The United States judicial system is in the midst of great and fundamental change with regard to the funding of litigation. Historically, parties financed litigation out of their own literal or figurative pockets or, perhaps with the assistance of some sort of contingent fee representation. Third-party financing of litigation was frowned upon, if not specifically forbidden. But, now, third-party litigation funding entities have begun, with much more frequency and success, to provide funding for br/iNew PDF Uploaded/i

Watershed institutions have emerged in the U.S. out of the structural fragmentation and functional inadequacies of several areas of law and policy. While these institutions organize governance, planning, and management functions around a type of ecosystem (i.e., watersheds), they are highly diverse and evolve over time. This book chapter seeks to understand the diversity of watershed institutions by employing framing analysis to identify the many cognitive and socio-political frames by which t

This article posits that privacy issues arising in the United States from the use of social media and the employment relationship are similar to those that have arisen around the world. It suggests, however, that the patchwork of governing legal claims arising under different laws in different jurisdictions may be unique. After a brief introduction, the second section describes the recent passage of legislation in several states that may protect the privacy of job applicants’ passwords to so

This brief article describes the debate over whether employers and unions should be permitted to agree to exclusively arbitrate, rather than litigate, employees’ statutory discrimination claims. The article then summarizes relevant findings from a review of 160 labor arbitration awards.

This article posits that privacy issues arising in the United States from the use of social media and the employment relationship are similar to those that have arisen around the world. It suggests, however, that the patchwork of governing legal claims arising under different laws in different jurisdictions may be unique. After a brief introduction, the second section describes the recent passage of legislation in several states that may protect the privacy of job applicants’ passwords to so

This article contributes to the debate over mandatory arbitration of employment discrimination claims in the unionized sector, which, in light of the proposed prohibition on union waivers in the Arbitration Fairness Act, has significant practical implications. Fundamentally, the article is about access to justice. The article examines 160 labor arbitration opinions and awards in employment discrimination cases. The author concludes that labor arbitration is a forum in which employment discrim

On October 26, 2012, the University of Akron School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property and Technology hosted its Sixth Annual IP Scholars Forum. In attendance were thirteen legal scholars with expertise and an interest in IP and public health who met to discuss problems and potential solutions at the intersection of these fields. This report summarizes this discussion by describing the problems raised, areas of agreement and disagreement between the participants, suggestions and solutio

On October 26, 2012, the University of Akron School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property and Technology hosted its Sixth Annual IP Scholars Forum. In attendance were thirteen legal scholars with expertise and an interest in IP and public health who met to discuss problems and potential solutions at the intersection of these fields. This report summarizes this discussion by describing the problems raised, areas of agreement and disagreement between the participants, suggestions and solutio

Environmental law is under dynamic and relentless pressure to develop a framework that is adaptive. Resilience theory -- based on considerable scientific data and examples -- aims to explain ecological and social systems that are dynamic, complex, and subject to abrupt and unpredictable change. In contrast, the foundations of environmental law assume that nature is relatively stable, changing primarily in linear patterns within a range of predictable conditions. Moreover, the U.S. legal system i

Who's to blame when legal scholarship is bad? Not pedestrian, repetitive, uninspired, or poorly conceived-just bad. If those crazy Minnesotans at Constitutional Commentary are to be believed, the fault lies with us scholars, that we are overweening. The "manifestly reasonable strategy" of "taking... shocking position[s]" in the quest for tenure generates "Gresham's Law of Legal Scholarship." Warped as it is by rampant "Ph.D. envy," the market for legal scholarship values ''paradigmshak[ing]'" hy

Bob Hudec was an invaluable colleague, a kind man, and a generous friend. The experience of irrevocably losing a colleague is a new and unpleasant one for many of us at the University of Minnesota Law School. In my eleven years here, many faculty members have retired or moved to other law schools, but only Bob Hudec has passed away. When a colleague dies, especially one as treasured as Bob Hudec, there simply is no way to fill the resulting void.

Ratemaking, the dreariest legal expression of the dismal science, is sexy again. Once upon a time, judicially enforced constitutional restraints on the setting of public utility rates strengthened the intellectual backbone of the Lochner era. Contemporary interest in this doctrine stems from the imposition of "the duty to interconnect, to lease unbundled network elements, and to sell services for resale" on incumbent firms in the few remaining "market segments that have natural monopoly characte

If justice be the end of law, ask on. How we pose normative legal questions "limits and disposes the way in which any answer -right or wrong-may be given." Economic analysis of law has firmly established itself as a controversial but respected neorealist approach to legal criticism. Ever since the 1960 publication of Ronald Coase's pathblazing article, The Problem of Social Cost, conventional law-and-economics literature has evaluated legal rules according to a microeconomic criterion called "ef

Constitutional Commentary is no stranger to legal analysis of music or to musings on legal analysis. "Seven years [have] disappear[ed] below [our] feet" since this journal last exercised its quasiconstitutional right to make bad parodies of copyrighted music. Those same seven years have lapsed since the Supreme Court lauded Creedence Clearwater Revival as "one of the greatest American rock and roll bands of all time." "Who'll stop the rain?" Ah, those seven years were an innocent time, when we

Twenty years ago Daniel Farber cofounded Constitutional Commentary. Dan's essay on McCulloch v. Maryland, "Banking on National Power," concludes the twentieth volume of this journal. Among his many achievements in twenty-two years on the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School, Dan helped secure Constitutional Commentary's place as one of America's preeminent law journals. As of 2004, Dan will be teaching full-time at the University of California at Berkeley. Once again, glitzy Califo

Regulation and Deregulation: Cases and Materials, Jeffrey L. Harrison, Thomas D. Morgan & Paul R. Verkuil. St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Co., 1997. Pp. 567. $48.00. Ours is unquestionably an Age of Statutes. Yet the comprehensive study of statutes, the legal lifeblood of the regulatory state, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Law school courses in legislation have begun to bridge this gap. The substantive law underlying the most economically sophisticated statutes, however, continues to elu

A specter is haunting academia, the specter of globalization. In Globalization and Its Losers, an essay published in the winter 2000 issue of the Minnesota Journal of Global Trade, I described legal and economic integration across borders as an epochal moment for a broad array of ecological, cultural, and economic interests. The summer 2000 issue of this journal published replies by two historians, an agricultural ethicist, and an advocate of regional self-reliance. At their mildest, my critics

Globalization marks the end of an epoch. Not merely an epoch in the colloquial sense, but an epoch in the geological sense. The spread of Homo sapiens around the earth has brought about mass extinctions and related ecological changes on a scale not seen since the Cretaceous period. In its evolutionary impact, comprehensive human colonization of the planet easily outclasses an ice age, or even twenty. The previous geological event of comparable magnitude ushered out the dinosaurs; the one befor

As local utility regulation enacted early this century proved inadequate to deal with complex concerns, Congress passed statutes formulating a national energy policy. Under the resulting programs of concurrent state and federal regulation, competing authorities sometimes clashed. In the context of federal statutes, the supremacy clause governs competing state and federal claims to authority. Under traditional doctrine, a federal statute may preempt state law in one of three ways. First, a stat

France regulates the production methods of certain fine foods and beverages through appellations of controlled origin, or appellations d'origine controlee (AOCS). The AOC system restricts the right to produce select wines and cheeses to a designated geographic region associated with those foods. Sparkling wine from Champagne and Roquefort cheese are but two celebrated examples. French law ensures localized control of AOCregulated products by requiring them to be processed in the same region wher