In recent times, corporate-finance scholars have embraced a methodological approach that looks for “shocks” to evaluate a policy change. These “shocks” are often new laws or court rulings that change some existing rule on a certain day. The researcher then makes predictions about how the world will change with the new rule and examines evidence… Continue reading →
Vaccine laws and debates are spreading like a contagion. Measles, once thought nearly eradicated in the United States, has experienced outbreaks in Minnesota, New York, California, and other states. These outbreaks have been caused primarily by undervaccinated communities. The resurgency of measles and other vaccinable diseases has flamed the already virulent vaccination debates between public-health… Continue reading →
Last February, UC Hastings Law hosted the first post-retirement symposium on Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence, with the justice himself attending. In the Hastings Law Journal’s symposium following the event, my colleague Rory Little has published a valuable survey of Justice Kennedy’s criminal cases during his thirteen years as a federal appellate judge and three decades on… Continue reading →
What do wolves in Yellowstone, Bay Area marshlands, and forests in Borneo have in common? They are all the subject of tugs of war between those who are trying new ways to save biodiversity and those who fear that those conservation programs will hurt them. In these cases, the norms that favor preserving and enhancing… Continue reading →
In Bankruptcy Hardball, Professor Jared Ellias teams up with attorney Robert Stark to expose increasingly aggressive tactics by corporate managers in bankruptcy proceedings. The article, which draws on detailed case studies, is a methodological departure from Professor Ellias’s usual empirical quantitative work. But the insights are incisive as usual. The article details maneuvers by corporate… Continue reading →
Kate Bloch‘s article “Harnessing Virtual Reality to Prevent Prosecutorial Misconduct,” just published in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, seeks to provide a technological solution to reduce the serious problem of Brady errors (prosecutorial failure to disclose materially exculpatory evidence). Bloch’s point of departure is that prosecutorial mishandling of exculpatory evidence often stems from cognitive… Continue reading →
In a thoughtful, recent article, “What were ‘They’ Thinking, and Does it Matter? Structural Inequality and Individual Intent in Criminal Justice Reform,” published in July, 2019, in Law & Social Inquiry, my colleague Professor Hadar Aviram turns a critical eye toward narratives that investigate the motivations of reformers in the carceral domain. To evaluate these… Continue reading →
All government officials take an oath to uphold the Constitution. The Supreme Court is the ultimate authority on the interpretation of the Constitution and, more pointedly, when a law or official conduct is unconstitutional. But the Court doesn’t decide all those questions. And so executive officials are often left with unanswered questions about whether a… Continue reading →
A “tax opinion” is a formal, written statement provided by a lawyer to a client about the tax consequences of a specific transaction. In addition to describing the expected tax treatment, the opinion also specifies the lawyer’s confidence in this determination—a “will” opinion indicates near certainty; a “more likely than not” opinion is much more… Continue reading →
Much has been said about the new $10,000 cap on the federal deduction for payments of state and local taxes (“SALT”), but the commentary generally focuses on the state-level impacts and responses. My colleague Manoj Viswanathan, in his recent essay, “Hyperlocal Responses to the SALT Deduction Limitation,” published in the Stanford Law Review Online, argues that this… Continue reading →
