Go West, Young Woman! The Mercer Girls and Legal Historiography

Taking Great Cases: Lessons from the Rosenberg Case

The most watched case of the 1952 Supreme Court Term was not Brown v. Board of Education, but the case of convicted atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Brown and Rosenberg demonstrate the Court’s different approaches toward taking “great cases.” The Brown Court is often criticized for having done too much; the Rosenberg Court is [...]



Arbitration Clauses in CEO Employment Contracts: An Empirical and Theoretical Analysis

A bill currently pending in Congress would render unenforceable mandatory arbitration clauses in all employment contracts. Some perceive these provisions as employer efforts to deprive employees of important legal rights. Company CEOs are firm employees, and, unlike most other firm employees, they can actually negotiate their employment contracts, very often with attorney assistance. Moreover, many [...]

Breach Is For Suckers

This Article presents results from three experiments offering evidence that parties see breach of contract as a form of exploitation that makes disappointed promisees into “suckers.” In psychology, being a sucker turns on a three-part definition: betrayal, inequity, and intention. We used web-based questionnaires to test the effect of each of the three factors separately. [...]

The Untouchables: Private Military Contractors’ Criminal Accountability under the UCMJ



Big Tobacco, Medicaid-Covered Smokers, and the Substance of the Master Settlement Agreement

Street Shootings: Covert Photography and Public Privacy

With the Bases Loaded, Alito Hits a Home Run

The Future of Agency Independence

Independent agencies have long been viewed as different from executive-branch agencies because the President lacks authority to fire their leaders for political reasons, such as failure to follow administration policy. In this Article, we identify mechanisms that make independent agencies increasingly responsive to presidential preferences. We find these mechanisms in a context where independent agencies [...]

Optimizing Private Antitrust Enforcement

Private litigation is the predominant means of antitrust enforcement in the United States. Other jurisdictions around the world are increasingly implementing private enforcement models. Private enforcement is usually justified on either compensation or deterrence grounds. While the choice between these two goals matters, private litigation is not very effective at advancing either one. Compensation fails [...]