This paper analyzes the evolution of U.S. patent law between the first patent act in 1790 and 1870, the passage of the last major patent act of the nineteenth century. During most of the nineteenth century, patent law developed in the courts, and instrumental to this development were a...

The creation in 1982 of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit represents the first significant appellate consolidation of a particular area of law in American history. Evaluating the Federal Circuit experiment is highly important to understanding, and perhaps improving upon,...

The doctrine of equivalents (DOE) allows courts to expand the scope of patent rights granted by the Patent Office. The doctrine has been justified on fairness grounds, but it lacks a convincing economic justification. The standard economic justification holds that certain frictions block patent...

In Massachusetts v. EPA, 127 S.Ct. 1438 (2007), the Supreme Court weakened the rules governing standing and overturned an Environmental Protection Agency decision not to regulate mobile source emissions of greenhouse gases. This article, forthcoming in the Cato Supreme Court Review, critiques...

Designers of competitive electricity systems face numerous challenges regarding how to achieve efficient retail customer access, cost-containment, market power mitigation, and environmental goals. The ideal system would provide retail price and demand response, customer satisfaction, meet...

The legal regimes of offshore jurisdictions have historically differed in significant ways from those applicable in onshore jurisdictions. Inevitably, legal and financial professionals have seized upon these differences to develop strategies for reducing transactions costs. A prominent example...

The Cayman Islands are one of the world's leading offshore financial centers (OFCs). Their development from a barter economy in 1960 to a leading OFC for the location of hedge funds, captive insurance companies, yacht registrations, special purpose vehicles, and international banking today was...

Onshore jurisdictions, such as the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany, are critical of offshore financial centers (OFCs), such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and the Channel Islands. Arguments against OFCs include claims that their regulatory oversight is lax, allowing fraud and...

Iceland was the first developed economy to fall into crisis in 2008, with the collapse of its banking sector, currency value, and economy. The collapse threw Iceland into a political crisis and provoked a serious international dispute between Iceland and Britain and the Netherlands over...

Allegations by political leaders and others that offshore financial centers enable multinational enterprise to avoid paying a “fair” amount of tax — and that they enable wealthy individuals to evade paying any tax, much of it on ill gotten gains — are once again garnering headlines and...