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Redefining Public Benefits
No full textThis Article considers the interaction between marriage, households, and public welfare-type benefits. In light of constant cultural and media attention to “the two-parent privilege,” the article argues that the very purpose of public benefits in the modern era is up for redefinition. The information age, much like the industrial revolution before it, has remade the preconditions for entry into the middle class and contributed to new middle-class family strategies geared to the changing labor market realities. This new era, which has increased income instability and employment insecurity, has increased economic inequality and eroded what were once secure pathways into middle-class status. This changing economy requires rethinking the purpose of public benefits and. a reexamination of the fairness and utility of tying benefits to employment or marriage. This requires reconceiving the State role from one that fills in the gaps left by private jobs’ creation and relationships to one that extends access to the preconditions for middle-class status. This Article makes three contributions. First, it shows that marriage takes on a very different meaning in the new economy. Second, the article challenges recent exhortations to marry as a way to improve children’s futures, ensure economic stability, and increase overall happiness. Finally, the Article asks how, in the context of a post-industrial economy with constantly shifting employment needs, to assist in making the preconditions universal instead of asking how to fill in the gaps of, or supplement, a private system that no longer reliably provides lifelong employment for a large part of the population. In this venture, marriage becomes largely irrelevant to benefit design. Part I surveys the design of the public benefits associated with relationship status as a precondition for middle-class status. Part II analyzes who actually receives the different types of marriage-based benefits. While, as Windsor pointed out, a number of federal statutes use marital status as a category, that status is not always a benefit, particularly for people who do not have a job. Part III explores why marriage remains resonant—and for whom. Finally, Part IV sketches out what a redesign of the public system might look like, analyzing how relationship status might be irrelevant to the availability of benefits
Making Law Practice Technology More Simulation-Based
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Silence As Consumer Consent: Global Regulation of Negative Option Contracts
Get PDFWorldwide, the “subscription economy” has exploded in recent years, especially among online sellers of consumer goods and services. These subscriptions use various contract forms-- but many have one common feature: the negative option. With a negative option contract, once a consumer has signed up, the contract will continue until the consumer actively reaches out to cancel it. These are wildly popular among sellers, as they create continuous income and put inertia on the sellers\u27 side. Unsurprisingly, then, consumers complain in extraordinary numbers about being trapped in agreements that are easy to sign up for but seemingly impossible to cancel. Even worse, consumers pay—sometimes for years—for scam or marginal “subscriptions” that they never meant to sign up for in the first place.
Governments around the globe have scrambled to respond (with mixed success) to this wave of complaints. This Article surveys that landscape, assessing the consumer risks and benefits of negative option contracts, cataloging the regulatory responses across countries, and taking stock of why much of that regulation (especially the disclosure-centric regulation) will fall short. It proposes a new model law that retains essential consumer disclosures, but affords greater substantive protections for consumers. In particular, the model law would prevent free trials from rolling over into paid negative-option contracts, extend the cancellation periods for automatically renewed contracts, and require sellers to stop charging consumers who have stopped using their services (or eliminate automatically renewing term contracts altogether). With negative option contracts and consumer discontent on the rise, now is the moment to take stock of best practices and shore up protections for consumers worldwide
Why Mass Incarceration is Uniquely American
No full textMass incarceration, among Western countries a uniquely American phenomenon, resulted from a transformation of American criminal justice systems. Indeterminate sentencing systems in which legislatures established maximum sentences, prosecutors processed cases, judges decided who went to prison, and parole boards decided how long people stayed there were replaced by determinate systems in which legislatures prescribed minimum sentences, prosecutors made the key charging and sentencing decisions, judges processed cases and sentenced minor crimes, and parole boards lost much of their authority. Parole boards and judges become largely irrelevant whenever prosecutors file charges subject to mandatory sentence, three-strikes, truth-in-sentencing, and life without parole laws. The explanation for the changes and mass incarceration is that developments beginning in the 1960s—White resentment of the civil rights movement, rising crime rates, and politicization of the criminal law—interacted with long-term characteristics of American history and culture. Four are fundamental: chronic, centuries-old racial conflict and three inheritances from America’s frontier history (election of local prosecutors, moral judgmentalism associated with fundamentalist Protestantism, and widespread fatalism about and indifference to human suffering)
Stakeholder Governance as Governance by Stakeholders
Get PDFMuch debate within corporate governance today centers on the proper role of corporate stakeholders, such as employees, customers, creditors, suppliers, and local communities. Scholars and reformers advocate for greater attention to stakeholder interests under a variety of banners, including ESG, sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and stakeholder governance. So far, that advocacy focuses almost entirely on arguing for an expanded understanding of corporate purpose. It argues that corporate governance should be for various stakeholders, not shareholders alone.
This Article examines and approves of that broadened understanding of corporate purpose. However, it argues that we should understand stakeholder governance as extending well beyond purpose to embracing governance by stakeholders. Purpose-based governance longingly hopes that either shareholders, or the directors elected by shareholders, will vigorously promote the interests of other stakeholders. But if we truly want companies to promote stakeholder interests, we should empower stakeholders within those companies. Such stakeholder governance would create some costs along with many benefits. However, we can structure stakeholder governance to emphasize the benefits while keeping the costs under control. Employees should be empowered via board representation, works councils, and/or unions. Other stakeholders can be less fully empowered through councils, advisory at first, and potentially given power to nominate or even elect directors
