The Institutional Dynamics of Transition Relief

Jonathan Masur & Jonathan Nash

In this Article, we consider what type of institution should provide legal transition relief and analyze the form that it should take. These questions are of great importance because the issue of legal transition relief—whether and how an institution should compensate parties because a change in the law adversely affects… Read More »

Partial Unconstitutionality

Kevin C. Walsh - University of Richmond School of Law

What do some Reconstruction-Era civil rights laws, the first federal income tax, and various pieces of New Deal economic legislation have in common? These are all laws that the Supreme Court has held totally invalid after concluding that they were partially unconstitutional.
The doctrine through which the Supreme Court accomplished… Read More »

Blind Expertise

Christopher T. Robertson - Harvard Law School

Litigants, attorneys, judges, and jurors are thought to be the main players in the civil litigation system. However, expert witnesses are also required in the vast majority of civil trials. The expert witnesses are the ones who, for instance, tell the factfinder whether a mistake has been made in medical… Read More »

Global Institutional Choice

Frederick J. Lee

Many of today’s problems are global in nature and scope. Collective action problems such as global climate change and systemic risk in capital markets threaten to affect every person on the planet. Yet because these problems transcend national boundaries, a single nation cannot solve them alone. So what do we… Read More »

Blameless Ignorance? The Ledbetter Act and Limitations Periods for Title VII Pay Discrimination Claims

Jeremy A. Weinberg

In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. a new act of discrimination occurred and a new limitations period arose each time an employer issued a paycheck to an employee that reflected… Read More »

The Anti-Stereotyping Principle in Constitutional Sex Discrimination Law

Cary Franklin - Yale Law School

In 1970, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, soon-to-be head of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project (WRP), had a novel idea: She decided to challenge the constitutionality of sex-based state action by bringing cases featuring male plaintiffs. Up to that point, only women had brought sex discrimination claims under the Fourteenth Amendment. By… Read More »

Are All Legal Probabilities Created Equal?

Yuval Feldman & Doron Teichman

Legal payments are in many cases probabilistic. For example, in the criminal context, a fine is levied against a criminal only after a series of sequential probabilistic events occur: He must be caught by the police, charged by the prosecution, and convicted by a court in accordance with the procedural… Read More »

Recognizing Equity Problems in the Taxation of Cross-Border Workers

Ruth Mason - University of Connecticut School of Law

Suppose a Belgian resident earns all of his income in Germany. Under the Belgian-German tax treaty and Belgian law, only Germany would tax his income. But which country should grant him personal tax benefits—things like mortgage interest deductions and charitable deductions? Where a worker lives in one country but works… Read More »

The Choice-of-Law Problem(s) in the Class Action Context

Genevieve York-Erwin

Over the past forty years, damage class actions have come to play an increasingly significant regulatory role in the consumer context. Recent legal developments, however, have greatly diminished the damage class’s practical utility:  While damage class actions remain viable on the books, in practice unfavorable federal precedent and nearly exclusive… Read More »

Reining in Non-State Actors: State Responsibility and Attribution in Cases of Genocide

Berglind Halldórsdóttir Birkland

In 2007, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) defined the scope of state responsibility under the Genocide Convention for the first time when it reached the merits in the Genocide Case, a case arising from the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The opinion immediately spurred extensive academic commentary, much of… Read More »