Law Commons^™

Forming A More Perfect Honor System: Why The Trend Of Over-Legalizing Academic Honor Codes Must Be Reversed, Christopher M. Hartley

Catholic University Law Review

Legal processes dominate many honor systems at schools and universities. The negative impacts of this legal saturation include time-consuming, overly burdensome, and seldom understood honor systems as well as a shift of student focus from compliance with honor codes to a fixation on exoneration, given the increased opportunity for fighting and defeating honor allegations using legal recourses. This article is a clarion call for higher education immediate action: schools must scrutinize their honor systems to ensure they are legally efficient, not legally saturated. Authors of books and law journal articles have meticulously reviewed the academic honor system history and legal …

(Anti)-Slapp Happy In Federal Court?: The Applicability Of State Anti-Slapp Statutes In Federal Court And The Need For Federal Protection Against Slapps, Caitlin Daday

Catholic University Law Review

In recent years, lawsuits known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs, have become increasingly common. These suits seek to intimidate and punish people for exercising their First Amendment rights. In response to SLAPPs, over half of the states have enacted anti-SLAPP statutes to protect the targets of SLAPPs. They do so by providing a mechanism for the target to dismiss the lawsuit more quickly than they would normally be able to. In federal courts, the question has arisen as to whether anti-SLAPP statutes should be applied in diversity suits given their close alignment to Federal Rules 8, 12, …

The Essentially-At-Home Requirement For General Jurisdiction: Some Embarrassing Cases, David Crump

Catholic University Law Review

In Daimler AG v. Baumann, the Supreme Court held that general jurisdiction does not exist unless the defendant is “essentially at home” in the forum. It offered two examples of places fitting this description but gave little further guidance or justification. A metaphor, such as essentially at home, is a bad way to express a legal standards, because the essence of a metaphor is that it substitutes one reality for another, creating a deliberate confusion. The Court also equated general jurisdiction with what it called all-purpose jurisdiction, which is wrong because it is easy to pose cases in which general …

The Federal Rule Of Civil Procedure 37(E) And Achieving Uniformity Of Case Law On Sanctions For Esi Spoliation: Focusing On The “Intent To Deprive” Culpability Under Rule 37(E)(2), Jung Won Jun, Rockyoun Ihm

Catholic University Law Review

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e) was adopted in 2015 primarily to resolve the circuit split and promote uniformity of case law on ESI (electronically stored information) spoliation sanctions. This Article examines relevant case law under the new Rule 37(e) and finds that courts have treated similar spoliation conduct differently due to the lack of a clear standard for finding the spoliator's intent to deprive another party of the use of the destroyed ESI at issue. This inconsistency has been exacerbated by the courts’ inconsistent reliance on their inherent authority to sanction based on bad faith analyses. Therefore, this Article …

The Attorney-Client Privilege And Former Employees, Douglas R. Richmond

Catholic University Law Review

Attorney-client relationships are infused with confidentiality, and the attorney-client privilege is critical to the protection of sensitive and important communications between clients and their lawyers. Organizational clients, like individuals, are entitled to assert the attorney-client privilege concerning communications that fall within its scope.

In the organizational context, a common problem is determining who among the entity’s employees speaks on its behalf, such that communications between the entity’s lawyers and those employees may be protected against discovery by the organization’s adversaries and other third parties. And, of course, as organizations experience the inevitable turnover in their workforces, another issue surfaces: when, …