Sidebars

Daniel Rubinfeld won an American Antitrust Institute annual award for the best antitrust and platform markets article. His paper with Michal Gal addresses the recent growth of free online goods and services, problems caused by their hidden costs, and how antitrust policy and regulatory tools can best manage them. 

legal-writing

Adam Badawi ’03 says law firms have a sizable effect on the legal writing of their lawyers. His new paper, which studies registration statements filed for public offerings, shows that lawyers who change firms—but execute the same type of documents—often alter their writing to reflect the linguistic culture of the new firm.

In a new article, Karen Tani confronts sexual assault on college campuses and how the issue has evolved legally and politically. Tani tracks the Department of Education’s enforcement campaign under Title IX, the backlash against it, and how federal agencies play a key jurisdictional role in shaping policy.

handgun

During the 2016 primary campaign, candidates Clinton and Sanders squabbled over a federal statute that preempts some state tort claims against the gun industry. But Stephen Sugarman says both sides got it wrong. His new paper describes the statute’s intent, how most gun-case plaintiffs would be stymied even without the statute, and more.

More countries are considering a destination-based cash flow tax on multinational companies. In a recent paper evaluating the tax against five criteria, Alan Auerbach and his co-authors explain how the tax might work, analyze its likely effects, and note issues that would arise with implementation.

classroom

Courts have long struggled over issues of fairness and equity in cases about the educational needs of disabled students. In a paper reframing the issue of adequate educational benefits, Talha Syed offers a new distributive justice principle, called “proportionate priority,” as a guide.

New faculty chair-holder Angela Onwuachi-Willig focuses much of her research on civil rights issues. Here, she explains why employer grooming policies that ban hairstyles such as braids, locks and twists place an undue burden on African-American women and violate antidiscrimination law.

security camera

Machines, such as a cameras and computers, increasingly provide facts in legal disputes. Andrea Roth notes that courts are assessing this evidence through old rules of testimony. Her new paper finds that machine-based facts should not be evaluated that way, as it limits a jury’s ability to assess the machine’s credibility.

vsl chart

Robert Cooter explores the value of a statistical life (VSL), which balances the risk of death and the costs of limiting that risk. Assessing community and market VSLs, Cooter endorses the former to help measure damages in tort law and aid regulatory cost-benefit analyses. His article calls for basing a life’s legal value on the community VSL.