The conquest of Mexico between 1846 and 1848 has largely disappeared from public consciousness as a significant historical event with contemporary consequences. Yet this conquest resulted in the annexation by the United States of approximately one-half of former Mexico, constituting most of the current southwestern United States. In this Article, I describe the roles that race and racism played...
Stating a Title VII Claim for Sexual Orientation Discrimination in the Workplace: The Legal Theories Available After Rene v. MGM Grand Hotel
No federal statute explicitly authorizes victims of workplace sexual orientation discrimination to sue their employers for damages. Nevertheless, many such victims have advanced novel legal theories that analyze sexual orientation discrimination as a kind of sex discrimination, thus bringing sexual orientation discrimination within the protection of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This...
Rethinking Assumption of Risk and Sports Spectators
In 2002, the puck-related death of thirteen-year-old Brittanie Cecil at a National Hockey League game spurred calls for improved safety measures in professional sports arenas. However, common law tort principles—under which injured fans’ claims have traditionally failed—are unlikely to provide the impetus for any such change. Under the “baseball rule,” stadium owners owe the “limited duty” of...
The Rise of the Perpetual Trust
For more than two centuries, the Rule against Perpetuities has served as the chief means of limiting a transferor's power to tie up property by way of successive contingent interests. But recently, at least seventeen jurisdictions in the United States have enacted statutes abolishing the Rule in the case of perpetual (or near-perpetual) trusts. The prime mover behind this important development...
Why We Need the Independence Sector: The Behavior, Law, and Ethics of Not-for-Profit Hospitals
Among the major forms of corporate ownership, the not-for-profit ownership form is distinct in its behavior, legal constraints, and moral obligations. A new empirical analysis of the American hospital industry, using eleven years of data for all urban general hospitals in the country, shows that corporate form accounts for large differences in the provision of specific medical services. Not-for...
Taming Patent: Six Steps for Surviving Scary Patent Cases
This Article mainly is for federal district judges, who keenly appreciate how modern patent law challenges their competence. The Supreme Court's 1996 Markman decision requires district judges to make highly scientific and technological decisions in patent cases. But these judges typically have no background in science or technology at all. This Article surveys six concrete steps judges should...
Searching for Trust in the Not-for-Profit Boardroom: Looking Beyond the Duty of Obedience to Ensure Accountability
Until recently, little attention has been paid to the law governing not-forprofits, and in particular (1) whether the not-for-profit director should be held to a trust standard, a corporate standard or some other standard in fulfilling his fiduciary duties, and (2) who should have standing to enforce those fiduciary duties. In the 1990s these issues were pushed to the forefront by public scandals...
Acknowledging Those Stubborn Facts of History: The Vestiges of Segregation
In 1955, as part of its historic drive to desegregate the nation's public schools, the Supreme Court authorized district judges to set in motion and oversee desegregation programs in hundreds of school districts throughout the country. Within a few decades of this decision, however, such desegregation programs quickly came under attack. In the 1991 decision Board of Education v. Dowell, the...