Law Commons^™

When Commanders Decide: Military Prosecutorial Decision-Making In Sexual Assault Cases, Chris Cox

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Congress enacted legislation that went into effect in 2023, which transferred prosecutorial decision-making for serious cases, including sexual assault, from Commanders to military lawyers. While there is some research on the military’s criminal justice system that supports shifting the decision-making to military lawyers, there is a large body of research that suggests lawyers, too, suffer from similar impediments when handling decision-making for sexual assault cases. In the wake of this new amendment, it is important to continue assessing how the change will impact case processing, by first clearly understanding what was happening when Commanders had complete authority. This article explores …

Theseus In The Labyrinth: How State Constitutions Can Slay The Procedural Minotaur, Marcus Alexander Gadson

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Civil procedure is one of the biggest hurdles to access to justice. An array of rules and interpretations of those rules have turned lawsuits into meandering mazes with a procedural minotaur waiting to gobble up meritorious claims. The problem is especially acute for the many Americans without abundant resources or access to a lawyer. Fortunately, there is a ready remedy, albeit one access to justice advocates have ignored: state constitutions. Forty state constitutions, which protect hundreds of millions of Americans, generally guarantee "[t]hat all courts shall be open, and every person, for an injury done him in his person, property …

Compelling Code, Nicole Ligon

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Does the First Amendment protect computer code from being compelled by the government? As society becomes more reliant on coded deviceslike pacemakers, insulin pumps, and even some baby bassinets-courts will need to grapple with this question. In considering compulsions related to code, this Article concludes that intermediate scrutiny is almost always the appropriate standard of review. Rather than expressing a particular viewpoint, code generally constitutes a functional and neutral script. Given that a machine's interpretation of code generally results in an objective action, not a subjective belief, the government need only show in most instances that the compulsion furthers a …

Bostock: A Clean Cut Into The Gordian Knot Of Causation, Melissa Essary

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Regardless of merit, most individual employment discrimination claims die a fast death at summary judgment. Judges apply the fine mesh net created by McDonnell Douglas v. Green, and most cases are caught in its trap. This dated, obfuscatory Supreme Court case creates a complex and flawed binary approach to causation: either discrimination or an innocent reason caused an adverse employment action. For decades, all three levels of the federal judiciary have wrestled with McDonnell Douglas, creating snarls and knots in construing causation. Because of this causal confusion, the ideal of equal opportunity in employment is on life-support.

Judges …

Censorship Of Sexual Assault Survivors In The Educational Context, Nicole Ligon

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No abstract provided.

Federal Pleadings Standards In State Court, Marcus Gadson

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Most state courts cannot follow both their state constitutions and federal pleading standards. Even if they could, policy considerations unique to states compel state courts to reject federal pleading standards. This is because federal courts have changed pleading standards to allow judges to make factual determinations on a motion to dismiss and to require more factual detail in complaints. While scholars have vigorously debated whether these changes are wise, just, and permissible under the federal rules and the Constitution, they have ignored the even more important questions of whether state courts can and should adopt those pleading standards. The oversight …

How Hard Is Soft Eu Company Law?, Raluca Papadima

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This article analyzes the soft law applicable to companies within the European Union (EU) in order to extract tendencies, including by comparing US and EU soft law instruments. It concludes that soft law is like wine: many enjoy it, and it gets better as it ages. Soft law is a very popular and successful girl nowadays, for legitimate reasons, but one that brings about a series of concerns as well. After an overview of the main soft law instruments related to corporate governance and financial markets, and their sources, this article extracts a number of trends.

State Constitutions And Summary Judgment, Marcus Gadson

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Is summary judgment constitutional? Scholars have passionately debated the question in recent years. But they have made an important oversight. State courts hear more than fifty times as many cases a year as federal courts do. Whatever state courts decide with regard to summary judgment will affect vastly more litigants than what federal courts do. At the same time, states have largely adopted federal summary judgment standards and cases interpreting them. Yet scholars considering whether summary judgment is constitutional have focused all of their attention on the Seventh Amendment. They have entirely failed to consider state constitutional jury trial guarantees. …

The Uncertain Fate Of Asymmetrical Dispute Resolution Clauses In Arbitration Around The Globe: To Be Or Not To Be, Raluca Papadima

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This article examines the validity and enforceability of asymmetrical dispute resolution clauses combining arbitration and litigation. Such clauses are currently favored by businesses in their search for a method of dispute resolution that provides a more favorable position for one of the parties to an agreement and ensures better enforcement against the assets of the counterparty.

Hitting The Trip-Wire: When Does A Company Become A “Marijuana Business”?, Lauren A. Newell

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Like the alcohol industry was during Prohibition, the marijuana industry is a profitable one. And, as bootlegging was then, selling marijuana in the United States is currently illegal. Despite the number of states that have legalized or decriminalized the sale of marijuana for medical or recreational use under state law, marijuana sales remain illegal as a matter of federal law under the federal Controlled Substances Act of1970 ("CSA "). Individuals and entities that violate the CSA face substantial criminal and civil liability, including prison time and fines, alongside a host of additional negative consequences arising from business, tax, bankruptcy, and …

"Assault Weapon" Lethality, E. Gregory Wallace

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No abstract provided.

Protecting Women's Voices: Preventing Retaliatory Defamation Claims In The #Metoo Context, Nicole Ligon

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No abstract provided.

