The business pages regularly provide graphic stories about corporate deferred prosecution agreements (“DPAs”). And commentators regularly fulminate about this alleged abuse of government power, quite confident (or willfully blind to the fact) that the removal of this non-nuclear option from the prosecutorial arsenal would substantially lessen the ability of prosecutors to obtain cooperation from firms and their employees. Yet this emerging practice has received all too little scholarly attention, and Professor Brandon Garrett has made an important contribution by carefully examining the available facts and creatively drawing on the structure reform literature to highlight questions it raises about legitimacy and institutional competence.
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Revisiting the Taxation of Punitive Damages
IN our recent article, Taxing Punitive Damages, we argued (i) that plaintiffs in punitive damages cases should be allowed to introduce to the jury evidence regarding the deductibility of those damages by defendants, and (ii) that this jury tax-awareness approach is better than the Obama Administration’s suggested alternative of disallowing those deductions. To our delight, Professor Larry Zelenak and Paul Mogin have each provided comments to our piece. Professor Zelenak’s thoughtful response focuses on our prescriptive claim that jury tax-awareness is better than nondeductibility while Mr. Mogin disputes our doctrinal claim that the tax evidence is admissible.4 We thank them for their contributions and provide our replies below.
What Kind of Right is “the Right to Vote”?
The right to vote is a deceptively complex legal and moral right. Perhaps because the right is considered a “fundamental” constitutional right, or the foundational right of democratic self-governance, or the right “preservative of all [other] rights,” it is tempting to assume the right to vote has an essential core concept that is relatively obvious and widely shared. Undoubtedly there will be disagreements about specific applications—is felony conviction a justifiable basis, for example, for concluding that a citizen has lost the right to vote—but all rights generate some range of disagreement in application. Such disagreements do not undermine shared agreement on the core interests the right protects.