27127 research outputs found
Sort by
Education Equity for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Persons in India: Insights Into Implementation Hurdles
Full text linkPart I of this article presents international, global, and national approaches to the right to education for transgender and gender-diverse persons. It then describes the Indian approach—the NALSA judgment and the Transgender Persons Act. Finally, it provides anecdotal insight into the lived experiences of transgender and gender-diverse persons and the marginalization they face.
Part II outlines: (i) the rationale of this study, (ii) the research methodology, and (iii) the questions in the right to information requests, which have formed the basis for investigating the landscape of education rights for transgender and gender-diverse students.
Part III provides an overview of the responses received for each question, shedding light on alarming policy failures regarding access to education for transgender and gender-diverse persons. Part IV analyses these responses and presents our findings.
Finally, our Conclusion highlights key observations and concerns that must be addressed to ensure the realization of the right to education for transgender and gender-diverse persons in India. Following the conclusion, we include a Tables section, containing Annexure I, Table 1, and Table 2, which includes all country-wide and institution-specific data collected during our study
Competitive Effects of T-Mobile/Sprint: Analysis of a 4-to-3 Merger
No full textMergers in the mobile telecommunications industry are of keen interest to policymakers and scholars. This sector often experiences high concentration levels, driven by pronounced economies of scale and scope, alongside substantial regulatory barriers to entry created by radio spectrum allocations. Hence, antitrust authorities frequently struggle with the tradeoff between the benefits of enhanced synergies and the potentially adverse effects of increased market power. This tension results in varied outcomes from regulatory agencies when approving (or blocking) mergers. Between 2012 and 2016, for instance, four E.U. nations (Austria, Ireland, Germany, and Italy) allowed the consummation of “4-to-3” mobile telecommunications transactions, while the U.K. and Denmark blocked similar combinations. In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rejected “4-to-3” mergers in 2011 and 2014, yet approved the T-Mobile acquisition of Sprint in April 2020—a decision that continues to spur debate. This Article examines the T-Mobile/Sprint post-merger evidence of retail mobile subscription prices, network investment, service quality, market share, and industry profits in the U.S. mobile communications industry. Our findings suggest that the T-Mobile/Sprint merger has led to consumer benefits, challenging arguments claiming negative impacts due to the carriers’ consolidation
Bowe v. United States: Brief of Federal Courts Scholars as \u3cem\u3eAmici Curiae\u3c/em\u3e in Support of Petitioner
No full textAmici curiae are law professors who research, study, teach, and write about the writ of habeas corpus and federal postconviction relief. They share an interest in seeing habeas law applied in a way that ensures the just adjudication of claims
Merger Remedies Unbound
No full textHow should foundational contract law doctrines apply to corporate mergers? This Article argues that recent changes in Delaware law grant parties expansive contractual freedom to define their preferred remedies in merger agreements, untethered from the limits imposed by traditional contract law. A new provision in the Delaware corporate code permits penalty clauses in merger agreements, departing from the traditional “anti-penalty doctrine” that forbids punitive liquidated damages in contract. Delaware courts have also shown deference to specific performance provisions, treating them as presumptively enforceable commitments instead of retaining their traditional judicial discretion over the choice of remedies. Given that Delaware law governs the vast majority of major corporate transactions, these developments reflect a significant shift toward contractual freedom in merger law. Merging parties can now customize their contractual remedies with minimal judicial intervention.
This Article, however, argues that such expansion of contractual freedom can carry undesirable and unanticipated risks. Allowing parties to move away from the traditional anti-penalty doctrine could lead to inflated liquidated damage provisions, including termination fees, that impede efficient dealmaking. These inflated terms can also exacerbate issues relating to information asymmetry between negotiating parties, allow managers to prioritize their own interests over those of shareholders, and harm third parties, including competing bidders who cannot acquire the target and consumers adversely affected by the successful completion of anticompetitive mergers.