Nine Questions For The Article 9 Professor, Timothy R. Zinnecker

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No abstract provided.

The University Of Bucharest Contributes To The Promotion Of Arbitration In Romania, Raluca Papadima, Maria Avram, Mihaela Gherghe

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No abstract provided.

High Crimes: Liability For Directors Of Retail Marijuana Corporations, Lauren Newell

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No abstract provided.

Differential Treatment Among Creditors Under India's Insolvency And Bankruptcy Code, 2016: Issues And Solutions, C. Scott Pryor, Risham Garg

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This paper represents the results of an examination of the implementation of India's Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC). This project included purposive sampling as well as interviews with resolution professionals, representatives of India's Insolvency Professional Agencies, and officials of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India. Analysis of this data identified three problems: 1. Vesting near-plenary control of the Corporate Resolution Insolvency Process (CIRP) with a Committee of Creditors made up of financial creditors has led to a perception of inequitable distributions between the classes of creditors. 2. The CIRP provisions of the IBC are inconsistent with public policy …

Victims Under Attack: North Carolina's Flawed Rule 609, Daniel R. Tilly

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Evidence law in North Carolina senselessly punishes victims of domestic and sexual violence by broadly sanctioning witness impeachment with prior convictions – no matter the implicit prejudice to the witness or how little the conviction bears on credibility. The North Carolina approach is an outlier. Under Rule 609 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, the use of conviction evidence for impeaching witness credibility is confined to felonies and crimes involving dishonest acts or false statements. Their use must also satisfy judicial balancing tests aimed at protecting against unfair prejudice to the witness. The majority of states take a similar or …

Rebooting Empathy For The Digital Generation Lawyer, Lauren A. Newell

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No abstract provided.

Who Tells Your Story: The Legality Of An Shift In Racial Preferences Within Casting Practices, Nicole Ligon

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No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property Channeling For Digital Works, Lucas S. Osborn

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Market economies are based on free competition, which can include copying. Yet intellectual property protection in the United States prohibits copying in certain circumstances to incentivize innovation and creativity. New breeds of digital works are challenging our historical application of intellectual property law. These include certain categories of software programs as well as digital manufacturing files. These new works look deceptively like works from a previous era and thus, courts might languorously treat them as they have older works. This would be a mistake. This Article analyzes these works in terms of existing intellectual property doctrine and constructs a normative …

"Assault Weapon" Myths, E. Gregory Wallace

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No abstract provided.

Adopted Statements In The Digital Age: Hearsay Responses To Social Media "Likes", Daniel R. Tilly

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Social media users collectively register billions of "likes" each and every day to the endless flow of content posted on social networking websites. What an individual user actually intends by the quick click of the "like" button may vary widely. Perhaps she is conveying acknowledgement but not agreement. Maybe he is expressing support but not acceptance. Within the social media context, short-form clicks register the same response. Yet they may be intended to convey sorrow, joy, support, agreement, acknowledgement, humor, or a multitude of other emotions. What a user actually intends by social media "likes" depends entirely on the person …

Nine Into Eleven: Accounting For Common Interest Communities In Bankruptcy, C. Scott Pryor

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Ever more Americans live in a common interest community such as a homeowners’ association or condominium. Common interest communities restrict the uses owners may make of their property but provide benefits to the owners. The community association pays for these benefits by levying assessments on the owners’ property. Common interest communities offer a wide variety of benefits that can be divided into two sorts: public and private. Local municipalities typically provide public benefits at taxpayer expense; private entities usually afford private benefits at the consumer’s expense.

Like both public and private entities, common interest communities can experience the problem of …

Murder For Life Insurance Money: Protecting The Children, Johnny C. Chriscoe

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Children are being murdered for life insurance proceeds.

Of course, if a beneficiary murders a child for the recovery of life insurance money and if he is apprehended, he will surely face numerous legal consequences. He will not recover the insurance money, he will be prosecuted and likely sentenced to life imprisonment or execution, he may be sued for the wrongful death of the child and he may be prosecuted for insurance fraud. However, all of these legal responses are triggered by the death of the child and, therefore, do not serve to protect the child from being murdered in …

The Limits Of Creativity In Copyright: Digital Manufacturing Files And Lockout Codes, Lucas S. Osborn

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As the distinction between the digital and physical worlds continues to diminish, the necessity to reevaluate the bargain struck by the copyright regime increases in importance. Digitization brings increasingly more aspects of our world into the potential ambit of the copyright system. To understand whether and how the copyright system should apply in an increasingly digital world, it is first necessary to understand doctrinally how current copyright laws apply to new digital works. This Article corrects several errors that have appeared in the literature analyzing copyright law's treatment of 3D printing and other digital manufacturing files. This Article incorporates an …

Do It In The Sunshine: A Comparative Analysis Of Rulemaking Procedures And Transparency Practices Of Lawyer-Licensing Entities, Bobbi Jo Boyd

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No abstract provided.

Trademarks And Digital Goods, Lucas S. Osborn, Mark P. Mckenna

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No abstract provided.

Trademark Boundaries And 3d Printing, Lucas S. Osborn

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No abstract provided.

Demystifying The Qualified Payment Right: Structuring And Administering A Sec. 2701-Compliant Entity, John F. Destefano

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No abstract provided.

Up In Smoke? Unintended Consequences Of Retail Marijuana Laws For Partnerships, Lauren A. Newell

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No abstract provided.