In Allianz SpA v. West Tankers Inc., the European Court of Justice (ECJ) deemed antisuit injunctions, a tool that English courts commonly employ to enforce arbitration agreements, incompatible with EU law. As a result, English courts can no longer issue an antisuit injunction preventing a party—who is either ignoring or contesting… Read More »
The Supreme Court has recently declared several categories of prisoners, such as juvenile and mentally retarded offenders, to be categorically ineligible for capital punishment under the Eighth Amendment. If these “death ineligible” offenders nonetheless sit on death row with procedurally defective habeas corpus petitions, can the writ be used to… Read More »
With the rise of virtual worlds and the generation of income with significant real-world value within them, debate has erupted regarding whether or how best to tax such income. A consensus exists for the proposition that those who “cash out,” i.e., convert virtual wealth to real-world wealth, should be taxed… Read More »
In 1986, Congress enacted “a comprehensive scheme prohibiting the employment of illegal aliens in the United States.” Recently, many municipalities have taken matters into their own hands because of dissatisfaction over federal enforcement of these employment regulations. Municipalities across the country have enacted, or considered enacting, ordinances that penalize employers of… Read More »
In 1930, during the Great Depression, Professor Karl Llewellyn declared in the Harvard Law Review that “ferment” was abroad in the law, proclaiming “realism” a powerful new scholarly force. In the past year, we have seen our own ferment: the world has shown us the folly of law’s most powerful… Read More »
What is environmental law? When we describe a factual pattern, case, or rule as arising within environmental law, what associations do we mean to convey by that designation? What, if anything, unifies environmental law? Is environmental law a legal field, or just an amalgamation of laws arranged under a general… Read More »
In 2008 in United States v. Santos, the Supreme Court addressed the meaning of the term “proceeds” as used in 18 U.S.C. § 1956, part of the Money Laundering Control Act. Efrain Santos and a co-defendant were charged with operating an illegal lottery, which involved payments to runners, collectors, and… Read More »
Many prominent jurists and scholars—including those with outlooks as diverse as Chief Justice John Roberts and Cass Sunstein—have recently urged the Supreme Court to adopt a “minimalist” approach to opinion writing: issuing narrow, fact-bound opinions that do not resolve much beyond the case before the Court. I argue that minimalism,… Read More »
Our preferences vary in intensity. Some are relatively strong, while others are comparatively weak. Information regarding the strength—rather than just the content—of preferences is often essential, for both efficiency and fairness reasons. The goal of efficiency maximization requires the allocation of goods to those who value them most. Accordingly, when… Read More »
This Editorial is a response to an editorial—and accompanying article—by two of my colleagues at Cornell, Valerie Hans and Ted Eisenberg. Their editorial persuasively argues that the admissibility of a defendant’s prior criminal record has several consistent effects: (1) it deters defendants with a record from taking the stand in… Read More »