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The Center for Law, Society, and Culture (http://www.law.indiana.edu/centers/lawsociety/) is sponsored by the Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington. The Center actively supports and promotes multidisciplinary understanding of law and legal problems through scholarship, teaching, and discussion. The Center is located in the School of Law on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University, but produces, presents and coordinates research conducted by more than 70 scholars from schools and departments across Indiana University. The Center's affiliated scholars hold appointments in African-American studies, business, criminal justice, journalism, history, economics, English, law, and gender studies, among others, and are dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the role of law in society and culture. The Center supports research related to the law in a broad sense, including the cultural aspects of law expressed through political theory and scientific aspects of law expressed through technological advances in biotechnology, environmental science and information technology.


Table of Contents

Economic Evaluation of Legal Protection of Virtual Items on Online Platforms - The Case of MMORPGs

Florian W. Bartholomae, University of the German Federal Armed Forces - Munich
Pamela Koch, University of the German Federal Armed Forces - Munich

In Family Law, Love's Got a Lot to Do with It: A Response to Phillip Shaver

Terry A. Maroney, Vanderbilt University - School of Law

Plus at Pretext: Resolving the Split Regarding the Sufficiency of Temporal Proximity Evidence in Title VII Retaliation Cases

Troy B. Daniels, Northern Kentucky University - Salmon P. Chase College of Law
Richard A. Bales, Northern Kentucky University - Salmon P. Chase College of Law

LAW & SOCIETY: PRIVATE LAW ABSTRACTS
Sponsored by: Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

"Economic Evaluation of Legal Protection of Virtual Items on Online Platforms - The Case of MMORPGs" 

FLORIAN W. BARTHOLOMAE, University of the German Federal Armed Forces - Munich
Email:
PAMELA KOCH, University of the German Federal Armed Forces - Munich
Email:

The recent growth of Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft has given rise to many economic as well as legal questions. The assignment of (intellectual) property rights to the licensee as well as to players is an important issue, legal discussion has to address.

In MMORPGs players experience the provided virtual realities through an avatar. This character can be customized under certain restrictions before playing, e.g. his appearance, race, gender as well as during the game, e.g. by equipment of armors or weapons. These virtual objects as well as the game currency have to be gathered by killing monsters or trading with other players. Despite converse Terms of Service players and newly founded enterprises sell their avatars and virtual items for real money. Hence, Real Money Trading (RMT) has become an important topic (not only) in the German law debates. It has to be clarified, whether customization of those avatars and items means that they also become the players (intellectual) property.

In our paper we consider an interdisciplinary approach. We examine the adaptability of German Law and show which legal problems will arise. On the other side RMT creates some economic problems as well, e.g. with respect to issues concerning the involved parties. We develop a pricing model which assigns different property rights to the players and the licensee according to the players' preferences to solve the arising legal as well as economic problems.

"In Family Law, Love's Got a Lot to Do with It: A Response to Phillip Shaver" Free Download
Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, Forthcoming

TERRY A. MARONEY, Vanderbilt University - School of Law
Email:

In a contribution to this Symposium on Law and Emotion: Re-Envisioning Family Law, Phillip Shaver and his co-authors succinctly encapsulate contemporary psychological theory on interpersonal attachment -- primarily parent-child attachment and its role in creating lifelong attachment patterns -- and seek to outline the relevance of such research for both social policy and law.

This Comment demonstrates that many areas of family law already seek to cultivate and reward attachment. But attachment is not and cannot be the sole-or even, perhaps, the most important-factor driving most legal determinations. Recognizing the importance of secure attachment does not answer difficult questions about how best to achieve it, particularly within the context of competing claims. In fact, taking an attachment perspective in isolation might lead to normatively bad outcomes. However, there are instances in which an attachment focus should be legally determinative, for it may sometimes illuminate outcomes that are all upside and no down. The Comment concludes by offering some thoughts about law-relevant social policy implications.

"Plus at Pretext: Resolving the Split Regarding the Sufficiency of Temporal Proximity Evidence in Title VII Retaliation Cases" Free Download
Gonzaga Law Review, Vol. 44, No. 3, 2009

TROY B. DANIELS, Northern Kentucky University - Salmon P. Chase College of Law
Email:
RICHARD A. BALES, Northern Kentucky University - Salmon P. Chase College of Law
Email:

Courts in Title VII retaliation cases disagree over the evidentiary value of temporal proximity evidence when an employer fires an employee weeks or a few months after the employee engaged in protected activity. Seven circuits have adopted the Temporal Proximity Alone approach, which views temporal proximity evidence as sufficient, standing alone, to establish the causal connection element of a plaintiff's prima facie case. Three circuits have adopted the Temporal Proximity Plus approach, which requires that temporal proximity be combined with other evidence before it can establish the causal connection element. The Supreme Court has acknowledged the split of authority but has not yet granted certiorari.

This article argues that courts should require Temporal Proximity Alone at the prima facie case stage of the analysis, but require Temporal Proximity Plus at the pretext stage, an approach we call the Plus at Pretext approach. This novel approach maintains a relatively light burden on discrimination plaintiffs at the prima facie case stage of proof, but compensates by imposing a heavier burden at the pretext stage. It is both the best policy approach and it neatly reconciles existing case law.

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Solicitation of Abstracts

LAW & SOCIETY: PRIVATE LAW, edited by Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, is dedicated to the distribution of empirical or theoretical scholarship on private law topics from any disciplinary perspective. For the purposes of this journal, private law topics are those that relate to the law that governs relationships between individuals or between individuals and other private entities. A non-exhaustive list of private law subjects includes the law of contracts, torts, obligations, family law, labor and employment law, antitrust or trusts and estates.

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Advisory Board

Law & Society: Private Law

ALFRED C. AMAN
Director, Center for Advanced Studies, Roscoe C. O'Byrne Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, Dean Alfred C. Aman, Jr., Suffolk University Law School

JEANNINE BELL
Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

PETER CARSTENSEN
George H. Young-Bascom Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School

KENNETH GLENN DAU-SCHMIDT
Co-Director, Center for Law, Society and Culture, Willard and Margaret Carr Professor of Labor and Employment Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

LAUREN B. EDELMAN
Director, Center for the Study of Law and Society, Agnes Roddy Robb Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley - Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program and Center for the Study of Law and Society

HOWARD S. ERLANGER
Voss-Bascom Professor of Law, Professor of Sociology, President, Law and Society Association, Review Section Editor - Law & Social Inquiry, Director - Institute for Legal Studies, University of Wisconsin Law School

LUIS E. FUENTES-ROHWER
Associate Professor of Law, Adjunct Professor of Latino Studies, Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

MARC GALANTER
John & Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison

MICHAEL GROSSBERG
Co-Director, Center for Law, Society and Culture, Professor of History & Law, Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

WILLIAM D. HENDERSON
Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

ANNA-MARIA MARSHALL
Editorial Advisory Board, Law and Society Review, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Department of Sociology

LYNN MATHER
Director - The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy; Professor of Law and Political Science, University at Buffalo Law School, SUNY

SALLY ENGLE MERRY
Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas, Wellesley College - Department of Anthropology

JOYCE STERLING
Professor of Law, University of Denver - Sturm College of Law

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