In 1992, when I started my doctorate research in the interdisciplinary field of Law and Literature, The Legal Imagination was one of the first books I read. To European eyes, it was a most unusual book since in continental legal theory in those days, the Anglo-analytical tradition was predominant, and French deconstruction had for some time been the up-and- coming stream. Fascinated as I became with Professor White’s works, I decided to try to get in contact with him in order to ask him about the genesis of his ideas.

James Boyd White is, above all, a teacher. Of course, that is in fact an inexact statement: Jim White is many things, some of them of greater or more central human importance—husband, father, friend, person of faith. But in this essay my concern is with Jim as an academic, and in that context I believe that the title teacher captures best his goals and his achievement.

As his many appreciative readers know, James Boyd White brought his learning to bear on the relation between ethical living and ethical speaking, and particularly as it pertains to how we live and speak in law. His prodigious writing, teaching, and speaking career, as far as I can tell, was motivated by a singular, passionate belief: that the human capacity for language can and should serve as a bridge from mind to mind and spirit to spirit, so that we might cohabit the earth not only peaceably, but with the pleasures and grace of each other’s company.

This Article develops a new understanding of equity-based compensation schemes, such as employee stock option plans. Current literature views such schemes as a measure aimed at motivating the recipient employees to work harder for the firm. Under that view, this method of remuneration either complements or substitutes for other measures used to monitor the performance of the recipient employees. In contrast, this Article proposes that recipient employees be viewed as potential monitors of other employees and that stock options (or similar types of compensation) motivate them to fulfill this task. This view has many applications and can shed light on persistent puzzles, including why there is sweeping use of stock ownership plans by many “new economy” firms.

This reply addresses the thoughtful comments that former OIRA Administrator Sally Katzen has provided on our Article, Inside the Administrative State: A Critical Look at the Practice of Presidential Control. Our Article is the first to investigate the agency perspective on White House involvement in agency rule-making. We interviewed 30 of the 35 top political officials in the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) during the George H.W. Bush (“Bush I”) and the William J. Clinton Administrations during 1989–2001. 

Patent infringement is a strict liability offense. Patent law gives patent owners not just the right to prevent others from copying their ideas, but the power to control the use of their idea—even by those who independently develop a technology with no knowledge of the patent or the patentee. This is a power that exists nowhere else in intellectual property (IP) or real property law, but it is a one that patentees have had, with rare exceptions, since the inception of the Republic. 

Cold medicine is not just for colds anymore. In the last decade, cold medicine has become the central ingredient in the domestic manufacture of methamphetamine, an extraordinarily dangerous drug that has exploded in popularity across the United States.  From its origins on the West Coast, methamphetamine has spread to the rest of the country, where users have started manufacturing the drug for themselves in makeshift laboratories. The manufacturing process utilizes a variety of ingredients, all of which are readily available at any local drug store or supermarket.  Chief among these ingredients is pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in many cold medicines. In response, retailers, state legislatures, and the federal government have imposed purchasing restrictions on cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine.