Georgetown University Law Center

About: Georgetown University Law Center is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supreme court & Global health. The organization has 585 authors who have published 2488 publications receiving 36650 citations. The organization is also known as: Georgetown Law & GULC.

The Effects of 'Early Offers' in Medical Malpractice Cases: Evidence from Texas

Abstract: Medical malpractice litigation is costly and time-consuming. Professor Jeffrey O'Connell, with various coauthors, has long advocated 'early offer' rules that would encourage defendants to offer to settle for economic damages plus attorney fees, and punish plaintiffs who refuse such offers. Using detailed closed claims data from Texas for 1988-2005, we simulate the effects of these 'early offers.'We find that defendants will normally not make early offers in cases with large economic damages (over $500,000 in 1988 dollars) because doing so will increase payouts. Early offers will normally reduce payouts, and hence will be made, in cases with small economic damages (under $100,000 in 1988 dollars). Defendants may also make offers in cases with moderate ($100,000-500,000) economic damages, depending on case characteristics and the plaintiff’s chances of prevailing. An early offer program will (i) sharply reduce payouts in cases with small economic damages; (ii) will not materially affect predicted payouts in other cases; (iii) will have very different effects on different types of plaintiffs, with large payout reductions for elderly and deceased plaintiffs and much smaller effects for newborns and employed adult plaintiffs; and (iv) will overlap substantially in its effects with statutory caps on non-economic damages, and hence have a smaller effect in states with these caps. Our mixed results contrast sharply with dramatic claims by O’Connell and co-authors, who predict 70% reductions in payouts and defense costs. Their estimates reflect the compound effects of a series of unreasonable assumptions.This article, in part, responds to Hersh, O’Connell and Viscusi, An Empirical Assessment of Early Offer Reform for Medical Malpractice, 36 Journal of Legal Studies s231-s259 (2007).Hersch, O’Connell and Viscusi reply to this article in Reply to the Effects of 'Early Offers' in Medical Malpractice Cases: Evidence from Texas, 7 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (forthcoming 2010), working paper version available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1487681We extend our analysis and respond to Hersch, O’Connell and Viscusi in Black, Hyman, and Silver, O’Connell Early Settlement Offers: Toward Realistic Numbers and Two-Sided Offers, 7 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (forthcoming 2010), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1503125

Taxing International Portfolio Income

Abstract: The importance of international portfolio investment to the world economy has grown exponentially in recent years. Yet most analyses of international tax policy have either lumped direct and portfolio investment together or ignored foreign portfolio income altogether. The economic differences between foreign direct investment and foreign portfolio investment ("FPI") suggest that the principal normative criteria used to evaluate international tax policy generally capital export neutrality and capital import neutrality ("CEN") have little or no relevance with respect to international portfolio investment. Furthermore, empirical analysis illustrates that to achieve CEN for FPI would require the U.S. government to make politically infeasible and fundamentally undesirable tax policy changes. Principles of international equity and interpersonal fairness, as well as U.S. national interest, all suggest that income from FPI should be taxed by the country where the investor resides, and that taxation of income from FPI at source should be eliminated. Thus, a strong case can be made that, for FPI, the U.S. should replace its foreign tax credit with a deduction for foreign withholding taxes. Multilateral cooperation and coordination would be essential to ensure that such a regime would not worsen the widespread underreporting and evasion of taxes on income from FPI.

Natural law as professional ethics: A reading of Fuller

Abstract: In Plato's Laws, the Athenian Stranger claims that the gods will smile only on a city where the law “is despot over the rulers and the rulers are slaves of the law.” This passage is the origin of the slogan “the rule of law not of men,” an abbreviation of which forms our phrase “the rule of law.” From Plato and Aristotle, through John Adams and John Marshall, down to us, no idea has proven more central to Western political and legal culture. Yet the slogan turns on a very dubious metaphor. Laws do not rule, and the “rule of law not of men” is actually a specific form of rule by men (including, nowadays, a few women). These rulers are not slaves to anything. Furthermore, the construction of the slogan—rule of law and not of men—has unfortunate connotations. It suggests that the personal qualities of the human rulers required to secure the rule of law are nothing more than forbearance and disinterestedness—a resolution to stay out of law's way.

Can an Old Dog Learn New Tricks? Applying Traditional Corporate Law Principles to New Social Enterprise Legislation

Abstract: Seven U.S. states have recently adopted the benefit corporation or the flexible purpose corporation — two novel corporate forms intended to house social enterprises, i.e., those ventures that pursue social and environmental missions along with profits. And yet, these corporate forms are not viable or sustainable if they do not attract social entrepreneurs or social investors due to the lack of understanding and inquiry into how traditional corporate law principles will be applied to them. This Article begins this necessary examination. As a first approach, this article assesses shareholder primacy and the shareholder wealth maximization norm in the context of the sale of an early-stage flexible purpose corporation. As the market for products and services produced by social enterprises grows, traditional “profit-maximizing” corporations, which may have given limited attention to their social or environmental outputs in the past, want a piece of this market share and can make a rapid market entrance by acquiring an established social enterprise. Using the lens of a corporate acquisition, this article argues that the shareholder wealth maximization norm must be rejected for flexible purpose corporations given the statute’s legislative history and a contractarian view of shareholder primacy where shareholders’ interests are both economic and non-economic. Nonetheless, rejection of the norm leaves a gap in directors’ accountability to shareholders. This article examines alternative accountability mechanisms, including employing a heightened standard of review to the sale of flexible purpose corporations.