The past few decades have witnessed the growth of an exciting debate in the legal academy about the tensions between economic pressures to commodify and philosophical commitments to the market inalienability of certain items. Sex, organs, babies and college athletics are among the many topics...

On June 11, 2017, Puerto Rico held a referendum on its legal status. Although turnout was low, 97% of ballots favored statehood over independence or the status quo. The federal government, however, has financial and political reasons to resist this preference: Puerto Rico would bring with it a...

Can popular sovereignty and sovereign territory co-exist? Can we imagine a world in which sovereignty territory could, like property, be traded among countries while still respecting people's interest in self-determination? What if countries' right to territorial integrity were predicated on a...

A body of empirical research in finance has attempted to assess whether stocks associated with sinful behavior (companies selling alcohol, tobacco, gambling activities, etc.) suffer from a market penalty. This question has been less studied in the sovereign bond market, but there is some...

The past few decades have witnessed the growth of an exciting debate in the legal academy over the tensions between norms and philosophical commitments to the market inalienability of certain items on the one hand and to economic pressures to commodify on the other. Sex, organs, babies and...

The ongoing European crisis has raised uncomfortable questions about the conditions under which treaty-based unions of nations like the EU or the EMU can legally expel a member — Greece being the most obvious candidate. The EU, for example, has rules governing the voluntary withdrawal of...

In 1898, in the wake of the Spanish-American war, Spain ceded the colony of Cuba to the United States. In keeping with the law of state succession, the Spanish demanded that the U.S. also take on Spanish debts that had been backed by Cuban revenues. The Americans refused, arguing that some of...

Sovereign territory was bought and sold throughout much of American history, and there are good reasons to think that an interstate market for borders could help solve many contemporary economic and political problems. But no such market currently exists. Why not? And could an interstate market...

Government regulates guns, it is widely assumed, because of the death and injuries guns can inflict. This standard account is radically incomplete—and in ways that dramatically skew constitutional analysis of gun rights. As we show in an account of the armed protesters who invaded the Michigan...

In the summer of 2004, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. announced plans to demolish the all-but-derelict New Haven Coliseum and replace it with a publicly financed redevelopment that would include a 300-room hotel. Critics of the plan immediately objected that the hotel - even if it were...