In response to your emails, Yes!. We encourage our readers to send papers of interest that they have written or papers written by others which are line with the Common Law Initiative.
Please send them to tozzi@thecre.com they will be published on this page.
ABSTRACT. This Essay explores how amicus briefs became a tool for coordinated judicial lobbying by dark-money interests. I show how current funding-disclosure rules for amici fail to provide genuine transparency—undermining fairness—and discuss reforms that could improve the judiciary’s amicus-disclosure regime and restore faith in the courts.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently issued a noteworthy ruling in East Central Illinois Pipe Trades Health & Welfare Fund v. Prather Plumbing & Heating, Inc. on the application of successor liability in federal courts.1 Federal common law successor liability is an exception to the general rule in virtually every U.S. jurisdiction that the buyer corporation (i.e., acquiror) in an asset sale transaction does not assume the seller corporation’s (i.e., acquiree) liabilities simply by acquiring ownership of the assets.2 Federal appellate courts, including the Third, Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits, have carved out an exception to this general rule and recognized that “when liability is based on a violation of a federal statute relating to labor relations or employment, a federal common law standard of successor liability is applied that is more favorable to plaintiffs than most state-law standards to which the court might otherwise look.”3
Editor’s Note: The reach of the common law umbrella is vast and transcends our current emphasis on regulatory proceedings.
For common law jurisdictions, there is no single definition of force majeure. The application of the doctrine is decided on a case-by-case basis.
When the contract is governed by a common law system, the courts will generally start from the presumption that parties are free to agree on all matters, which includes the freedom to agree to widen or narrow relief in force majeure situations. Generally, force majeure provisions are interpreted by focusing on the actual language used, with the result that each case rests on its own contractual language and set of facts.
