Thesis advisor: Shep Melnick / This dissertation examines the use of coordinated multistate lawsuits by state attorneys general (SAGs) as a tool to create national policy. Entrepreneurial SAGs have increasingly employed multistate litigation against private industry and the federal government, reaching numerous out-of-court settlements and favorable court judgments. These lawsuits have imposed new national regulatory requirements across several policy areas and have challenged regulatory regimes established by Congress and federal agencies. This study investigates three interrelated questions about multistate SAG litigation: (1) how SAGs have used this litigation to achieve national regulatory goals, (2) why this activity has increased over time, and (3) what the consequences are for American politics and policy. Employing both qualitative and quantitative analysis, I examine these questions through two stages. First, I present an analysis of an original dataset containing SAG lawsuits and legal settlements in four key policy areas covering 1980 through 2009. Second, I examine three case studies involving pharmaceutical litigation, air pollution control litigation, and lawsuits against the firearms industry. I find that changes in federal law instituted by Congress and the federal courts have created new opportunity points for SAGs, helping spur a dramatic increase of multistate litigation. The SAGs built upon earlier successful efforts, including their blockbuster settlement with the tobacco industry in 1998, to create new avenues of collaboration among their fellow SAGs, public interest groups, and the private bar. The result has been to substantially alter the regulatory landscape in areas including prescription drug pricing, pharmaceutical advertising, and greenhouse gas emissions. By shedding light on this significant form of "regulation through litigation," this dissertation illustrates how SAGs have seized upon the trend towards adversarial legalism in America by using the courts to achieve policy goals when attempts to do so in other venues fail. This runs contrary to a line of scholarly literature suggesting that litigation and courts have a limited impact on significant social change. This study also demonstrates how American federalism, commonly thought to serve as a restraint on the federal government by diffusing power, can be used by skillful political actors to create more energetic government and stronger national regulation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Thesis advisor: Julie Mortimer / Non-practicing entities (NPEs) – firms that do not produce goods or services but license to and sue other companies with portfolios of patents – have drastically increased patent infringement litigation since 2006. Over the same period, the USPTO has granted an increasing amount of patents, indicating that American innovation has strengthened by one measure. This paper finds fault with equating patents granted to innovation and develops a new metric of innovation – the ratio of a firm’s intangible to total assets. Through empirical analysis this study concludes that lawsuits initiated by NPEs between 2006 and 2011 do not affect the rate of American innovation. However, this study also finds that NPEs inflict at least a $567 million innovation cost to the top twenty-five most litigated against firms in the United States. This cost represents money that could be allocated towards research and development or investment, but it is not a dead-weight loss – it is the cost associated with firms’ growth measured in inflation-adjusted total assets. Ultimately, this study highlights the need for continued research into the impact of NPEs on the American economy but provides empirical evidence that the patent troll classification is unwarranted. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: International Studies Honors Program. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program. / Discipline: International Studies.

La dématérialisation des méthodes de traitement, de transmission et de conservation de l’information modifie substantiellement les rapports économiques et sociaux. Le domaine juridique n’aurait pu rester étranger à ce mouvement de fond. Le droit et la justice s’en trouvent bouleversés jusque dans leurs organisations, leurs méthodes et leurs métiers. L’adaptation du droit aux technologies numériques désormais acquise, les craintes et résistances liées à leur intégration dans le fonctionnement judiciaire surmontées ; la dématérialisation des actes du procès et leur communication électronique se généralisent. Une phase de maturation débute à présent, celle d’un retour au droit de la procédure civile et de l’appréciation que la jurisprudence fera de ces innovations technologiques. Il conviendra dès lors de veiller à ce que cette appropriation serve pleinement les intérêts des justiciables et de la justice. / Paperless methods of data production, process and records management has substantially changed both the economic and social relationships. Therefore, French law and justice could not have ignored these technological evolution which is deeply impacting their own organisation, methods, and professions. The necessary adaptation by French law and Justice to digital technologies now acquired, and concerns or fears on their integration into the civil litigation process being overcome ; dematerialisation of procedural acts and their communication in electronic forms are generally used. Regarding this technological reality, attention needs henceforth to be directed towards the role of each relevant actor of the French E-justice to make sure that such proceedings allow a fair trial to any litigant

