This Article explores the ironies involved in the contemporary enforcement of family obligations. As forms of intimate partnership and parenthood become ever more varied, the law of family obligation—child support, property division, and alimony—has become increasingly routine and formulaic. As scholars increasingly call for more attention to the varied ways in which different individuals and communities structure their care networks and intimate lives, the law of family obligation has become less, not more attentive to context. This Article explains how the law’s rejection of context is an understandable reaction to the growing diversity of family forms. By unpacking contemporary family law rules, one sees that the baselines and value judgments informing the law of family obligation are usually contested, arbitrary, or both. They are accepted not because they represent consensus on what obligation should be, but because they clearly demarcate who is obligated and for how much. Predictability emerges as more important than context for almost everyone. Social acceptance of so many different family forms makes judicial attention to context extraordinarily invasive and expensive. In an area of law where very few of the parties have the resources or desire to debate the normative underpinnings of family obligation and where both the parties and the state have strong interests in minimizing contested issues, there are compelling reasons to establish a very rule and status-based law of obligation, even if that system is rooted in a normative vision of family that, for most people, has ceased to exist. This Article thus argues that despite the profoundly limited way in which the current law identifies families, some reliance on restricted legal definitions of family will be necessary for any meaningful system of family obligation to operate. In doing so, this Article challenges much contemporary family law scholarship and suggests that we may have to accept the law’s privileging of certain family forms if we are to expect an enforceable system of family obligation.

In a given year, a resident of the United States is roughly twice more likely to move to a different home than is a resident of France (or of western Europe as a whole). Cultural differences undoubtedly account for some of this gap. The central thesis of this Article, however, is that much of this disparity in residential mobility can be chalked up to differences between U.S. and French (and other European) legal policies—in particular, taxation statutes, land-use policies, landlord-tenant laws, and housing assistance programs. This Article also offers a normative framework for analyzing the desirability of household relocations. Legal policies that foster residential moves can enable individuals to better match themselves with a job, a dwelling, a set of housemates, a tenure arrangement, a neighborhood, and a municipality (à la Tiebout). A decision to move, however, may give rise to negative externalities, such as erosion of local social capital. In theory, although rarely in practice, people thus can move too often.

In 2000, a group of American entrepreneurs moved to a former World War II antiaircraft platform in the North Sea, seven miles off the British coast. There, they launched HavenCo, one of the strangest start-ups in Internet history. A former pirate radio broadcaster, Roy Bates, had occupied the platform in the 1960s, moved his family aboard, and declared it to be the sovereign Principality of Sealand. HavenCo’s founders were opposed to governmental censorship and control of the Internet; by putting computer servers on Sealand, they planned to create a “data haven” for unpopular speech, safely beyond the reach of any other country. This Article tells the full story of Sealand and HavenCo—and examines what they have to tell us about the nature of the rule of law in the age of the Internet.

The story itself is fascinating enough: it includes pirate radio, shotguns, rampant copyright infringement, a Red Bull skateboarding special, perpetual motion machines, and the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of State. But its implications for the rule of law are even more remarkable. Previous scholars have seen HavenCo as a straightforward challenge to the rule of law: by threatening to undermine national authority, HavenCo was opposed to all law. As the fuller history shows, this story is too simplistic. HavenCo also depended on international law to recognize and protect Sealand, and on Sealand law to protect it from Sealand itself. Where others have seen HavenCo’s failure as the triumph of traditional regulatory authorities over HavenCo, this Article argues that in a very real sense, HavenCo failed not from too much law but from too little. The “law” that was supposed to keep HavenCo safe was law only in a thin, formalistic sense, disconnected from the human institutions that make and enforce law. But without those institutions, law does not work, as HavenCo discovered.

This Article analyzes the recent trend of conservative judicial activism in the Supreme Court and searches for a principled reason to explain it. The conservative majority has struck down several laws in recent years, culminating in its invalidation of an important provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. While judicial restraint and originalism are currently seen as conservative principles, neither principle explains these decisions.

