Interlude: Context and Common Ground

An influential alternative account of context that likewise models context as a body of information that changes with an evolving discourse is Stalnakerian common ground model. On this model, however, the context is projected from a body of information mutually accepted by the interlocutors for the purposes of a conversation—a common ground. While the context constantly changes, these changes simply reflect the agents’ rational and cooperative response to manifest evidence. Might one attempt to assimilate the kinds of effects on prominence simply to such rational responses to manifest evidence? Might we then do without the rich discourse structure posited in this chapter? It is argued here that this account would be empirically inadequate, failing to capture the special status linguistic conventions have when weighed against our overall evidence.

International cooperation during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper explores the concept of ‘global public goods’ (GPGs) in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It argues that many of the tasks involved in public health, and in particular those involved in the control of an infectious disease like COVID-19, ought to be treated as GPGs that can only be effectively delivered through international cooperation. It sets out what a cooperative response to the COVID-19 pandemic should look like and introduces ideas for further discussion about how it might be financed.

A Cooperative Federalism Approach to Shareholder Arbitration

128 Yale Law Journal Forum 169 (2018).Arbitration dominates private law across an ever-expanding range of fields. Its latest target, however, may not be a new field as much as a new form: mandatory arbitration provisions built into corporate charters and bylaws. Recent developments in corporate law coupled with signals from the Securities and Exchange Commission suggest that regulators may be newly receptive to shareholder arbitration. What they do next may have dramatic consequences for whether and how corporate and securities laws are enforced.The debate about the merits of arbitration is well worn, but its application to shareholder claims opens the door to a different set of responses. In particular, the overlapping authority of federal and state actors with respect to corporate law calls for approaches that sound in cooperative federalism. Yet cooperative-federalist approaches have been absent from recent debates about shareholder arbitration. This Essay explains why cooperative federalism is a natural fit for addressing these issues. Moreover, we marshal specific examples of cooperative solutions in this area that could help frame federal-state coordination going forward. Such a cooperative response would avoid unnecessary federal-state conflict and allow policymakers to approach shareholder arbitration with expertise, accountability, and mutual respect.