The Law Market
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...
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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.The Law Market is a wide-ranging and novel analysis for all lawyers, policymakers, legislators, and businesses who need to understand the changing role of law in an increasingly mobile world.
1 Introduction: Shopping for Law in a Shrinking World 32 Policy Arguments 193 Choice-of-Law Principles 374 The Creation of a Law Market 655 Arbitration and the Law Market 856 The Corporate Law Market 1077 Consumer Contracts 1338 Marriage and Other Social Issues 1619 Property 18310 A Federal Choice-of-Law Statute 19911 Summary and Implications 217Index 271
