Taboo Trades

In this episode, I – together with UVA Law 3Ls Ryan Fitzgerald and Mary Talkington -- interview Jonathan Peterson, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola New Orleans, about commodification and privatization in prisons. The paper we’re discussing is forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook on Commodification, edited by Elodie Bertrand and Vida Panitch. 

Jonathan’s research specializations are in philosophy of law and political philosophy. His current research focuses on political authority, social justice, criminal law, and punishment. 

Jonathan Peterson's webpage at Loyola New Orleans: http://cas.loyno.edu/philosophy/bios/jonathan-peterson 

In this episode, UVA Law 3L Marley Peters and I continue our discussion with Brittany Farr, Assistant Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. We’re discussing her article, Breach By Violence, which is forthcoming in the UCLA Law Review. It analyzes the use of private law by sharecroppers and tenant farmers in the Jim Crow South to address violent breaches of contract by landlords. To hear the full interview, make sure to also listen to the prior episode, Episode 3. 

Farr is a scholar of private law and race. With more than a decade of interdisciplinary training, her research draws on history, legal theory, and cultural studies to theorize how marginalized populations have availed themselves of otherwise inhospitable legal regimes. In particular, her research focuses on enslaved and free African Americans’ use of contract law during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and interrogates the ways in which contract law mediated African Americans’ relationship to bodily autonomy, economic freedom, and legal agency both during and after slavery. 

Brittany Farr NYU Homepage: https://its.law.nyu.edu/facultyprofiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=profile.overview&personid=57053

Interview with Samuel James (S. J.) and Leonia Farrar, May 28, 2003.
Interview K-0652. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007). https://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/playback.html?base_file=K-0652&duration=01:29:20

Oral history with 84 year old black female, Joiner, Arkansas https://www.loc.gov/item/afccal000030

In this episode, UVA Law 3L Marley Peters and I interview Brittany Farr, Assistant Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. Farr is a scholar of private law and race. With more than a decade of interdisciplinary training, her research draws on history, legal theory, and cultural studies to theorize how marginalized populations have availed themselves of otherwise inhospitable legal regimes. In particular, her research focuses on enslaved and free African Americans’ use of contract law during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and interrogates the ways in which contract law mediated African Americans’ relationship to bodily autonomy, economic freedom, and legal agency both during and after slavery. 

We’re discussing her article, Breach By Violence, forthcoming in the UCLA Law Review, which analyzes the use of private law by sharecroppers and tenant farmers in the Jim Crow South to address violent breaches of contract by landlords. 

Brittany Farr NYU Homepage: https://its.law.nyu.edu/facultyprofiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=profile.overview&personid=57053

Interview with Samuel James (S. J.) and Leonia Farrar, May 28, 2003.
Interview K-0652. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007). https://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/playback.html?base_file=K-0652&duration=01:29:20

Oral history with 84 year old black female, Joiner, Arkansas https://www.loc.gov/item/afccal000030

In this episode, we continue our discussion with Nathan B. Oman, the W. Taylor Reveley III Research Professor and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Markets at William & Mary School of Law. Nate specializes in Contract Law, the Economic Analysis of Law, Jurisprudence, Law and Religion, and Legal History. Today, we’re discussing his 2009 article, Specific Performance and the Thirteenth Amendment, published in the Minnesota Law Review. 

As I mentioned in episode 1, the article first came to my attention this summer, when the internet erupted with suggestions that the specific performance clause in the Elon Musk (more precisely, X Holdings) merger agreement with Twitter wasn’t enforceable because of the 13th Amendment. As you heard in our last episode, Nate strongly disagrees with that take. 

 I’ve split my discussion with Nate into two parts. In Episode 1, largely driven by questions from UVA Law 3Ls Bridget Boyd and Jenn Scoler, we discussed the Musk-Twitter litigation and the various provisions of the merger agreement, including the specific performance provision and the termination fee. In this episode, we delve more deeply into Nate’s analysis of the scope of the 13th amendment’s prohibition against indentured servitude and its relation to the specific performance of personal service contracts. As always, we spend some time on examples from the world of sports . . . because hey, we’re in Virginia. 

Links:

Nathan B. Oman faculty bio https://law2.wm.edu/faculty/bios/fulltime/nboman.php 

Nathan B. Oman, Specific Performance and the Thirteenth Amendment, 93 MINN. L. REV. 2020 (2009). https://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Oman_MLR.pdf

Amendment and Plan of Merger by and among X Holdings I, Inc., X Holdings II, Inc. and Twitter, Inc. dated as of April 25, 2022 https://kimberlydkrawiec.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Musk-Twitter-Agreement.pdf

In this episode, UVA Law 3Ls Bridget Boyd and Jenn Scoler join me to interview Nathan B. Oman, the W. Taylor Reveley III Research Professor and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Markets at William & Mary School of Law. Nate specializes in Contract Law, the Economic Analysis of Law, Jurisprudence, Law and Religion, and Legal History. Today, we’re discussing his 2009 article, Specific Performance and the Thirteenth Amendment, published in the Minnesota Law Review. 

