Legal scholars typically treat the Declaration of Independence as a purely historical document, but as this Article explains, the Declaration is relevant to legislative and judicial decision making. After describing why this founding document contains legal significance, I examine two contemporary legal issues through the lens of the Declaration’s prescriptions. Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment grants Congress […]

It is a familiar ideal that the remedy should fit the wrong—this wrong, by this wrongdoer, against this victim. Modern legal systems ordinarily pursue this kind of fit, at least in civil cases, by tailoring the remedy case by case. There is an alternative, though, which is for a legal system to announce in advance exactly what the […]

In legal domains ranging from tort to torture, pain and its degree do important definitional work by delimiting boundaries of lawfulness and of entitlements. Yet, for all the work done by pain as a term in legal texts and practice, it has a confounding lack of external verifiability. Now, neuroimaging is rendering pain and myriad other subjective states at […]

In a world of active, empowered shareholders, the match between shareholders and public corporations potentially affects firm value. This Article examines the extent to which publicly held corporations can shape their shareholder base. Two sorts of  approaches are available: “direct” or “recruitment” strategies and “shaping” or “socialization” strategies. Direct or recruitment strategies, which attract “good” shareholders to the […]