who do often struggle to fully comprehend their terms and implications. While the lack of consumer reading has been well-documented through empirical research, consumers’ ability to comprehend standard form contracts has received surprisingly little attention.
This Article addresses the latter issue by empirically examining whether providing excerpts from the dominant standard form homeowners insurance policy improves consumer understanding of coverage. Through a series of survey-based experiments, we compare consumers’ general beliefs about homeowners insurance with their beliefs when provided with key policy excerpts. Our main finding is that providing policy language only moderately improved consumer understanding in some scenarios, while affirmatively decreasing accuracy in others. Respondents often struggled with partial reading or misinterpretation of policy provisions, especially when broad coverage grants were later restricted by specific exclusions—a common structural feature of insurance policies.
These findings carry significant legal and regulatory implications. Even if most consumers do not read standard form contracts, improving the readability and comprehensibility of standard form terms can limit firms’ discretion in disputes, enhance regulatory oversight of unfair provisions, and empower markets to penalize firms relying on excessively one-sided terms. This Article argues that addressing these challenges is essential to fostering fairer and more effective consumer protections
Altering Rules: The New Frontier for Corporate Governance
Get PDFCorporate law has taken a contractarian turn. Shareholders are increasingly contracting around its foundational rules—statutory rights, the fiduciary duty of loyalty, even the central role of the board—and Delaware courts are increasingly enforcing these contracts. In the one case where they did not, the legislature swiftly overruled the decision and adopted a new statutory provision permitting boards to completely cede their powers to a shareholder by contract. These developments have sparked a polarized debate, with some calling for a return to mandatory rules, while others push for total contractual freedom.
We argue, however, that the solution lies neither in rigid mandatory rules nor unchecked contractual freedom—but in recognizing the untapped potential of corporate law’s altering rules. Altering rules determine how parties can opt out of the default rules of governance. Our theory identifies corporate altering rules’ essential features, namely, whose consent is required to change a default (process) and who is bound by that decision (scope). We show that the central role of altering rules in corporate law is not simply to make changing a default more or less difficult, as is widely supposed, but rather to combine process and scope in ways that define distinct bargaining environments, shaping how insiders negotiate over governance. Corporate law can fine-tune these features in ways that both encourage contractual innovation and manage intra-corporate risks. In response to recent cases and legislation, we propose new altering mechanisms that will broaden decision-making to include non-signatory shareholders, protecting them from harmful externalities.
These insights are just the beginning. Altering rules, as they exist now, represent only a fraction of their potential. Rethinking their design opens the door to a vast, largely unexplored landscape of possibilities that could guide corporate governance in its new era of contractual innovation
Bank Fragility After Mergers
Get PDFDo banks become more fragile after merging? By constructing a novel forward-looking measure of fragility and exploiting staggered interstate banking deregulation as exogenous shocks to bank mergers, we show that the loan portfolios of merged U.S. banks become more vulnerable to adverse economic conditions. However, merger size matters. The increase in fragility is driven almost entirely by mega-mergers of large banks, suggesting the presence of moral hazard. In addition, we find that increased geographic or portfolio diversification following mergers does not offset the increase in fragility. If anything, mergers between large banks that have significantly dissimilar portfolios can actually worsen fragility, possibly due to added complexity introduced by the merger. But we observe that larger ex ante capital and liquidity buffers appear to limit the increase in fragility, highlighting the role of prudent risk management
How Design Thinking Can Help Lawyers Find Purpose in Work
Get PDFIn the wake of significant government layoffs, increasing political instability and a justice system stretched to its limits, lawyers across the country are overwhelmed. Some were abruptly dismissed from their federal positions and are scrambling to find meaningful work. Others in legal aid and nonprofits are drowning under a surge of urgent cases, from housing crises to immigration battles. Even those in the private sector are grappling with how they can contribute to addressing the relentless wave of injustices unfolding around them. Lawyers everywhere are struggling. Those in the trenches are overwhelmed. Many of us feel helpless. And all too often, we have a tendency to kick ourselves for not doing enough, for not having enough impact and for not being enough. But there is a structured way to navigate this uncertainty. Design thinking — a human-centered approach to problem-solving — provides a powerful framework for lawyers seeking meaning in their careers. Rather than searching for predefined answers, design thinking encourages us to empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test our way into fulfilling and impactful work, no matter our job title or career stage
Is the US Exit Tax Constitutional?
Get PDFThe recent US Supreme Court decision in Moore vs. United States raised the possibility that the Court would declare that realization is required for a tax provision to be constitutional. The US exit tax on expatriations is the most likely vehicle for a post-Moore constitutional challenge to taxation without realization because (a) it involves individual taxpayers; (b) it does not involve attribution, because the tax is imposed directly on the expatriating taxpayer, and (c) it involves precisely the kind of tax that was the direct target of the Moore litigation, namely a mark to market tax on rich taxpayers (the kind that will happily fund such litigation). Such a case could force the Court to confront precisely the question it avoided in Moore, namely whether the Sixteenth Amendment authorizes Congress to tax unrealized sums without apportionment among the states
The State[s] of Confession Law in a Post-Miranda World
No full textPolice interrogators often use lies, threats, subterfuge, and psychological pressure to coerce vulnerable suspects to speak. These tactics produce false confessions, contribute to racial injustice, and undermine the legitimacy of the criminal process. Despite a documented need for better regulation, theU.S. Supreme Court has watered down constitutional protections in the interrogation room, signaling its intent to delegate most regulation of police interrogation practices to the states. Reformers and scholars must think about how best to push states to fill the void left by the absence of federal oversight.
This Article catalogues four different state approaches to regulating confession law: procedural protections, substantive restrictions, rules of adjudication, and changes in police approaches to training. It then draws conclusions about the relative effectiveness of these different approaches in light of currently available empirical, psychological, and sociological research. It argues that substantive restrictions on interrogation practices through rules with robust remedies are the best way to promote lasting change and restore legitimacy to what is currently a broken system. Recognizing that policymakers in different states and localities face different political climates, the Article concludes by outlining a graduated set of reforms that permits policymakers to identify what would be most feasible and effective in their respective jurisdictions
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