As China reformed its economy during the past 44 years, it experienced the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history, with an annual rate of GDP growth averaging nearly 10% from 1978 to 2018. In the past decade, however, the rate of growth has noticeably slowed, falling to just under 7% on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2018. Though GDP growth over 6% might be considered admirable in many nations, in China it has sparked a debate about the causes of the slowdown. One suspect is China’s 2008 Labor Contract Law (LCL), which provides workers with certain rights against firings and other adverse employment actions. Critics of the law claim its provisions threaten to stifle the Chinese economy by unduly restricting employers’ ability to terminate unproductive workers and adjust their workforce to changing economic conditions. In the past, the Chinese government strongly supported the LCL. The issue for the present is whether that support should continue. This article provides the first detailed comparative study of the LCL and reveals that Chinese law imposes constraints no more restrictive than the average among OECD countries. The article also challenges the contention that provisions of the LCL have caused slower growth and adversely affected Chinese labor markets. Theoretical models generate only ambiguous and inconsistent predictions concerning the effects of employment protections on labor market performance. And the available empirical evidence likewise fails to show any consistent pattern of adverse effects associated with employment protection laws. We argue that this economic literature casts considerable doubt on the causal claim that Chinese labor law has reduced the country’s growth rate or depressed employment. Limited coverage and under-enforcement further diminish the likelihood that China’s labor regulations have harmed the economy. Thus, the Chinese government should look skeptically on claims that reducing the employment protections in the LCL will reignite economic growth.
This Article details the legal, cultural, and political history of the right to arms in Colorado in the nineteenth century. The Article pays particular attention to the period between 1858, when mass white settlement began with the gold rush, and 1876, when Colorado achieved statehood. When Colorado became the thirty-eighth state, Coloradans chose to adopt a constitution whose right to arms guarantee was stronger than any other state. The choice stemmed in part from pre-statehood conditions, when the settlers had to rely on their own resources for defense against a myriad of dangers. Right from the start, Coloradans established a vigorous and enduring tradition of self-government and self-defense. In the Colorado view, the right to arms is an inherent, inalienable human right, which is protected by legitimate governments, but not created by government. Accordingly, the Article extensively describes the exercise of the right to arms by Colorado Indians. Not only were their rights guaranteed by the 1876 constitution, they had vigorously exercised their natural right to arms since long before the constitution was adopted.
Climate change has significant consequences for land conservation. Government agencies and nonprofit land trusts heavily rely on perpetual conservation easements. However, climate change and other dynamic landscape changes raise questions about the effectiveness and adaptability of permanent conservation instruments like conservation easements. Building upon a study of 269 conservation easements and interviews with seventy conservation-easement professionals in six different states, we examine the adaptability of conservation easements to climate change. We outline four potential approaches to enhance conservation outcomes under climate change: (1) shift land-acquisition priorities to account for potential climate change impacts; (2) consider conservation tools other than perpetual conservation easements; (3) ensure that the terms of conservation easements permit the holder to adapt to climate change successfully; and (4) provide for more active stewardship of conservation lands. There is still a good deal of uncertainty as to the legal fate of a conservation easement that no longer meets its original purposes. Many state laws provide that conservation easements can be modified or terminated in the same manner as traditional easements. Yet conservation easements are in many ways unlike other easements. The beneficiary is usually the public, not merely a neighboring landowner, and the holder is always a nonprofit conservation organization or a government agency. Thus, there is a case to be made for adaptive protection. An overly narrow focus on perpetual property rights could actually thwart efforts to meet adaptation needs over the long term. We call for careful attention to ensuring conservation outcomes in dynamic landscapes over time.
We have known for quite some time that disadvantaged individuals suffer from poorer health outcomes and lower life spans than the advantaged. The disadvantaged do not perform as well on educational tests than their wealthier peers. In some situations, racial discrimination intersects with poverty to worsen these outcomes for minorities. With the notion that poverty becomes implanted in an individual’s genes and brain, science helps explain how these disparate lifespans and variations in cognitive outcomes come to be. This Article collectively refers to these scientific theories as embodied inequality. Embodied inequality explains why it is so difficult for individuals to escape the effects of socioeconomic disadvantage. Rhetorically, embodied inequality challenges traditional narratives that assume that individual genes and individual behavioral choices are the primary causal agents for social outcomes. Individual action plays a role, but biologists and brain scientists now understand that the environment, along with one’s genes, pulls many of the strings toward particular social outcomes. While social-policy theorists have long advocated for government intervention to create a more robust social safety net and a more nurturing society, this Article is the first to apply these emerging scientific theories to these legal and policy issues.
The future of intellectual property is in trade secrets. Changes to patent law make obtaining a patent more costly in some cases and impossible in others. The relentless spread of networked computing, with its inevitable vulnerabilities, and digital data make non-legal means of maintaining secrecy increasingly unreliable. Innovators will be forced to turn to trade secrets. This newfound prominence for trade secrecy will generate tensions with freedom of speech protections, federalism, and the balance between civil and criminal enforcement. The Article, part of a symposium on the Future World IP by the Denver Law Review, closes with a set of testable empirical predictions to evaluate its claims.
