BANKRUPTCY’S ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE
David Gray Carlson
Does bankruptcy law have an organizing principle—a spirit that unifies and animates it? Of course it does. The very invocation of the phrase “bankruptcy” evokes a domain in the mind of every lawyer and judge. Intersubjectively, bankruptcy enjoys a “rule of recognition” that makes it an intelligible concept to an interpretive community. If this spirit could be identified, our knowledge of bankruptcy law would be enriched. Then hard cases could be solved by reason rather than intuition. Law would become more rational and hence more objective.
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INSURANCE REGULATION IN THE UNITED STATES: REGULATORY FEDERALISM AND THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF INSURANCE COMMISSIONERS
Susan Randall
The states regulate insurance in the United States. The history of insurance regulation, however, has been marked by federal-state tensions and accommodations, and, after more than a century of state dominance, by periodic proposals for federal intervention. Recent proposals to integrate financial services industries—banking, securities, and insurance—have prompted yet another round of debate over the appropriate structure of insurance regulation and the relative merits of federal versus state regulation. Key federal legislators, current state legislators and regulators, and the insurance industry have expressed a commitment to functional regulation of each of the affected industries, as well as the maintenance of the current state regulatory structure in insurance. Public debate, however, seems to be occurring—to the extent it occurs at all—on a superficial level with no real account of or inquiry into the ways in which states actually accomplish regulation of the industry. This Article attempts to fill that gap.
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FROM CRITICISM TO CRITIQUE: PRESERVING THE RADICAL POTENTIAL OF CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES THROUGH A REEXAMINATION OF FRANKFURT SCHOOL CRITICAL THEORY
Jason E. Whitehead
Critical Legal Studies (CLS) embodies both a difficulty and a possibility. The difficulty is that in attempting to separate its understanding of law from its understanding of the larger system of social and economic arrangements, CLS loses sight of its goal to critique law and degenerates into mere criticism of the form and outcome of law. The possibility lies in the chance that CLS can reflect on its own contradictory methods and projects and, therefore, can build a critique capable of both understanding law as part of the larger socioeconomic system of liberalism and emancipating law’s subjects from the injustice and inequality that both support and are supported by liberal law.
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INFORMATION LIABILITY: THE POSSIBLE CHILLING EFFECT OF TORT CLAIMS AGAINST PRODUCERS OF GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS DATA
Jennifer L. Phillips
“A picture is worth a thousand words”—that is the saying and therein lies the problem. What happens when that picture is created with faulty or incomplete information, and someone detrimentally relies on the depiction? Is the maker responsible for the harm? One could hardly say yes, but this situation will arise in the near future for producers of Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping and data base analysis. If statutes and regulations are not enacted immediately to standardize nationally GIS data and its dissemination, GIS producers may be liable to GIS users for producing, designing, selling, or manufacturing inaccurate information. The resolution of this issue will significantly affect not only the industry, but also the goods and services available to the public.
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CASEY’S CASE: TAKING A SLICE OUT OF THE PGA TOUR’S NO-CART POLICY
Tanya R. Sharpe
When Casey Martin hobbled into an Oregon federal district court in January of 1998, Americans took notice. Martin, a young golfer who competes on the Nike Tour, a lower level golf circuit run by the Professional Golfers’ Association Tour (PGA Tour), possesses a rare circulatory disorder that makes it painful and potentially dangerous for him to walk. Martin sued the PGA Tour over its unwillingness to allow him to use a golf cart in its competitions.
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