To address these concerns, the Article proposes legislative and judicial solutions to mitigate the risks of relying exclusively on the transacting parties to craft merger remedies and to curb the excessive application of contractual freedom in merger law. Legislators should consider amending the Delaware corporate code to restore the traditional contract law limits that are suitable for merger transactions. Courts, for their part, could invalidate excessive or socially inefficient merger remedies and only order specific performance when they deem monetary damages to be inadequate. Together, these interventions would preserve the benefits of contractual flexibility while restraining its most distortionary effects
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Nearby Branch Closures and Small Business Growth
No full textSince 2010, the total number of commercial bank branches in the United States has decreased by about 20%. Do branch closures meaningfully affect economic activity? We investigate the impact of branch closures on small businesses, whose access to credit may be facilitated through local relationships with banks. Using exogenous variation in closures related to mergers and acquisitions, we show that the closure of nearby bank branches leads to decreased small business employment growth and entry while increasing business exit. Our results are robust to variations in our measure of employment, proximity, and construction of the instrument. We use subsample analyses to better understand how firm and market characteristics affect the role and importance of local branches for small businesses
Tort Law in a World of Scarce Compensatory Resources
No full textLarge corporations facing extensive tort liabilities have often gone into bankruptcy, forcing tort plaintiffs to accept pennies on the dollar as compensation for their injuries. Bankruptcy painfully illustrates the social fact that the compensatory properties of tort law depend on the availability of compensatory resources. Although this feature of tort law is self-evident, no one has adequately analyzed whether it matters for substantive tort doctrine, and if so, how.
Wealth would seem to be substantively irrelevant given the rule that excludes evidence concerning the defendant’s financial resources when determining breach or compensatory damages. The antecedent tort duty, however, depends on the burden it would impose on the ordinary duty-bearer across the general class of cases the duty governs. The reasonableness of this burden is affected by social facts such as per capita wealth, the replacement of debtor’s prison with bankruptcy, the availability of liability insurance, and the social meaning of monetary damages. These normatively relevant facts are largely absent from modern accounts of tort law, even though they contract or expand the scope of substantive tort duties for noncontroversial reasons grounded in widely recognized tort values. An extended historical and doctrinal analysis confirms as much, showing how the scarcity of compensatory resources has shaped the basic structure of tort law—why it employs a default rule of negligence liability, sometimes supplemented by strict liability, while also being limited for wide swaths of negligently caused harms involving economic loss and emotional distress.
Accounting for the availability of compensatory resources reveals normative properties of substantive tort law that are often quite different from the ones modern tort theories depict, including the relation between tort law and criminal law and the vital role deterrence plays in a rights-based tort system. An adequate account of tort law must comprehend how the scarcity of compensatory resources alters substantive tort doctrine in principled ways
The Comstock Act’s Equal Protection Problem
No full textFollowing its victory in Dobbs, the antiabortion movement has set its sights on a national abortion ban. Affiliates of the second Trump Admin- istration—including the vice president-elect—have endorsed the re- newed enforcement of the 1873 Comstock Act as one avenue for implementing such a ban. This Essay argues that contemporary enforce- ment of the Comstock Act as a national abortion ban would be unconsti- tutional. The Act violates the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee because it was enacted with the discriminatory purpose of in- hibiting illicit sex to promote women’s sexual purity. Only contemporary reenactment of the law without constitutionally suspect motives can purge the Comstock Act of its discriminatory intent. In the alternative, these serious constitutional doubts justify adopting a narrower construc- tion of the law as a matter of constitutional avoidance
Smartphones on Wheels in Southeast Asia: A Crossroads for Data Governance
