Scores of juvenile justice system youth are subject to electronic monitoring, yet little is known about its effects. A new paper by Catherine Crump finds that tracking young people this way yields troubling results that fail to advance individual rehabilitation and open the door to more invasive tactics. Crump also offers suggestions for reform.
Robert Merges revisits the Hamiltonian origins of America’s patent system, and why they matter today. His recent paper says contemporary administrative law is a poor fit for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and recommends honoring the office’s original mission and its cooperative, interactive relationship with other government branches.
Professor and former dean Christopher Edley edited and co-authored the final report of a study committee he chaired for the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering. His team spent 18 months designing a national system of K-12 education equity indicators that highlight educational achievement and opportunity disparities.
More companies are going public via dual class stock, where shares owned by the founders or other insiders have greater voting rights than shares sold to public investors. In a paper he co-authored, Steven Davidoff Solomon explains the perils of sunset provisions, a popular compromise allowing dual class stock only if it converts to a single share structure after a set amount of time.
Avani Mehta Sood explores how jurors can become prone to bias and legal misunderstanding when evaluating criminal attempt. Her new paper challenges common notions of attempt law (which imposes liability when a defendant intends and starts a crime but does not successfully complete it), and offers ways to reduce confusion.
“Spit and Acquit,” where certain defendants charged with petty misdemeanors are offered a dismissal or plea deal in exchange for their DNA, is used in Orange County. In a paper that notes issues raised by this method, Andrea Roth shows the problems it poses in the areas of public safety benefits, privacy, and democratic accountability.
While many lawyers think the party providing the first draft of a merger deal ends up with better terms, there was no empirical research until Adam Badawi took it on with a co-author. Their new paper on large M&A transactions with U.S. public-company targets debunks certain myths and finds a “limited” first-drafter advantage.
Corporate bankruptcies often involve fragmented, complex capital structures marked by layers of debt and many subsidiaries. A new paper by Kenneth Ayotte tracks the reasons for this, how investor disagreements on the value of loan-backing assets fuel inefficient liquidations, and ways to reduce costly litigation over valuation.
Growing use of the cloud and its international scope challenges traditional legal authorities that permit access to data stored outside the U.S. Paul Schwartz tracks the instability of American rules in this area. His paper delineates three models of cloud computing to provide greater clarity for courts evaluating international data access requests.
Migration raises questions about the exercise of state power over borders. Sarah Song examines common justifications, and arguments for open borders. Her paper confronts whether a democratic state can morally prevent its citizens from exiting the country and bar migrants from entering, and if so how such decisions should be made.