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A producer pays commodity taxes on sold goods, realizing only later that the tax was unlawful. Yet, his claim for refund is denied. Tax authorities in the U.S. and elsewhere use the "passing on defense" to deny refunds of unlawfully levied taxes. The defense states that some or all of the unlawful tax the producer paid was passed on to consumers through the price of goods, and thus the producer would be enriched if refunded fully. The passing on defense is largely perceived in legal scholarship as a choice between unjustly enriching the producer by a full refund and unjustly enriching government by denying it. A balance is thus called for, e.g., by applying equity considerations. This paper shows that a full refund of overpaid taxes never enriches the producer-taxpayer. Since the defense does not serve to prevent producers' enrichment, it should be rejected. Further, the paper demonstrates that, in fact, the passing on defense generates an additional implicit tax in the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the legal doctrine of market share liability from an economic perspective. It explains the underlying economic, or quasi-economic, basis for the doctrine: to obtain appropriate cost internalization of harm-causing behavior where it is not possible to identify which of many producers of identical harm-causing products harmed any single victim. The paper discusses the recent extension of the concept in the lead paint litigation in the U.S. in both products liability and public nuisance cases. The article discusses the very particular requirements necessary for the doctrine to appropriately internalize costs. It also discusses the implications of the passage of time as between manufacture and harm for the application of the doctrine and addresses the view that market share liability can effectively provide a form of insurance for loss. The article shows that application of the doctrine of market share liability serves in many contexts--including with respect to lead paint--chiefly as a form of taxation, which cannot generally be defended on social welfare grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the price-fixing and the violation of per se rule of the U.S. with reference to the trials of Appalachian Coals v. United States, U.S. v. Socony-Vacuum Oil and Arizona v. Maricopa County Medical Society. It further focuses on the decisions by the district and the U.S. Supreme court. It discusses price-fixing agreements and the legal analysis on economy of scale. It concludes by stating that Appalachian Coals was not a price-fixing case.

The article presents information on the development of the U.S. patent law with reference to the patent acts in 1790 and 1865 and the role of interest groups and the U.S. Congress in this issue. It discusses the public choice theory and role of federal courts in patent law. It further conducts an analysis based on the utilitarian view and natural law for innovations and inventors and infringing the rights of users of technology. It also discusses the need of patent law reform.

This research considers the citations to Supreme Court opinions issued over a ten year period of the Rehnquist Court. It traces the citations to those opinions received over the ten years following their issuance, broken down into total citations, significant positive citations, and negative citations. Nearly all categories of citations were positively associated, suggesting that certain features influence all types of citations at all court levels, though Supreme Court negative citations appeared to diminish the overall influence of opinions. The type of case was an important determinant of the citations received, especially by lower courts, where civil rights and other types of decisions received more citation. The vote margin in the case was not a significant predictor of citations, but conservative opinions consistently received more citations than liberal opinions, during this era. Opinion author proved significant, and the most dramatic findings were the much higher citation rates associated with Justice Scalia's opinions for the Court, including negative citations. This finding survived controls for case type and ideological direction and suggests that some feature of Scalia's opinions makes them especially powerful precedents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost all cases reach the U.S. Supreme Court's merits docket through discretionary grants of writs of certiorari. On rare occasions, the Court will dismiss a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted, or DIG the case. The DIG process has received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature. This article fills that gap in several ways. First, it documents and analyses the 155 cases the Court DIGged in the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts (1954 through 2004 Terms). Second, the article examines how the Court's decision to DIG a case relates to a number of legal and extralegal factors. Finally, it considers whether DIGs should be conceptualized as, or are sometimes examples of, sophisticated strategic behavior by the Justices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]