No full textWhile the transformation of automobiles into data-generating “smartphones on wheels” has revolutionized mobility, it has also raised critical concerns over data privacy and sovereignty. Equipped with sensors and connected technologies, smart vehicles collect vast amounts of data, including personal information, driving patterns, and biometric identifiers. While auto-exporting jurisdictions such as the United States, the European Union, and China have introduced regulatory measures to address these challenges, countries importing smart vehicles remain vulnerable due to their limited influence over the auto companies’ integrated technology and data policies. This Article examines the regulatory and economic challenges faced by developing nations integrating foreign-designed smart vehicles, with a focus on Southeast Asia’s rapid adoption of Chinese electric vehicles. Using Thailand as a case study, it highlights the urgent need for regulatory frameworks that balance data protection with economic growth. By analyzing approaches from the three dominant auto-exporting jurisdictions, this Article explores how regional cooperation and adaptive regulatory strategies can help developing nations assert greater control over smart vehicle data governance
Presumption of Creditworthiness
No full textCreditworthiness, or the likelihood that one will repay one’s debts, is typically signaled through a three-digit number known as a credit score. Yet, over thirty-two million adult-aged consumers lack adequate consumer credit reports and therefore do not have a traditional credit score. As a result of being unscored, these consumers are generally presumed uncreditworthy and foreclosed from mainstream credit markets. Unscored consumers are often relegated to extractive, fringe credit markets that neither require nor build credit scores. More insidiously, however, a growing number of non-credit contexts, including rental housing, utility services, and employment markets, look to creditworthiness to determine eligibility and price. Thus, unscored consumers face barriers beyond credit markets in ways that can marginalize them socially and entrench financial hardships. Innovations in the credit markets have aimed to serve unscored consumers by expanding scoring models to include nontraditional data metrics, such as alternative underwriting, or evading credit scores altogether, such as through earned wage access (EWA) programs. Such innovations have indeed had some success reducing the number of unscored consumers or the negative impacts related thereto, but they have also imposed on unscored consumers disproportionate costs while failing to offer them a comprehensive escape from the scarlet letter awarded by being unscored.
The plight of the unscored consumer rests upon an as-yet-resolved conundrum of our credit scoring system: To build a fair credit score, a consumer first needs access to fair credit, which in turn requires a fair credit score. This classic chicken-and-egg dilemma is based on the maxim that past behavior is predictive of future conduct. Yet, for unscored consumers who lack credit history, the maxim is unduly distorted to treat those with no past behavior as those with poor past behavior. Specifically, the system creates a form of adverse selection that harms unscored consumers and market providers alike. This Article argues that eliminating the marginalized “unscored” consumer status with a presumption of creditworthiness would better achieve the efficiency and equity goals undergirding the credit scoring system. Alternative approaches abroad may prove instructive, though they reflect distinct policy and cultural priorities, since they avoid the marginalized “unscored” status. By surfacing the sociopolitical nature of credit scoring, this Article creates space to reimagine the U.S. system in light of its market failures
Facebook Decision Enables IRS to Seek CWI Enforcement Against Meta
No full textIn this report, the authors explain how the Tax Court’s recent decision in the Facebook transfer pricing case — although widely viewed as a victory for the taxpayer, Meta Inc. — could instead be a Pyrrhic victory because it enables the IRS to pursue a potentially substantial periodic adjustment against the company. The views expressed in this report are solely the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect those of any other person or institution. On May 22 the Tax Court issued its opinion in Facebook. This was the third case, after Amazon and Veritas, in which the IRS tried to substantially increase by multiples a taxpayer’s ex ante cost- sharing arrangement (CSA) buy-in payment, which is now known as a platform contribution transaction (PCT) payment. As in the prior two cases, the taxpayer in Facebook prevailed in eliminating most or all of the IRS’s adjustment. In this case, the IRS had increased Facebook’s September 2010 cost-sharing buy-in payment by more than 300 percent, from a net present value (NPV) of 19.945 billion. Judge Cary Douglas Pugh ruled that the buy-in payment was underpriced by only $1.486 billion, largely because of the use of an incorrect method used by the taxpayer and incorrect inputs used by the IRS in its application of the correctly used “income method.