Articles – Cornell Law Review

Category: Articles

Article

One-Offs

William D. Araiza

Stanley A. August Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School.

This Article examines the phenomenon of “one-offs”: court opinions that are rarely cited by the court that issued them and do not explicitly generate further doctrinal development. At first glance, one might think that such opinions are problematic outputs from an apex court such as the U.S. Supreme Court, whose primary tasks are the exposition…

Feb 2024

Article

Penalizing Prevention: The Paradoxical Legal Treatment of Preventative Medicine

Doron Dorfman

Associate Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School Faculty.

Preventive medicine, which includes interventions intended to preempt illnesses before they surface, has long been a priority for furthering public health goals and improving quality of care. Yet, preventive medicine also sends strong signals about the possible risks associated with the users’ behavior and character. This signaling effect intersects with existing stigma and pervades law…

Feb 2024

Article

Rape as Indignity

Ben A. McJunkin

Associate Professor of Law, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University; Associate Deputy Director, Academy for Justice.

Rape law has a consent problem. The topic of sexual consent predominates any discussion of rape law, both doctrinally and socially. It is now widely taken as axiomatic that nonconsensual sex is paradigmatic of rape. But consent is in fact a deeply contested concept, as recent debates over affirmative consent have demonstrated. Grounding rape law…

Feb 2024

Article

Lethal Immigration Enforcement

Abel Rodriguez

Assistant Professor of Law, St. John’s University School of Law.

Increasingly, U.S. immigration law and policy perpetuate death. As more people become displaced globally, death provides a measurable indicator of the level of racialized violence inflicted on migrants of color. Because of Clinton-era policies continued today, deaths at the border have reached unprecedented rates, with more than two migrant deaths per day. A record 853…

Feb 2024

Article

Democracy, Civil Litigation, and the Nature of Non-Representative Institutions

Matthew A. Shapiro

Associate Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School.

With democratic governance under threat in the United States and abroad, legal scholars have endeavored to defend the institutions considered integral to a well-functioning democracy. According to an increasing number of civil procedure scholars, civil litigation should be included among those institutions, with many contending that litigation performs several important “democratic” functions. This Article draws…

Jan 2024

Article

Balancing is for Suckers

Gali Racabi

Assistant Professor, School of Industrial & Labor Relations, Cornell University, Associated Faculty, Cornell Law School.

Balancing workers’ statutory rights against employers’ interests is the heart of labor law. But balancing—or employers’ interests, for that matter—is nowhere to be found in the text of our labor statutes. Yet courts and the National Labor Relations Board routinely grind down workers’ rights against this loose legal premise. Balancing is the meta-doctrine that stripped…

Jan 2024

Article

The Lost Promise of Private Ordering

Cathy Hwang,Yaron Nili& Jeremy McClane

Barron F. Black Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law, Professor of Law & Smith-Rowe Faculty Fellow in Business Law, the University of Wisconsin Law School & Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law.

The agency problem is corporate law’s most enduring challenge: when corporate managers spend investors’ money, how does the law protect investors from reckless management? Scholars of law, finance, and accounting have suggested that in one corner of corporate law—corporate debt—a powerful tool exists to mitigate the agency problem. Specifically, through loan covenants, lenders can force…

Jan 2024

Article

Arbitration Secrecy

E. Gary Spitko

Presidential Professor of Ethics and the Common Good and Professor of Law, Santa Clara University.

Parties to an arbitration contract may agree to a secrecy clause that will govern their arbitration process to protect the confdentiality of their proprietary or personal information. Of great concern, however, is that they also may use such an arbitration secrecy clause to hide their improper or discriminatory practices or defects in their products, and…

Jan 2024

Article

Federal Rules of Private Enforcement

David L. Noll & Luke P. Norris

Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development, Rutgers Law School & Associate Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were made for a different world. Fast approaching their hundredth anniversary, the Rules reflect the state of litigation in the first few decades of the twentieth century and the then-prevailing distinction between “substantive” rights and the “procedure” used to adjudicate them. The role of procedure, the rulemakers believed, was…

Jan 2024

Article

The Sea Corporation

Robert Anderson

Professor of Law, University of Arkansas School of Law.

Over the past two centuries the corporation has emerged from obscurity to become the dominant form of business organization in the United States, accounting for more productive assets than all other business forms combined. Yet the corporation is relatively young for a legal institution of such economic importance. As late as the middle of the…

Jan 2024

Category: Articles

William D. Araiza Stanley A. August Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School.

Doron Dorfman Associate Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School Faculty.

Ben A. McJunkin Associate Professor of Law, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University; Associate Deputy Director, Academy for Justice.

Abel Rodriguez Assistant Professor of Law, St. John’s University School of Law.

Matthew A. Shapiro Associate Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School.

Gali Racabi Assistant Professor, School of Industrial & Labor Relations, Cornell University, Associated Faculty, Cornell Law School.

Cathy Hwang, Yaron Nili & Jeremy McClane Barron F. Black Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law, Professor of Law & Smith-Rowe Faculty Fellow in Business Law, the University of Wisconsin Law School & Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law.

E. Gary Spitko Presidential Professor of Ethics and the Common Good and Professor of Law, Santa Clara University.

David L. Noll & Luke P. Norris Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development, Rutgers Law School & Associate Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law.

Robert Anderson Professor of Law, University of Arkansas School of Law.

William D. Araiza

Stanley A. August Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School.

Doron Dorfman

Associate Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School Faculty.

Ben A. McJunkin

Associate Professor of Law, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University; Associate Deputy Director, Academy for Justice.

Abel Rodriguez

Assistant Professor of Law, St. John’s University School of Law.

Matthew A. Shapiro

Associate Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School.

Gali Racabi

Assistant Professor, School of Industrial & Labor Relations, Cornell University, Associated Faculty, Cornell Law School.

Cathy Hwang,Yaron Nili& Jeremy McClane

Barron F. Black Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law, Professor of Law & Smith-Rowe Faculty Fellow in Business Law, the University of Wisconsin Law School & Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law.

E. Gary Spitko

Presidential Professor of Ethics and the Common Good and Professor of Law, Santa Clara University.

David L. Noll & Luke P. Norris

Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development, Rutgers Law School & Associate Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law.

Robert Anderson

Professor of Law, University of Arkansas School of Law.