Articles The Disappearing Opt-Out Right in Punitive-Damages Class Actions By Richard Frankel One of the most pressing issues in punitive-damages law today is how to protect defendants from multiple punitive-damages awards for a single course of conduct, while still ensuring that wronged plaintiffs can recover punitive damages. Numerous commentators have proposed non-optout class actions for …

  Articles Breaking Bucks in Money Market Funds By William A. Birdthistle This Article argues that the Securities and Exchange Commission’s first and most significant response to the economic crisis increases rather than decreases the likelihood of future failures in money market funds and the broader capital markets. In newly promulgated regulations addressing the “breaking …

Tribute to Dean Emeritus Kenneth B. Davis, Jr., John A. Kidwell, & R. Alta Charo Articles Justice Stevens, Religion, and Civil Society By Gregory P. Magarian Did Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired from the Supreme Court last year, harbor a bias against religion? During his thirty-five years on the Court, Justice Stevens showed little …

  Articles The Rules and Standards of Patentable Subject Matter By Tun-Jen Chiang The general understanding of the rules-versus-standards debate is that it involves a trade off between administrative costs and error costs. A legal regime governed by a set of bright-line rules will have high error costs because rules tend to be over- and …

Articles The Properties of Instability: Markets, Predation, Racialized Geography, and Property Law By Audrey G. McFarlane A central, symbolic image supporting property ownership is the image of stability. This symbol motivates most because it allows for settled expectations, promotes investment, and fulfills a psychological need for predictability. Despite the symbolic image, property is home to …

Articles Moral Equilibrium: Stock Brokers and the Limits of Disclosure by Robert A. Prentice At this writing, the SEC is pursuing one of the charges given it by Congress in the Dodd-Frank Act by attempting to decide whether to impose a uniform fiduciary obligation upon stock brokers and other professionals giving investment advice to customers …