Shortly after taking the phone call from Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Megan Dillhoff became the second NDLS graduate to accept a Supreme Court judicial clerkship for the October 2014 Supreme Court term. Earlier this term, G. Ryan Snyder accepted his clerkship offer from Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. Read More

In his new paper, Restricting Testamentary Freedom: Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Justifications, Professor Kelly investigates the circumstances in which it may be socially beneficial for courts to alter wills, trusts, and other gratuitous transfers at death. The organizing principle of American succession law—testamentary freedom—gives decedents a nearly unrestricted right to dispose of property. After surveying the justifications for testamentary freedom, he examines the circumstances in which it may be socially beneficial for courts to alter wills, trusts, and other gratuitous transfers at death: imperfect information, negative externalities, and intergenerational equity. These justifications correspond with many existing limitations on the freedom of testation. Yet, disregarding donor intent to maximize the donees’ ex post interests, an increasingly common justification for intervention, is socially undesirable. Doing so ignores important ex ante considerations, including a donor’s happiness, a donor’s incentive to work, save, and invest, and the structure and timing of a donor’s gifts. If donors believe courts may not facilitate their intent, donors may be less happy, accumulate less property, and alter gifts during life. Moreover, because the law often affects donor behavior, ignoring donative intent to benefit particular donees may harm not only the donors but also donees as a class. Thus, the living may themselves benefit if the law allows a certain degree of “dead hand” control. Read More

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court visited Notre Dame Law School the week of February 3, 2014, serving as the James J. Clynes Visiting Chair in Judicial Ethics. Over the course of the week, Justice Thomas co-taught with Professor Richard W. Garnett an intensive seminar on “Religious Freedom and the Establishment Clause.” Read More

Professor Tor has published a new co-authored article on The Psychology of Competition: A Social Comparison Perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(6), 634-650 (2013).

Social comparison—the tendency to self-evaluate by comparing ourselves to others—is an important source of competitive behavior. The article proposes a new model that distinguishes between individual and situational factors that increase social comparison and thus lead to a range of competitive attitudes and behavior. Individual factors are those that vary from person to person: the relevance of the performance dimension, the similarity of rivals, and their relationship closeness to the individual, as well as the various individual differences variables relating to social comparison more generally.

Situational factors, conversely, are those factors on the social comparison landscape that affect similarly situated individuals: proximity to a standard, the number of competitors, social category fault lines, and more. The distinction between individual and situational factors also helps chart future directions for social comparison research and generates new vistas across psychology and related disciplines, including business, economics, and the law. Read More

Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell will deliver the 2014 Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture at the University of Cambridge’s Lauterpacht Centre for International Law in Cambridge, England. Read More

Members of the NDLS community and the U.S. Attorney’s Office joined family and friends to support 3L Jason O’Brien at his U.S. Navy ensign commissioning ceremony in the Patrick F. McCartan Courtroom last November. Read More

Professor Martijn Cremers has co-authored a new research article, Thirty Years of Shareholder Rights and Firm Valuation, that introduces the concept of a new hand-collected dataset that tracked restrictions on shareholder rights at approximately 1,000 firms from 1978-1989. In conjunction with 1990-2006 IRRC data, the authors tracked firms’ shareholder rights over thirty years. Most governance changes occurred during the 1980s. The data found a robustly negative association between restrictions on shareholder rights (using the G-Index as a proxy) and Tobin’s Q. The negative association only appears after the judicial approval of antitakeover defenses in the 1985 landmark Delaware Supreme Court decision of Moran v. Household. This decision was an unanticipated, exogenous shock that increased the importance of shareholder rights. Read More

Professor Mark McKenna has written a new article, Confusion Isn’t Everything. The typical shorthand justification for trademark rights centers on avoiding consumer confusion. But in truth, this encapsulation mistakes a method for a purpose: confusion merely serves as an indicator of the underlying problems that trademark law seeks to prevent. This article analyzes causes of this phenomenon, problems that result, and possible cures. Read More

It is with a heavy heart that the Law School announces the death of Bob Wilczek, J.D. ’68, who passed away on January 8, his 70th birthday. Read More

The U.S. Senate has voted 70-29 to confirm Elizabeth A. Wolford to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. Read More