The article first came to my attention this summer, when the internet erupted with suggestions that the specific performance clause in the Elon Musk (more precisely, X Holdings) merger agreement with Twitter wasn’t enforceable because of the 13thAmendment. As you’ll hear in this episode, Nate is having none of that.  

I’ve split my discussion with Nate into two parts. In this Part, largely driven by questions from Bridget and Jenn, we discuss the Musk-Twitter litigation and the various provisions of the merger agreement, including the specific performance provision and the termination fee. If you’re covering that litigation in class this year, in my completely and wholly unbiased view , the episode makes a really nice introduction for students to some of the issues.  

Links:

Nathan B. Oman faculty bio https://law2.wm.edu/faculty/bios/fulltime/nboman.php

Nathan B. Oman, Specific Performance and the Thirteenth Amendment, 93 MINN. L. REV. 2020 (2009). https://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Oman_MLR.pdf

Amendment and Plan of Merger by and among X Holdings I, Inc., X Holdings II, Inc. and Twitter, Inc. dated as of April 25, 2022 https://kimberlydkrawiec.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Musk-Twitter-Agreement.pdf

Welcome to Season 3! Hear more about this year's topics and guests and listen to UVA Law students introduce themselves and talk about why they're taking time out of their busy law school schedules to produce this podcast with me. 

This year's co-hosts are: Bryan Blaylock, Bridget Boyd, Makenna Cherry, Reider Compasano, Ryan Fitzgerald, Rahima Ghafoori, Caroline Gozigian, Marley Peters, Meghana Puchalapalli, Jennifer Scoler, and Mary Talkington

Frank McCormick is an economist and the author of numerous articles focused on the shortage of kidneys for transplantation. He is retired from the Bank of America where he was Vice-president and Director of U.S. Economic and Financial Research. Today, we’re discussing his recent article, Projecting the Economic Impact of Compensating Living Kidney Donors in the United States: Cost-Benefit Analysis Demonstrates Substantial Patient and Societal Gains, co-authored with Philip J. Held, Glenn Chertow, Thomas G. Peters, and John P. Roberts. It is published in the journal, Value in Health and is available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109830152201957X/

Brian Frye and I engage in academic navel gazing, discuss scholarly shit posting, and argue about the virtues of plagiarism. A fun time was had!

My guest today is one of the most unusual and creative voices in the legal academy, Brian Frye, the Spears-Gilbert Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky. He teaches classes in civil procedure, intellectual property, copyright, and nonprofit organizations, as well as a seminar on law and popular culture. Today we’re engaging in academic navel gazing and opining on plagiarism, law review publishing, and plagiarism.

Brian is also a filmmaker. He produced the documentary Our Nixon (2013), which was broadcast by CNN and opened theatrically nationwide. His short films and videos have shown in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, the New York Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival, among other venues, and are in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. His critical writing on film and art has appeared in October, The New Republic, Film Comment, Cineaste, Senses of Cinema, and Incite! among other journals.

Additionally, Professor Frye also produces a podcast that I highly recommend, Ipse Dixit https://shows.pippa.io/ipse-dixit

My UVA colleague, Gregg Strauss, and I interview Sean Williams, of the University of Texas School of Law about his new paper "Sacred Children and Taboo Trade Offs"

Welcome to the first bonus episode of the Taboo Trades podcast! As regular listeners know, I’ve sadly had to say goodbye to the amazing group of students who were my co-hosts for Season 2. But I decided to do a couple of bonus episodes this summer, and this is the first, featuring Sean Williams of the University of Texas School of Law. I also have a very special co-host, one of my favorite colleagues at UVA Law, Gregg Strauss. 

Sean Williams studies decision making dynamics in a wide variety of areas including marriage markets, parental investments in child safety, jury damage awards, and consumer contracts. He writes widely on Family Law, Tort Theory, and Behavioral Law and Economics. Today we’re discussing his new working paper, “Sacred Children and Taboo Tradeoffs,” which is downloadable from SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4163131 

Gregg Strauss is with me at the University of Virginia school of law. He is both a lawyer and a philosopher, and studies the limits of legitimate law in situations of fundamental disagreement, with an emphasis on familial relationships.