Litigation

Jurisdictional Competition

By Francis G. X. Pileggi, Esq.

Professors Larry Ribstein and Erin O'Hara have published a book called: The Law Market   that addresses the topic of jurisdictional competition. Professor Ribstein has written extensively on the topic of competition among the states to attract corporations as their domicile for incorporation purposes, and related topics. Coincidentally, Professor Mark Roe also recently published his scholarship on a related issue that we highlighted here.

The description of The Law Market provided by the authors, follows:

Today, a California resident can incorporate her shipping business in Delaware, register her ships in Panama, hire her employees from Hong Kong, place her earnings in an asset-protection trust formed in the Cayman Islands, and enter into a same-sex marriage in Massachusetts or Canada--all the while enjoying the California sunshine and potentially avoiding many facets of the state's laws.
In this book, Erin O'Hara and Larry E. Ribstein explore a new perspective on law, viewing it as a product for which people and firms can shop, regardless of geographic borders. The authors consider the structure and operation of the market this creates, the economic, legal, and political forces influencing it, and the arguments for and against a robust market for law. Through jurisdictional competition, law markets promise to improve our laws and, by establishing certainty, streamline the operation of the legal system. But the law market also limits governments' ability to enforce regulations and protect citizens from harmful activities. Given this tradeoff, O'Hara and Ribstein argue that simple contractual choice-of-law rules can help maximize the benefits of the law market while tempering its social costs. They extend their insights to a wide variety of legal problems, including corporate governance, securities, franchise, trust, property, marriage, living will, surrogacy, and general contract regulations.

Full post as published by Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog on January 18, 2009 (boomark / email).