News Topic: Historical Perspectives

I shudder even as I write these words, but I’m increasingly fascinated by insurance contracts.  If you are interested in the processes by which standard form contracts evolve – which I am -- then you can’t help but be sucked into this world. Coming from ... Read full article

The ideas in this post are drawn from work with Stephen Choi .  Errors are mine. ... Read full article

I did some digging into Joe Biden's previously unexplored roll call vote on floor amendments to BAPCPA. They were ugly then and have not improved with age. My full take is in The American Prospect .  ... Read full article

Iraq’s debt restructuring a decade and a half ago was one of the few things that went right with the US incursion into that country in 2003.  Thanks to a combination of an expensive war with Iran, mismanagement and corruption on the part of Saddam and his ... Read full article

Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy work continues to be in the news, now with a Washington Post article on her work in the CMC Heartland case . Unfortunately, the Washington Post completely misses the point about why Elizabeth decided to work on this case. ... Read full article

I don't like bullies.  And I just ran into a $3 trillion one.  JPMorgan Chase Bank, armed with six partners at two AmLaw 100 firms (Wilmer Hale and McGuire Woods) took the truly unusual step of filing an objection to an amicus curiae brief I filed in ... Read full article

by Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati ... Read full article

I have filed an amicus brief  regarding "valid-when-made" in Rent-Rite Super Kegs West, Ltd. v. World Business Lenders, LLC . ... Read full article

( This post draws directly from ideas from co authored work with Joseph Blocher ; and particularly the numerous discussions we have had about the incentives that a market for sovereign control might create for nations to take better care of their minority ... Read full article

Two of the contracts papers I’ve been most looking forward to this fall have just been posted on ssrn. They are are Rob Anderson’s “An Evolutionary Perspective on Contracting: Evidence From Poison Pills” ( here ) and Julian Nyarko’s “Stickiness and ... Read full article

I love contract metaphors. ... Read full article

One of the central features of the  Stop Wall Street Looting Act  that was introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren and a number of co-sponsors is a targeted rollback of limited liability. ... Read full article

The way many of us teach interpretation in Contract Law, there is little role for history (admittedly, this is just based on casual observation). ... Read full article

Have you heard of Ramming Bows? Or did you know that they describe a category of boilerplate contract provisions?  Until a couple of weeks ago, I had not either.  That was when I came across Glenn West’s two delightful blog posts at the Weil Gotshal & ... Read full article

A major issue in consumer finance regulation in mid-20th century was what counted as “credit” and was therefore subject to state usury laws and (after 1968) to the federal Truth in Lending Act. Many states had a time-price differential doctrine that held ... Read full article

The Washington Post has a story about Senator Elizabeth Warren’s involvement in the Dow Corning bankruptcy that implies that Senator Warren was somehow working against the interests of personal injury victims. ... Read full article

About two years ago, in 2017, an intriguing lawsuit was filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act in New York. It was filed by members of the Herero and Nama tribes for the genocide of their ancestors that took place in what is now known as Namibia. In March ... Read full article

A remarkable new quantitative study finds that over two decades, African American home buyers in Chicago lost between $3 and $4 billion in wealth because of credit apartheid. The study authors from research centers at Duke, UIC and Loyola-Chicago reviewed ... Read full article