Jul 31, 2025 Goldburn MaynardTrusts & Estates
Adam Hofri-Winogradow & Mark Bennett,
Looking through Trusts, __
Osgoode Hall L. J. __ (forthcoming), available at
SSRN (Oct. 9, 2024).
The issue of whether trust beneficiaries should be treated differently from individuals who own their assets directly has been a central one in the trusts and estates world for centuries, and it shows no signs of disappearing. While it would be preferable to have a standard, across-the-board response to this matter, its intractable nature reveals a balancing of interests. The trust is a centuries-old fiduciary relationship that is not nefarious in and of itself. Much as they do with corporations, governments find themselves torn between respecting such voluntary arrangements according to their terms or setting them aside to prevent abuse. The purpose of look-through rules is to prevent trusts from undermining other policy goals, such as facilitating debt collection or restricting certain government benefits to individuals who demonstrate financial need.
In a forthcoming article, Professors Adam Hofri-Winogradow & Mark Bennett compare trust look-through approaches taken by five nations: the U.S. (and its states), Canada (and its provinces), England and Wales, Australia, and New Zealand. The authors’ focus is primarily on liability and means-testing avoidance by trust beneficiaries, which they argue is improper. To paint a picture of how weighty and emotion-provoking these issues can be in the real world, consider three examples featuring Gary, a hypothetical trust beneficiary of a $10 million trust set up by his mother Gwen before her death from a terminal illness. Gary’s father, as trustee, in entitled to make distributions to Gary in his sole discretion: Continue reading "Placing Limits on Trust Asset Protection"
Jul 30, 2025 Ann LiptonCorporate Law
Recent high-profile business implosions such as FTX and WeWork introduced the world to the notion of the business cult. In these firms, a charismatic founder created pressure-cooker working conditions where dissent was stifled and a grandiose business philosophy – such as the “We” in WeWork and the effective altruism of FTX – fueled employee devotion.
In her book, Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America, New York magazine reporter Bridget Read excavates a much older, and much larger business cult: the cult of multilevel marketing. Multilevel marketing is a model whereby a network of independent “sellers” buy products from a manufacturer, for the ostensible purpose of reselling to end-users at a profit, but sellers also earn commissions based on the purchases of new sellers who they bring into the network. Beginning with its origins with the Nutrilite Company and tracing through to its modern form in companies like Mary Kay, Amway, and Herbalife, Read convincingly demonstrates that the model is, fundamentally, a pyramid scheme: sales to actual customers are negligible and rarely even tracked; profits accrue only to those very few members (in the vicinity of 1% or less) who have built a large “downline” of new recruits who kickback commissions when they make their own purchases. Continue reading "When Business is a Cult"
Jul 29, 2025 Robert HillmanContracts
Danielle D’Onfro & Cathy Hwang,
Tortious Interference Revisited, __
U. Penn. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming), available at
SSRN (Feb. 19, 2025).
Professors D’Onfro and Hwang’s new article, Tortious Interference Revisited, brings the reader almost up to date on the nature of tortious interference and, in doing so, adds to each of their impressive contributions to contract scholarship. I use the word “almost” in the title and the first sentence here advisedly because the final paragraph of their article calls “for more sophisticated empirical treatments” (P. 54) of the subject and announces their intention to investigate recent cases.
Still the reader can learn a lot about tortious interference with contract and with other business relationships and opportunities (as do D’Onfro and Hwang, I will refer to the subject matter, often treated as separate torts, singularly as “tortious inference”). Relying on cases and secondary literature, the article offers numerous insights into the nature of and issues engendered by tortious interference. Continue reading "Everything (Almost) You Wanted to Know About Tortious Interference"
Jul 28, 2025 TestUser6zetasec
What would a theory of migration that takes seriously the lived expertise of migrants and their families contribute to the scholarly conversation? Drawing from extensive qualitative interviews in Mexico with community members who journeyed to the United States to seek work and those they left behind, Prof. Ragini Shah has a compelling answer: a theory of migration as extraction. The thesis of her new book, Constructed Movements: Extraction and Resistance in Mexican Migrant Communities, builds on prior work on decolonizing migration and migrations as reparations, evolving those critiques into a comprehensive theory of migration.
This brilliant new work begins with the voices of migrants themselves, offering insightful quotes and a firsthand understanding of the journey to El Norte and its impact on individuals, families, and communities. One of the invaluable contributions that this qualitative work offers is a clear description of the emotional cost of migration as extraction. The interviews provide powerful insights into this profound price that families paid and continue to pay, and the ongoing impacts on migrant communities. Prof. Shah describes a vicious cycle of dispossession, dismemberment of family relations, and exploitation, as well as a story of agency on the part of migrants. Continue reading "Test Three (w/ featured image of globe)"
Jul 28, 2025 Jaya Ramji-NogalesLexImmigration
What would a theory of migration that takes seriously the lived expertise of migrants and their families contribute to the scholarly conversation? Drawing from extensive qualitative interviews in Mexico with community members who journeyed to the United States to seek work and those they left behind, Prof. Ragini Shah has a compelling answer: a theory of migration as extraction. The thesis of her new book, Constructed Movements: Extraction and Resistance in Mexican Migrant Communities, builds on prior work on decolonizing migration and migrations as reparations, evolving those critiques into a comprehensive theory of migration.
This brilliant new work begins with the voices of migrants themselves, offering insightful quotes and a firsthand understanding of the journey to El Norte and its impact on individuals, families, and communities. One of the invaluable contributions that this qualitative work offers is a clear description of the emotional cost of migration as extraction. The interviews provide powerful insights into this profound price that families paid and continue to pay, and the ongoing impacts on migrant communities. Prof. Shah describes a vicious cycle of dispossession, dismemberment of family relations, and exploitation, as well as a story of agency on the part of migrants. Continue reading "Migration as Extraction"
Jul 25, 2025 Toni Williams
TEST TWO CITATION.
TEST TWO POST.
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Jul 25, 2025 Toni Williams
TEST ONE CITATION.
TEST ONE POST.
The post TEST ONE (AUTO-POSTER WITH NO FEATURED IMAGE). appeared first on Jotwell: Zeta-Section.
Jul 25, 2025 Ilya SominConstitutional Law
In the Insular Cases of the early twentieth century, the Supreme Court ruled that much of the Constitution does not apply to America’s “unincorporated” overseas territories, such as Puerto Rico and other territories acquired as a result of the Spanish-American War of 1898. Thus, the federal government could rule the people there without being constrained by a variety of constitutional rights. Only “fundamental” rights were held to constrain the federal government’s powers over the inhabitants of these territories, while other constitutional constraints on federal power did not apply. In a 2022 concurring opinion, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch urged the Court to overrule these decisions. Prominent originalist legal scholar Michael Ramsey’s important new article explains why Gorsuch was right.
Ramsey compellingly demonstrates that the Insular Cases were wrongly decided, at least from an originalist standpoint. And his argument has potential implications that go beyond the status of people living in “unincorporated” territories. There have been various previous critiques of the Insular Cases. But Ramsey’s is the first systematic scholarly dismantling undertaken from an originalist perspective. Continue reading "Originalism and the Insular Cases"
Jul 24, 2025 Susan Bandes
TEST CITATION.
TEST POST.
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Jul 24, 2025 Jack Beermann
TEST CITATION.
TEST POST.
The post TEST. appeared first on Jotwell: Zeta-Section.