The purpose of this study is to identify trends and issues related to college and university involvement in patent litigation. The study found 568 reported cases between 1980 through 2009. From this initial set of cases, detailed review identified 171 patent-related lawsuits involving a college or university. A three-pronged approach to analysis was then conducted. First, analysis focused on characteristics of the parties involved in litigation. Second, the types of patents at issue were analyzed. Third, the procedural and substantive results of the lawsuits were analyzed to identify patterns of activities which contributed to the university involvement in the lawsuit. The 85 universities identified in this study were most often public research universities suing corporations for infringement in order to protect their rights in a university-owned patent. These corporations were most frequently competitors of a corporation with whom the university had an existing licensing agreement. While most of the universities in this study were involved in only one lawsuit, a select few were involved in multiple lawsuits with five universities involved in one-fourth of the lawsuits in the cases identified. All the patents included in this study were utility patents, with pharmaceutical patents being the most common subject of litigation. About one-fourth of the lawsuits were decided for procedural reasons and more than one-third had indeterminate dispositions. When the court issued a substantive ruling, it was most often based on the technical requirements of patent law. When the universities' opposing party had an existing relationship with the university (patent licensees, research partner, faculty, staff, and students) the university was as often the plaintiff as it was the defendant. These cases provided the most salient lessons for university administrators looking to minimize the institution's risk of future patent litigation. The study concludes with recommendations focused on activities for a campus technology transfer office, as well as on ways to work with constituent groups of faculty, staff, and students to minimize the risk of future patent litigation.

Ett processbolag är ett bolag vars huvudsyfte är att driva en process åt sin huvudman. Enligt huvudregeln i rättegångsbalken skall den förlorande parten stå för den vinnande partens rättegångskostnader. Vid det fall att en person använder sig av ett underkapitaliserat processbolag för att driva processen kan denne person vid en eventuell förlust, försätta bolaget i konkurs och därmed undvika att betala det stora belopp som krav på rättegångskostnader oftast utgör. Huvudregeln i aktiebolagslagen är att vare sig aktieägare eller någon annan skall vara skyldig att svara för aktiebolagets åtaganden. Denna huvudregel stipuleras i aktiebolagslagens 3 kap 1 §. Det har dock utvecklats en princip i praxis för när undantag görs ifrån denna huvudprincip och man ålägger aktieägare eller annan med "bestämmande inflytande" över bolaget ett ansvar för bolagets skulder. Denna princip kallas för ansvarsgenombrott. I doktrin går åsikterna isär när det gäller denna princip. Vissa författare anser att någon praxis som ger stöd för ett ansvarsgenombrottsinstitut inte existerar eller att det åtminstone är omöjligt att dra några säkra slutsatser om en eventuell utformning. Andra författare kan se tydliga principer utvecklade och har även ställt upp kriterier för när ansvarsgenombrott kan anses vara för handen. När det gäller processbolag diskuteras frågan inte i någon vidare utsträckning i vare sig praxis eller doktrin. Med det nya rättsfallet T 3004-08 (Punctatorfallet) har dock frågan fått nytt liv. Det rör sig här om ett enormt utstuderat användande av aktiebolagsformen för att genom ett processbolag undgå ansvar för rättegångskostnaderna i målet. Jag sätter i denna uppsats existerande rättskällor i relation till detta nya rättsfall för att utröna huruvida användandet av ett processbolag är grund för att tillämpa principerna om ansvarsgenombrott eller ej.

Due to the planned economy, the labor relations in China had been merely an extension of the administrative relations for long. Led by collectivism, collective labor relations based on individual interests actually did not exist in China. In fact, the labor relations, aimed to protect individual labor interests, turned out to be a complex of labor interests, trade unions, and the administration. Although the factors such as labor interests, trade unions, and governmental regulations could be found in China¡¦s labor market, the causes of them were quite different from those in western countries. Accordingly, the conceptions derived from Taiwan or other developed countries couldn¡¦t be entirely applied when we analyzed the labor relations in China. The transition of the legal system of labor relations in modern China can be grouped under the two categories: preventive regulations and remedy measures. The former contains the implementation of labor standards, the enforcement of collective labor contracts, and the administration of labor contract system while the latter covers labor supervision and labor disputes resolution regulations. During the establishment of China labor laws, the regulations of the labor dispute resolutions tend to correspond with labor condition rules. Different from the policies of dealing labor disputes in western countries, the labor dispute regulations in China strictly follow the three stages: mediation, arbitration, and litigation. In such an inflexible procedure, the clients have no freedom to choose preferred methods or measures. Most of all, since labor litigation is the final stage of the procedure, the judicial interpretation of the supreme civil court has a great impact on the results of labors¡¦ relief-seeking. In other words, it plays a crucial role in the field of labor dispute resolutions. To have a full understanding of the labor dispute resolution system in China, the research begins with labor litigation and systematically examines the relations between arbitration and judicial review.