The author argues that no principle can explain the results of these cases—rather, they can only be explained by the Justices’ personal views and policy preferences. The author compares the conservative majority’s pattern to that of the Warren Court, which largely invalidated laws only when footnote four in United States v. Carolene Products Co. would dictate that the Court should. Thus, neither unrestrained judicial activism nor total judicial restraint is appropriate. Instead, the author argues that a selective judicial activism guided by footnote four is the best approach. The author then concludes that the conservative majority is troubling because it is infusing its personal policy preferences into its opinions while at the same time convincing the public that it is acting in a principled manner.

Auditor litigation risk is growing increasingly out of control. This risk not only poses problems for the auditing industry, but it may also create systemic problems throughout entire financial markets. Auditor litigation risks arise from criminal and civil causes of action at both the federal and state level. This Note specifically addresses civil litigation. Scholars suggest a number of solutions for mitigating auditor civil litigation risk, including bargained liability caps, liability caps with strict liability, and decoupled liability.

This Note argues that federal law should allow auditors to bargain for alternative liability regimes with the audit committees of boards of directors. This approach allows the market to determine the most efficient means for limiting auditor liability while minimizing agency and transaction costs. It also incentivizes boards to create good bargains because of shareholder takeover and proxy threats. The Note also calls for further study on requiring proxy votes to enforce these auditor-board bargains. Lastly, it calls for a provision allowing auditors to opt out of federal and state securities remedies. These proposals comply with current disclosure-based securities laws. Moreover, current regulatory and judicial players could be used to review extreme bargains to ensure fairness.

The Note begins with a discussion of the major players in financial markets: management, the board of directors, shareholders, and auditors. It then follows with background of the multitude of federal and state legal regimes that govern these major corporate players, especially auditors, and the effects these regimes have on auditors. The Note then looks at the justifications of each of the proposed solutions. Continuing with a discussion of the criticisms of each approach, it specifically looks at the effects each approach has on company agency and transaction costs. It then considers the limitations each approach faces from current legal and political structures.

When a federal agency proposes to undertake a “major Federal action,” the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) requires the agency, as part of an overall Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), to engage in an analysis of reasonable alternatives to that action. Just what constitutes a major federal action or a proper alternatives analysis, however, is the subject of debate. Should the objectives of third party, nonfederal proponents influence which alternatives are considered? What kinds of alternatives are reasonable? Is the major federal action the approval of a project or the project itself? This Note analyzes the different ways courts have approached these issues, focusing on statutory, environmental, efficiency, and common sense considerations. Ultimately, the author suggests that to fully realize NEPA’s goals of public participation and environmentally focused decision making, courts need to reconceptualize their own analysis of reasonable alternatives. The author posits that courts need to work collaboratively with federal agencies and project proponents by adopting a good faith standard of review for alternatives, rejecting the idea that the “purpose and need” statement of an EIS should guide the scope of alternatives, and recognizing a more limited scope for alternatives when nonfederal third parties propose a project.

The advent of the Internet and the rise of social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook have created new challenges for the courts in protecting defendants’ Sixth Amendment rights. The Sixth Amendment provides criminal defendants with “the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury” as well as the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” These Internet resources, particularly when combined with new technologies such as smart phones with web-browsing capabilities, provide jurors with a new avenue to do independent research on the defendant or the case, or to communicate trial-related material before deliberations are complete, both of which violate a defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights. This Note analyzes the different approaches courts have taken in combating such violations, including the use of more specific jury instructions, restriction of juror access to electronic devices such as smart phones, use of voir dire to exclude “at risk” jurors, and monitoring of juror Internet activities. Ultimately, this Note argues that jury instructions, prohibitions on electronic devices in the courtroom, voir dire, and monitoring are insufficient to protect defendants’ Sixth Amendment rights. Courts, rather, should establish specific punishments for engaging in these prohibited activities, ensure that the jurors are informed of the punishments, and take a more proactive approach toward identifying violators by questioning jurors throughout the trial process.