The purpose of this study was to examine the legal strategy of utilizing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to compel change to the racial composition of head coaches at NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision institutions. To accomplish this, the researcher examined the guidelines for bringing a Title VII case, researched statutory requirements and case law precedents, and compiled and analyzed the outcomes of prior employment discrimination cases. In addition, the researcher investigated the proposition that Title VII could do for minority football coaches what Title IX did in athletics for girls and women. Investigation of Title VII procedural guidelines revealed that plaintiffs are disadvantaged when pursuing a claim. This is due in part to the fact that plaintiffs must exhaust administrative remedies prior to filing a complaint with a court. As a result, the Title VII remedy requires a protracted process. In addition, review of salient sport and non-sport cases revealed that courts are highly deferential to employers when evaluating the employers’ proffered hiring criteria. Analysis of prior Title VII case outcomes revealed a significant disparity in plaintiff and defendant success rates. During 1998-2006, plaintiffs succeeded in opposing motions for summary judgment only 1.84% of the time in U.S. District Courts. Plaintiffs were more successful if they were able to get their cases heard by a court. Plaintiffs prevailed in 37.9% of jury trials and in 26.7% of bench trials. It was also determined that Title VII is unlikely to provide results similar to Title IX. This is asserted for two main reasons. First, unlike Title IX, Title VII complaints cannot be filed directly in a court without exhausting administrative remedies. Second, because standing is not an issue in filing a Title IX complaint with the Office for Civil Rights, the investigation of an institution can commence upon the filing of a complaint by an interested party. Thus, a coach or administrator does not have to be directly involved. It was concluded that for these and other reasons, it is unlikely that Title VII litigation can affect change. Minority coach advocates should instead try less adversarial approaches.

This study analyzes the legal decisions that emerged across the nearly 45-year spectrum of Texas public school finance court cases, culminating in the judicial opinions and legislative actions that rather than bringing fundamental reform to the system has seen the enactment of temporary stopgap measures in 2006 that threw the system into further incertitude and undermined its basic tenets of constitutionality, eliciting the eighth round of lawsuits filed in 2011 and 2012 against the State, which charge that the school finance system is inequitable, inadequate, and inefficient. This is not to say that the decades-long litigation has not produced some beneficial results. In the intervening years since the initial filing in 1968 of the Rodriguez case, Texas has seen the development of a more equitable and adequate school finance system. Following Rodriguez, the Texas Supreme Court opinions in Edgewood I (1989) and Edgewood II (1991) were instrumental in spurring the legislative reforms that increased the overall funding of the system as well as provided the larger allocations that went to low-wealth school districts. Although the litigation strengthened the gains in equity in this initial period, the subsequent Texas Supreme Court opinions produced judicial ambiguities and redefinitions that left the Texas school finance system in a continual state of constitutional uncertainty with respect to its fundamental mandate to provide an equitable and adequate education. The decisions in Edgewood IIa (1991), Edgewood III (1992), Edgewood IV (1995), West Orange-Cove I (2003), and West Orange-Cove II (2005) have nonetheless been instructive in demonstrating how the Texas school finance court cases have altered the dynamic of equality and adequacy and the basic assumptions and ideals that have defined the fundamental right to an education, with the implications that these altered policy approaches have on the distribution of educational resources for all children. Importantly, the state’s trajectory in school finance litigation offers an illustrative example of the tenuous but often contentious partisan interrelationship between the different levels of the judiciary and the legislative and executive branches of government that too often has deprived Texas public school students of an equitable and adequate education. / text

Persuasion scholars have documented the use of compliance-gaining messages in both negotiation and negotiation. The extant research offers suggestions for litigators and negotiators, but fails to compare the methods of persuasion in the two circumstances in order to advise attorneys and clients which communication messages to employ in the different contexts. The present study explores differences in use of 7 common compliance-gaining message strategies (“It's Up To You”, “This Is The Way Things Are”, “Equity”, “Benefit (Other)”, “Bargaining”, and “Cooperation”; Kellerman, 2004) in separate negotiation and litigation cases. Findings indicate that “This Is The Way Things Are” messages were more frequent in litigation than negotiation, but “Cooperation” messages were more common in negotiation than litigation. No other significant differences in strategy frequency across the different contexts were found. These results indicate that some differences exist between the messages used in negotiation and litigation and that future research should investigate what other messages may be used differently in the two contexts. / text

This paper proposes a judicial advocacy strategy aimed to challenge the constitutionality of the law that imposes an absolute prohibition of abortion in Chile. Examines the origin of the criminalization provisions in light to the constitutional mandate to protect the life of the unborn, presents an overview of the arguments used in the legislative to request the partial decriminalization of abortion, the tendency of the executive in the past years in this matter, and the criminal strategy that has been used in cases where women have been prosecuted by abortion, based on what has been intended so far the paper conclude a solicitude to declare unconstitutional the criminal abortion provisions because they do not protect the life of the unborn.